Operation: Outer Space

Chapter Eight

Before sunset, they reached the area of ashes where the ship had stood. Cochrane was sure that if anybody else had been left behind besides themselves, the landing–place was an inevitable rendezvous. Only three members of the ship's company had been inside when Babs and Cochrane left to stroll for the two hours astronomers on Earth had set as a waiting–period. Jones had been in the ship, and Holden, and Alicia Simms. Everybody else had been exploring. Their attitude had been exactly that of sight–seers and tourists. But they could have gotten back before the take–off.

Apparently they had. Nobody seemed to have returned to the burned–over space since the ship's departure. The blast of the rockets had erased all previous tracks, but still there was a thin layer of ash resettled over the clearing. Footprints would have been visible in it. Anybody remaining would have come here. Nobody had. Babs and Cochrane were left alone.

There were still temblors, but the sharper shocks no longer came. There was conflagration in the wood, where the lurching ship had left a long fresh streak of forest–fire. The two castaways stared at the round, empty landing–place. Overhead, the blue sky turned yellow—but where the smoke from the eruption rose, the sky early became a brownish red—and presently the yellow faded to gold. Unburned green foliage all about was singularly beautiful in that golden glow. But it was more beautiful still as the sky turned rose–pink and then carmine in turn, and then crimson from one horizon to the other save where the volcanic smoke–cloud marred the color. Then the east darkened, and became a red so deep as to be practically black, and unfamiliar bright stars began to peep through it.

Before darkness was complete, Cochrane dragged burning branches from the edge of the new fire—the heat was searing—and built a new and smaller fire in the place where the ship had been.

"This isn't for warmth," he explained briefly, "but so we'll have light if we need it. And it isn't likely that animals will be anything but afraid of it."

He went off to drag charred masses of burnable stuff from the burned–out first forest fire. He built a sort of rampart in the very center of the clearing. He brought great heaps of scorched wood. He did not know how much was needed to keep the fire going until dawn.

When he finished, Babs was silently at work trying to find out how to keep the fire going. The burning parts had to be kept together. One branch, burning alone, died out. Two red–hot brands in contact kept each other alight.

"I'm sorry we haven't anything to eat," Cochrane told her.

"I'm not hungry," she assured him. "What are we going to do now?"

"There's nothing to do until morning." Unconsciously, Cochrane looked grim. "Then there'll be plenty. Food, for one thing. We don't know, actually, whether or not there's anything really edible on this planet—for us. It could be that there are fruits or possibly stalks or leaves that would be nourishing. Only—we don't know which is which. We have to be careful. We might pick something like poison ivy!"

Babs said:

"But the ship will come back!"

"Of course," agreed Cochrane. "But it may take them some time to find us. This is a pretty big planet, you know."

He estimated his supply of burnable stuff. He improved the rampart he had made at first. Babs stared at him. After four or five minutes he stepped back.

"You can lean against this," he explained. "You can watch the fire quite comfortably. And it's a sort of wall. The fire will light one side of you and the wall will feel comforting behind you when you get sleepy."

Babs nodded. She swallowed.

"I—think I see what you mean when you say they may have trouble finding us, because this planet is so large."

Cochrane nodded reluctantly.

"Of course there's this burned–off space for a marker," he observed cheerfully. "But it could take several days for them to see it."

Babs swallowed again. She said carefully:

"The—ship can't hover like a helicopter, to search. You said so. It doesn't have fuel enough. They can't really search for us at all! The only way to make a real search would be to go back to Earth and—bring back helicopters and fuel for them and men to fly them…. Isn't that right?"

"Not necessarily. But we do have to figure on a matter of—well—two or three days as a possibility."

Babs moistened her lips and he said quickly:

"I did a show once about some miners lost in a wilderness. A period show. In it, they knew that part of their food was poisoned. They didn't know what. They had to have all their food. And of course they didn't have laboratories with which to test for poison."

Babs eyed him oddly.

"They bandaged their arms," said Cochrane, "and put scraps of the different foodstuffs under the bandages. The one that was poisonous showed. It affected the skin. Like an allergy–test. I'll try that trick in the morning when there's light to pick samples by. There are berries and stuff. There must be fruits. A few hours should test them."

Babs said without intonation:

"And we can watch what the animals eat."

