Operation: Outer Space

Chapter Three

It is a matter of record that the American continents were discovered because ice–boxes were unknown in the fifteenth century. There being no refrigeration, meat did not keep. But meat was not too easy to come by, so it had to be eaten, even when it stank. Therefore it was a noble enterprise, and to the glory of the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, to put up the financial backing for even a crackpot who might get spices cheaper and thereby make the consumption of slightly spoiled meat less unpleasant. Which was why Columbus got three ships and crews of jailbirds for them from a government still busy trying to drive the Moors out of the last corner of Spain.

This was a precedent for the matter on hand now. Cochrane happened to know the details about Columbus because he'd checked over the research when he did a show on the Dikkipatti Hour dealing with him. There were more precedents. The elaborate bargain by which Columbus was to be made hereditary High Admiral of the Western Oceans, with a bite of all revenue obtained by the passage he was to discover—he had to hold out for such terms to make the package he was selling look attractive. Nobody buys anything that is underpriced too much. It looks phoney. So Cochrane made his preliminaries rather more impressive than they need have been from a strictly practical point of view, in order to make the enterprise practical from a financial aspect.

There was another precedent he did not intend to follow. Columbus did not know where he was going when he set sail, he did not know where he was when he arrived at the end of his voyage, and he didn't know where he'd been when he got back. Cochrane expected to improve on the achievement of the earlier explorer's doings in these respects.

He commandeered the legal department of Kursten, Kasten, Hopkins, and Fallowe to set up the enterprise with strict legality and discretion. There came into being a corporation called "Spaceways, Inc." which could not possibly be considered phoney from any inspection of its charter. Expert legal advice arranged that its actual stock–holders should appear to be untraceable. Deft manipulation contrived that though its stock was legally vested in Cochrane and Holden and Jones—Cochrane negligently threw in Jones as a convenient name to use—and they were officially the owners of nearly all the stock, nobody who checked up would believe they were anything but dummies. Stockholdings in West's, and Jamison's and Bell's names would look like smaller holdings held for other than the main entrepreneurs. But these stock–holders were not only the legal owners of record—they were the true owners. Kursten, Kasten, Hopkins and Fallowe wanted no actual part of Spaceways. They considered the enterprise merely a psychiatric treatment for a neurotic son–in–law. Which, of course, it was. So Spaceways, Inc., quite honestly and validly belonged to the people who would cure Dabney of his frustration—and nobody at all believed that it would ever do anything else. Not anybody but those six owners, anyhow. And as it turned out, not all of them.

The psychiatric treatment began with an innocent–seeming news–item from Lunar City saying that Dabney, the so–and–so scientist, had consented to act as consulting physicist to Spaceways, Inc., for the practical application of his recent discovery of a way to send messages faster than light.

This was news simply because it came from the moon. It got fairly wide distribution, but no emphasis.

Then the publicity campaign broke. On orders from Cochrane, Jamison the extrapolating genius got slightly plastered, in company with the two news–association reporters in Lunar City. He confided that Spaceways, Inc., had been organized and was backed to develop the Dabney faster–than–light–signalling field into a faster–than–light–travel field. The news men pumped him of all his extrapolations. Cynically, they checked to see who might be preparing to unload stock. They found no preparations for stock–sales. No registration of the company for raising funds. It wasn't going to the public for money. It wasn't selling anybody anything. Then Cochrane refused to see any reporters at all, everybody connected with the enterprise shut up tighter than a clam, and Jamison vanished into a hotel room where he was kept occupied with beverages and food at Dabney's father–in–law's expense. None of this was standard for a phoney promotion deal.

The news story exploded. Let loose on an overcrowded planet which had lost all hope of relief after fifty years in which only the moon had been colonized—and its colony had a population in the hundreds, only—the idea of faster–than–light travel was the one impossible dream that everybody wanted to believe in. The story spread in a manner that could only be described as chain–reaction in character. And of course Dabney—as the scientist responsible for the new hope—became known to all peoples.

