"
"And what about Old Glory?" said Miss Zaidie. "The _Astronef_ was built
with English money and English skill, but----"
"She is the creature of American genius. Of course she is. In fact she
is the first concrete symbol of the Anglo-American Alliance, and when
the daughter of her creator has gone into partnership with the man who
made her we'll have two flagstaff's, and the Jack and Old Glory will
float side by side."
"And meanwhile where are we going?" asked Zaidie, after a moment's
interval. "Ah, there we are through the clouds again. What makes us
rise? Is that the force that Pop told me he discovered?"
"I'll answer the last question first," said Redgrave. "That was the
greatest of your father's discoveries. He got at the secret of
gravitation, and was able to analyse it into two separate forces just as
Volta did with electricity--positive and negative, or, to put it better,
attractive and repulsive.
"Three out of the five sets of engines in the _Astronef_ develop the R.
Force, as I call it for short. This wheel with the hundred degrees
marked behind it regulates the development. The further I turn it this
way to the right, the more the R. Force overcomes the attractive force
of the earth or any other planet that we may visit. Turn it back, and
gravitation asserts itself. If I put this arrow-head on the wheel
opposite zero the weight of the _Astronef_ is about a hundred and fifty
tons, and of course she would go down like a stone, and a very big one
at that.
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