It is a of record that the American were ice-boxes were unknown in the century. There being no refrigeration, meat did not keep. But meat was not too easy to come by, so it had to be eaten, when it stank. Therefore it was a enterprise, and to the of the of Castile and Aragon, to put up the financial for a who might and make the of meat less unpleasant. Which was why Columbus got three ships and of for them from a government still trying to drive the Moors out of the last of Spain.
This was a for the on hand now. Cochrane to know the about Columbus he'd over the when he did a on the Dikkipatti Hour with him. There were more precedents. The by which Columbus was to be High Admiral of the Western Oceans, with a bite of all revenue by the passage he was to discover—he had to out for such terms to make the he was selling look attractive. Nobody anything that is too much. It looks phoney. So Cochrane his more than they need have been from a practical point of view, in order to make the enterprise practical from a financial aspect.
There was another he did not to follow. Columbus did not know where he was going when he set sail, he did not know where he was when he at the end of his voyage, and he didn't know where he'd been when he got back. Cochrane to on the of the explorer's doings in these respects.
He the legal of Kursten,[Pg 40] Kasten, Hopkins, and Fallowe to set up the enterprise with and discretion. There came into being a called "Spaceways, Inc." which not possibly be from any of its charter. Expert legal that its stock-holders should appear to be untraceable. Deft that though its stock was legally in Cochrane and Holden and Jones—Cochrane in Jones as a name to use—and they were officially the owners of nearly all the stock, nobody who up would they were anything but dummies. Stockholdings in West's, and Jamison's and Bell's names would look like smaller 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 part of Spaceways. They the enterprise a for a son-in-law. Which, of course, it was. So Spaceways, Inc., and to the people who would Dabney of his frustration—and nobody at all that it would do anything else. Not but those six owners, anyhow. And as it out, not all of them.
The with an innocent-seeming news-item from Lunar City saying that Dabney, the so-and-so scientist, had to act as to Spaceways, Inc., for the practical of his of a way to send than light.
This was news it came from the moon. It got wide distribution, but no emphasis.
Then the broke. On orders from Cochrane, Jamison the got plastered, in company with the two news-association reporters in Lunar City. He that Spaceways, Inc., had been and was to the Dabney faster-than-light-signalling into a faster-than-light-travel field. The news men him of all his extrapolations. Cynically, they to see who might be preparing to stock. They no for stock-sales. No registration of the company for funds. It wasn't going to the public for money. It wasn't selling anything. Then Cochrane to see any reporters at all, with the enterprise[Pg 41] up than a clam, and Jamison into a hotel room where he was with and food at Dabney's father-in-law's expense. None of this was for a promotion deal.
The news exploded. Let on an which had all of after fifty years in which only the moon had been colonized—and its had a population in the hundreds, only—the idea of faster-than-light travel was the one that wanted to in. The spread in a manner that only be as chain-reaction in character. And of Dabney—as the scientist for the new hope—became to all peoples.
The of Kursten, Kasten, Hopkins and Fallowe on the to Dabney. Strict agency that to date the cost-per-customer-mention of Dabney and his were the in the history of advertising. Surveys that three Earth-days less than 3.5 of every hundred questioned were of Dabney and the of travel to the through his discovery. More people Dabney's name than the name of the President of the United States!
That was only the beginning. The leading popular-science jumped eight points in audience-rating. It actually top-twenty when it a regular five-minute period to the Dabney Field and its possibilities in terms. On the day after Jamison's calculated indiscretion, the public was with the idea of faster-than-light transportation. Dabney was mentioned in every of every shirt, he was to on every (three had been invented, which were into one thousand eight hundred switcheroos, most of them only different from the original trio) and Marilyn Winters—Little Aphrodite Herself—was a faster-than-light-travel in her next television show.
On the seventh day Bill Holden came into the office where Cochrane feverishly.
"Doctor Cochrane," said Holden, "a word with you!"
"Doctor?" asked Cochrane.
"Doctor!" Holden. "I've just been my patient. You're good. My patient is adjusted."
