"No production," said Cochrane blandly. "It isn't necessary. A straight
public-relations set-up. We concoct a story and then let it leak out. We
make it so good that even the people who don't believe it can't help
spreading it." He nodded at Jamison. "Right now, Jamison, we want a
theory that the sending of radiation at twenty times the speed of light
means that there is a way to send matter faster than light--as soon as
we work it out. It means that the inertia-mass which increases with
speed--Einstein's stuff--is not a property of matter, but of space, just
as the air-resistance that increases when an airplane goes faster is a
property of air and not of the plane. Maybe we need to work out a theory
that all inertia is a property of space. We'll see if we need that. But
anyhow, just as a plane can go faster in thin air, so matter--any
matter--will move faster in this field as soon as we get the trick of
it. You see?"

Holden shook his head.

"What's that got in it to make Dabney famous?" he asked.

"Jamison will extrapolate from there," Cochrane assured him. "Go ahead,
Jamison. You're on."

Jamison said promptly, with the hypnotic smoothness of the practiced
professional:

"When this development has been completed, not only will messages be
sent at multiples of the speed of light, but matter! Ships! The barrier
to the high destiny of mankind; the limitation of our race to a single
planet of a minor sun--these handicaps crash and will shatter as the
great minds of humanity bend their efforts to make the Dabney