“Then,” said Cochrane, “I’m literally forced, for Dabney’s sake, to do something that he’d scream shrilly at if he heard about it.  We’re going to have a party, Bill!  A party after your and my and Jones’ hearts!”

“What do you mean?” demanded Holden.

“We make a production after all,” said Cochrane, grinning.  “We are going to take Dabney’s discovery—­the one he bought publicity rights to—­very seriously indeed.  I’m going to get him acclaim.  First we break a story of what Dabney’s field means for the future of mankind—­and then we prove it!  We take a journey to the stars!  Want to make your reservations now?”

“You mean,” said West incredulously, “a genuine trip?  Why?”

Cochrane snapped at him suddenly.

“Because I can’t kid myself any more,” he rasped.  “I’ve found out how little I count in the world and the estimation of Kursten, Kasten, Hopkins and Fallowe!  I’ve found out I’m only a little man when I thought I was a big one, and I won’t take it!  Now I’ve got an excuse to try to be a big man!  That’s reason enough, isn’t it?”

Then he glared around the small laboratory under the dust-heap.  He was irritated because he did not feel splendid emotions after making a resolution and a plan which ought to go down in history—­if it worked.  He wasn’t uplifted.  He wasn’t aware of any particular feeling of being the instrument of destiny or anything else.  He simply felt peevish and annoyed and obstinate about trying the impossible trick.

It annoyed him additionally, perhaps, to see the expression of starry-eyed admiration on Babs’ face as she looked at him across the untidy laboratory table, cluttered up with beer-cans.

CHAPTER THREE

It is a matter of record that the American continents were discovered because ice-boxes were unknown in the fifteenth century.  There being no refrigeration, meat did not keep.  But meat was not too easy to come by, so it had to be eaten, even when it stank.  Therefore it was a noble enterprise, and to the glory of the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, to put up the financial backing for even a crackpot who might get spices cheaper and thereby make the consumption of slightly spoiled meat less unpleasant.  Which was why Columbus got three ships and crews of jailbirds for them from a government still busy trying to drive the Moors out of the last corner of Spain.

This was a precedent for the matter on hand now.  Cochrane happened to know the details about Columbus because he’d checked over the research when he did a show on the Dikkipatti Hour dealing with him.  There were more precedents.  The elaborate bargain by which Columbus was to be made hereditary High Admiral of the Western Oceans, with a bite of all revenue obtained by the passage he was to discover—­he had to hold out for such terms to make the package he was selling look attractive.  Nobody buys anything that is underpriced too much.  It looks phoney.  So Cochrane made his preliminaries rather more impressive than they need have been from a strictly practical point of view, in order to make the enterprise practical from a financial aspect.