The experts of Kursten, Kasten, Hopkins and Fallowe checked on the publicity given to Dabney. Strict advertising agency accounting figured that to date the cost–per–customer–mention of Dabney and his discovery were the lowest in the history of advertising. Surveys disclosed that within three Earth–days less than 3.5 of every hundred interviews questioned were completely ignorant of Dabney and the prospect of travel to the stars through his discovery. More people knew Dabney's name than knew the name of the President of the United States!

That was only the beginning. The leading popular–science show jumped eight points in audience–rating. It actually reached top–twenty rating when it assigned a regular five–minute period to the Dabney Field and its possibilities in human terms. On the sixth day after Jamison's calculated indiscretion, the public consciousness was literally saturated with the idea of faster–than–light transportation. Dabney was mentioned in every interview of every stuffed shirt, he was referred to on every comedy show (three separate jokes had been invented, which were developed into one thousand eight hundred switcheroos, most of them only imperceptibly different from the original trio) and even Marilyn Winters—Little Aphrodite Herself—was demanding a faster–than–light–travel sequence in her next television show.

On the seventh day Bill Holden came into the office where Cochrane worked feverishly.

"Doctor Cochrane," said Holden, "a word with you!"

"Doctor?" asked Cochrane.

"Doctor!" repeated Holden. "I've just been interviewing my patient. You're good. My patient is adjusted."

Cochrane raised his eyebrows.

"He's famous," said Holden grimly. "He now considers that everybody in the world knows that he is a great scientist. He is appreciated. He is happily making plans to go back to Earth and address a few learned societies and let people admire him. He can now spend the rest of his life being the man who discovered the principle by which faster–than–light–travel will some day be achieved. Even when the furor dies down, he will have been a great man—and he will stay a great man in his own estimation. In short, he's cured."

Cochrane grinned.

"Then I'm fired?"

"We are," said Holden. "There are professional ethics even among psychiatrists, Jed. I have to admit that the guy now has a permanent adjustment to reality. He has been recognized as a great scientist. He is no longer frustrated."

Cochrane leaned back in his chair.

"That may be good medical ethics," he observed, "but it's lousy business practice, Bill. You say he's adjusted to reality. That means that he will now have a socially acceptable reaction to anything that's likely to happen to him."

Holden nodded.

"A well–adjusted person does. Dabney's the same person. He's the same fool. But he'll get along all right. A psychiatrist can't change a personality! All he can do is make it adjust to the world about so the guy doesn't have to be tucked away in a straight–jacket. In that sense, Dabney is adjusted."

"You've played a dirty trick on him," said Cochrane. "You've stabilized him, and that's the rottenest trick anybody can play on anybody! You've put him into a sort of moral deep–freeze. It's a dirty trick, Bill!"

"Look who's talking!" said Holden wearily. "I suppose the advertising business is altruistic and unmercenary?"

"The devil, no!" said Cochrane indignantly. "We serve a useful purpose! We tell people that they smell bad, and so give them an alibi for the unpopularity their stupidity has produced. But then we tell them to use so–and–so's breath sweetener or whosit's non–immunizing deodorant they'll immediately become the life of every party they attend! It's a lie, of course, but it's a dynamic lie! It gives the frustrated individual something to do! It sells him hope and therefore activity—and inactivity is a sort of death!"

Holden looked at Cochrane with a dreary disinterest.

"You're adjusted, Jed! But do you really believe that stuff?"

Cochrane grinned again.

"Only on Tuesdays and Fridays. It's about two–sevenths true. But it does have that much truth in it! Nobody ever gets anything done while they merely make socially acceptable responses to the things that happen to them! Take Dabney himself! We've got a hell of a thing coming along now just because he wouldn't make the socially acceptable response to having a rich wife and no brains. He rebelled. So mankind will start moving to the stars!"

"You still believe it?"

