Operation: Outer Space

Chapter Four

Cochrane said kindly into the vision–beam microphone to Earth, "Cancel section C, paragraph nine. Then section b(1) from paragraph eleven. Then after you've canceled the entire last section—fourteen—we can sign up the deal."

There was a four–second pause. About two seconds for his voice to reach Earth. About two seconds for the beginning of the reply to reach him. The man at the other end protested wildly.

"We're a long way apart," said Cochrane blandly, "and our talk only travels at the speed of light. You're not talking from one continent to another. Save tolls. Yes or no?"

Another four–second pause. The man on Earth profanely agreed. Cochrane signed the contract before him. The other man signed. Not only the documents but all conversation was recorded. There were plugged–in witnesses. The contract was binding.

Cochrane leaned back in his chair. His eyes blinked wearily. He'd spent hours going over the facsimile–transmitted contract with Joint Networks, and had weeded out a total of six joker–stipulations. He was very tired. He yawned.

"You can tell Jones, Babs," he said, "that all the high financing's done. He can spend money. And you can transmit my resignation to Kursten, Kasten, Hopkins and Fallowe. And since this is a pretty risky operation, you'd better send a service message asking what you're to do with yourself. They'll probably tell you to take the next rocket back and report to the secretarial pool, I'm afraid. The same fate probably awaits West and Jamison and Bell."

Babs said guiltily:

"Mr. Cochrane—you've been so busy I had to use my own judgment. I didn't want to interrupt you—."

"What now?" demanded Cochrane.

"The publicity on the torp–test," said Babs guiltily, "was so good that the firm was worried for fear we'd seem to be doing it for a client of the firm—which we are. So we've all been put on a leave–with–expenses–and–pay status. Officially, we're all sick and the firm is paying our expenses until we regain our health."

"Kind of them," said Cochrane. "What's the bite?"

"They're sending up talent contracts for us to sign," admitted Babs. "When we go back, we would command top prices for interviews. The firm, of course, will want to control that."

Cochrane raised his eyebrows.

"I see! But you'll actually be kept off the air so Dabney can be television's fair–haired boy. He'll go on Marilyn Winter's show, I'll bet, because that has the biggest audience on the planet. He'll lecture Little Aphrodite Herself on the constants of space and she'll flutter her eyelashes at him and shove her chest–measurements in his direction and breathe how wonderful it is to be a man of science!"

"How'd you know?" demanded Babs, surprised.

Cochrane winced.

"Heaven help me, Babs, I didn't. I tried to guess at something too impossible even for the advertising business! But I failed! I failed! You and my official gang, then, are here with the firm's blessing, free of all commands and obligations, but drawing salary and expenses?"

"Yes," admitted Babs. "And so are you."

"I get off!" said Cochrane firmly. "Forward my resignation. It's a matter of pure vanity. But Kursten, Kasten, Hopkins and Fallowe do move in a mysterious way to latch onto a fast buck! I'm going to get some sleep. Is there anything else you've had to use your judgment on?"

"The contracts for re–broadcast of the torp–test. The original broadcast had an audience–rating of seventy–one!"

"Such," said Cochrane, "are the uses of fame. Our cash?"

She showed him a neatly typed statement. For the original run of the torp–test film–tape, so much. It was to be re–run with a popularization of the technical details by West, and a lurid extrapolation of things to come by Jamison. The sponsors who got hold of commercial time with that expanded and souped–up version would expect, and get, an audience–rating unparalleled in history. Dabney was to take a bow on the rebroadcast, too—very much the dignified and aloof scientist. There were other interviews. Dabney again, from a script written by Bell. And Jones. Jones hated the idea of being interviewed, but he had faced a beam–camera and answered idiotic questions, and gone angrily back to his work.

