wandering about looking for a chicken coop that isn't locked.
Or, perhaps, seeking a chance to rob."

Jack said nothing, but from the glimpse he had had of the man's
face, he did not believe the fellow was a tramp. There was too
much intelligence shown. The face was an evil one, and seemed to
indicate that the man had an object in peering into the window--a
motive that was not connected with a chicken coop.

"I'll tell Andy to keep watch for a while tonight with his gun,"
went on the professor. "I don't like prowlers around here. I
have some valuable tools in my machine shop, and they might steal
them."

"Now, Professor Henderson," began Mr. Roumann, when he had taken
his seat at a small table and spread out his plans in front of
him, "I am only going to sketch briefly, for you and your young
assistants, what I propose. As I have said, we will need a
projectile, two hundred feet long and about ten feet through in
the thickest part. In that we will build sleeping and living
apartments, lacks to store the air which we will have to breathe
while traveling through space, other tanks for water, a
compartment for food, another for scientific instruments, and we
will need a comparatively large space for my machinery."

"Why will it take up so much space?" asked the professor. "I
thought you said the new power required only a small machine to
generate it."

"That is true, but you see we will have to carry two kinds of