With no more disturbance than firing a big gun."
"But what good will that do?"
"I'm going up with it!"
I put down my teacup and stared at him.
"Imagine a sphere," he explained, "large enough to hold two people and
their luggage. It will be made of steel lined with thick glass; it will
contain a proper store of solidified air, concentrated food, water
distilling apparatus, and so forth. And enamelled, as it were, on the
outer steel--"
"Cavorite?"
"Yes."
"But how will you get inside?"
"There was a similar problem about a dumpling."
"Yes, I know. But how?"
"That's perfectly easy. An air-tight manhole is all that is needed. That,
of course, will have to be a little complicated; there will have to be a
valve, so that things may be thrown out, if necessary, without much loss
of air."
"Like Jules Verne's thing in _A Trip to the Moon_."
But Cavor was not a reader of fiction.
"I begin to see," I said slowly. "And you could get in and screw yourself
up while the Cavorite was warm, and as soon as it cooled it would become
impervious to gravitation, and off you would fly--"
"At a tangent."
"You would go off in a straight line--" I stopped abruptly. "What is to
prevent the thing travelling in a straight line into space for ever?" I
asked. "You're not safe to get anywhere, and if you do--how will you get
back?"
"I've just thought of that," said Cavor. "That's what I meant when I said
the thing is finished.
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