Cochrane when the stewardess' voice the action. With he his safety-belt and out into the spiral, aisle. It to have weight again, as little as this. Cochrane weighed, on the moon, just one-sixth of what he would on Earth. Here he would a spring-scale at just about twenty-seven pounds. By his toes, he jump. Absurdly, he did. And he rose very slowly, and hovered—feeling foolish—and with a deliberation. He on the again indeed. He saw Babs at him.
"I think," said Cochrane, "I'll have to take up toe-dancing."
She laughed. Then there were clankings, and something itself outside, and after a moment the entrance-door of the opened.
They the to the moon-jeep, onto the hand-rail and helping each other. The foolishly. They out the thick and themselves in an very much like the of a small submarine. But it did have windows—ports—and Babs herself into a seat one and her eyes. She saw the and the ring-mountain wall, miles off to one side, and the of the "sea." Across that surface the was near, and Cochrane that the moon was only one-fourth the size of Earth, so its would naturally be nearer. He at the that through the that the sunshine. And then he looked for Holden.
The looked and and and disheveled. When a person have space-sickness,[Pg 26] a little weight the symptoms, but the last for days.
"Don't worry!" he said when he saw Cochrane's upon him. "I won't waste any time! I'll my man and to work at once. Just let me to Earth...."
There were more clankings—the jeep-bus off from the rocket. Then the vehicle stirred. The to move.
They saw Lunar City as they approached it. It was five dust-heaps, from five hundred-odd in to three. There were at their and dust-covered them, and radar-bowls about their sides. But they were dust-heaps. Which was reasonable. There is no air on the moon. By day the sun with ferocity. It as with a furnace-flame. At night all away to empty space, and the ground-temperature well that of liquid air. So Lunar City was a group of which were half-balloons—hemispheres of plastic from Earth and and with dust. With to permit entrance and exit, they were inhabitable. They needed no to support them there were no or to put on them. They needed neither equipment. They were under of moon-dust, with the dust-grains. Lunar City was not beautiful, but beings live in it.
The jeep-bus them a mile, and they a lock, and another door and another opened and closed, and they into a which no amount of television film-tape portray.
The main was a thousand across and as high. There were green plants in and pots. And the air was fresh! It strange. There be no on the and it new and to breathe air after days of the variety. But this Cochrane that he'd for a bath.
He took a in his hotel room. The room was very much like one on Earth, that it had no windows. But the was strange. The were tiny. Cochrane as if he were being by than shower-nozzles until he noticed that water ran off him very slowly and that a normal would have[Pg 27] been overwhelming. He up a of water and let it drop. It took a full second to two and a feet.
It was unsettling, but fresh from his waiting him better. He to the of the hotel, and it was not a lounge, and the hotel was not a hotel. Everything in the was in the that it was under a fifty high. But was also out-doors in the of light and trees and and shrubs.
He Babs and waiting for him. She said in tones:
"Mr. Cochrane, I asked at the desk. Doctor Holden has gone to Mr. Dabney. He asked that we call. I've sent word to Mr. West and Mr. Jamison and Mr. Bell."
Cochrane of her efficiency.
"Then we'll and wait. Since this isn't an office, we'll some refreshment."
They asked for a table and got one near the pool. And Babs her office manner, all and business, until they were seated. But this was not like a on Earth. The water was the pool's rim, and great and forth. The swimmers—.
Babs gasped. A man on a thirty above the water. He prepared to dive.
"That's Johnny Simms!" she said, awed.
"Who's he?"
"The playboy," said Babs, staring. "He's a and his family has millions. They keep him up here out of trouble. He's married."
"Too bad—if he has millions," said Cochrane.
"I wouldn't a man with a personality!" Babs.
"Keep away from people in the business, then," Cochrane told her.
Johnny Simms did not up and on the to start. He upward, and for easily fifteen feet, and for a full breath, and then to in slow motion. He only two and a the second, and five more the one after, and twelve and a after that.... It took him over four to forty-five into the water, and the that when he struck[Pg 28] the surface rose four yards and with a deliberation.
Watching, Babs not keep her demeanor. She was with the knowledge that she was on the moon, the and looking at fame.