Cochrane nodded gravely. Animals on Earth can live on things that—to put it mildly—humans do not find satisfying. Grass, for example. But it was good for Babs to think of cheering things right now. There would be plenty of discouragement to contemplate later.

There was a flicker of brightness in the sky. Presently the earth quivered. Something made a plaintive, "waa–waa–waaaaa!" sound off in the night. Something else made a noise like the tinkling of bells. There was an abstracted hooting presently, which now was nearby and now was far away, and once they heard something which was exactly like the noise of water running into a pool. But the source of that particular burbling moved through the dark wood beyond the clearing.

It was not wholly dark where they were, even aside from their own small fire. The burning trees in the departing ship's rocket–trail sent up a column of white which remaining flames illuminated. The remarkably primitive camp Cochrane had made looked like a camp on a tiny snow–field, because of the ashes.

"We've got to think about shelter," said Babs presently, very quietly indeed. "If there are glaciers, there must be winter here. If there is winter, we have to find out which animals we can eat, and how to store them."

"Hold on!" protested Cochrane. "That's looking too far ahead!"

Babs clasped her hands together. It could have been to keep their trembling from being seen. Cochrane was regarding her face. She kept that under admirable control.

"Is it?" asked Babs. "On the broadcast Mr. Jamison said that there was as much land here as on all the continent of Asia. Maybe he exaggerated. Say there's only as much land not ice–covered as there is in South America. It's all forest and plain and—uninhabited." She moistened her lips, but her voice was very steady. "If all of South America was uninhabited, and there were two people lost in it, and nobody knew where they were—how long would it take to find them?"

"It would be a matter of luck," admitted Cochrane.

"If the ship comes back, it can't hover to look for us. There isn't fuel enough. It couldn't spot us from space if it went in an orbit like a space platform. By the time they could get help—they wouldn't even be sure we were alive. If we can't count on being found right away, this burned–over place will be green again. In two or three weeks they couldn't find it anyhow."

Cochrane fidgeted. He had worked out all this for himself. He'd been disturbed at having to tell it, or even admit it to Babs. Now she said in a constrained voice:

"If men came to this planet and built a city and hunted for us, it might still be a hundred years before anybody happened to come into this valley. Looking for us would be worse than looking for a needle in a haystack. I don't think we're going to be found again."

Cochrane was silent. He felt guiltily relieved that he did not have to break this news to Babs. Most men have an instinctive feeling that a woman will blame them for bad news they hear.

A long time later, Babs said as quietly as before:

"Johnny Simms asked me to come along while he went hunting. I didn't. At least I—I'm not cast away with him!"

Cochrane said gruffly:

"Don't sit there and brood! Try to get some sleep."

She nodded. After a long while, her head drooped. She jerked awake again. Cochrane ordered her vexedly to make herself comfortable. She stretched out beside the wall of wood that Cochrane had made. She said quietly:

"While we're looking for food tomorrow morning, we'd better keep our eyes open for a place to build a house."

She closed her eyes.

Cochrane kept watch through the dark hours. He heard night–cries in the forest, and once toward dawn the distant volcano seemed to undergo a fresh paroxysm of activity. Boomings and explosions rumbled in the night. There were flickerings in the sky. But there were fewer temblors after it, and no shocks at all.

More than once, Cochrane found himself dozing. It was difficult to stay in a state of alarm. There was but one single outcry in the forest that sounded like the shriek of a creature seized by a carnivore. That was not nearby. He tried to make plans. He felt bitterly self–reproachful that he knew so few of the things that would be useful to a castaway. But he had been a city man all his life. Woodcraft was not only out of his experience—on overcrowded Earth it would have been completely useless.

From time to time he found himself thinking, instead of practical matters, of the astonishing sturdiness of spirit Babs displayed.

When she waked, well after daybreak, and sat up blinking, he said:

"Er—Babs. We're in this together. From now on, if you want to tell me something for my own good, go ahead! Right?"

She rubbed her eyes on her knuckles and said,

"I'd have done that anyhow. For both our good. Don't you think we'd better try to find a place where we can get a drink of water? Water has to be right to drink!"