Spaceways, Inc., had a bank–account already amounting to more than twenty years of Cochrane's best earning–power. He was selling publicity for sponsors to hang their commercials on, in a strict parallel to Christopher Columbus' selling of spices to come. But Cochrane was delivering for cash. Freight–rockets were on the way moonward now, whose cargoes of supplies for a space–journey Cochrane was accepting only when a bonus in money was paid for the right to brag about it. So–and–so's oxygen paid for the privilege of supplying air–reserves. What's–his–name's dehydrated vegetables were accepted on similar terms, with whoosit's instant coffee and somebody else's noodle soup in bags.

"If," said Cochrane tiredly, looking up from the statement, "we could only start off in a fleet instead of a single ship, Babs, we'd not only be equipped but so rich before we started that we'd want to stay home to enjoy it!" He yawned prodigiously. "I'm going to get some sleep. Don't let me sleep too long!"

He went off to his hotel–room and was out cold before his head had drifted down to its pillow. But he was not pleased with himself. It annoyed him that his revolt against being an expendable employee had taken the form of acting like one of his former bosses in collecting ruthlessly for the brains—in the case of Jones—and the neurotic idiosyncrasies—in the case of Dabney—of other men. The gesture by which he had become independent was not quite the splendid, scornful one he'd have liked. The fact that this sort of gesture worked, and nothing else would have, did not make him feel better.

But he slept.

He dreamed that he was back at his normal business of producing a television show. Nobody but himself cared whether the show went on or not. The actual purpose of all his subordinates seemed to be to cut as many throats among their fellow–workers as possible—in a business way, of course—so that by their own survival they might succeed to a better job and higher pay. This is what is called the fine spirit of teamwork by which things get done, both in private and public enterprise.

It was a very realistic dream, but it was not restful.

While he slept, the world wagged on and the cosmos continued on its normal course. The two moons of Earth—one natural and one artificial—swung in splendid circles about. A psychiatrist should not be the means of associating that planet's divided rings. The red spot of Jupiter and the bands on that gas–giant world moved in orderly fashion about its circumference. Light–centuries away, giant Cepheid suns expanded monstrously and contracted again, rather more rapidly than their gravitational fields could account for. Double stars sedately swung about each other. Comets reached their farthest points and, mere aggregations of frigid jagged stones and metal, prepared for another plunge back into light and heat and warmth.

And various prosaic actions took place on Luna.

When Cochrane waked and went back to the hotel–room in use as an office, he found Babs talking confidentially to a woman—girl, rather—whom Cochrane vaguely remembered. Then he did a double take. He did remember her. Three or four years before she'd been the outstanding television personality of the year. She'd been pretty, but not so pretty that you didn't realize that she was a person. She was everything that Marilyn Winters was not—and she'd been number two name in television.

Cochrane said blankly:

"Aren't you Alicia Keith?"

The girl smiled faintly. She wasn't as pretty as she had been. She looked patient. And an expression of patience, on a woman's face, is certainly not unpleasant. But it isn't glamorous, either.

"I was," she said. "I married Johnny Simms."

Cochrane looked at Babs.

"They live up here," explained Babs. "I pointed him out at the swimming–pool the day we got here."

"Wonderful," said Cochrane. "How—"

"Johnny," said Alicia, "has bought into your Spaceways corporation. He got your man West drunk and bought his shares of Spaceway stock."

Cochrane sat down—not hard, because it was impossible to sit down hard on the moon. But he sat down as hard as it was possible to sit.

"Why'd he do that?"

"He found out you had hold of the old Mars colony ship. He understands you're going to take a trip out to the stars. He wants to go along. He's very much like a little boy. He hates it here."

"Then why live—." Cochrane checked the question, not quite in time.

"He can't go back to Earth," said Alicia calmly. "He's a psychopathic personality. He's sane and quite bright and rather dear in his way, but he simply can't remember what is right and wrong. Especially when he gets excited. When they fixed up Lunar City as an international colony, by sheer oversight they forgot to arrange for extradition from it. So Johnny can live here. He can't live anywhere else—not for long."

