“If I were you,” said Cochrane confidentially, “I would plan a speech to that effect because the test is coming off in five minutes.”

He closed his face-plate as Dabney began to protest.  He went into the lock.  He knew better than to hold anything up while waiting for a neurotic to make a decision.  Dabney had all he wanted, now.  From this moment on he would be frantic for fear of losing it.  But there could be no argument outside the laboratory.  In the airlessness, anything anybody said by walkie-talkie could be heard by everybody.

When Dabney and Simms followed out of the lock, Cochrane was helping Jones set up the device that had been prepared for this test.  It was really two devices.  One was a very flat cone, much like a coolie-hat and hardly larger, with a sort of power-pack of coils and batteries attached.  The other was a space-ship’s distress-signal rocket, designed to make a twenty-mile streak of red flame in emptiness.  Nobody had yet figured out what good a distress signal would do, between Earth and moon, but the idea was soothing.  The rocket was four feet long and six inches in diameter.  At its nose there was a second coolie-hat cone, with other coils and batteries.

Jones set the separate cone on the ground and packed stones around and under it to brace it.  His movements were almost ridiculously deliberate.  Bending over, he bent slowly, or the motion would lift his feet off the ground.  Straightening up, he straightened slowly, or the upward impetus of his trunk would again lift him beyond contact with solidity.  But he braced the flat cone carefully.

He set the signal-torpedo over that cone.  The entire set-up was under six feet tall, and the coolie-hat cones were no more than eighteen inches in diameter.  He said flatly: 

“I’m all ready.”

The hand and arm of a space-suited figure lifted, for attention.  Dabney’s voice came worriedly from the headphones of every suit: 

“I wish it understood,” he said in some agitation, “that this first attempted application of my discovery is made with my consent, but that I am not aware of the mechanical details.  As a scientist, my work has been in pure science.  I have worked for the advancement of human knowledge, but the technological applications of my discovery are not mine.  Still—­if this device does not work, I will take time from my more important researches to inquire into what part of my discovery has been inadequately understood and applied.  It may be that present technology is not qualified to apply my discovery—­”

Jones said without emotion—­but Cochrane could imagine his poker-faced expression inside his helmet: 

“That’s right.  I consulted Mr. Dabney about the principles, but the apparatus is my doing, I take the responsibility for that!”

Then Cochrane added with pleasant irony: 

“Since all this is recorded, Mr. Dabney can enlarge upon his disinterest later.  Right now, we can go ahead.  Mr. Dabney disavows us unless we are successful.  Let us let it go at that.”  Then he said:  “The observatory’s set to track?”