They set off, Cochrane carrying the weapon he'd brought from the ship. It was Babs who pointed out that a stream should almost certainly be found where rain would descend, downhill. Babs, too, spotted one of the small, foot–high furry bipeds feasting gluttonously on small round objects that grew from the base of a small tree instead of on its branches. The tree, evidently, depended on four–footed rather than on flying creatures to scatter its seeds. They gathered samples of the fruit. Cochrane peeled a sliver of the meat from one of the round objects and put it under his watchstrap.

They found a stream. They found other fruits, and Cochrane prepared the same test for them as for the first. One of the samples turned his skin red and angry almost immediately. He discarded it and all the fruits of the kind from which it came.

At midday they tasted the first–gathered fruit. The flesh was red and juicy. There was a texture it was satisfying to chew on. The taste was indeterminate save for a very mild flavor of maple and peppermint mixed together.

They had no symptoms of distress afterward. Other fruits were less satisfactory. Of the samples which the skin–test said were non–poisonous, one was acrid and astringent, and two others had no taste except that of greenness—practically the taste of any leaf one might chew.

"I suppose," said Cochrane wryly, as they headed back toward the ash–clearing at nightfall, "we've got to find out if the animals can be eaten."

Babs nodded matter–of–factly.

"Yes. Tonight I'm taking part of the watch. As you remarked this morning, we're in this together."

He looked at her sharply, and she flushed.

"I mean it!" she said doggedly. "I'm watching part of the night!"

He was desperately tired. His muscles were not yet back to normal after the low gravity on the moon. She'd had more rest than he. He had to let her help. But there was embarrassment between them because it looked as if they would have to spend the rest of their lives together, and they had not made the decision. It had been made for them. And they had not acknowledged it yet.

When they reached the clearing, Cochrane began to drag new logs toward the central place where much of last night's supply of fuel remained. Matter–of–factly, Babs began to haul stuff with him. He said vexedly:

"Quit it! I've already been realizing how little I know about the things we're going to need to survive! Let me fool myself about masculine strength, anyhow!"

She smiled at him, a very little. But she went obediently to the fire to experiment with cookery of the one palatable variety of fruit from this planet's trees. He drove himself to bring more wood than before. When he settled down she said absorbedly:

"Try this, Jed."

Then she flushed hotly because she'd inadvertently used his familiar name. But she extended something that was toasted and not too much burned. He ate, with weariness sweeping over him like a wave. The cooked fruit was almost a normal food, but it did need salt. There would be trouble finding salt on this planet. The water that should be in the seas was frozen in the glaciers. Salt would not have been leached out of the soil and gathered in the seas. It would be a serious problem. But Cochrane was very tired indeed.

"I'll take the first two hours," said Babs briskly. "Then I'll wake you."

He showed her how to use the weapon. He meant to let himself drift quietly off to sleep, acting as if he had a little trouble going off. But he didn't. He lay down, and the next thing he knew Babs was shaking him violently. In the first dazed instant when he opened his eyes he thought they were surrounded by forest fire. But it wasn't that. It was dawn, and Babs had let him sleep the whole night through, and the sky was golden–yellow from one horizon to the other. More, he heard the now–familiar cries of creatures in the forest. But also he heard a roaring sound, very thin and far away, which could only be one thing.

"Jed! Jed! Get up! Quick! The ship's coming back! The ship! We've got to move!"

She dragged him to his feet. He was suddenly wide–awake. He ran with her. He flung back his head and stared up as he ran. There was a pin–point of flame and vapor almost directly overhead. It grew swiftly in size. It plunged downward.

They reached the surrounding forest and plunged into it. Babs stumbled, and Cochrane caught her, and they ran onward hand in hand to get clear away from the down–blast of the rockets. The rocket–roaring grew louder and louder.

The castaways gazed. It was the ship. From below, fierce flames poured down, blue–white and raging. The silver hull slanted a little. It shifted its line of descent. It came down with a peculiar deftness of handling that Cochrane had not realized before. Its rockets splashed, but the flame did not extend out to the edge of the clearing that had been burned off at first. The rocket–flames, indeed, did not approach the proportion to be seen on rockets on film–tape, or as Cochrane had seen below the moon–rocket descending on Earth.

The ship settled within yards of its original landing–place. Its rockets dwindled, but remained burning. They dwindled again. The noise was outrageous, but still not the intolerable tumult of a moon–rocket landing on Earth.

The rockets cut off.