Cochrane said nothing.

"He wants to go with you," said Alicia pleasantly. "He's thrilled. The lawyer his family keeps up here to watch over him is thrilled, too. He wants to go back and visit his family. And as a stockholder, Johnny can keep you from taking a ship or any other corporate property out of the jurisdiction of the courts. But he'd rather go with you. Of course I have to go too."

"It's blackmail," said Cochrane without heat. "A pretty neat job of it, too. Babs, you see Holden about this. He's a psychiatrist." He turned to Alicia. "Why do you want to go? I don't know whether it'll be dangerous or not."

"I married Johnny," said Alicia. Her smile was composed. "I thought it would be wonderful to be able to trust somebody that nobody else could trust." After a moment she added: "It would be, if one could."

A few moments later she went away, very pleasantly and very calmly. Her husband had no sense of right or wrong—not in action, anyhow. She tried to keep him from doing too much damage by exercising the knowledge she had of what was fair and what was not. Cochrane grimaced and told Babs to make a note to talk to Holden. But there were other matters on hand, too. There were waivers to be signed by everybody who went along off Luna. Then Cochrane said thoughtfully:

"Alicia Keith would be a good name for film–tape … "

He plunged into the mess of paper–work and haggling which somebody has to do before any achievement of consequence can come about. Pioneer efforts, in particular, require the same sort of clearing–away process as the settling of a frontier farm. Instead of trees to be chopped and dug up by the roots, there are the gratuitous obstructionists who have to be chopped off at the ankles in a business way, and the people who exercise infinite ingenuity trying to get a cut of something—anything—somebody else is doing. And of course there are the publicity–hounds. Since Spaceways was being financed on sales of publicity which could be turned on this product and that, publicity–hounds cut into its revenue and capital.

Back on Earth a crackpot inventor had a lawyer busily garnering free advertisement by press conferences about the injury done his client by Spaceways, Inc., who had stolen his invention to travel through space faster than light. Somebody in the Senate made a speech accusing the Spaceway project of being a political move by the party in power for some dire ultimate purpose.

Ultimately the crackpot inventor would get on the air and announce triumphantly that only part of his invention had been stolen, because he'd been too smart to write it down or tell anybody, and he wouldn't tell anybody—not even a court—the full details of his invention unless paid twenty–five million in cash down, and royalties afterward. The project for a congressional investigation of Spaceways would die in committee.

But there were other griefs. The useless spaceship hulk had to be emptied of the mining–tools stored in it. This was done by men working in space–suits. Occupational rules required them to exert not more than one–fourth of the effort they would have done if working for themselves. When the ship was empty, air was released in it, and immediately froze to air–snow. So radiant heaters had to be installed and powered to warm up the hull to where an atmosphere could exist in it. Its generators had to be thawed from the metal–ice stage of brittleness and warmed to where they could be run without breaking themselves to bits.

But there were good breaks, too. Presently a former moonship–pilot—grounded to an administrative job on Luna—on his own free time checked over the ship. Jones arranged it. With rocket–motors of adamite—the stuff discovered by pure accident in a steel–mill back on Earth—the propelling apparatus checked out. The fuel–pumps had been taken over in fullness of design from fire–engine pumps on Earth. They were all right. The air–regenerating apparatus had been developed from the aeriating culture–tanks in which antibiotics were grown on Earth. It needed only reseeding with algae—microscopic plants which when supplied with ultraviolet light fed avidly on carbon dioxide and yielded oxygen. The ship was a rather involved combination of essentially simple devices. It could be put back into such workability as it had once possessed with practically no trouble.

It was.