Cochrane grimaced.

"Yesterday morning I sweated blood in a space–suit out in the crater beyond Jones' laboratory. He tried his trick. He had a small signal–rocket mounted on the far side of that crater,—twenty–some miles. It was in front of the field–plate that established the Dabney field across the crater to another plate near us. Jones turned on the field. He ignited the rocket by remote control. I was watching with a telescope. I gave him the word to fire…. How long do you think it took that rocket to cross the crater in that field that works like a pipe? It smashed into the plate at the lab!"

Holden shook his head.

"It took slightly," said Cochrane, "slightly under three–fifths of a second."

Holden blinked. Cochrane said:

"A signal–rocket has an acceleration of about six hundred feet per second, level flight, no gravity component, mass acceleration only. It should have taken a hundred seconds plus to cross that crater—over twenty miles. It shouldn't have stayed on course. It did stay on course, inside the field. It did take under three–fifths of a second. The gadget works!"

Holden drew a deep breath.

"So now you need more money and you want me not to discharge my patient as cured."

"Not a bit of it!" snapped Cochrane. "I don't want him as a patient! I'm only willing to accept him as a customer! But if he wants fame, I'll sell it to him. Not as something to lean his fragile psyche on, but something to wallow in! Do you think he could ever get too famous for his own satisfaction?"

"Of course not," said Holden. "He's the same fool."

"Then we're in business," Cochrane told him. "Not that I couldn't peddle my fish elsewhere. I'm going to! But I'll give him old–customer preference. I'll want him out at the distress–torp tests this afternoon. They'll be public."

"This afternoon?" asked Holden. "Distress–torp?"

A lunar day is two Earth–weeks–long. A lunar night is equally long–drawn–out. Cochrane said impatiently:

"I got out of bed four hours ago. To me that's morning. I'll eat lunch in an hour. That's noon. Say, three hours from now, whatever o'clock it is lunar time."

Holden glanced at his watch and made computations. He said:

"That'll be half–past two hundred and three o'clock, if you're curious. But what's a distress–torp?"

"Shoo!" said Cochrane. "I'll send Babs to find you and load you on the jeep. You'll see then. Now I'm busy!"

Holden shrugged and went away, and Cochrane stared at his own watch. Since a lunar day and night together fill twenty–eight Earth days of time, a strictly lunar "day" contains nearly three hundred forty Earth–hours. To call one–twelfth of that period an hour would be an affectation. To call each twenty–four Earth hours a day would have been absurd. So the actual period of the moon's rotation was divided into familiar time–intervals, and a bulletin–board in the hotel lobby in Lunar City notified those interested that: "Sunday will be from 143 o'clock to 167 o'clock A.M." There would be another Sunday some time during the lunar afternoon.

Cochrane debated momentarily whether this information could be used in the publicity campaign of Spaceways, Inc. Strictly speaking, there was some slight obligation to throw extra fame Dabney's way regardless, because the corporation had been formed as a public–relations device. Any other features, such as changing the history of the human race, were technically incidental. But Cochrane put his watch away. To talk about horology on the moon wouldn't add to Dabney's stature as a phoney scientist. It didn't matter.

He went back to the business at hand. Some two years before there had been a fake corporation organized strictly for the benefit of its promoters. It had built a rocket–ship ostensibly for the establishment of a colony on Mars. The ship had managed to stagger up to Luna, but no farther. Its promoters had sold stock on the promise that a ship that could barely reach Luna could take off from that small globe with six times as much fuel as it could lift off of Earth. Which was true. Investors put in their money on that verifiable fact. But the truth happened to be, of course, that it would still take an impossible amount of fuel to accelerate the ship—so heavily loaded—to a speed where it would reach Mars in one human lifetime. Taking off from Luna would solve only the problem of gravity. It wouldn't do a thing about inertia. So the ship never rose from its landing near Lunar City. The corporation that had built it went profitably bankrupt.