They at drinks—but the liquid rose much too in the straws—and Cochrane that the drink in Babs' would cost Dabney's father-in-law as much as Babs in a week home, and his own was no less.
Presently a note came from Holden:
"Jed: send West and Jamison right away to Dabney's laboratory to of from man named Jones. Get moon-jeep and driver from hotel. I will want you in an hour.—Bill."
"I'll be back," said Cochrane. "Wait."
He left the table and West and Jamison in Bell's room, all three in over a bottle. West and Jamison were Cochrane's scientific team for the yet he was to perform. West was the specialist. He make a television audience that it all the seven for some of wave-mechanics theory. His did not stick, of course. One didn't them. But they were in cultural on television productions. Jamison was the expert. He anything into anything else, and make you that a one-week in the on Kamchatka was the of a that would the Earth in four hundred and seventy-three years. They were good men for a television to have on call. Now, instructed, they out to be by somebody who more than of them put together, but they would with suspicion.
Bell, left behind, said cagily:
"This I've got to do, now—Will that laboratory be the set? Where is it? In the dome?"
"It's not in the dome," Cochrane told him. "West and Jamison took a moon-jeep to to it. I don't know what the set will be. I don't know anything, yet. I'm waiting to be told about the job, myself."[Pg 29]
"If I've got to cook up a story-line," Bell, "I have to know the set. Who'll act? You know how can up any script! How about a part for Babs? Nice kid!"
Cochrane himself annoyed, without why.
"We just have to wait until we know what our job is," he said curtly, and to go.
Bell said:
"One more thing. If you're to use a news up here—don't! I used to be a I got and started to write. Let me do the camera-work. I've got a idea of using a camera to tell a now, than—"
"Hold it," said Cochrane. "We're not up here to film-tape a show. Our job is psychiatry—craziness."
To a self-respecting producer, a production would craziness. A script-writer might have trouble out a psychiatrist's prescription, or he might not. But producing it would be out of all rationality! No camera, the patient would be the star, and most lines would be ad libbed. Cochrane viewed such a production with distaste. But of course, if a man wanted only to be famous, it might be as a public-relations job. In any case, though, it would amount to in three and Cochrane would have no part in it. But he had to the whole thing.
He to the table and Babs. She that she'd been talking to Johnny Simms' wife. She was nice! But homesick. Cochrane sat and thoughts. Then he that he was Babs didn't notice. He his drink and ordered another.
Half an hour later, Holden them. He had in a sad-looking man with a narrow and an of anxiety. Cochrane winced. A type if there was one!
"Jed," said Holden heartily, "here's Mr. Dabney. Mr. Dabney, Jed Cochrane is here as a in public-relations set-ups. He'll take of this affair. Your father-in-law sent him up here to see that you are done to!"
Dabney to think he spoke.
"It is not for myself," he in an tone. "It is my work! That is important! After all, this is a scientific discovery! But nobody pays any attention![Pg 30] It is important! Extremely! Science itself is by the of attention paid to my discovery!"
"Which," Holden him, "is about to be changed. It's a of public relations. Jed's a specialist. He'll take over."
The sad-faced man up his hand for attention. He thought. Visibly. Then he said worriedly:
"I would take you over to my laboratory, but I promised my wife I would call her in an hour from now. Johnny Simms' wife just me. My wife is on Earth. So you will have to go to the laboratory without me and have Mr. Jones you the proof of my work. A very man, Jones—in a way, of course. Yes. I will you a and you can go there at once, and when you come you can tell me what you plan. But you that it is not for myself that I want credit! It is my discovery! It is important! It is vital! It must not be overlooked!"
Holden him away, while Cochrane his features. After a moments Holden came back, his sagging.
"This your drink, Jed?" he asked dispiritedly. "I need it!" He up the and it. "The history of that case would be interesting, if one to the of it! Come along!" His was itself. "I've got a waiting for us."
Babs up, her shining.
"May I come, Mr. Cochrane?"
Cochrane her along. Holden to gloomily, but nobody can in one-sixth gravity. He reeled, and then himself to on the moon.
