Markten had already seated himself at the controls of the craft, switched on the take-off lights and started the powerful engines. Above the roar of the engines as they warmed for take-off, Markten's assistant could still detect the undertones of excitement in the Elder's voice.
"It's something different--completely different that you've found! Not just an improved design or a variation such as we've had to be content with for the past five years.... This is _new_! I'm positive of it!"
There was, of course, little sense in doubting the word of an Elder. That was a part of training. Another part which Markten's aide had not forgotten had also said, however, that there could always be danger in a too-cursory preconstruction study of any new discovery.
And then, of course, there were those other things he had read which Markten had said were such a complete waste of time.
They began construction work from the large colored diagram less than a month after the book containing it had been discovered. The diagram itself, of course, had been enlarged to its full scale, as had other sectional diagrams that Markten said definitely were parts of the same thing, but drawn separately in the book to render greater detail.
Two things had almost stumped the Elder completely, however, before he announced his preconstruction studies finished, and that he was prepared to begin actual construction. There were odors in the laboratory which his aide's nostrils had never experienced before. He wondered if they were as new to Markten.
"I admit," Markten said the day he began work in the two specially constructed, oblong vats filled with a fluid Markten called formaldehyde, "I am puzzled about the power source. Obviously a chain of electrochemical reactions, but stemming from _where_--that's what I've got to find out. Also, I've had to have another full-scale diagram drawn up. There was another colored one we missed--it was on a regular page. Have a look."
His aide's less-experienced eyes examined the second full-scale drawing Markten had made.
"It's--smaller. And--different, sort of. But yet it's the same. Maybe--"
"Maybe one is just an improved model over the other? One a later development, you think?"