Cochrane had been working feverishly to find out who owned that ship now. Just before the torp–test he'd mentioned, he found that the ship belonged to the hotel desk–clerk, who had bought it in hope of renting it sooner or later for television background–shots in case anybody was crazy enough to make a television film–tape on the moon. He was now discouraged. Cochrane chartered it, putting up a bond to return it undamaged. If the ship was lost, the hotel–clerk would get back his investment—about a week's pay.

So Cochrane had a space–ship practically in his pocket when the public demonstration of the Dabney field came off at half–past 203 o'clock.

The site of the demonstration was the shadowed, pitch–dark part of the floor of a crater twenty miles across, with walls some ten thousand jagged feet high. The furnace–like sunshine made the plain beyond the shadow into a sea of blinding brightness. The sunlit parts of the crater's walls were no less terribly glaring. But above the edge of the cliffs the stars began; infinitely small and many–colored, with innumerable degrees of brightness. The Earth hung in mid–sky like a swollen green apple, monstrous in size. And the figures which moved about the scene of the test could be seen only faintly by reflected light from the lava plain, because one's eyes had to be adjusted to the white–hot moon–dust on the plain and mountains.

There were not many persons present. Three jeeps waited in the semi–darkness, out of the burning sunshine. There were no more than a dozen moon–suited individuals to watch and to perform the test of the Dabney field. Cochrane had scrupulously edited all fore–news of the experiment to give Dabney the credit he had paid for. There were present, then, the party from Earth—Cochrane and Babs and Holden, with the two tame scientists and Bell the writer—and the only two reporters on the moon. Only news syndicates could stand the expense–account of a field man in Lunar City. And then there were Jones and Dabney and two other figures apparently brought by Dabney.

There was, of course, no sound at all on the moon itself. There was no air to carry it. But from each plastic helmet a six–inch antenna projected straight upward, and the microwaves of suit–talkies made a jumble of slightly metallic sounds in the headphones of each suit.

As soon as Cochrane got out of the jeep's air–lock and was recognized, Dabney said agitatedly:

"Mr. Cochrane! Mr. Cochrane! I have to discuss something with you! It is of the utmost importance! Will you come into the laboratory?"

Cochrane helped Babs to the ground and made his way to the airlock in the dust–heap against the cliff. He went in, with two other space–suited figures who detached themselves from the rest to follow him. Once inside the odorous, cramped laboratory, Dabney opened his face–plate and began to speak before Cochrane was ready to hear him. His companion beamed amiably.

"—and therefore, Mr. Cochrane," Dabney was saying agitatedly, "I insist that measures be taken to protect my scientific reputation! If this test should fail, it will militate against the acceptance of my discovery! I warn you—and I have my friend Mr. Simms here as witness—that I will not be responsible for the operation of apparatus made by a subordinate who does not fully comprehend the theory of my discovery! I will not be involved—"

Cochrane nodded. Dabney, of course, didn't understand the theory of the field he'd bought fame–rights to. But there was no point in bringing that up. Johnny Simms beamed at both of them. He was the swimmer Babs had pointed out in the swimming–pool. His face was completely unlined and placid, like the face of a college undergraduate. He had never worried about anything. He'd never had a care in the world. He merely listened with placid interest.

"I take it," said Cochrane, "that you don't mind the test being made, so long as you don't have to accept responsibility for its failure—and so long as you get the credit for its success if it works. That's right, isn't it?"

"If it fails, I am not responsible!" insisted Dabney stridently. "If it succeeds, it will be because of my discovery."

Cochrane sighed a little. This was a shabby business, but Dabney would have convinced himself, by now, that he was the genius he wanted people to believe him.

"Before the test," said Cochrane gently, "you make a speech. It will be recorded. You disclaim the crass and vulgar mechanical details and emphasize that you are like Einstein, dealing in theoretic physics only. That you are naturally interested in attempts to use your discovery, but your presence is a sign of your interest but not your responsibility."