Jones moved into it, with masses of apparatus from the laboratory in the Lunar Apennines. He labored lovingly, fanatically. Like most spectacular discoveries, the Dabney field was basically simple. It was almost idiotically uncomplicated. In theory it was a condition of the space just outside one surface of a sheet of metal. It was like that conduction–layer on the wires of a cross–country power–cable, when electricity is transmitted in the form of high–frequency alterations and travels on the skins of many strands of metal, because high–frequency current simply does not flow inside of wires, but only on their surfaces. The Dabney field formed on the surface—or infinitesimally beyond it—of a metal sheet in which eddy–currents were induced in such–and–such a varying fashion. That was all there was to it.

So Jones made the exterior forward surface of the abandoned spaceship into a generator of the Dabney field. It was not only simple, it was too simple! Having made the bow of the ship into a Dabney field plate, he immediately arranged that he could, at will, make the rear of the ship into another Dabney field plate. The two plates, turned on together, amounted to something that could be contemplated with startled awe, but Jones planned to start off, at least, in a manner exactly like the distress–torp test. The job of wiring up for faster–than–light travel, however, was not much more difficult than wiring a bungalow, when one knew how it should be done.

Two freight–rockets came in, picked up by radar and guided to landings by remote control. The Lunar City beam receiver picked up music aimed up from Earth and duly relayed it to the dust–heaps which were the buildings of the city. The colonists and moon–tourists became familiar with forty–two new tunes dealing with prospective travel to the stars. One work of genius tied in a just–released film–tape drama titled "Child of Hate" to the Lunar operation, and charmed listeners saw and heard the latest youthful tenor gently plead, "Child of Hate, Come to the Stars and Love." The publicity department responsible for the masterpiece considered itself not far from genius, too.

There was confusion thrice and four and five times confounded. Cochrane came in to dispute furiously with Holden whether it was better to have a psychopathic personality on the space–ship or to have a legal battle in the courts. Cochrane won. Jones arrived, belligerent, to do battle for technical devices which would cost money.

"Look!" said Cochrane harassedly. "I'm not trying to boss you! Don't come to me for authority! If you can make that ship take off I'll be in it, and my neck will be in as much danger as yours. You buy what will keep my neck as safe as possible, along with yours. I'm busy raising money and fighting off crackpots and dodging lawsuits and getting supplies! I've got a job that needs three men anyhow. All I'm hoping is that you get ready to take off before I start cutting out paperdolls. When can we leave?"

"We?" said Jones suspiciously. "You're going?"

"If you think I'll stay behind and face what'll happen if this business flops," Cochrane told him, "you're crazy! There are too many people on Earth already. There's no room for a man who tried something big and failed! If this flops I'd rather be a frozen corpse with a happy smile on my face—I understand that in space one freezes—than somebody living on assisted survival status on Earth!"

"Oh," said Jones, mollified. "How many people are to go?"

"Ask Bill Holden," Cochrane told him. "Remember, if you need something, get it. I'll try to pay for it. If we come back with picture–tapes of outer space—even if we only circumnavigate Mars!—we'll have money enough to pay for anything!"

Jones regarded Cochrane with something almost like warmth.

"I like this way of doing business," he said.

"It's not business!" protested Cochrane. "This is getting something done! By the way. Have you picked out a destination for us to aim at?" When Jones shook his head, Cochrane said harassedly; "Better get one picked out. But when we make out our sail–off papers, for destination we'll say, 'To the stars.' A nice line for the news broadcasts. Oh, yes. Tell Bill Holden to try to find us a skipper. An astrogator. Somebody who can tell us how to get back if we get anywhere we need to get back from. Is there such a person?"

"I've got him," said Jones. "He checked the ship for me. Former moon–rocket pilot. He's here in Lunar City. Thanks!"

He shook hands with Cochrane before he left. Which for Jones was an expression of overwhelming emotion. Cochrane turned back to his desk.

"Let's see … That arrangement for cachets on stamps and covers to be taken along and postmarked Outer Space. Put in a stipulation for extra payment in case we touch on planets and invent postmarks for them … "

He worked on, while Babs took notes. Presently he was dictating. And as he talked, frowning, he took a fountain–pen from his pocket and absently worked the refill–handle. It made ink exude from the pen–point. On the moon, the surface tension of the ink was exactly the same as on earth, but the gravity was five–sixths less. So a drop of ink of really impressive size could be formed before the moon's weak gravity made it fall.