Cochrane his eyebrows.[Pg 42]
"He's famous," said Holden grimly. "He now that in the world that he is a great scientist. He is appreciated. He is making plans to go to Earth and address a learned and let people him. He can now the of his life being the man who the by which faster-than-light-travel will some day be achieved. Even when the dies down, he will have been a great man—and he will 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 among psychiatrists, Jed. I have to admit that the guy now has a permanent to reality. He has been as a great scientist. He is no longer frustrated."
Cochrane in his chair.
"That may be good medical ethics," he observed, "but it's practice, Bill. You say he's to reality. That means that he will now have a to anything that's likely to to him."
Holden nodded.
"A well-adjusted person does. Dabney's the same person. He's the same fool. But he'll along all right. A can't a personality! All he can do is make it to the world about so the guy doesn't have to be away in a straight-jacket. In that sense, Dabney is adjusted."
"You've played a dirty on him," said Cochrane. "You've him, and that's the can play on anybody! You've put him into a of deep-freeze. It's a dirty trick, Bill!"
"Look who's talking!" said Holden wearily. "I the is and unmercenary?"
"The devil, no!" said Cochrane indignantly. "We a useful purpose! We tell people that they bad, and so give them an for the their has produced. But then we tell them to use so-and-so's or whosit's non-immunizing they'll the life of every party they attend! It's a lie, of course, but it's a lie! It the something to do! It sells him and therefore activity—and is a of death!"[Pg 43]
Holden looked at Cochrane with a disinterest.
"You're adjusted, Jed! But do you that stuff?"
Cochrane again.
"Only on Tuesdays and Fridays. It's about two-sevenths true. But it have that much truth in it! Nobody anything done while they make to the that to them! Take Dabney himself! We've got a of a thing along now just he wouldn't make the response to having a rich wife and no brains. He rebelled. So will start moving to the stars!"
"You still it?"
Cochrane grimaced.
"Yesterday I blood in a space-suit out in the Jones' laboratory. He his trick. He had a small signal-rocket on the of that crater,—twenty-some miles. It was in of the field-plate that the Dabney across the to another plate near us. Jones on the field. He the by control. I was with a telescope. I gave him the word to fire.... How long do you think it took that to the in that that like a pipe? It into the plate at the lab!"
Holden his head.
"It took slightly," said Cochrane, "slightly under three-fifths of a second."
Holden blinked. Cochrane said:
"A signal-rocket has an of about six hundred second, level flight, no component, only. It should have taken a hundred plus to that crater—over twenty miles. It shouldn't have on course. It did on course, the field. It did take under three-fifths of a second. The works!"
Holden a breath.
"So now you need more money and you want me not to my patient as cured."
"Not a of it!" Cochrane. "I don't want him as a patient! I'm only to accept him as a customer! But if he wants fame, I'll sell it to him. Not as something to his on, but something to in! Do you think he too famous for his own satisfaction?"[Pg 44]
"Of not," said Holden. "He's the same fool."
"Then we're in business," Cochrane told him. "Not that I couldn't my fish elsewhere. I'm going to! But I'll give him old-customer preference. I'll want him out at the distress-torp this afternoon. They'll be public."
"This afternoon?" asked Holden. "Distress-torp?"
A day is two Earth-weeks-long. A night is long-drawn-out. Cochrane said impatiently:
"I got out of four hours ago. To me that's morning. I'll eat in an hour. That's noon. Say, three hours from now, o'clock it is time."
Holden at his watch and 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 you and you on the jeep. You'll see then. Now I'm busy!"
Holden and away, and Cochrane at his own watch. Since a day and night together twenty-eight Earth days of time, a "day" nearly three hundred 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 period of the moon's was into familiar time-intervals, and a bulletin-board in the hotel in Lunar City those that: "Sunday will be from 143 o'clock to 167 o'clock A.M." There would be another Sunday some time the afternoon.
Cochrane this be used in the of Spaceways, Inc. Strictly speaking, there was some to Dabney's way regardless, the had been as a public-relations device. Any other features, such as the history of the race, were incidental. But Cochrane put his watch away. To talk about on the moon wouldn't add to Dabney's as a scientist. It didn't matter.
