"That ship that attacked us, attacked with a neutron gun, a gun that shot neutrons through the hull of our ship as easily as protons pass through open space. Those neutrons killed off four of the crew, and spared us only because we happened to be behind the water tanks. Masses of hydrogen will stop neutrons, so we lived, and escaped in the tender. The little tender, lightless, escaped their observation, and we were picked up. Now, when the 247 had been picked up, and locked into their ship, that ship started accelerating. It accelerated so fast along my line of sight that it just dwindled, and--vanished. It didn't vanish in distance, it vanished _because it exceeded the speed of light_." "Isn't that impossible?" "Not at all. It can be done--if you can find some way of escaping from this space to do it. Now if you could cut across through a higher dimension, your _projection_ in this dimension might easily exceed the speed of light. For instance, if I could cut directly through the Earth, at a speed of one thousand miles an hour, my projection on the surface would go twelve thousand miles while I was going eight. Similar, if you could cut _through_ the four dimensional space instead of following its surface, you'd attain a speed greater than light." "Might it not still be a space pirate? That's a lot easier to believe, even allowing your statement that he exceeded the speed of light." "If you invented a neutron gun which could kill through tungsten walls without injuring anything within, a system of accelerating a ship that didn't affect the inhabitants of that ship, and a means of exceeding the speed of light, all within a few months of each other, would you become a pirate? I wouldn't, and I don't think any one else would. A pirate is a man who seeks adventure and relief from work. Given a means of exceeding the speed of light, I'd get all the adventure I wanted investigating other planets. If I didn't have a cent before, I'd have relief from work by selling it for a few hundred millions--and I'd sell it mighty easily too, for an invention like that is worth an incalculable sum. Tie to that the value of compensated acceleration, and no man's going to turn pirate. He can make more millions selling his inventions than he can make thousands turning pirate with them. So who'd turn pirate?" "Right." McLaurin nodded. "I see your point. Now before I'd accept your statements _in re_ the 'speed of light' thing, I'd want opinions from some IP physicists." "Then let's have a conference, because something's got to be done soon. I don't know why we haven't heard further from that fellow."