Dictating as he worked the pen, Cochrane achieved a pear–shaped mass of ink which was quite the size of a large grape before it fell into his waste–basket. It was the largest he'd made to date. It fell—slow–motion—and splashed—violently—as he regarded it with harried satisfaction.

More time passed. A moon–rocket arrived from Earth. There were new tourists under the thousand–foot plastic dome. Out by the former Mars–ship Jones made experiments with small plastic balloons coated with a conducting varnish. In a vacuum, a cubic inch of air at Earth–pressure will expand to make many cubic feet of near–vacuum. If a balloon can sustain an internal pressure of one ounce to the square foot, a thimbleful of air will inflate a sizeable globe to that pressure. Jones was arranging tiny Dabney field robot–generators with tiny atomic batteries to power them. Each such balloon would be a Dabney field "plate" when cast adrift in emptiness, and its little battery would keep it in operation for twenty years or more.

Baggage came up from Earth for Johnny Simms. It was mostly elephant–guns and ammunition for them. Johnny, as the heir to innumerable millions back on earth, had had a happy life, but hardly one to give him a practical view of things. To him, star–travel meant landing on such exotic planets as the fictioneers had been writing about for a hundred years or so. He really looked upon the venture into space as a combined big–game expedition and escape from Lunar City. And he did look forward, too, to freedom from his family's legal representative and the constant reminder of ethical and moral values which Johnny preferred happily to ignore.

Film–tape came up, and cameras to use it in. Every imaginable item an expedition to space could use or even might use, was thrust upon Spaceways, Inc. Manufacturers yearned to have their products used in connection with the hottest news story in decades. There was a steady trailing of moon–jeeps from the airlocks of Lunar City to the ship.

The time of lunar sunset arrived—503:30 o'clock, half–past five hundred and three hours. Time was measured from midnight to midnight, astronomical fashion. The great, blazing sun whose streamer prominences, even, were too bright to be looked at with the naked eye—the sun neared and reached the horizon. There was no change in the star–studded sky. There were no sunset colorings. The incandescent brightness on the mountains was not lessened in the least. Only the direction of the stark black shadows shifted.

The glaring sun descended. Its motion was almost infinitely slow. Its disk was of the order of half a degree of arc, and it took a full hour to be fully obscured. And then there was at first no difference in the look of things save that the Mare Imbrium—the solidified, arid Sea of Showers—was as dark as the shadows in the mountains.

They still gleamed brightly. For a very long time the white–hot sunshine glowed on their flanks. The brightness rose and rose, and blackness followed it. At long last only the topmost peaks of the Apennines blazed luridly against a background of stars whose light seemed feeble by comparison.

Then it was night indeed. But the Earth shone forth, a half–globe of seas and clouds and continents, vast and nostalgic in the sky. And now Earthshine fell upon the moon. It was many times brighter than moonlight ever was upon the Earth. Even at lunar sunset the Earthlight was sixteen times brighter. At midnight, when the Earth was full, it would be bright enough for any activity. Actually, the human beings on Luna were nearly nocturnal in their habits, because it was easier to run moon–jeeps in frigidity and keep men and machines warm enough for functioning, than it was to protect them against the more–than–boiling heat of midday on the moon.

So the activity about the salvaged space–ship increased. There were electric lights blazing in the demi–twilight, to guide freight vehicles with their loads. The tourist–jeeps went and returned and went and returned. The last shipload of travelers from Earth wanted to see the space–craft about which all the world was talking.

Even Cochrane presently became curious. There came a time when all the paper–work connected with what had happened was done with, and conditional contracts drawn up on everything that could be foreseen. It was time for something new to happen.