He to the at hand. Some two years there had been a for the of its promoters. It had a rocket-ship for the of a on Mars. The ship had managed to up to Luna, but no farther. Its had stock on the promise that a ship that[Pg 45] Luna take off from that small with six times as much fuel as it off of Earth. Which was true. Investors put in their money on that fact. But the truth to be, of course, that it would still take an amount of fuel to the ship—so loaded—to a speed where it would Mars in one lifetime. Taking off from Luna would solve only the problem of gravity. It wouldn't do a thing about inertia. So the ship rose from its landing near Lunar City. The that had it bankrupt.
Cochrane had been to out who owned that ship now. Just the torp-test he'd mentioned, he that the ship to the hotel desk-clerk, who had it in of it sooner or later for television background-shots in case was to make a television film-tape on the moon. He was now discouraged. Cochrane it, up a to return it undamaged. If the ship was lost, the hotel-clerk would his investment—about a week's pay.
So Cochrane had a space-ship in his pocket when the public of the Dabney came off at half-past 203 o'clock.
The site of the was the shadowed, pitch-dark part of the of a twenty miles across, with some ten thousand high. The furnace-like the plain the into a sea of brightness. The parts of the crater's were no less glaring. But above the of the the began; small and many-colored, with of brightness. The Earth in mid-sky like a green apple, in size. And the which moved about the of the test be only by light from the plain, one's had to be to the white-hot moon-dust on the plain and mountains.
There were not many present. Three waited in the semi-darkness, out of the sunshine. There were no more than a dozen moon-suited to watch and to perform the test of the Dabney field. Cochrane had all fore-news of the to give Dabney the he had paid for. There were present, then, the party from Earth—Cochrane and Babs and Holden, with the two scientists and Bell[Pg 46] the writer—and the only two reporters on the moon. Only news the expense-account of a man in Lunar City. And then there were Jones and Dabney and two other by Dabney.
There was, of course, no at all on the moon itself. There was no air to it. But from each plastic a six-inch upward, and the of suit-talkies a of in the 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 importance! Will you come into the laboratory?"
Cochrane helped Babs to the ground and his way to the in the dust-heap against the cliff. He in, with two other space-suited who themselves from the to him. Once the odorous, laboratory, Dabney opened his face-plate and to speak Cochrane was to him. His amiably.
"—and therefore, Mr. Cochrane," Dabney was saying agitatedly, "I that be taken to protect my scientific reputation! If this test should fail, it will against the of my discovery! I you—and I have my friend Mr. Simms here as witness—that I will not be for the operation of by a who not the of my discovery! I will not be involved—"
Cochrane nodded. Dabney, of course, didn't the of the he'd fame-rights to. But there was no point in that up. Johnny Simms at of them. He was the Babs had pointed out in the swimming-pool. His was and placid, like the of a college undergraduate. He had about anything. He'd had a in the world. He with interest.
"I take it," said Cochrane, "that you don't mind the test being made, so long as you don't have to accept for its failure—and so long as you the for its success if it works. That's right, isn't it?"
"If it fails, I am not responsible!" Dabney stridently. "If it succeeds, it will be of my discovery."
Cochrane a little. This was a business,[Pg 47] but Dabney would have himself, by now, that he was the he wanted people to him.
"Before the test," said Cochrane gently, "you make a speech. It will be recorded. You the and and that you are like Einstein, in only. That you are naturally in to use your discovery, but your presence is a of your but not your responsibility."
"I shall have to think it over—," Dabney nervously.
"You can say," promised Cochrane, "that if it not work you will check over what Jones did and tell him why."
"Y-yes," said Dabney hesitantly, "I 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 the test is off in five minutes."
He closed his face-plate as Dabney to protest. He into the lock. He than to anything up while waiting for a to make a decision. Dabney had all he wanted, now. From this moment on he would be for of it. But there be no the laboratory. In the airlessness, anything said by walkie-talkie be by everybody.
When Dabney and Simms out of the lock, Cochrane was helping Jones set up the device that had been prepared for this test. It was two devices. One was a very cone, much like a coolie-hat and larger, with a of power-pack of and attached. The other was a space-ship's distress-signal rocket, designed to make a twenty-mile of red in emptiness. Nobody had yet out what good a would do, Earth and moon, but the idea was soothing. The was four long and six in diameter. At its nose there was a second coolie-hat cone, with other and batteries.
