Operation: Outer Space
CHAPTER FOUR
Cochrane said kindly into the vision-beam microphone to Earth, "Cancelsection C, paragraph nine. Then section b(1) from paragraph eleven. Thenafter you've canceled the entire last section--fourteen--we can sign upthe deal."
There was a four-second pause. About two seconds for his voice to reachEarth. 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 onlytravels at the speed of light. You're not talking from one continent toanother. Save tolls. Yes or no?"
Another four-second pause. The man on Earth profanely agreed. Cochranesigned the contract before him. The other man signed. Not only thedocuments but all conversation was recorded. There were plugged-inwitnesses. The contract was binding.
Cochrane leaned back in his chair. His eyes blinked wearily. He'd spenthours 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'sdone. He can spend money. And you can transmit my resignation toKursten, Kasten, Hopkins and Fallowe. And since this is a pretty riskyoperation, you'd better send a service message asking what you're to dowith yourself. They'll probably tell you to take the next rocket backand report to the secretarial pool, I'm afraid. The same fate probablyawaits West and Jamison and Bell."
Babs said guiltily:
"Mr. Cochrane--you've been so busy I had to use my own judgment. Ididn't want to interrupt you--."
"What now?" demanded Cochrane.
"The publicity on the torp-test," said Babs guiltily, "was so goodthat the firm was worried for fear we'd seem to be doing it fora client of the firm--which we are. So we've all been put on aleave-with-expenses-and-pay status. Officially, we're all sick and thefirm 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 betelevision's fair-haired boy. He'll go on Marilyn Winter's show, I'llbet, because that has the biggest audience on the planet. He'll lectureLittle Aphrodite Herself on the constants of space and she'll flutterher eyelashes at him and shove her chest-measurements in his directionand 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 tooimpossible even for the advertising business! But I failed! I failed!You and my official gang, then, are here with the firm's blessing, freeof 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 amatter of pure vanity. But Kursten, Kasten, Hopkins and Fallowe do movein a mysterious way to latch onto a fast buck! I'm going to get somesleep. Is there anything else you've had to use your judgment on?"
"The contracts for re-broadcast of the torp-test. The original broadcasthad 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 thetorp-test film-tape, so much. It was to be re-run with a popularizationof the technical details by West, and a lurid extrapolation of things tocome by Jamison. The sponsors who got hold of commercial time with thatexpanded and souped-up version would expect, and get, an audience-ratingunparalleled in history. Dabney was to take a bow on the rebroadcast,too--very much the dignified and aloof scientist. There were otherinterviews. Dabney again, from a script written by Bell. And Jones.Jones hated the idea of being interviewed, but he had faced abeam-camera and answered idiotic questions, and gone angrily back to hiswork.
Spaceways, Inc., had a bank-account already amounting to more thantwenty years of Cochrane's best earning-power. He was selling publicityfor sponsors to hang their commercials on, in a strict parallel toChristopher Columbus' selling of spices to come. But Cochrane wasdelivering for cash. Freight-rockets were on the way moonward now, whosecargoes of supplies for a space-journey Cochrane was accepting only whena bonus in money was paid for the right to brag about it. So-and-so'soxygen 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 couldonly start off in a fleet instead of a single ship, Babs, we'd not onlybe equipped but so rich before we started that we'd want to stay home toenjoy it!" He yawned prodigiously. "I'm going to get some sleep. Don'tlet me sleep too long!"
He went off to his hotel-room and was out cold before his head haddrifted down to its pillow. But he was not pleased with himself. Itannoyed him that his revolt against being an expendable employee hadtaken the form of acting like one of his former bosses in collectingruthlessly for the brains--in the case of Jones--and the neuroticidiosyncrasies--in the case of Dabney--of other men. The gesture bywhich he had become independent was not quite the splendid, scornful onehe'd have liked. The fact that this sort of gesture worked, and nothingelse would have, did not make him feel better.
But he slept.
