I remember the occasion very distinctly when Cavor told me of his idea
of the sphere. He had had intimations of it before, but at the time it
seemed to come to him in a rush. We were returning to the bungalow for
tea, and on the way he fell humming. Suddenly he shouted, “That’s it!
That finishes it! A sort of roller blind!”
“Finishes what?” I asked.
“Space--anywhere! The moon!”
“What do you mean?”
“Mean? Why--it must be a sphere! That’s what I mean!”
I saw I was out of it, and for a time I let him talk in his own
fashion. I hadn’t the ghost of an idea then of his drift. But after he
had taken tea he made it clear to me.
“It’s like this,” he said. “Last time I ran this stuff that cuts things
off from gravitation into a flat tank with an overlap that held it
down. And directly it had cooled and the manufacture was completed all
that uproar happened, nothing above it weighed anything, the air went
squirting up, the house squirted up, and if the stuff itself hadn’t
squirted up too, I don’t know what would have happened! But suppose the
substance is loose, and quite free to go up?”
“It will go up at once!”
“Exactly. With no more disturbance than firing a big gun.”
“But what good will that do?”
“I’m going up with it!”