Cochrane said dubiously:

"Babs, have you seen the ship?"

She shook her head.

"I think we'd better go take a look at it," said Cochrane. "Do you know, I've been acting like a damned business man! I've only been out of Lunar City three times. Once to the laboratory to talk, once to test a signal–rocket across the crater, and once when the distress–torp went off. I haven't even seen the nightclub here in the City!"

"You should," said Babs matter–of–factly. "I went once, with Doctor Holden. The dancing was marvelous!"

"Bill Holden, eh?" said Cochrane. He found himself annoyed. "Took you to the nightclub; but not to see the ship!"

"The ship's farther," explained Babs. "I could always be found at the nightclub if you needed me. I went when you were asleep."

"Damn!" said Cochrane. "Hm … You ought to get a bonus. What would you rather have, Babs, a bonus in cash or Spaceways stock?"

"I've got some stock," said Babs. "Mr. Bell—the writer, you know—got in a poker game. He was cleaned out. So I gave him all the money I had—I told you I cleared out my savings–account before we came up, I think—for half his shares."

"Either you got very badly stuck," Cochrane told her cynically, "or else you'll be so rich you won't speak to me."

"Oh, no!" said Babs warmly. "Never!"

Cochrane yawned.

"Let's get out and take a look at the ship. Maybe I can stow cargo or something, now there's no more paper–work."

Babs said with an odd calm:

"Mr. Jones wanted you out there today—in an hour, he said. I promised you'd go. I meant to mention it in time."

Cochrane did not notice her tone. He was dead–tired, as only a man can be who has driven himself at top speed for days on end over a business deal. Business deals are stimulating only in their major aspects. Most of the details are niggling, tedious, routine, and boring—and very often bear–trapped. Cochrane had done, with only Babs' help, an amount of mental labor that in the offices of Kursten, Kasten, Hopkins and Fallowe would have been divided among two vice–presidents, six lawyers, and at least twelve account executives. The work, therefore, would actually have been done by not less than twenty secretaries. But Babs and Cochrane had done it all.

In the moon–jeep on the way to the ship he felt that heavy, exhausted sense of relaxation which is not pleasurable at all. Babs annoyed him a little, too. She was late getting to the airlock, and seemed breathless when she arrived.

The moon–jeep crunched and clanked and rumbled over the gently undulating lava sea beneath its giant wheels. Babs looked zestfully out of the windows. The picture was, of course, quite incredible. In the relatively dim Earthlight the moonscape was somehow softened, and yet the impossibly jagged mountains and steep cliffsides and the razor–edged passes of monstrous stone,—these things remained daunting. It was like riding through a dream in which everything nearby seemed fey and glamorous, but the background was deathly–still and ominous.

There were the usual noises inside the jeep. The air had a metallic smell. One could detect the odors of oil, and ozone, and varnish, and plastic upholstery. There were the crunching sounds of the wheels, traveling over stone. There was the paradoxic gentleness of all the jeep's motions because of the low gravity. Cochrane even noted the extraordinary feel of an upholstered seat when one weighs only one–sixth as much as back on Earth. All his sensations were dreamlike—but he felt that headachy exhaustion that comes of overwork too long continued.

"I'll try," he said tiredly, "to see that you have some fun before you go back, Babs. You'll go back as soon as we dive off into whatever we're diving into, but you ought to get in the regular tourist stuff up here, anyhow."

Babs said nothing. Pointedly.

The moon–jeep clanked and rumbled onward. The hissing of steam was audible. The vehicle swung around a pinnacle of stone, and Cochrane saw the space–ship.

In the pale Earthlight it was singularly beautiful. It had been designed to lure investors in a now–defunct promotion. It was stream–lined, and gigantic, and it glittered like silver. It stood upright on its tail–fins, and it had lighted ports and electric lights burned in the emptiness about it. But there was only one moon–jeep at its base. A space–suited figure moved toward a dangling sling and sat in it. He rose deliberately toward an open airlock–hatch, and the other moon–jeep moved soundlessly away back toward Lunar City.