He dreamed that he was back at his normal business of producing atelevision show. Nobody but himself cared whether the show went on ornot. The actual purpose of all his subordinates seemed to be to cut asmany throats among their fellow-workers as possible--in a business way,of course--so that by their own survival they might succeed to a betterjob and higher pay. This is what is called the fine spirit of teamworkby 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 itsnormal course. The two moons of Earth--one natural and oneartificial--swung in splendid circles about. A psychiatrist should notbe the means of associ-[Missing text] that planet's divided rings. Thered spot of Jupiter and the bands on that gas-giant world moved inorderly fashion about its circumference. Light-centuries away, giantCepheid suns expanded monstrously and contracted again, rather morerapidly than their gravitational fields could account for. Double starssedately swung about each other. Comets reached their farthest pointsand, mere aggregations of frigid jagged stones and metal, prepared foranother 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--whomCochrane vaguely remembered. Then he did a double take. He did rememberher. Three or four years before she'd been the outstanding televisionpersonality of the year. She'd been pretty, but not so pretty that youdidn't realize that she was a person. She was everything that MarilynWinters 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. Shelooked patient. And an expression of patience, on a woman's face, iscertainly 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 theswimming-pool the day we got here."
"Wonderful," said Cochrane. "How--"
"Johnny," said Alicia, "has bought into your Spaceways corporation. Hegot your man West drunk and bought his shares of Spaceway stock."
Cochrane sat down--not hard, because it was impossible to sit down hardon 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 understandsyou're going to take a trip out to the stars. He wants to go along. He'svery 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 psychopathicpersonality. He's sane and quite bright and rather dear in his way, buthe simply can't remember what is right and wrong. Especially when hegets excited. When they fixed up Lunar City as an international colony,by sheer oversight they forgot to arrange for extradition from it. SoJohnny 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. Thelawyer his family keeps up here to watch over him is thrilled, too. Hewants to go back and visit his family. And as a stockholder, Johnny cankeep you from taking a ship or any other corporate property out of thejurisdiction of the courts. But he'd rather go with you. Of course Ihave 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 toAlicia. "Why do you want to go? I don't know whether it'll be dangerousor not."
"I married Johnny," said Alicia. Her smile was composed. "I thought itwould be wonderful to be able to trust somebody that nobody else couldtrust." After a moment she added: "It would be, if one could."
A few moments later she went away, very pleasantly and very calmly. Herhusband had no sense of right or wrong--not in action, anyhow. She triedto keep him from doing too much damage by exercising the knowledge shehad of what was fair and what was not. Cochrane grimaced and told Babsto 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 offLuna. 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 hasto do before any achievement of consequence can come about. Pioneerefforts, in particular, require the same sort of clearing-away processas the settling of a frontier farm. Instead of trees to be choppedand dug up by the roots, there are the gratuitous obstructionistswho have to be chopped off at the ankles in a business way, andthe people who exercise infinite ingenuity trying to get a cut ofsomething--anything--somebody else is doing. And of course there arethe publicity-hounds. Since Spaceways was being financed on sales ofpublicity 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 freeadvertisement by press conferences about the injury done his client bySpaceways, Inc., who had stolen his invention to travel through spacefaster than light. Somebody in the Senate made a speech accusing theSpaceway project of being a political move by the party in power forsome dire ultimate purpose.
Ultimately the crackpot inventor would get on the air and announcetriumphantly that only part of his invention had been stolen, becausehe'd been too smart to write it down or tell anybody, and he wouldn'ttell anybody--not even a court--the full details of his invention unlesspaid twenty-five million in cash down, and royalties afterward. Theproject for a congressional investigation of Spaceways would die incommittee.
But there were other griefs. The useless spaceship hulk had to beemptied of the mining-tools stored in it. This was done by men workingin space-suits. Occupational rules required them to exert not more thanone-fourth of the effort they would have done if working for themselves.When the ship was empty, air was released in it, and immediately frozeto air-snow. So radiant heaters had to be installed and powered to warmup the hull to where an atmosphere could exist in it. Its generators hadto be thawed from the metal-ice stage of brittleness and warmed to wherethey could be run without breaking themselves to bits.
But there were good breaks, too. Presently a formermoonship-pilot--grounded to an administrative job on Luna--on his ownfree time checked over the ship. Jones arranged it. With rocket-motorsof adamite--the stuff discovered by pure accident in a steel-mill backon Earth--the propelling apparatus checked out. The fuel-pumps had beentaken over in fullness of design from fire-engine pumps on Earth. Theywere all right. The air-regenerating apparatus had been developed fromthe aeriating culture-tanks in which antibiotics were grown on Earth. Itneeded only reseeding with algae--microscopic plants which when suppliedwith ultraviolet light fed avidly on carbon dioxide and yielded oxygen.The ship was a rather involved combination of essentially simpledevices. It could be put back into such workability as it had oncepossessed with practically no trouble.
It was.
