For the ships, of course, such a jet unit wouldn't do. The ships needed jets which would work while in motion, at speeds exceeding a hundred miles an hour. Thus, they'd had to fly the ship until its gravitors completely polarized its hull. Then they had to determine the air-flow over that hull at flying speeds with flow and pressure indicators mounted on the hull. Then they had to rebuild the tail-jets to conform with their findings. A flight half-way across the continent and back to their workshop would have served for that. But then, they had to be sure that there was no further change in the air-flow or polarization or gravitor field. For that reason, they had decided on this trip all the way across the country. It would give them a complete, thorough test of the ship. They had even gone so far as to arm themselves for defense, in case they were forced down anywhere and someone tried to get rough with them. In a strictly legal sense, the streamlined plastic pistols they carried were not lethal weapons. Technically, those pistols were ray-guns. They fired a beam of light. That light came from a standard photographer's flash-bulb. It was focused into a tight, narrow beam by the pistol's barrel reflector. It wouldn't penetrate the human skin; it wouldn't even raise a blister. It was almost physically harmless. But directed at a person's face at a distance of no more than twenty feet, it would leave them totally blind for about three minutes. A simple flash-bulb delivered a nice, bright flash. A person suddenly struck blind wasn't likely to be in any condition or mood to cause trouble. All other preparations for the trip had been as completely thorough, as carefully planned. Yet they had made one slight error. They had forgotten to include extra batteries for the ship. In all their careful and intricate preparations, that one, simple precaution had been overlooked. And now, because of it, Morrow wondered if the whole purpose of their trip wasn't going to be changed. They were flying to Westerton where he would borrow a car from someone he knew. The one person in Westerton he felt he could trust more readily than others was, of course, Gwyn Davidson. And Gwyn's father had a car. But they couldn't land their ship anywhere near town, where he could go directly to Gwyn. They would have to land some distance from town, at a spot he knew quite well, and he'd have to proceed from there. He couldn't hitch-hike into town; people knew him, would recognize him and ask questions. He'd have to fly in on his suit gravitor. And when Gwyn saw that, he'd have some explaining to do. He wondered what she would think.... He wondered, too, at the thrilling tingle of excitement which was washing through him in waves of--of ecstasy, almost! There was no other word for it! He felt like a kid with his first toy.