* * * * * The boats were very like LCPs, with big bow ports closed by movable ramps. Skagarach said, "Yes, very like LCPs," which of course was not mind-reading, but intelligent guessing of my first thought. "We ground them on the beach, then they can be backed off easily, because of their specially designed propellors and rudders. The power comes from a reactor operating with thermal neutrons, and late refinements have made it almost wholly silent. This is the perfect transportation for us." "To Pompey Island, naturally," I said. "Naturally," said Bill Cuff in a surly tone. "We're going to pay Howard a visit." "But what good will that do?" "Don't be a burbling, maundering, congenital idiot, Ray," said Bill irritably. "That space station is the answer for us. With it we'll command the world." "But how will you get it into the sky?" "The same way the _men_ were going to do it. Tow it with three stage rockets." He relaxed his expression of potential murder, and gripped me by the shoulder. His hand was like a bear trap. "There are musters of the Old Companions lying in wait near every rocket station on the seaboard. As soon as we've secured possession of the space station, they'll know it; and within fifteen minutes the rockets will be on the way to Pompey." "Oh, wait a minute," I said. I was consumed with impatience to see Nessa, but the sheer incredibility of this plot had to be coped with now. These men were stark crazy.... "If I dared to write up a yarn in which three-stage rockets were flown to an island and from there into the sky with a 237-foot-broad space station, my publisher would slit my throat with a rolled-up contract! Vampires are easier to believe than a wacked thing like that." "Ray," said Bill Cuff, and suddenly from the growl in his voice I realized that I had been taking liberties with a savage cave-brute, "Ray, do we seem like fumblers to you?" "No," I said. "How do you think the _men_ were going to do it?" "I don't know, but I presumed they'd dismantle the station, after testing it, and tow it in parts into space, where they'd reassemble it." "Dead wrong. They were going to carry it to the thousand-mile mark by three-stage rockets, yes; but as a whole, not in parts." "I didn't think it could be done." "It can with the rockets they have. There've been improvements since you read about rocketry last, Ray." Cuff looked superior. As if he'd had something to do with the improvements, instead of squatting somewhere in a swamp. "And that isn't all. Those rockets are going to be towed themselves--from their bases to the site of the man-made moon--by smaller vehicles built on the principles of the VTO planes." VTO--Vertical Take Off. Yes, it was remotely conceivable....