Jones moved into it, with masses of apparatus from the laboratory in theLunar Apennines. He labored lovingly, fanatically. Like most spectaculardiscoveries, the Dabney field was basically simple. It was almostidiotically uncomplicated. In theory it was a condition of the spacejust outside one surface of a sheet of metal. It was like thatconduction-layer on the wires of a cross-country power-cable, whenelectricity is transmitted in the form of high-frequency alterations andtravels on the skins of many strands of metal, because high-frequencycurrent simply does not flow inside of wires, but only on theirsurfaces. The Dabney field formed on the surface--or infinitesimallybeyond it--of a metal sheet in which eddy-currents were induced insuch-and-such a varying fashion. That was all there was to it.
So Jones made the exterior forward surface of the abandoned spaceshipinto a generator of the Dabney field. It was not only simple, it was toosimple! Having made the bow of the ship into a Dabney field plate, heimmediately arranged that he could, at will, make the rear of the shipinto another Dabney field plate. The two plates, turned on together,amounted to something that could be contemplated with startled awe, butJones planned to start off, at least, in a manner exactly like thedistress-torp test. The job of wiring up for faster-than-light travel,however, was not much more difficult than wiring a bungalow, when oneknew how it should be done.
Two freight-rockets came in, picked up by radar and guided to landingsby remote control. The Lunar City beam receiver picked up music aimed upfrom Earth and duly relayed it to the dust-heaps which were thebuildings of the city. The colonists and moon-tourists became familiarwith 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 andheard the latest youthful tenor gently plead, "_Child of Hate, Come tothe Stars and Love._" The publicity department responsible for themasterpiece considered itself not far from genius, too.
There was confusion thrice and four and five times confounded. Cochranecame in to dispute furiously with Holden whether it was better to have apsychopathic personality on the space-ship or to have a legal battle inthe courts. Cochrane won. Jones arrived, belligerent, to do battle fortechnical devices which would cost money.
"Look!" said Cochrane harassedly. "I'm not trying to boss you! Don'tcome to me for authority! If you can make that ship take off I'll be init, and my neck will be in as much danger as yours. You buy what willkeep my neck as safe as possible, along with yours. I'm busy raisingmoney and fighting off crackpots and dodging lawsuits and gettingsupplies! I've got a job that needs three men anyhow. All I'm hoping isthat 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 businessflops," Cochrane told him, "you're crazy! There are too many people onEarth already. There's no room for a man who tried something big andfailed! If this flops I'd rather be a frozen corpse with a happy smileon my face--I understand that in space one freezes--than somebody livingon 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 ofouter space--even if we only circumnavigate Mars!--we'll have moneyenough 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 somethingdone! By the way. Have you picked out a destination for us to aim at?"When Jones shook his head, Cochrane said harassedly; "Better get onepicked out. But when we make out our sail-off papers, for destinationwe'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. Somebodywho can tell us how to get back if we get anywhere we need to get backfrom. Is there such a person?"
"I've got him," said Jones. "He checked the ship for me. Formermoon-rocket pilot. He's here in Lunar City. Thanks!"
He shook hands with Cochrane before he left. Which for Jones was anexpression of overwhelming emotion. Cochrane turned back to his desk.
"Let's see ... That arrangement for cachets on stamps and covers to betaken along and postmarked Outer Space. Put in a stipulation for extrapayment in case we touch on planets and invent postmarks for them ..."
He worked on, while Babs took notes. Presently he was dictating. And ashe talked, frowning, he took a fountain-pen from his pocket and absentlyworked the refill-handle. It made ink exude from the pen-point. On themoon, 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 reallyimpressive size could be formed before the moon's weak gravity made itfall.
Dictating as he worked the pen, Cochrane achieved a pear-shapedmass of ink which was quite the size of a large grape before it fellinto his waste-basket. It was the largest he'd made to date. Itfell--slow-motion--and splashed--violently--as he regarded it withharried satisfaction.
More time passed. A moon-rocket arrived from Earth. There were newtourists under the thousand-foot plastic dome. Out by the formerMars-ship Jones made experiments with small plastic balloons coated witha conducting varnish. In a vacuum, a cubic inch of air at Earth-pressurewill expand to make many cubic feet of near-vacuum. If a balloon cansustain an internal pressure of one ounce to the square foot, athimbleful of air will inflate a sizeable globe to that pressure. Joneswas arranging tiny Dabney field robot-generators with tiny atomicbatteries to power them. Each such balloon would be a Dabney field"plate" when cast adrift in emptiness, and its little battery would keepit in operation for twenty years or more.