The airlock door opened. Cochrane and Babs waved cheerfully from the edge of the clearing. Holden appeared in the door and shouted down:

"Sorry to be so long coming back."

He waved and vanished. They had, of course, to wait until the ground at least partly cooled before the landing–sling could be used. Around them the noises of the forest continued. There were cooling, crackling sounds from the ship.

"I wonder how they found their way back!" said Babs. "I didn't think they ever could. Did you?"

"Babs," said Cochrane, "you lied to me! You said you'd wake me in two hours. But you let me sleep all night!"

"You'd let me sleep the night before," she told him composedly. "I was fresher than you were, and today'd have been a pretty bad one. We were going to try to kill some animals. You needed the rest."

Cochrane said slowly:

"I found out something, Babs. Why you could face things. Why we humans haven't all gone mad. I think I've gotten the woman's viewpoint now, Babs. I like it."

She inspected the looming blister–ports of the ship, now waiting for the ground to cool so they could come aboard.

"I think we'd have made out if the ship hadn't come," Cochrane told her. "We'd have had a woman's viewpoint to work from. Yours. You looked ahead to building a house. Of course you thought of finding food, but you were thinking of the possibility of winter and—building a house. You weren't thinking only of survival. You were thinking far ahead. Women must think farther ahead than men do!"

Babs looked at him briefly, and then returned to her apparently absorbed contemplation of the ship.

"That's what's the matter with people back on Earth," Cochrane said urgently. "There's no frustration as long as women can look ahead—far ahead, past here and now! When women can do that, they can keep men going. It's when there's nothing to plan for that men can't go on because women can't hope. You see? You saw a city here. A little city, with separate homes. On Earth, too many people can't think of more than living–quarters and keeping food enough for them—them only!—coming in. They can't hope for more. And it's when that happens—You see?"

Babs did not answer. Cochrane fumbled. He said angrily:

"Confound it, can't you see what I'm trying to say? We'd have been better off, as castaways, than back on Earth crowded and scared of our jobs! I'm saying I'd rather stay here with you than go back to the way I was living before we started off on this voyage! I think the two of us could make out under any circumstances! I don't want to try to make out without you! It isn't sense!" Then he scowled helplessly. "Dammit, I've staged plenty of shows in which a man asked a girl to marry him, and they were all phoney. It's different, now that I mean it! What's a good way to ask you to marry me?"

Babs looked momentarily up into his face. She smiled ever so faintly.

"They're watching us from the ports," she said. "If you want my viewpoint—If we were to wave to them that we'll be right back, we can get some more of those fruits I cooked. It might be interesting to have some to show them."

He scowled more deeply than before.

"I'm sorry you feel that way. But if that's it—"

"And on the way," said Babs. "When they're not watching, you might kiss me."

They had a considerable pile of the red–fleshed fruits ready when the ground had cooled enough for them to reach the landing–sling.

Once aboard the ship, Cochrane headed for the control–room, with Jamison and Bell tagging after him. Bell had an argument.

"But the volcano's calmed down—there's only a wall of steam where the lava hit the glaciers—and we could fix up a story in a couple of hours! I've got background shots! You and Babs could make the story–scenes and we'd have a castaway story! Perfect! The first true castaway story from the stars—. You know what that would mean!"

Cochrane snarled at him.

"Try it and I'll tear you limb from limb! I've put enough of other people's private lives on the screen! My own stays off! I'm not going to have even a phoney screen–show built around Babs and me for people to gabble about!"

Bell said in an injured tone:

"I'm only trying to do a good job! I started off on this business as a writer. I haven't had a real chance to show what I can do with this sort of material!"

"Forget it!" Cochrane snapped again. "Stick to your cameras!"

Jamison said hopefully:

"You'll give me some data on plants and animals, Mr. Cochrane? Won't you? I'm doing a book with Bell's pictures, and—"

"Let me alone!" raged Cochrane.

He reached the control–room. Al, the pilot, sat at the controls with an air of special alertness.

"You're all right? For our lined up trip, we ought to leave in about twenty minutes. We'll be pointing just about right then."

"I'm all right," said Cochrane. "And you can take off when you please." To Jones he said: "How'd you find us? I didn't think it could be done."

