But with
this new trick, we've got fuel for a couple of hundred!"
"Ah!" said Cochrane mildly. "This is the first thing you've said that
meant anything to me. Congratulations! What comes next?"
"I thought you'd be pleased," said Jones. "What I'm really telling you
is that now we've got fuel enough to reach the Milky Way."
"Let's not," suggested Cochrane, "and say we did! You've got a new star
picked out to travel to?"
Jones shrugged his shoulders. In him, the gesture indicated practically
hysterical frustration. But he said:
"Yes. Twenty-one light-years. Back on Earth they're anxious for us to
check on sol-type suns and Earth-type planets."
"For once," said Cochrane, "I am one with the great scientific minds.
Let's go over."
He made his way to the circular stairway leading down to the main
saloon. On his clumsy way across the saloon floor to the communicator,
he felt the peculiar sensation of the booster-current, which should
have been a sound, but wasn't. It was the sensation which had preceded
the preposterous leap of the space-ship away from Luna, when in a
heart-beat of time all stars looked like streaks of light, and the ship
traveled nearly two light-centuries.
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