Twenty-five points. You owe me a quarter, Elshawe."
The reporter handed him a coin. "Two bits it is. What can you do,Porter? They've got you sewed up tight. If you try to take off, they'llcart you right back to The Rock--if the Army doesn't shoot you downfirst. Do you want to spend the next ten years engrossed in the scenicbeauties of San Francisco Bay?"
"No. And I won't, either."
"Not if the Army gets you. I can see the epitaph now:
_Malcom Porter, with vexation, Thought he could defy the nation. He shot for space with great elation-- Now he's dust and radiation._
Beneath it, they'll engrave a spaceship argent with A-bombs rampant on afield sable."
Porter didn't take offense. He grinned. "What are you griping about? Itwould make a great story."
"Sure it would," Elshawe agreed. "But not for me. I don't write theobituary column."
"You know what I like about you, Elshawe?"
"Sure. I lose dart games to you."
"That, yes. But you really sound worried. That means two things. One:You like me. Two: You believe that my ship actually will take off.That's more than any of those other reporters who have been prowlingaround and phoning in do."
Elshawe shrugged silently and puffed at his pipe. Malcom Porter's egowas showing through. He was wrong on two counts. Elshawe didn't likehim; the man's arrogance and his inflated opinion of himself as ascientific genius didn't sit well with the reporter. And Elshawe didn'treally believe there was anything but a rocket motor in that hulloutside. A new, more powerful kind of rocket perhaps--otherwise Porterwouldn't be trying to take a one-stage rocket to the Moon. But a rocket,nonetheless.
"I don't want to go back to prison," Porter continued, "but I'll riskthat if I have to. But I won't risk death just yet. Don't worry; theArmy won't know I'm even gone until I'm halfway to the Moon."
"Foo!" said Elshawe. "Every radar base from Albuquerque to the Mexicanborder has an antenna focused on the air above this ranch. The minuteyou get above those mountains, they'll have a fix on you, and a minuteafter that, they'll have you bracketed with Cobras.
"Why don't you let the Government inspectors look it over and give youan O.K.? What makes you think they're all out to steal your invention?"
"Oh, they won't _steal_ it," Porter said bitterly. "Heaven's-to-Betsy_no_! But this invention of mine will mean that the United States ofAmerica will be in complete control of the planets and the spacebetween. When the Government wants a piece of property, they try to buyit at their price; if they can't do that, they condemn it and pay theowner what they think it's worth--not what the owner thinks it's worth.The same thing applies here; they'd give me what they thought I ought tohave--in ten years or so. Look what happened to Fermi.
"No, Elshawe; when the Government comes begging to me for thisinvention, they can have it--on _my_ terms."
"Going to keep it a secret, eh? You can't keep a thing like that secret.Look what happened with atomic energy after World War Two. We kept it asecret from the Russians, didn't we? Fine lot of good that did us. Assoon as they knew it was possible, they went to work on it. Natureanswers any questions you ask her if you ask her the right way. As soonas the Government sees that your spaceship works, they'll put some oftheir bright physicists to work on it, and you'll be in the sameposition as you would have been if you'd showed it to them in the firstplace. Why risk your neck?"
Porter shook his head. "The analogy isn't valid. Suppose someone hadinvented the A-bomb in 1810. It would have been a perfectly safe secretbecause there wasn't a scientist on Earth who included such a thing asatomic energy in his philosophy. And, believe me, this drive of mine isjust as far ahead of contemporary scientific philosophy as atomic energywas ahead of Napoleon's scientists.
"Suppose I told you that the fuel my ship uses is a gas lighter thanhydrogen. It isn't, but suppose I told you so. Do you think anyscientist today could figure out how it worked? No. They _know_ thatthere's no such thing as a gas with a lighter atomic weight thanhydrogen. They know it so well that they wouldn't even bother toconsider the idea.
"My invention is so far ahead of present-day scientific thought that noscientists except myself could have even considered the idea."