There was an with a smaller of the moon-jeep that had them from the ship to the city. It was a brightly-polished metal body, some ten off the ground on large wheels. It was very to the straddle-trucks used in on Earth. It would in its path. It go in of and detritus, and its metal was air-tight and air for breathing, out on the moon's surface.
They in. There was the of pumping, which fainter. The lock-door opened. The moon-jeep rolled outside.
Babs with out of a shielded[Pg 31] port. There were stones, cliffs. There had been no weather to remove the of anything in a hundred years. The awkward-seeming vehicle over the sea toward the of over Lunar City. It a ascent. It climbed. And the way was and the vehicle springless, but it was a ride. A cannot be in light gravity. The vehicle as if on wings.
"All right," said Cochrane. "Tell me the worst. What's the trouble with him? Is he the result of six of the money in the family? Or is he a freak?"
Holden a little.
"He's a stock model of a rich man without for a job in the family firm, and too much money for anything else. Fortunately for his family, he didn't like Johnny Simms—though they're good friends. A hundred years ago, Dabney'd have gone in for the arts. But it's hard to that way now. Fifty years ago he'd have gone in for left-wing sociology. But we are doing the best that can be done with too many people and not world. So he in for science. It's non-competitive. Incapacity doesn't up. But he has on something. It important. It must have been an accident! The only trouble is that it doesn't a thing! Yet he's more than he to, he's it's not appreciated! What a joke!"
Cochrane said cynically:
"You paint a dark picture, Bill. Are you trying to make this thing into a challenge?"
"You can't make a man famous for something that doesn't matter," said Holden hopelessly. "And this is that!"
"Nothing's to public relations if you money," Cochrane him. "What's this of his?"
The over a small and for a second and rolled on. Babs beamed.
"He's found," said Holden discouragedly, "a way to send than light. It's a around Einstein's stuff—not it, but it. Right now it takes not two for a message to go from the moon to Earth. That's at the speed of light. Dabney has proof—we'll see it—that he can cut that some ninety-five per[Pg 32] cent. Only it can't be used for Earth-moon communication, ends have to be in a vacuum. It be used to the space platform, but—what's the difference? It's a for which there's no possible use. There's no place to send to!"
Cochrane's and hard. There were some three thousand in the of Earth—and more only a way—and it had not to anybody. The did not likely to change. But—The moon-jeep and climbed. It was a mile above the of the sea and the dust-heaps that were a city. It looked like ten miles, of the of the horizon. The all about looked like a madman's dream.
"But he wants appreciation!" said Holden angrily. "People on Earth almost on each other for of room, and people like me trying to keep them when they've every for despair—and he wants appreciation!"
Cochrane grinned. He softly.
"Never a genius, Bill," he said kindly. "I to myself. In two your patient—I'll it—will be the hope, the blessing, the man in all the history of humanity! It'll be phoney, of course, but we'll have Marilyn Winters—Little Aphrodite herself—making at him in of a break! It's a natural!"
"How'll you do it?" Holden.
The moon-jeep in its crazy, progress. A area had been in which had been since the of time. Here there was a structure. Typically, it was a dust-heap against a cliff. There was an and another waited outside, and there were metal on the space, from direct and with to them from the door.
"How?" Cochrane. "I'll the here. Let's go! How do we manage?"
It was a matter, he discovered, of vacuum-suits, and they were to into and when one was in. Struggling, Cochrane to say:
"You can wait here in the jeep, Babs—"
But she was already into a very much for her, with the look of high that Cochrane had wear.[Pg 33]
They got out of a that just one person at a time. They started for the laboratory. And Cochrane saw Babs through the dark, almost-opaque that a space-suit-helmet needs in the moon's if its isn't to be by sunlight. Cochrane up too.
He saw Earth. It almost in mid-sky. It was huge. It was gigantic. It was colossal. It was four times the of the moon as from Earth, and it sixteen times as much of the sky. Its were plain to see, and its seas, and the ice-caps at its whitely, and over all of it there was a which was like a glamour; a and which Earth a to at one's heart-strings.
Behind it and all about it there was the of space, so with that there no room for another gem.