"Doctor Holden figured it out," said Jones. "Simple enough, but I was lost! When the ground–shocks came, everybody else ran to the ship. We waited for you. You didn't come." It had been, of course, because Cochrane would not risk taking Babs through a forest in which trees were falling. "We finally had to choose between taking off and crashing. So we took off."

"That was quite right. We'd all be messed up if you hadn't," Cochrane told him.

Jones waved his hands.

"I didn't think we could ever find you again. We were sixty light–years away when that booster effect died out. Then Doctor Holden got on the communicator. He got Earth. The astronomers back there located us and gave us the line to get back by. We found the planet. Even then I didn't see how we'd pick out the valley. But Doc had had 'em checking the shots we transmitted as we were making our landing. We had the whole first approach on film–tape. They put a crowd of map–comparators to work. We went in a Space Platform orbit around the planet, transmitting what we saw from out there—they figured the orbit for us, too—and they checked what we transmitted against what we'd photographed going down. So they were able to spot the exact valley and tell us where to come down. We actually spotted this valley last night, but we couldn't land in the dark."

Cochrane felt abashed.

"I couldn't have done that job," he admitted, "so I didn't think anybody could. Hm. Didn't all this cost a lot of fuel?"

Jones actually smiled.

"I worked out something. We don't use as much fuel as we did. We're probably using too much now. Al—go ahead and lift. I want to check what the new stuff does, anyhow. Take off!"

The pilot threw a switch, and Jones threw another, a newly installed one, just added to his improvised control–column. A light glowed brightly. Al pressed one button, very gently. A roaring set up outside. The ship started up. There was practically no feeling of acceleration, this time. The ship rose lightly. Even the rocket–roar was mild indeed, compared to its take–off from Luna and the sound of its first landing on the planet just below.

Cochrane saw the valley floors recede, and mountain–walls drop below. From all directions, then, vegetation–filled valleys flowed toward the ship, and underneath. Glaciers appeared, and volcanic cones, and then enormous stretches of white, with smoking dots here and there upon it. In seconds, it seemed, the horizon was visibly curved. In other seconds the planet being left behind was a monstrous white ball, and there were patches of intolerable white sunlight coming in the ports.

And Cochrane felt queer. Jones had given the order for take–off. Jones had determined to leave at this moment, because Jones had tests he wanted to make…. Cochrane felt like a passenger. From the man who decided things because he was the one who knew what had to be done, he had become something else. He had been absent two nights and part of a day, and decisions had been made in which he had no part—

It felt queer. It felt even startling.

"We're in a modification of the modified Dabney field now," observed Jones in a gratified tone. "You know the original theory."

"I don't," acknowledged Cochrane.

"The field's always a pipe, a tube, a column of stressed space between the field–plates," Jones reminded him. "When we landed the first time, back yonder, the tail of the ship wasn't in the field at all. The field stretched from the bow of the ship only, out to that last balloon we dropped. We were letting down at an angle to that line. It was like a kite and a string and the kite's tail. The string was the Dabney field, and the directions we were heading was the kite's tail."

Cochrane nodded. It occurred to him that Jones was very much unlike Dabney. Jones had discovered the Dabney field, but having sold the fame–rights to it, he now apparently thought "Dabney Field" was the proper technical term for his own discovery, even in his own mind.

"Back on the moon," Jones went on zestfully, "I wasn't sure that a field once established would hold in atmosphere. I hoped that with enough power I could keep it, but I wasn't sure—"

"This doesn't mean much to me, Jones," said Cochrane. "What does it add up to?"

"Why—the field held down into atmosphere. And we were out of the primary field as far as the tail of the ship was concerned. But this time we landed, I'd hooked in some ready–installed circuits. There was a second Dabney field from the stern of the ship to the bow. There was the main one, going out to those balloons and then back to Earth. But there was—and is—a second one only enclosing the ship. It's a sort of bubble. We can still trail a field behind us, and anybody can follow in any sort of ship that's put into it. But now the ship has a completely independent, second field. Its tail is never outside!"

Cochrane did not have the sort of mind to find such information either lucid or suggestive.

"So what happens?"

"We have both plates of a Dabney field always with us," said Jones triumphantly. "We're always in a field, even landing in atmosphere, and the ship has practically no mass even when it's letting down to landing. It has weight, but next to no mass. Didn't you notice the difference?"

