's a limit. It depends on the temperature of the things in the
field. But I've fixed up the field, now, like a spot-welding outfit.
Like a strobe-light. We took off with a light field. It's on now--we
have to keep it on. But I got hold of some pretty storage condensers. I
hooked them up in parallel to get a momentary surge of high-amperage
current when I shorted them through my field-making coils. Couldn't make
it a steady current! Everything would blow! But I had a surge of
probably six amps per square centimetre for a while."

Cochrane swallowed.

"The field was sixty times as strong as the one the distress-torpedo
used? We went--we're going--sixty times as fast?"

"We had lots more speed than that!" But then Jones' enthusiasm dwindled.
"I haven't had time to check," he said unhappily. "It's one of the
things I want to get at right away. But in theory the field should
modify the effect of inertia as the fourth power of its strength. Sixty
to the fourth is--."

"How far," demanded Cochrane, "is Proxima Centaurus? That's the nearest
star to Earth. How near did we come to reaching it?"

The pilot on the other side of the control-room said with a trace less
than his former zest:

"That looks like Sirius, over there ..."

"We didn't head for Proxima Centaurus," said Jones mildly. "It's too
close! And we have to keep the field-plate back on the moon lined up
with us, more or less, so we headed out roughly along the moon's axis.
Toward where its north pole points."

"Then where are we headed? Where are we going?"

"We're not going anywhere just yet," said Jones without interest. "We
have to find out where we are, and from that--"

Cochrane ran his hand through his hair.

"Look!" he protested. "Who's running this show? You didn't tell me you
were going to take off! You didn't pick out a destination! You didn't--"

Jones said very patiently:

"We have to try out the ship. We have to find out how fast it goes with
how much field and how much rocket-thrust. We have to find out how far
we went and if it was in a straight line. We even have to find out how
to land! The ship's a new piece of apparatus. We can't do things with it
until we find out what it can do."

Cochrane stared at him. Then he swallowed.

"I see," he said. "The financial and business department of Spaceways,
Inc., has done its stuff for the time being."

Jones nodded.

"The technical staff now takes over?"

Jones nodded again.

"I still t