Cochrane looked. He said nothing. Holden on to the airlock. He to the door open for Babs.
And then there was the of the laboratory. It was not familiar to Cochrane, who had used sets on the Dikkipatti Hour of most of the in which can unfold. This was a laboratory, pure and simple. The air of and and oil and food and tobacco-smoke and other items. West and Jamison were already here, their space-suits removed. They sat at a table with about. There was a deep-browed man to his new visitors.
Holden the face-plate of his and his mission. He Cochrane and Babs, in the that the dark man was the Jones he had come to see. A laboratory high in the of the Lunar Apennines is an odd place for a to himself on professional business. But Holden only that Dabney had sent them to learn about his and for a public-relations job to make it known.
Cochrane saw Jones' just once Holden's explanation. Otherwise he was poker-faced.
"I was the to these two," he observed.
"Shoot it," said Cochrane to West. It was to[Pg 34] ask West for an explanation, he would into terms.
West said briskly—exactly as if a television camera—that Mr. Dabney had started from the well-known that the properties of space are by energy fields. Magnetic and and light or light or do this or that as the case may be. But all previous of the of space had been in fields. All previous had in all directions, in as the square of the ...
"Cut," said Cochrane.
West his professional delivery. He re-addressed himself to his beer.
"How about it, Jones?" asked Cochrane. "Dabney's got a variation? What is it?"
"It's a of that doesn't spread out. You set up two plates and this them," said Jones curtly. "It's and it doesn't expand. It's like a or a beam, and it the same size like a pipe. In that field—or pipe—radiation than it outside. The properties of space are the plates. Therefore the speed of all radiation. That's all."
Cochrane seated himself. He of this Jones, met in the middle of his forehead. He was not more than required. He did not employer-like at the mention of his employer's name.
"But what can be done with it?" asked Cochrane practically.
"Nothing," said Jones succinctly. "It the properties of space, but that's all. Can you think of any use for a faster-than-light radiation-pipe? I can't."
Cochrane an at Jamison, who at the of an equation. But Jamison his head.
"Communication planets," he said morosely, "when we to them. Chats on Earth and Pluto. Broadcasts to the when we that another one's set up a plate and is to with us. There's nothing else."
Cochrane his hand. It is good policy to put a in his place, occasionally.
"Demonstration?" he asked Jones.[Pg 35]
"There are plates across the out yonder," said Jones without emotion. "Twenty miles clear reach. I can send a message across and it twice and through two in about five of the time ought to take."
Cochrane said with cynicism:
"Jamison, you work by where you can go. Jones by where he is. But this is a public relations job. I don't know where we are or where we can go, but I know where we want to take this thing."
Jones looked at him. Not hostilely, but with the of a man to nearly exact science, when he somebody work in one of the least of them all.
Holden said:
"You you've out some of production."
"No production," said Cochrane blandly. "It isn't necessary. A public-relations set-up. We a and then let it out. We make it so good that the people who don't it can't help it." He at Jamison. "Right now, Jamison, we want a that the sending of at twenty times the speed of light means that there is a way to send than light—as soon as we work it out. It means that the inertia-mass which with speed—Einstein's stuff—is not a property of matter, but of space, just as the air-resistance that when an goes is a property of air and not of the plane. Maybe we need to work out a that all is a property of space. We'll see if we need that. But anyhow, just as a plane can go in thin air, so matter—any matter—will move in this as soon as we the of it. You see?"
Holden his head.
"What's that got in it to make Dabney famous?" he asked.
"Jamison will from there," Cochrane him. "Go ahead, Jamison. You're on."
Jamison said promptly, with the of the professional:
"When this has been completed, not only will be sent at of the speed of light, but matter! Ships! The to the high of mankind; the of our to a single of a minor sun—these[Pg 36] crash and will as the great minds of their to make the Dabney faster-than-light the of our ships. There are thousands of millions of in our galaxy, and not less than one in three has planets, and among these of unknown worlds there will be thousands with and land and clouds and continents, fit for men to enter upon, there to their cities. There will be sun-clusters, and landing on in the Milky Way. We ourselves will see freight-lines to Rigel and Arcturus, and on passenger-liners through the to Andromeda and Aldebaran! Dabney has the in the to the of humanity!"
