"You chirped it, old scout, I sure would. I never did like the looks of that old guy with the scythe, and I would hate to let DuQuesne feel that he had slipped something over on me at my own game. Besides, I've developed a lot of caution myself, lately. Double she is, with a skin of four-foot Norwegian armor. Let's get busy!" * * * * * They made the necessary alteration in the plans, and in a few days work was begun upon the huge steel shell in the little mountain steel-plant. The work was done under the constant supervision of the great MacDougall, by men who had been in his employ for years and who were all above suspicion. While it was being built Seaton and Crane employed a force of men and went ahead with the construction of the space-car in the testing shed. While they did not openly slight the work nearly all their time was spent in the house, perfecting the many essential things which were to go into the real Skylark. There was the attractor, for which they had to perfect a special sighting apparatus so that it could act in any direction, and yet would not focus upon the ship itself nor anything it contained. There were many other things. It was in this work that the strikingly different temperaments and abilities of the two men were most clearly revealed. Seaton strode up and down the room, puffing great volumes of smoke from his hot and reeking briar, suggesting methods and ideas, his keen mind finding the way over, around, or through the apparently insuperable obstacles which beset their path. Crane, seated calmly at the drafting-table, occasionally inhaling a mouthful of smoke from one of his specially-made cigarettes, mercilessly tore Seaton's suggestions to shreds--pointing out their weaknesses, proving his points with his cold, incisive reasoning and his slide-rule calculations of factors, stresses, and strains. Seaton in turn would find a remedy for every defect, and finally, the idea complete and perfect, Crane would impale it upon the point of his drafting pencil and spread it in every detail upon the paper before him, while Seaton's active mind leaped to the next problem. Not being vitally interested in the thing being built in the shed, they did not know that to the flawed members were being attached faulty plates, by imperfect welding. Even if they had been interested they could not have found the poor workmanship by any ordinary inspection, for it was being done by a picked crew of experts picked by Perkins. But to make things even, Perkins' crew did not know that the peculiar instruments installed by Seaton and Crane, of which their foreman took many photographs, were not real instruments, and were made only nearly enough like them to pass inspection. They were utterly useless, in design and function far different from the real instruments intended for the Skylark.