Jones set the on the ground and packed around and under it to it. His movements were almost deliberate. Bending over, he slowly, or the motion would his off the ground. Straightening up, he slowly, or the of his would again him with solidity. But he the carefully.[Pg 48]
He set the signal-torpedo over that cone. The entire set-up was under six tall, and the coolie-hat were no more than eighteen in diameter. He said flatly:
"I'm all ready."
The hand and arm of a space-suited lifted, for attention. Dabney's voice came from the of every suit:
"I wish it understood," he said in some agitation, "that this of my is with my consent, but that I am not aware of the details. As a scientist, my work has been in pure science. I have for the of knowledge, but the of my are not mine. Still—if this device not work, I will take time from my more to into what part of my has been and applied. It may be that present technology is not to apply my discovery—"
Jones said without emotion—but Cochrane his poker-faced his helmet:
"That's right. I Mr. Dabney about the principles, but the is my doing, I take the for that!"
Then Cochrane added with irony:
"Since all this is recorded, Mr. Dabney can upon his later. Right now, we can go ahead. Mr. Dabney us unless we are successful. Let us let it go at that." Then he said: "The observatory's set to track?"
A voice said boredly, by short-wave from the up on the crater's rim:
"We're ready. Visual and records, and we've got the set to clock the auto-beacon as they come in."
The voice was not enthusiastic. Cochrane had had to put up his own money to have the put a low-power to watch the rocket's flight. In theory, this distress-rocket should make a twenty-mile of long-burning red sparks. A auto-beacon in its nose was set to send at ten-second intervals. On the of it, it had looked like a performance.
"Let's go," said Cochrane.
He noted with that his mouth was suddenly[Pg 49] dry. This was out of all reason. A of television should not be the person to in an scientific the way to the stars. A son-in-law of an should not be the by which the should come about. A should not be the means of Jones—a very junior with no money—and Cochrane and the Cochrane was prepared to about if only this unlikely-looking worked.
"Jones," said Cochrane with a little difficulty, "let's an tradition. Let Babs the enterprise by the switch."
Jones pointed there in the of the crater-wall, and Babs moved to the he indicated. She said absorbedly:
"Five, four, three, two, one—"
She the switch. There was a of red flame.
The vanished.
It vanished. It did not rise, visibly. It away from where it was, with all the of a light going out. There was a of the most flame. That light remained. But the did not so much as disappear.
Cochrane his up. He was close to the line of the rocket's ascent. He see a of red which to invisibility. It was an thin line. The of light which it were in space. They were so from each other that the signal-rocket was a complete failure as a device making a of light that should be visible.
The voice in the helmet-phones said blankly:
"Hey! What'd you do to that rocket?"
The others did not move. They stunned. The of the was no way for a to act. In all expectation, it should have with a velocity, and should have more from the moon's surface than it would have done from Earth. But it should have visible all its flight. Its should have been a thick red line. Instead, the red were so separated—the was so that it was visible only from a spot near its base. The voice said more still:
"Hey! I've up the trail! I can't see it nearby, but it to start, thin, about fifty miles up and go on[Pg 50] away from there! That shouldn't ha' gone more than twenty miles! What happened?"
"Watch for the signals," said Jones' voice in Cochrane's headphones.
The voice from the suddenly. This was not one of the highly-placed astronomers, but part of the staff who'd been to do an for pay.
"Here's the blip! It's crazy! Nothing can go that fast!"
And then in the there came the of the auto-beacon in the rocket. The signal-sound was that of a pulse, at low and three in the tenth of a second. At middle C—the middle of the range of a piano—there was a of volume. But in the that louder had four tones. Cochrane said crisply:
"Jones, what speed would that be?"
"It'd take a slide-rule to it," said Jones' voice, very calmly, "but it's than anything before."
Cochrane waited for the next beep. It did not come in ten seconds. It was easily fifteen. Even he out what that meant! A signal-source that ten of at to fifteen at ...
The voice from the wailed:
"It's crazy! It can't be going like that!"