"I shall have to think it over—," began Dabney nervously.

"You can say," promised Cochrane, "that if it does not work you will check over what Jones did and tell him why."

"Y–yes," said Dabney hesitantly, "I could do that. But I must think it over first. You will have to delay—"

"If I were you," said Cochrane confidentially, "I would plan a speech to that effect because the test is coming off in five minutes."

He closed his face–plate as Dabney began to protest. He went into the lock. He knew better than to hold anything up while waiting for a neurotic to make a decision. Dabney had all he wanted, now. From this moment on he would be frantic for fear of losing it. But there could be no argument outside the laboratory. In the airlessness, anything anybody said by walkie–talkie could be heard by everybody.

When Dabney and Simms followed out of the lock, Cochrane was helping Jones set up the device that had been prepared for this test. It was really two devices. One was a very flat cone, much like a coolie–hat and hardly larger, with a sort of power–pack of coils and batteries attached. The other was a space–ship's distress–signal rocket, designed to make a twenty–mile streak of red flame in emptiness. Nobody had yet figured out what good a distress signal would do, between Earth and moon, but the idea was soothing. The rocket was four feet long and six inches in diameter. At its nose there was a second coolie–hat cone, with other coils and batteries.

Jones set the separate cone on the ground and packed stones around and under it to brace it. His movements were almost ridiculously deliberate. Bending over, he bent slowly, or the motion would lift his feet off the ground. Straightening up, he straightened slowly, or the upward impetus of his trunk would again lift him beyond contact with solidity. But he braced the flat cone carefully.

He set the signal–torpedo over that cone. The entire set–up was under six feet tall, and the coolie–hat cones were no more than eighteen inches in diameter. He said flatly:

"I'm all ready."

The hand and arm of a space–suited figure lifted, for attention. Dabney's voice came worriedly from the headphones of every suit:

"I wish it understood," he said in some agitation, "that this first attempted application of my discovery is made with my consent, but that I am not aware of the mechanical details. As a scientist, my work has been in pure science. I have worked for the advancement of human knowledge, but the technological applications of my discovery are not mine. Still—if this device does not work, I will take time from my more important researches to inquire into what part of my discovery has been inadequately understood and applied. It may be that present technology is not qualified to apply my discovery—"

Jones said without emotion—but Cochrane could imagine his poker–faced expression inside his helmet:

"That's right. I consulted Mr. Dabney about the principles, but the apparatus is my doing, I take the responsibility for that!"

Then Cochrane added with pleasant irony:

"Since all this is recorded, Mr. Dabney can enlarge upon his disinterest later. Right now, we can go ahead. Mr. Dabney disavows us unless we are successful. Let us let it go at that." Then he said: "The observatory's set to track?"

A muffled voice said boredly, by short–wave from the observatory up on the crater's rim:

"We're ready. Visual and records, and we've got the timers set to clock the auto–beacon signals as they come in."

The voice was not enthusiastic. Cochrane had had to put up his own money to have the nearside lunar observatory put a low–power telescope to watch the rocket's flight. In theory, this distress–rocket should make a twenty–mile streak of relatively long–burning red sparks. A tiny auto–beacon in its nose was set to send microwave signals at ten–second intervals. On the face of it, it had looked like a rather futile performance.

"Let's go," said Cochrane.

He noted with surprise that his mouth was suddenly dry. This affair was out of all reason. A producer of television shows should not be the person to discover in an abstruse scientific development the way to reach the stars. A neurotic son–in–law of an advertising tycoon should not be the instrument by which the discovery should come about. A psychiatrist should not be the means of associating Jones—a very junior physicist with no money—and Cochrane and the things Cochrane was prepared to bring about if only this unlikely–looking gadget worked.

"Jones," said Cochrane with a little difficulty, "let's follow an ancient tradition. Let Babs christen the enterprise by throwing the switch."

