In seconds, it seemed, the horizon was visibly curved. In other seconds
the planet being left behind was a monstrous white ball, and there were
patches of intolerable white sunlight coming in the ports.
And Cochrane felt queer. Jones had given the order for take-off. Jones
had determined to leave at this moment, because Jones had tests he
wanted to make.... Cochrane felt like a passenger. From the man who
decided things because he was the one who knew what had to be done, he
had become something else. He had been absent two nights and part of a
day, and decisions had been made in which he had no part--
It felt queer. It felt even startling.
"We're in a modification of the modified Dabney field now," observed
Jones in a gratified tone. "You know the original theory."
"I don't," acknowledged Cochrane.
"The field's always a pipe, a tube, a column of stressed space between
the field-plates," Jones reminded him. "When we landed the first time,
back yonder, the tail of the ship wasn't in the field at all. The field
stretched from the bow of the ship only, out to that last balloon we
dropped. We were letting down at an angle to that line.
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