They waited. Fifteen more. Sixteen. Eighteen. Twenty. The sounded. The of had a full octave. The signal-rocket, traveling normally, might have a maximum of some two thousand second. It was now moving at a speed which was an large of the speed of light. Which was impossible. It to be true.
They the once more. The observatory's multiple-receptor had been up to maximum amplification. The was distinct, but very indeed. And the was then traveling—so it was later computed—at seven-eighths of the speed of light. Between the on the of the distress-torpedo, and the on the ground, a of existed. The was not on the surface of the torpedo's cone, but the surface. It to the moon from there, so all the and its were in the space. And an amount of rocket-push that should have sent the four-foot maybe twenty miles during[Pg 51] its period of burning, had actually its to more than thirty-seven hundred miles the red were too to be any farther, and by then had the up close to light-speed.
In a sense, the Dabney had an to the of railways. The same moved more weight faster, over rails, than it over a road. The same rocket-thrust moved more weight in the Dabney than in normal space. There would be a practical limit to the speed at which a be over a road. The speed of light was a limit to the speed of in normal space. But on a railway the practical speed at which a vehicle travel up from three miles an hour to a hundred and twenty. In the Dabney it was yet to be what the might be. But old for and increase-of-mass-with-velocity did not apply in a Dabney field.
Jones to Lunar City with Cochrane and Holden and Babs. His was dead-pan.
Babs to the and manner of the perfect secretary.
"Mr. Cochrane," she said professionally, "will you want to read the Mr. Bell out from what Mr. West and Mr. Jamison tell him?"
"I don't think it matters," said Cochrane. "The will pump West and Jamison empty, anyhow. It's all right. In fact, it's than our own would be. They'll each other. It'll more that way. We're up a customer-demand for information."
The small moon-jeep rolled and the long, to Lunar City. Its engine ran smoothly, as steam-engines always do. It ran on seventy peroxide, as a fuel in the 1940s for the of the V2 that to win the Second World War for Germany. When comes in with a catalyst, such as of potash, it into and water. But the water is in the of high-pressure steam, which is used in engines. The jeep's fuel steam for power and its were water to drink and to breathe. Steam ran all vehicles on Luna.[Pg 52]
"What are you about, Jones?" asked Cochrane suddenly.
Jones said meditatively:
"I'm what of field-strength a capacity-storage would give me. I the this time. The results were good. I'm thinking—suppose I the with a strobe-light power-pack—or maybe a spot-welding unit. Even a portable strobe-light a of for the forty-thousandth of a second. Suppose I up a storage-pack to give me a with a billion in it? It might be like matter-transmission, though it would be only high-speed travel. I think I've got to work on that idea a little ..."
Cochrane the in silence.
"Far be it from me," he said presently, "to such high-level contemplation. Bill, what's on your mind?"
Holden said moodily:
"I'm that the thing works. But Jed! You talk as if you hadn't any more worries! Yet if you and Jones do have a way to make a ship travel than light, you haven't got a ship or the you need—."
"I've got 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 is preposterous! How can you try out this idea without more than you can possibly raise?"
"I'm going to my old friend Christopher Columbus," said Cochrane. "I'm going to give the what they want. Columbus didn't try to sell in new continents. Who wanted new continents? Who wanted to move to a new world? Who wants new now? Everybody would like to see their neighbors move away and more room, but nobody wants to move himself. Columbus a promise of something that had an already-established value, that be in every town and village—that had a already set up! I'm going to offer just such a commodity. I'll have freight-rockets on the way up here twenty-four hours, and the and their will all be paid for!"
He to Babs. He looked more and than before.
"Babs, you've just one of the moments that[Pg 53] ought to be in all the grammar-school history-books along with Ben Franklin a kite. What's in your mind?"
She and then flushed. The moon-jeep and over the that downhill. There was no outside, of course. There was no air. But the noise the moon-vehicle was notable. The steam-motor, in particular, a racket.
"I'd—rather not say," said Babs awkwardly. "What's your own main feeling, Mr. Cochrane?"
"Mine?" Cochrane grinned. "I'm what a of a world this is, when people like Dabney and Bill and Jones and I are the ones who have to operation space!"
[Pg 54]
