“_ ... my work for the advancement of science has been applied by other minds.  I need to specify that if the experiment now about to begin does not succeed, it will not invalidate my discovery, which has been amply verified by other means.  It may be, indeed, that my discovery is so far ahead of present engineering—._”

“See here!” raged Cochrane.  “You can’t take off with Babs on board!  This is dangerous!”

Nobody paid any attention.  Jones made frantic gestures to indicate the most delicate of adjustments.  The man in the strap-chair obeyed the instruction with an absorbed attention.  Jones suddenly threw a switch.  Something lighted, somewhere.  There was a momentary throbbing sound which was not quite a sound.

“Take it away,” said Jones in a flat voice.

The man in the strap-chair pressed hard on the controls.  Cochrane glanced desperately out of one of the side ports.  He saw the moonscape—­the frozen lava sea with its layer of whitish-tan moondust.  He saw many moon-jeeps gathered near, as if most of the population of Lunar City had been gathered to watch this event.  He saw the extraordinary nearness of the moon’s horizon.

But it was the most momentary of glimpses.  As he opened his mouth to roar a protest, he felt the upward, curiously comforting thrust of acceleration to one full Earth-gravity.

The moonscape was snatched away from beneath the ship.  It did not descend.  The ship did not seem to rise.  The moon itself diminished and vanished like a pricked bubble.  The speed of its disappearance was not—­it specifically was not—­attributable to one earth-gravity of lift applied on a one-sixth-gravity moon.

The loudspeaker hiccoughed and was silent.  Cochrane uttered the roar he had started before the added acceleration began.  But it was useless.  Out the side-port, he saw the stars.  They were not still and changeless and winking, as they appeared from the moon.  These stars seemed to stir uneasily, to shift ever so slightly among themselves, like flecks of bright color drifting on a breeze.

Jones said in an interested voice: 

“Now we’ll try the booster.”

He threw another switch.  And again there was a momentary throbbing sound which was not quite a sound.  It was actually a sensation, which one seemed to feel all through one’s body.  It lasted only the fraction of a second, but while it lasted the stars out the side-ports ceased to be stars.  They became little lines of light, all moving toward the ship’s stern but at varying rates of speed.  Some of them passed beyond view.  Some of them moved only a little.  But all shifted.

Then they were again tiny spots of light, of innumerable tints and colors, of every conceivably degree of brightness, stirring and moving ever-so-slightly with relation to each other.

“The devil!” said Cochrane, raging.

Jones turned to him.  And Jones was not quite poker-faced, now.  Not quite.  He looked even pleased.  Then his face went back to impassiveness again.