As the four approached her she had been placed on the ramp from which she was to start, slanting slightly upward, with a buffer of timber and earth behind it, to take up the enormous recoil her power plant was expected to develop. "How do you get in?" asked Gloria, walking around the _Monitor_ and discovering no sign of a door. "Oh, that's a trick I borrowed from our friends the Lassans," explained Sherman. "Look here." He led her to a place half way along one side, where two almost imperceptible holes marred the shining brightness of the new vessel's sides. "Stick your fingers in." * * * * * She did as directed, pressed, and a wide door in the side of the projectile swung open. "Bright thought. No handles to break off." They stepped in, bending their heads to avoid the low ceiling. "She isn't as roomy or comfortable or as heavily armored as the one I mean to build later," explained Sherman, "but this is only an experimental craft, built in a hurry, so I had to take what I could get.... Now here, Murray you sit here. Your job is going to be to mind the gravity beam that furnishes us our power. Every time you get the signal from me, you throw this power switch. That will turn on all three switches at the stern, and shoot the gravity beam out for the exhaust.... You see, we can't expect to keep up a steady stream of explosions with this kind of a machine. We wouldn't be able to control it. We'll travel in a series of short hops through the air, soaring between hops, like a glider." "How are you going to do any soaring without wings?" asked Murray. "We have wings. They fold into the body at the back. I've made them automatic. When the power switch is thrown the wings fold in; after the explosion they come out automatically unless we disconnect them. If we want to really go fast, we'll disconnect them and go through the air like a projectile." "Oh, I see. Will the windows stand the gaff?" "I hope to tell you they will. I had them made of fused quartz, with an outer plating of leaded glass, just in case the Lassans try to get fresh with that light-ray of theirs. "Now, Gloria, you sit here. You're the best shot in the crowd, and it's going to be your job to run that searchlight in the prow. As soon as you pick up anything with it, Ben will throw his switch, and whatever is at the end of it will get a dose of pure protons. We'll have to do a good deal of our aiming by turning the ship itself. I made the searchlight as flexible as I could, but I couldn't get a great deal of turn to it on account of the necessity of getting the nuclei into the light beam." "By the way," asked Murray. "Won't this pure light armor of the Lassans knock your beam for a row of ashcans?"