In experimental work there
always are. And here, as a practical man, _you_ must come in. For my own
part it seems to me we might make it edgeways, perhaps, and very thin. Yet
I don't know. I have a certain dim perception of another method. I can
hardly explain it yet. But curiously enough it came into my mind, while I
was rolling over and over in the mud before the wind, and very doubtful
how the whole adventure was to end, as being absolutely the thing I
ought to have done."

Even with my aid we found some little difficulty, and meanwhile we kept at
work restoring the laboratory. There was plenty to do before it became
absolutely necessary to decide upon the precise form and method of our
second attempt. Our only hitch was the strike of the three labourers, who
objected to my activity as a foreman. But that matter we compromised after
two days' delay.

Chapter 3

The Building of the sphere

I remember the occasion very distinctly when Cavor told me of his idea of
the sphere. He had had intimations of it before, but at the time it seemed
to come to him in a rush. We were returning to the bungalow for tea, and
on the way he fell humming. Suddenly he shouted, "That's it! That
finishes it! A sort of roller blind!"

"Finishes what?" I asked.

"Space--anywhere! The moon."

"What do you mean?"

"Mean? Why--it must be a sphere! That's what I mean!"

I saw I was out of it, and for a time I let him talk in his own fashion. I
hadn't the ghost of an idea then of his drift. But after he had taken tea
he made it clear to me.

"It's like this," he said. "Last time I ran this stuff that cuts things
off from gravitation into a flat tank with an overlap that held it down.
And directly it had cooled and the manufacture was completed all that
uproar happened, nothing above it weighed anything, the air went squirting
up, the house squirted up, and if the stuff itself hadn't squirted up too,
I don't know what would have happened! But suppose the substance is loose,
and quite free to go up?"

"It will go up at once!"

"Exactly. 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 s