"Stupid as it may seem, I didn't," admitted Cochrane. "I haven't the least idea what you're talking about."

Jones looked at him patiently.

"Now we can shoot our exhaust out of the field! The ship–field, not the main one!"

"I'm still numb," said Cochrane. "Multiple sclerosis of the brain–cells, I suppose. Let me just take your word for it."

Jones tried once more.

"Try to see it! Listen! When we landed the first time we had to use a lot of fuel because the tail of the ship wasn't in the Dabney field. It had mass. So we had to use a lot of rocket–power to slow down that mass. In the field, the ship hasn't much mass—the amount depends on the strength of the field—but rockets depend for their thrust on the mass that's thrown away astern. Looked at that way, rockets shouldn't push hard in a Dabney field. There oughtn't to be any gain to be had by the field at all. You see?"

Cochrane fumbled in his head.

"Oh, yes. I thought of that. But there is an advantage. The ship does work."

"Because," said Jones, triumphant again, "the field–effect depends partly on temperature! The gases in the rocket–blast are hot, away up in the thousands of degrees. They don't have normal inertia, but they do have what you might call heat–inertia. They acquire a sort of fictitious mass when they get hot enough. So we carry along fuel that hasn't any inertia to speak of when it's cold, but acquires a lunatic sort of substitute for inertia when it's genuinely hot. So a ship can travel in a Dabney field!"

"I'm relieved," acknowledged Cochrane. "I thought you were about to tell me that we couldn't lift off the moon, and I was going to ask how we got here."

Jones smiled patiently.

"What I'm telling you now is that we can shoot rocket–blasts out of the Dabney field we make with the stern of the ship! Landing, we keep our fuel and the ship with next to no mass, and we shoot it out to where it does have mass, and the effect is practically the same as if we were pushing against something solid! And so we started off with fuel for maybe five or six landings and take–offs against Earth gravity. But with this new trick, we've got fuel for a couple of hundred!"

"Ah!" said Cochrane mildly. "This is the first thing you've said that meant anything to me. Congratulations! What comes next?"

"I thought you'd be pleased," said Jones. "What I'm really telling you is that now we've got fuel enough to reach the Milky Way."

"Let's not," suggested Cochrane, "and say we did! You've got a new star picked out to travel to?"

Jones shrugged his shoulders. In him, the gesture indicated practically hysterical frustration. But he said:

"Yes. Twenty–one light–years. Back on Earth they're anxious for us to check on sol–type suns and Earth–type planets."

"For once," said Cochrane, "I am one with the great scientific minds. Let's go over."

He made his way to the circular stairway leading down to the main saloon. On his clumsy way across the saloon floor to the communicator, he felt the peculiar sensation of the booster–current, which should have been a sound, but wasn't. It was the sensation which had preceded the preposterous leap of the space–ship away from Luna, when in a heart–beat of time all stars looked like streaks of light, and the ship traveled nearly two light–centuries.

Sunshine blinked, and then shone again in the ports around the saloon walls. The second shining came from a different direction—as if somebody had switched off one exterior light and turned on another—and at a different angle to the floor.

Cochrane reached the communicator. He felt no weight. He strapped himself into the chair. He switched on the vision–phone which sent radiation along the field to a balloon two hundred odd light–years from Earth—that was the balloon near the glacier planet—and then switched to the field traveling to a second balloon then the last hundred seventy–odd light–years back to the moon, and then from Luna City down to Earth.

He put in his call. He got an emergency message that had been waiting for him. Seconds later he fought his way frantically through no–weight to the control–room again.

"Jamison! Bell!" he cried desperately. "We've got a broadcast due in twenty minutes! I lost track of time! We're sponsored on four continents and we damwell have to put on a show! What the devil! Why didn't somebody—"

Jamison said obviously from a blister–port where he swung a squat star–telescope from one object to another:

"Noo–o–o. That's a gas–giant. We'd be squashed if we landed there—though that big moon looks promising. I think we'd better try yonder."

"Okay," said Jones in a flat voice. "Center on the next one in, Al, and we'll toddle over."

Cochrane felt the ship swinging in emptiness. He knew because it seemed to turn while he felt that he stayed still.

"We've got a show to put on!" he raged. "We've got to fake something—."

