a, and eventually kill them all. Since my plan
would take time, you objected to it, and sent an airplane to drop a
five-hundred-pound bomb on them. Airplane, bomb, and all simply
vanished. It didn't explode, you remember, just flashed into light and
disappeared, with scarcely any noise. Then you pulled several more of
your fool ideas, such as long-range bombardment, and so on. None of
them worked. Still you've got the nerve to think that you can get them
with ordinary gunmen! I've drawn you diagrams and shown you
figures--I've told you in great detail and in one-syllable words exactly
what we're up against. Now I tell you again that they've _got
something_. If you had the brains of a pinhead, you would know that
anything I can't do with a space-ship can't be done by a mob of ordinary
gangsters. I'm telling you, Brookings, that you can't do it. My way is
absolutely the only way that will work."

"But five years, Doctor!"

"I may be back in six months. But on a trip of this kind anything can
happen, so I am planning on being gone five years. Even that may not be
enough--I am carrying supplies for ten years, and that box of mine in
the vault is not to be opened until ten years from today."

"But surely we shall be able to remove the obstructions ourselves in a
few weeks. We always have."

"Oh, quit kidding yourself, Brookings! This is no time for idiocy! You
stand just as much chance of killing Seaton----"

"Please, Doctor, please don't talk like that!"

"Still squeamish, eh? Your pussyfooting always did give me an acute
pain. I'm for direct action, word and deed, first, last, and all the
time. I repeat, you have exactly as much chance of killing Richard
Seaton as a blind kitten has."

"How do you arrive at that conclusion, Doctor? You seem very fond of
belittling our abilities. Personally, I think that we shall be able to
attain our objectives within a few weeks--certainly long before you can
possibly return from such an extended trip as you have in mind. And
since you are so fond of frankness, I will say that I think that Seaton
has you buffaloed, as you call it. Nine-tenths of these wonderful
Osnomian things, I am assured by competent authorities, are
scientifically impossible, and I think that the other one-tenth exists
only in your own imagination. Seaton was lucky in that the airplane bomb
was defective and exploded prematurely; and your space-ship got hot
because of your injudicious speed through the atmosph