"
My imagination was picking itself up again. "After all," I said,
"there's something in these things. There's travel--"
An extraordinary possibility came rushing into my mind. Suddenly I saw,
as in a vision, the whole solar system threaded with Cavorite liners
and spheres deluxe. "Rights of pre-emption," came floating into my
head--planetary rights of pre-emption. I recalled the old Spanish
monopoly in American gold. It wasn't as though it was just this planet
or that--it was all of them. I stared at Cavor's rubicund face, and
suddenly my imagination was leaping and dancing. I stood up, I walked
up and down; my tongue was unloosened.
"I'm beginning to take it in," I said; "I'm beginning to take it in." The
transition from doubt to enthusiasm seemed to take scarcely any time at
all. "But this is tremendous!" I cried. "This is Imperial! I haven't
been dreaming of this sort of thing."
Once the chill of my opposition was removed, his own pent-up excitement
had play. He too got up and paced. He too gesticulated and shouted. We
behaved like men inspired. We _were_ men inspired.
"We'll settle all that!" he said in answer to some incidental difficulty
that had pulled me up. "We'll soon settle that! We'll start the drawings
for mouldings this very night."
"We'll start them now," I responded, and we hurried off to the laboratory
to begin upon this work forthwith.
I was like a child in Wonderland all that night. The dawn found us both
still at work--we kept our electric light going heedless of the day.
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