Baggage came up from Earth for Johnny Simms. It was mostly elephant-gunsand ammunition for them. Johnny, as the heir to innumerable millionsback on earth, had had a happy life, but hardly one to give him apractical view of things. To him, star-travel meant landing on suchexotic planets as the fictioneers had been writing about for a hundredyears or so. He really looked upon the venture into space as a combinedbig-game expedition and escape from Lunar City. And he did look forward,too, to freedom from his family's legal representative and the constantreminder of ethical and moral values which Johnny preferred happily toignore.
Film-tape came up, and cameras to use it in. Every imaginable item anexpedition to space could use or even might use, was thrust uponSpaceways, Inc. Manufacturers yearned to have their products used inconnection with the hottest news story in decades. There was a steadytrailing 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 hundredand 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 nearedand reached the horizon. There was no change in the star-studded sky.There were no sunset colorings. The incandescent brightness on themountains was not lessened in the least. Only the direction of the starkblack shadows shifted.
The glaring sun descended. Its motion was almost infinitely slow. Itsdisk was of the order of half a degree of arc, and it took a full hourto be fully obscured. And then there was at first no difference in thelook of things save that the _Mare Imbrium_--the solidified, arid Sea ofShowers--was as dark as the shadows in the mountains.
They still gleamed brightly. For a very long time the white-hot sunshineglowed on their flanks. The brightness rose and rose, and blacknessfollowed it. At long last only the topmost peaks of the Apennines blazedluridly against a background of stars whose light seemed feeble bycomparison.
Then it was night indeed. But the Earth shone forth, a half-globe ofseas and clouds and continents, vast and nostalgic in the sky. And nowEarthshine fell upon the moon. It was many times brighter than moonlightever was upon the Earth. Even at lunar sunset the Earthlight was sixteentimes brighter. At midnight, when the Earth was full, it would be brightenough for any activity. Actually, the human beings on Luna were nearlynocturnal in their habits, because it was easier to run moon-jeeps infrigidity and keep men and machines warm enough for functioning, than itwas to protect them against the more-than-boiling heat of midday on themoon.
So the activity about the salvaged space-ship increased. There wereelectric lights blazing in the demi-twilight, to guide freight vehicleswith their loads. The tourist-jeeps went and returned and went andreturned. The last shipload of travelers from Earth wanted to see thespace-craft about which all the world was talking.
Even Cochrane presently became curious. There came a time when all thepaper-work connected with what had happened was done with, andconditional contracts drawn up on everything that could be foreseen. Itwas 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 LunarCity three times. Once to the laboratory to talk, once to test asignal-rocket across the crater, and once when the distress-torp wentoff. I haven't even seen the nightclub here in the City!"
"You should," said Babs matter-of-factly. "I went once, with DoctorHolden. The dancing was marvelous!"
"Bill Holden, eh?" said Cochrane. He found himself annoyed. "Took you tothe nightclub; but not to see the ship!"
"The ship's farther," explained Babs. "I could always be found at thenightclub if you needed me. I went when you were asleep."
"Damn!" said Cochrane. "Hm ... You ought to get a bonus. What would yourather have, Babs, a bonus in cash or Spaceways stock?"
"I've got some stock," said Babs. "Mr. Bell--the writer, you know--gotin a poker game. He was cleaned out. So I gave him all the money Ihad--I told you I cleared out my savings-account before we came up, Ithink--for half his shares."
"Either you got very badly stuck," Cochrane told her cynically, "or elseyou'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 orsomething, 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 promisedyou'd go. I meant to mention it in time."
Cochrane did not notice her tone. He was dead-tired, as only a man canbe who has driven himself at top speed for days on end over a businessdeal. Business deals are stimulating only in their major aspects. Mostof the details are niggling, tedious, routine, and boring--and veryoften bear-trapped. Cochrane had done, with only Babs' help, an amountof mental labor that in the offices of Kursten, Kasten, Hopkins andFallowe would have been divided among two vice-presidents, six lawyers,and at least twelve account executives. The work, therefore, wouldactually have been done by not less than twenty secretaries. But Babsand Cochrane had done it all.
In the moon-jeep on the way to the ship he felt that heavy, exhaustedsense of relaxation which is not pleasurable at all. Babs annoyed him alittle, too. She
was late getting to the airlock, and seemed breathlesswhen she arrived.
The moon-jeep crunched and clanked and rumbled over the gentlyundulating lava sea beneath its giant wheels. Babs looked zestfully outof the windows. The picture was, of course, quite incredible. In therelatively dim Earthlight the moonscape was somehow softened, and yetthe impossibly jagged mountains and steep cliffsides and the razor-edgedpasses of monstrous stone,--these things remained daunting. It was likeriding through a dream in which everything nearby seemed fey andglamorous, but the background was deathly-still and ominous.