There was no debris about. There was no cargo waiting to be loaded. Cochrane did see a great metal plate, tilted on the ground, with a large box attached to it by cables. That would be the generators and the field–plate for a Dabney field. It was plainly to remain on the moon. It was not underneath the ship. Cochrane puzzled tiredly over it for a moment. Then he understood. The ship would lift on its rockets, hover over the plate—which would be generating its half of the field—and then Jones would switch on the apparatus in the ship itself. The forward, needle–pointed nose of the ship would become another generator of the Dabney field. The ship's inertia, in that field, would be effectively reduced to a fraction of its former value. The rockets, which might give it an acceleration of a few hundred feet per second anywhere but in a Dabney field, would immediately accelerate the ship and all its contents to an otherwise unattainable velocity. The occupants of the rocket would lose their relative inertia to the same degree as the ship. They should feel no more acceleration than from the same rocket–thrust in normal space. But they would travel—

Cochrane felt that there was a fallacy somehow, in the working of the Dabney field as he understood it. If there was less inertia in the Dabney field—why—a rocket shouldn't push as hard in it, because, it was the inertia of the rocket–gases that gave the rocket–thrust. But Cochrane was much too tired to work out a theoretic objection to something he knew did work. He was almost dozing when Babs touched his arm.

"Space–suits, Mr. Cochrane."

He got wearily into the clumsy costume. But he saw again that Babs wore the shining–eyed look of rapturous adventure that he had seen her wear before.

They got out of the moon–jeep, one after the other. The sling came down the space–ship's gleaming side. They got in it, together. It lifted them.

The vast, polished hull of the space–ship slid past them only ten feet away. The ground diminished. They seemed less to be lifted than to float skyward. And in this sling, in this completely unreal ascent, Cochrane roused suddenly. He felt the acute unease which comes of height. He had looked down upon Earth from a height of four thousand miles with no feeling of dizziness. He had looked at Earth a quarter–million miles away with no consciousness of depth. But a mere fifty feet above the surface of the moon he felt like somebody swinging out of a skyscraper window.

Then the airlock opening was beside them, and the sling rolled inward. They were in the lock, and Cochrane found himself pushing Babs away from the unrailed opening. He was relieved when the airlock closed.

Inside the ship, with the space–suits off, there was light and warmth, and a remarkably matter–of–fact atmosphere. The ship had been built to sell stock in a scheme for colonizing Mars. Prospective investors had been shown through it. It had been designed to be a convincing passenger–liner of space.

It was. But Cochrane found himself not needed for any consultation, and Jones was busy, and Bill Holden highly preoccupied. He saw Alicia Keith—but her name was Simms now. She smiled at him but took Babs by the arm. They went off somewhere.

Cochrane waited for somebody to tell him what to look at and to admire. He saw Jamison, and Bell, and he saw a man he had not seen before. He settled down in a deeply upholstered chair. He felt neglected. Everybody was busy. But mostly he felt tired.

He slept.

Then Babs was shaking his arm, her eyes shining.

"Mr. Cochrane!" she cried urgently. "Mr. Cochrane! Wake up! Go on up to the control–room! We're going to take off!"

He blinked at her.

"We!" Then he started up, and went five feet into the air from the violence of his uncalculated movement. "We? No you don't! You go back to Lunar City where you'll be safe!"

Then he heard a peculiar drumming, rumbling noise. He had heard it before. In the moonship. It was rockets being tested; being burned; rockets in the very last seconds of preparation before take–off for the stars.

He didn't drop back to the floor beside the chair he'd occupied. The floor rose to meet him.

"I've had our baggage brought on board," said Babs, happily. "I'm going because I'm a stockholder! Hold on to something and climb those stairs if you want to see us go up! I'm going to be busy!"