Читать книгу The First Men in the Moon (Illustrated Edition) онлайн

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I stuck like a leech to the “we”—“you” and “I” didn’t exist for me.

His idea was, that the profits I spoke of might go to endow research, but that, of course, was a matter we had to settle later. “That’s all right,” I shouted, “that’s all right.” The great point, as I insisted, was to get the thing done.

“Here is a substance,” I cried, “no home, no factory, no fortress, no ship can dare to be without—more universally applicable even than a patent medicine! There isn’t a solitary aspect of it, not one of its ten thousand possible uses that will not make us rich, Cavor, beyond the dreams of avarice!”

“No!” he said. “I begin to see. It’s extraordinary how one gets new points of view by talking over things!”

“And as it happens you have just talked to the right man!”

“I suppose no one,” he said, “is absolutely averse to enormous wealth. Of course there is one thing——”

He paused. I stood still.

“It is just possible, you know, that we may not be able to make it after all! It may be one of those things that are a theoretical possibility, but a practical absurdity. Or when we make it, there may be some little hitch——!”