Jones pointed there in the shadow of the crater–wall, and Babs moved to the switch he indicated. She said absorbedly:

"Five, four, three, two, one—"

She threw the switch. There was a spout of lurid red flame.

The rocket vanished.

It vanished. It did not rise, visibly. It simply went away from where it was, with all the abruptness of a light going out. There was a flurry of the most brilliant imaginable carmine flame. That light remained. But the rocket did not so much rise as disappear.

Cochrane jerked his head up. He was close to the line of the rocket's ascent. He could see a trail of red sparks which stretched to invisibility. It was an extraordinarily thin line. The separate flecks of crimson light which comprised it were distant in space. They were so far from each other that the signal–rocket was a complete failure as a device making a streak of light that should be visible.

The muffled voice in the helmet–phones said blankly:

"Hey! What'd you do to that rocket?"

The others did not move. They seemed stunned. The vanishing of the rocket was no way for a rocket to act. In all expectation, it should have soared skyward with a reasonable velocity, and should have accelerated rather more swiftly from the moon's surface than it would have done from Earth. But it should have remained visible during all its flight. Its trail should have been a thick red line. Instead, the red sparks were so far separated—the trail was so attenuated that it was visible only from a spot near its base. The observatory voice said more blankly still:

"Hey! I've picked up the trail! I can't see it nearby, but it seems to start, thin, about fifty miles up and go on away from there! That rocket shouldn't ha' gone more than twenty miles! What happened?"

"Watch for the microwave signals," said Jones' voice in Cochrane's headphones.

The voice from the observatory squeaked suddenly. This was not one of the highly–placed astronomers, but part of the mechanical staff who'd been willing to do an unreasonable chore for pay.

"Here's the blip! It's crazy! Nothing can go that fast!"

And then in the phones there came the relayed signal of the auto–beacon in the vanished rocket. The signal–sound was that of a radar pulse, beginning at low pitch and rising three octaves in the tenth of a second. At middle C—the middle of the range of a piano—there was a momentary spurt of extra volume. But in the relayed signal that louder instant had dropped four tones. Cochrane said crisply:

"Jones, what speed would that be?"

"It'd take a slide–rule to figure it," said Jones' voice, very calmly, "but it's faster than anything ever went before."

Cochrane waited for the next beep. It did not come in ten seconds. It was easily fifteen. Even he could figure out what that meant! A signal–source that stretched ten seconds of interval at source to fifteen at reception …

The voice from the observatory wailed:

"It's crazy! It can't be going like that!"

They waited. Fifteen seconds more. Sixteen. Eighteen. Twenty. The beep sounded. The spurt of sound had dropped a full octave. The signal–rocket, traveling normally, might have attained a maximum velocity of some two thousand feet per second. It was now moving at a speed which was an appreciably large fraction of the speed of light. Which was starkly impossible. It simply happened to be true.

They heard the signal once more. The observatory's multiple–receptor receiver had been stepped up to maximum amplification. The signal was distinct, but very faint indeed. And the rocket was then traveling—so it was later computed—at seven–eighths of the speed of light. Between the flat cone on the front of the distress–torpedo, and the flat cone on the ground, a field of force existed. The field was not on the back surface of the torpedo's cone, but before the front surface. It went back to the moon from there, so all the torpedo and its batteries were in the columnar stressed space. And an amount of rocket–push that should have sent the four–foot torpedo maybe twenty miles during its period of burning, had actually extended its flight to more than thirty–seven hundred miles before the red sparks were too far separated to be traced any farther, and by then had kicked the torpedo up impossibly close to light–speed.

In a sense, the Dabney field had an effect similar to the invention of railways. The same horsepower moved vastly more weight faster, over steel rails, than it could haul over a rutted dirt road. The same rocket–thrust moved more weight faster in the Dabney field than in normal space. There would be a practical limit to the speed at which a wagon could be drawn over a rough road. The speed of light was a limit to the speed of matter in normal space. But on a railway the practical speed at which a vehicle could travel went up from three miles an hour to a hundred and twenty. In the Dabney field it was yet to be discovered what the limiting velocity might be. But old formulas for acceleration and increase–of–mass–with–velocity simply did not apply in a Dabney field.