Then he stopped and said professionally:
"I can that up a bit, of course. All right?"
"Fair," Cochrane. He to Holden. "How about a public-relations job on that order? Won't that of meet the requirements? Will your patient be satisfied with that of appreciation?"
Holden a breath. He said unsteadily:
"As a personality, he won't that it be true. All he'll want is the seeming. But—Jed, it be true? Could it?"
Cochrane laughed unpleasantly. He did not himself. His it.
"What do you want?" he demanded. "You got me a job I didn't want. You it my throat! Now there's the way to it done! What more can you ask?"
Holden winced. Then he said heavily:
"I'd like for it to be true."
Jones moved suddenly. He said in an voice:
"D'you know, it can be! I didn't realize! It can be true! I can make a ship go than light!"
Cochrane said with irony:
"Thanks, but we don't need it. We aren't paid for that! All we need is a of for a son-in-law of a partner of Kursten, Kasten, Hopkins and Fallowe! A public-relations job is all that's required. You give West the theory, and Jamison will do the prophecy, and Bell will it out."
Jones said calmly:
"I will like hell! Look! I this faster-than-light in the place! I it to Dabney he[Pg 37] wanted to be famous! I got my pay and he can keep it! But if he can't it himself, to lecture about it ... Do you think I'm going to in some I noticed, that I can fit into that but nobody else can—Do you think I'm going to give him as a bonus?"
Holden said, nodding, with his twisted:
"I should have that! He his great from you, eh? And that's what he about!"
Cochrane snapped:
"I you the of life, Bill! Dabney's not in my business! He's almost a sponsor!"
"When you ask me to away starships," said Jones coldly, "for a feature, I don't play. I won't take the for the away from Dabney. I him that with my open. But are more than a fool's to be famous! He'd try it! He'd be it wouldn't work! I don't play!"
Holden said stridently:
"I don't give a about any you with Dabney! But if you can us to the stars—all us who need it—you've got to!"
Jones said, again calmly:
"I'm willing. Make me an offer—not cash, but a to do something real—not just a for a neurotic's ego!"
Cochrane at him very peculiarly.
"I like your approach. You've got illusions. They're to have. I wouldn't mind having some myself. Bill," he said to Dr. William Holden, "how much nerve has Dabney?"
"Speaking unprofessionally," said Holden, "he's a with wants. He hasn't anything but cravings. Why?"
Cochrane again, his on one side.
"He wouldn't take part in an enterprise to the stars, would he?" When Holden his head, Cochrane said zestfully, "I'd that the of his would be to have the for it if it worked, but he wouldn't being with it until it had worked! Right?"
"Right," said Holden. "I said he was a worm. What're you at?"
"I'm what you're my arm to make me do," said Cochrane, "in case you haven't noticed. Bill, if[Pg 38] Jones can make a ship go than light—"
"I can," Jones. "I didn't think of the thing in with travel. I only of it for signalling."
"Then," said Cochrane, "I'm forced, for Dabney's sake, to do something that he'd at if he about it. We're going to have a party, Bill! A party after your and my and Jones' hearts!"
"What do you mean?" Holden.
"We make a production after all," said Cochrane, grinning. "We are going to take Dabney's discovery—the one he to—very indeed. I'm going to him acclaim. First we a of what Dabney's means for the of mankind—and then we prove it! We take a to the stars! Want to make your now?"
"You mean," said West incredulously, "a trip? Why?"
Cochrane at him suddenly.
"Because I can't kid myself any more," he rasped. "I've out how little I count in the world and the of Kursten, Kasten, Hopkins and Fallowe! I've out I'm only a little man when I I was a big one, and I won't take it! Now I've got an to try to be a big man! That's enough, isn't it?"
Then he around the small laboratory under the dust-heap. He was he did not after making a and a plan which ought to go in history—if it worked. He wasn't uplifted. He wasn't aware of any particular of being the of or anything else. He and and about trying the trick.
It him additionally, perhaps, to see the of starry-eyed on Babs' as she looked at him across the laboratory table, up with beer-cans.
[Pg 39]