"O.K.; O.K.," Elshawe said. "So you're going to get yourself shot downto prove your point."
Porter grinned lopsidedly. "Not at all. You're still thinking in termsof a rocket. Sure--if I used a rocket, they'd knock me down fast, justas soon as I lifted above the mountains. But I don't have to do that.All I have to do is get a few feet of altitude and hug the ground allthe way to the Pacific coast. Once I get out in the middle of thePacific, I can take off straight up without being bothered at all."
"All right. If your machine will do it," the reporter said, trying tohide his skepticism.
"You still think I've got some kind of rocket, don't you?" Porter askedaccusingly. He paused a moment, then, as if making a sudden decision, hesaid: "Look, Elshawe, I trust you. I'm going to show you the inside ofthat ship. I won't show you my engines, but I _will_ prove to you thatthere are no rocket motors in her. That way, when you write up thestory, you'll be able to say that you have first-hand knowledge of thatfact. O.K.?"
"It's up to you," the reporter said. "I'd like to see it."
"Come along," said Malcom Porter.
* * * * *
Elshawe followed Porter out to the field, feeling rather grateful thathe was getting something to work on. They walked across the field, pastthe two gun-toting men in Levis that Porter had guarding the ship.Overhead, the stars were shining brightly through the thin mountain air.Elshawe glanced at his wrist watch. It was a little after ten p.m.
He helped Porter wheel the ramp up to the door of the ship and thenfollowed him up the steps. Porter unlocked the door and went inside. TheGrumman had been built to cruise in the high stratosphere, so it was asair-tight as a submarine.
Porter switched on the lights. "Go on in."
The reporter stepped into the cabin of the ship and looked around. Ithad been rebuilt, all right; it didn't look anything like the inside ofa normal stratojet.
"Elshawe."
"Yeah?" The reporter turned to look at Porter, who was standing a littlebehind him. He didn't even see the fist that arced upward and smashedinto his jaw. All he saw was a blaze of light, followed by darkness.
The next thing he knew, something was stinging in his nostrils. Hejerked his head aside, coughing. The smell came again. Ammonia.
"Wake up, Elshawe," Porter was saying. "Have another whiff of thesesmelling salts and you'll feel better."
Elshawe opened his eyes and looked at the bigger man. "I'm awake. Takethat stuff away. What's the idea of slugging me?"
"I was afraid you might not come willingly," Porter said apologetically."I needed a witness, and I figured you'd do better than anyone else."
Elshawe tried to move and found that he was tied to the seat andstrapped in with a safety belt. "What's this for?" he asked angrily. Hisjaw still hurt.
"I'll take that stuff off in a few minutes. I know I can trust you, butI want you to remember that I'm the only one who can pilot this ship. Ifyou try anything funny, neither one of us will get back alive. I'll letyou go as soon as we get up to three hundred miles."
Elshawe stared at him. "Where are we?"
"Heading out toward mid-Pacific. I headed south, to Mexico, first. We'reover open water now, headed toward Baja California, so I put on theautopilot. As soon as we get out over the ocean, we can really maketime. You can watch the sun come up in the west."
"And then?" Elshawe felt dazed.
"And then we head straight up. For empty space."
Elshawe closed his eyes again. He didn't even want to think about it.
* * * * *
"... As you no doubt heard," Terrence Elshawe dictated into the phone,"Malcom Porter made good his threat to take a spaceship of his owndevising to the Moon. Ham radios all over North America picked up hi
sspeech, which was made by spreading the beam from an eighty-footdiameter parabolic reflector and aiming it at Earth from a hundredthousand miles out. It was a collapsible reflector, made of thin foil,like the ones used on space stations. Paragraph.
"He announced that the trip was made with the co-operation of the UnitedStates Space Force, and that it represented a major breakthrough in theconquest of space. He--"
"Just a sec," Winstein's voice broke