Jones rode back to Lunar City with Cochrane and Holden and Babs. His face was dead–pan.

Babs tried to recover the mien and manner of the perfect secretary.

"Mr. Cochrane," she said professionally, "will you want to read the publicity releases Mr. Bell turns out from what Mr. West and Mr. Jamison tell him?"

"I don't think it matters," said Cochrane. "The newsmen will pump West and Jamison empty, anyhow. It's all right. In fact, it's better than our own releases would be. They'll contradict each other. It'll sound more authentic that way. We're building up a customer–demand for information."

The small moon–jeep rolled and bumped gently down the long, improbable highway back to Lunar City. Its engine ran smoothly, as steam–engines always do. It ran on seventy per cent hydrogen peroxide, first developed as a fuel back in the 1940s for the pumps of the V2 rockets that tried to win the Second World War for Germany. When hydrogen peroxide comes in contact with a catalyst, such as permanganate of potash, it breaks down into oxygen and water. But the water is in the form of high–pressure steam, which is used in engines. The jeep's fuel supplied steam for power and its ashes were water to drink and oxygen to breathe. Steam ran all motorized vehicles on Luna.

"What are you thinking about, Jones?" asked Cochrane suddenly.

Jones said meditatively:

"I'm wondering what sort of field–strength a capacity–storage system would give me. I boosted the field intensity this time. The results were pretty good. I'm thinking—suppose I made the field with a strobe–light power–pack—or maybe a spot–welding unit. Even a portable strobe–light gives a couple of million watts for the forty–thousandth of a second. Suppose I fixed up a storage–pack to give me a field with a few billion watts in it? It might be practically like matter–transmission, though it would really be only high–speed travel. I think I've got to work on that idea a little … "

Cochrane digested the information in silence.

"Far be it from me," he said presently, "to discourage such high–level contemplation. Bill, what's on your mind?"

Holden said moodily:

"I'm convinced that the thing works. But Jed! You talk as if you hadn't any more worries! Yet even if you and Jones do have a way to make a ship travel faster than light, you haven't got a ship or the capital you need—."

"I've got scenery that looks like a ship," said Cochrane mildly. "Consider that part settled."

"But there are supplies. Air—water—food—a crew—. We can't pay for such things! Here on the moon the cost of everything is preposterous! How can you try out this idea without more capital than you can possibly raise?"

"I'm going to imitate my old friend Christopher Columbus," said Cochrane. "I'm going to give the customers what they want. Columbus didn't try to sell anybody shares in new continents. Who wanted new continents? Who wanted to move to a new world? Who wants new planets now? Everybody would like to see their neighbors move away and leave more room, but nobody wants to move himself. Columbus sold a promise of something that had an already–established value, that could be sold in every town and village—that had a merchandising system already set up! I'm going to offer just such a marketable commodity. I'll have freight–rockets on the way up here within twenty–four hours, and the freight and their contents will all be paid for!"

He turned to Babs. He looked more sardonic and cynical than ever before.

"Babs, you've just witnessed one of the moments that ought to be illustrated in all the grammar–school history–books along with Ben Franklin flying a kite. What's topmost in your mind?"

She hesitated and then flushed. The moon–jeep crunched and clanked loudly over the trail that led downhill. There was no sound outside, of course. There was no air. But the noise inside the moon–vehicle was notable. The steam–motor, in particular, made a highly individual racket.

"I'd—rather not say," said Babs awkwardly. "What's your own main feeling, Mr. Cochrane?"

"Mine?" Cochrane grinned. "I'm thinking what a hell of a funny world this is, when people like Dabney and Bill and Jones and I are the ones who have to begin operation outer space!"