There were the usual noises inside the jeep. The air had a metallicsmell. One could detect the odors of oil, and ozone, and varnish, andplastic upholstery. There were the crunching sounds of the wheels,traveling over stone. There was the paradoxic gentleness of all thejeep's motions because of the low gravity. Cochrane even noted theextraordinary feel of an upholstered seat when one weighs only one-sixthas much as back on Earth. All his sensations were dreamlike--but he feltthat headachy exhaustion that comes of overwork too long continued.
"I'll try," he said tiredly, "to see that you have some fun before yougo back, Babs. You'll go back as soon as we dive off into whatever we'rediving 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 wasaudible. The vehicle swung around a pinnacle of stone, and Cochrane sawthe space-ship.
In the pale Earthlight it was singularly beautiful. It had been designedto lure investors in a now-defunct promotion. It was stream-lined, andgigantic, and it glittered like silver. It stood upright on itstail-fins, and it had lighted ports and electric lights burned in theemptiness about it. But there was only one moon-jeep at its base. Aspace-suited figure moved toward a dangling sling and sat in it. He rosedeliberately toward an open airlock-hatch, and the other moon-jeep movedsoundlessly 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 largebox attached to it by cables. That would be the generators and thefield-plate for a Dabney field. It was plainly to remain on the moon. Itwas not underneath the ship. Cochrane puzzled tiredly over it for amoment. Then he understood. The ship would lift on its rockets, hoverover the plate--which would be generating its half of the field--andthen Jones would switch on the apparatus in the ship itself. Theforward, needle-pointed nose of the ship would become another generatorof the Dabney field. The ship's inertia, in that field, would beeffectively reduced to a fraction of its former value. The rockets,which might give it an acceleration of a few hundred feet per secondanywhere but in a Dabney field, would immediately accelerate the shipand all its contents to an otherwise unattainable velocity. Theoccupants of the rocket would lose their relative inertia to the samedegree as the ship. They should feel no more acceleration than from thesame rocket-thrust in normal space. But they would travel--
Cochrane felt that there was a fallacy somehow, in the working of theDabney field as he understood it. If there was less inertia in theDabney field--why--a rocket shouldn't push as hard in it, because, itwas the inertia of the rocket-gases that gave the rocket-thrust. ButCochrane was much too tired to work out a theoretic objection tosomething he knew did work. He was almost dozing when Babs touched hisarm.
"Space-suits, Mr. Cochrane."
He got wearily into the clumsy costume. But he saw again that Babs worethe shining-eyed look of rapturous adventure that he had seen her wearbefore.
They got out of the moon-jeep, one after the other. The sling came downthe space-ship's gleaming side. They got in it, together. It liftedthem.
The vast, polished hull of the space-ship slid past them only ten feetaway. The ground diminished. They seemed less to be lifted than to floatskyward. And in this sling, in this completely unreal ascent, Cochraneroused suddenly. He felt the acute unease which comes of height. He hadlooked down upon Earth from a height of four thousand miles with nofeeling of dizziness. He had looked at Earth a quarter-million milesaway with no consciousness of depth. But a mere fifty feet above thesurface of the moon he felt like somebody swinging out of a skyscraperwindow.
Then the airlock opening was beside them, and the sling rolled inward.They were in the lock, and Cochrane found himself pushing Babs away fromthe 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 tosell stock in a scheme for colonizing Mars. Prospective investors hadbeen shown through it. It had been designed to be a convincingpassenger-liner of space.
It was. But Cochrane found himself not needed for any consultation, andJones was busy, and Bill Holden highly preoccupied. He saw AliciaKeith--but her name was Simms now. She smiled at him but took Babs bythe 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. Hesettled down in a deeply upholstered chair. He felt neglected. Everybodywas 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 tothe 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 theviolence of his uncalculated movement. "We? No you don't! You go back toLunar City where you'll be safe!"
Then he heard a peculiar drumming, rumbling noise. He had heard itbefore. In the moonship. It was rockets being tested; being burned;rockets in the very last seconds of preparation before take-off for thestars.
He didn't drop back to the floor beside the chair he'd occupied. Thefloor rose to meet him.
"I've had our baggage brought on board," said Babs, happily. "I'm goingbecause I'm a stockholder! Hold on to something and climb those stairsif you want to see us go up! I'm going to be busy!"