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It actually reached top-twenty rating when it assigned a regular five-minute period to the Dabney Field and its possibilities in human terms. On the sixth day after Jamison's calculated indiscretion, the public consciousness was literally saturated with the idea of faster-than-light transportation. On the seventh day Bill Holden came into the office where Cochrane worked feverishly.
The faster-than-light angle came from the fact that it worked like a donkey trotting after a carrot held in front of him by a stick. The ship moving into the stressed area moved the stress. The force fields of a landing grid were similar. A tuning principle was involved, but basically a landing grid clamped an area of stress around a spaceship, and the ship couldn't move out of it.
The faster-than-light spaceship took off. At first it was like any other rocket takeoff. The glow of its exhaust spread over the field of the spaceport, then over the hills and valleys, and then the town of Waraxe, spreading illumination even as far as Sam Collins' silent house. After a time of being sick, Collins lay back and accepted this too. "That's right, that's it," Doc Candle said.
"Well, how's your trick 'bank' out on Luna, despite its twelve-foot walls, going to stand an atomic explosion?" "More protective devices to come is our only hope. I'm working on three trails: atomic energy, some type of magnetic shield that will stop any moving material particle, and their faster-than-light thing.
But he wanted to see the rest of Earth. He wanted to travel just for the sake of travel. Before he left, he visited a rare book dealer in York City, and for an exorbitant fifty credits purchased a fifth-edition copy of An Investigation into the Possibility of Faster-than-Light Space Travel, by James H. Cavour.
Mankind could trade and travel all over their galaxy, but they did it on Lhari ships. The Lhari had an absolute, unbreakable monopoly on star travel. "That's what hurts," Tommy said. "It wouldn't do us any good to have the star-drive. Humans can't stand faster-than-light travel, except in cold-sleep." Bart nodded.
"It changes the properties of space, but that's all. Can you think of any use for a faster-than-light radiation-pipe? I can't." Cochrane cocked an eye at Jamison, who could extrapolate at the drop of an equation. But Jamison shook his head. "Communication between planets," he said morosely, "when we get to them. Chats between sweethearts on Earth and Pluto.
"How about putting that brain of yours to work on a faster-than-light drive?" But then he began to struggle with the long distance operator. It took minutes to get the plant, and then it took time to get to the point, because his father insisted on asking anxiously how he was and if he was hurt in any way. Personal stuff.
Alan had been gone a year; he was past eighteen, now, a little heavier, a little stronger. Very little of the wide-eyed boy who had stepped off the Valhalla the year before remained intact. He had changed inwardly. But one part of him had not changed, except in the direction of greater determination. That was the part that hoped to unlock the secret of faster-than-light travel.
"Cavour is as far from Lexman as possible, my friend. Cavour was a dreamer; Lexman, a doer." "Lexman succeeded but how do you know Cavour didn't succeed as well?" "Because, my young friend, faster-than-light travel is flatly impossible. A dream. A delusion." "You mean that there's no faster-than-light research being carried on here?"
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