Jamison looked aside from his telescope.

"Tell him, Bell," he said expansively.

"I wrote a script of sorts," said Bell apologetically. "The story–line's not so good—that's why I wanted a castaway narrative to put in it, though I wouldn't have had time, really. We spliced film and Jamison narrated it, and you can run it off. It's a kind of show. We ran it as a space–platform survey of the glacier–planet, basing it on pictures we took while we were in orbit around it. It's a sort of travelogue. Jamison did himself proud. Alicia can find the tape–can for you."

He went back to his cameras. Cochrane saw a monstrous globe swing past a control–room port. It was a featureless mass of clouds, save for striations across what must be its equator. It looked like the Lunar Observatory pictures of Jupiter, back in the Sun's family of planets.

It went past the port, and a moon swam into view. It was a very large moon. It had at least one ice–cap—and therefore an atmosphere—and there were mottlings of its surface which could hardly be anything but continents and seas.

"We've got to put a show on!" raged Cochrane. "And now!"

"It's all set," Bell assured him. "You can transmit it. I hope you like it!"

Cochrane sputtered. But there was nothing to do but transmit whatever Bell and Jamison had gotten ready. He swam with nightmarelike difficulty back to the communicator. He shouted frantically for Babs. She and Alicia came. Alicia found the film–tape, and Cochrane threaded it into the transmitter, and bitterly ran the first few feet. Babs smiled at him, and Alicia looked at him oddly. Evidently, Babs had confided the consequence of their casting–away. But Cochrane faced an emergency. He began to check timings with far–distant Earth.

When the ship approached a second planet, Cochrane saw nothing of it. He was furiously monitoring the broadcast of a show in which he'd had no hand at all. From his own, professional standpoint it was terrible. Jamison spouted interminably, so Cochrane considered. Al, the pilot, was actually interviewed by an offscreen voice! But the pictures from space were excellent. While the ship floated in orbit, waiting to descend to pick up Babs and Cochrane, Bell had hooked his camera to an amplifying telescope and he did have magnificent shots of dramatic terrain on the planet now twenty light–years behind.

Cochrane watched the show in a mingling of jealousy and relief. It was not as good as he would have done. But fortunately, Bell and Jamison had stuck fairly close to straight travelogue–stuff, and close–up shots of vegetation and animals had been interspersed with the remoter pictures with moderate competence, if without undue imagination. An audience which had not seen many shows of the kind would be thrilled. It even amounted to a valid change of pace. Anybody who watched this would at least want to see more and different pictures from the stars.

Halfway through, he heard the now–muffled noise of rockets. He knew the ship was descending through atmosphere by the steady sound, though he had not the faintest idea what was outside. He ground his teeth as—for timing—he received the commercial inserted in the film. The U. S. commercials served the purpose, of course. He could not watch the other pictures shown to residents of other than North America in the commercial portions of the show.

He was counting seconds to resume transmission when he felt the slight but distant impact which meant that the ship had touched ground. A very short time after, even the lessened, precautionary rocket–roar cut off.

Cochrane ground his teeth. The ship had landed on a planet he had not seen and in whose choice he had had no hand. He was humiliated. The other members of the ship's company looked out at scenes no other human eyes had ever beheld.

He regarded the final commercial, inserted into the broadcast for its American sponsor. It showed, purportedly, the true story of two girl friends, one blonde and one brunette, who were wall–flowers at all parties. They tried frantically to remedy the situation by the use of this toothpaste and that, and this deodorant and the other. In vain! But then they became the centers of all the festivities they attended, as soon as they began to wash their hair with Rayglo Shampoo.

Holden and Johnny Simms came clattering down from the control–room together. They looked excited. They plunged together toward the stair–well that would take them to the deck on which the airlock opened.

Holden panted,

"Jed! Creatures outside! They look like men!"

The communicator–screen faithfully monitored the end of the commercial. Two charming girls, radiant and lovely, raised their voices in grateful song, hymning the virtues of Rayglo Shampoo. There followed brisk reminders of the superlative, magical results obtained by those who used Rayglo Foundation Cream, Rayglo Kisspruf Lipstick, and Rayglo home permanent—in four strengths; for normal, hard–to–wave, easy–to–wave, and children's hair.

Cochrane heard the clanking of the airlock door.