w research, but
that, of course, was a matter we had to settle later. "That's all right,"
I shouted, "that's all right." The great point, as I insisted, was to get
the thing done.

"Here is a substance," I cried, "no home, no factory, no fortress, no ship
can dare to be without--more universally applicable even than a patent
medicine. There isn't a solitary aspect of it, not one of its ten thousand
possible uses that will not make us rich, Cavor, beyond the dreams of
avarice!"

"No!" he said. "I begin to see. It's extraordinary how one gets new points
of view by talking over things!"

"And as it happens you have just talked to the right man!"

"I suppose no one," he said, "is absolutely _averse_ to enormous wealth.
Of course there is one thing--"

He paused. I stood still.

"It is just possible, you know, that we may not be able to make it after
all! It may be one of those things that are a theoretical possibility, but
a practical absurdity. Or when we make it, there may be some little
hitch!"

"We'll tackle the hitch when it comes." said I.

Chapter 2

The First Making of Cavorite

But Cavor's fears were groundless, so far as the actual making was
concerned. On the 14th of October, 1899, this incredible substance was
made!

Oddly enough, it was made at last by accident, when Mr. Cavor least
expected it. He had fused together a number of metals and certain other
things--I wish I knew the particulars now!--and he intended to leave
the mixture a week and then allow it to cool slowly. Unless he had
miscalculated, the last stage in the combination would occur when the
stuff sank to a temperature of 60 degrees Fahrenheit. But it chanced
that, unknown to Cavor, dissension had arisen about the furnace tending.
Gibbs, who had previously seen to this, had suddenly attempted to shift
it to the man who had been a gardener, on the score that coal was soil,
being dug, and therefore could not possibly fall within the province of
a joiner; the man who had been a jobbing gardener alleged, however, that
coal was a metallic or ore-like substance, let alone that he was cook.
But Spargus insisted on Gibbs doing the coaling, seeing that he was a
joiner and that coal is notoriously fossil wood. Consequently Gibbs
ceased to replenish the furnace, and no one else did so, and Cavor was
too much immersed in certain interesting problems concerning a Cavorite
flying machine (neglecting the resistance of the air and one