The sun rose. Cochrane noted the time, it was fourteen hours since
sunset. The local day would be something more than an Earth-day in
length. The manner of sunrise was familiar. There was a pale gray light
in the sky. It strengthened. Then reddish colors appeared, and changed
to gold, and the unnamed stars winked out one after another. Presently
the nearer hillsides ceased to be black. There was light everywhere.
Alicia, white and haggard, waited to see what the light would show.
But there was heavy mist everywhere. The hill-crests were clear, and the
edge of the visible woodland, and the top half of the ship's shining
hull rose clear of curiously-tinted, slowly writhing fog. But everything
else seemed submerged in a sea of milk.
But the mist grew thinner as the sun shone on it. Its top writhed to
nothingness. All this was wholly commonplace. Even clouds in the sky
were of types well-known enough. Which was, when one thought about it,
inevitable. This was a Sol-type sun, of the same kind and color as the
star which warmed the planet Earth. It had planets, like the sun of
men's home world. There was a law--Bode's Law--which specified that
planets must float in orbits bearing such-and-such relationships to each
other. There must also be a law that planets in those orbits must bear
such-and-such relationships of size to each other. There must be a law
that winds must blow under ordinary conditions, and clouds form at
appointed heights and times. It would be very remarkable if Earth were
an exception to natural laws that other worlds obey.
So the strangeness of the morning to those who watched from the ship was
more like the strangeness of an alien land on Earth than that of a
wholly alien planet.
The lower dawnmist thinned. Gazing down, Cochrane saw dark masses
moving slowly past the ship's three metal landing-fins. They were the
beasts of the night, moving deliberately from their bed-ground to the
vast plains inland. There were bunches of hundreds, and bunches of
scores. There were occasional knots of dozens only.
From overhead and through the mist Cochrane could not see individual
animals too clearly, but they were heavy beasts and clumsy ones. They
moved sluggishly. Their numbers dwindled. He saw groups of no more than
four or five. He saw single animals trudging patiently away.
He saw no more at all.
Then the sunlight touched the inland hills. The last of the morning mist
dissolved, and there were the dead bodies of two beasts near the base of
the ship. Johnny Simms had killed them with his first panicky shots of
the night. There was another dead beast a quarter-mile away.
Cochrane gave orders. Jones and Al could not leave the ship. They were
needed to get it back to Earth, with full knowledge of how to make other
starships. Cochrane tried to leave Babs behind, but she would not stay.
Bell had loaded himself with a camera and film-tape besides a weapon,
before Cochrane even began his organization. Holden was needed for an
extra gun. Alicia, tearless and despairing, would not be left behind.
Cochrane turned wryly to Jamison.
"I don't think Johnny was killed," he said. "He'd gotten a long way off
before it happened, anyhow. We've got to hunt for him. With beasts like
those of last night, there'll naturally be other creatures to prey on
them. We might run into anything. If we don't get back, you get to the
lawyers I've had representing Spaceways. They'll get rich off the job,
but you'll end up rich, too."
"The best bet all around," said Jamison in a low tone, "would be to find
him trampled to death."
"I agree," said Cochrane sourly. "But apparently the beasts don't
stampede. Maybe they don't even charge, but just form rings to protect
their females and young, like musk-oxen. I'm afraid he's alive, but I'm
also afraid we'll never find him."
He marshaled his group. Jones had walkie-talkies ready, deftly removed
for the purpose from space-suits nobody had used since leaving Lunar
City--and Holden took one to keep in touch by. They went down in the
sling, two at a time.
Cochrane regarded the two dead animals near the base of the ship. They
were roughly the size of cattle, and they were shaggy like buffalo. They
had branching, pointed, deadly horns. They had hoofs, single hoofs, not
cloven. They were not like any Earth animal. But horns and hoofs will
appear in any system of parallel evolution. It would seem even more
certain that proteins and amino acids and such compounds as hemoglobin
and fat and muscle-tissue should be identical as a matter of chemical
inevitability. These creatures had teeth and they were herbivorous. Bell
photographed them painstakingly.
"Somehow," said Cochrane, "I think they'd be wholesome food. If we can,
we'll empty a freezing-locker and take a carcass for tests."
Holden fingered his rifle unhappily. Alicia said nothing. Babs stayed
close beside her. They went on.
They came to another dead animal a quarter-mile away. The ground was
full of the scent and the hoofmarks of the departed herd. Bell
photographed again. They did not stop. Johnny Simms had been this way,
because of the carcass. He wasn't here now.
They topped the next rise in the ground. They saw two other slaughtered
creatures. It was wholly evident, now, that these animals did not charge
but only stood their ground when alarmed. Johnny Simms had fired blindly
when he blundered into their groupings.
The last carcass they saw was barely two hundred yards from the one
patch of woodland visible from the ship. Cochrane said with some
grimness.
"If his eyes had gotten used to the darkness, he might have seen the
forest and tried to get into it to get away from those animals."
And if Johnny Simms had not stopped short instantly he reached the woods
and presumable safety, he would be utterly lost by now. There could be
nothing less hopeful than the situation of a man lost on a strange
planet, not knowing in what direction he had blundered on his first
starting out. Even nearby, three directions out of four would be wrong.
Farther away, the chance of stumbling on the way back to the ship would
be nonexistent.
Alicia saw a human footprint on the trodden muck near the last carcass.
It pointed toward the wood.
They reached the wood, and search looked hopeless. Then by purest chance
they found a place where Johnny had stumbled and fallen headlong. He'd
leaped up and fled crazily. For some fifteen yards they could track him
by the trampled dried small growths he'd knocked down in his flight.
Then there were no more such growths. All signs of his flight were lost.
But they went on.
There were strangenesses everywhere, of which they could realize only a
small part because they had been city-dwellers back on Earth. There was
one place where trees grew like banyans, and it was utterly impossible
to penetrate them. They swerved aside. There was another spot where
giant trees like sequoias made a cathedral-like atmosphere, and it
seemed an impiety to speak. But Holden reported tonelessly in the
walkie-talkie, and assured Jones and Al and Jamison that all so far was
well.
They heard a vast commotion of chattering voices, and they hoped that it
might be a disturbance of Johnny Simms' causing. But when they reached
the place there was dead silence. Only, there were hundreds of tiny
nests everywhere. They could not catch a glimpse of a single one of the
nests' inhabitants, but they felt that they were peeked at from under
leaves and around branches.
Cochrane looked unhappy indeed. In cold blood, he knew that Johnny Simms
had left the ship in exactly the sort of resentful bravado with which a
spoiled little boy will run away from home to punish his parents. Quite
possibly he had intended only to go out into the night and wait near the
ship until he was missed. But he'd found himself among the unknown
beasts. He'd gone into blind panic. Now he was lost indeed.
But one could not refuse to search for him simply because it was
hopeless. Cochrane could not imagine doing any less than continuing to
search as long as Alicia had hope. She might hope on indefinitely.
They heard the faint, distant, incisive sound of a shot.
Holden's voice reported it in the walkie-talkie. Cochrane nodded
brightly to Alicia and fired a shot in turn. He was relieved. It looked
like everything would end in a commonplace fashion. The party from the
ship headed toward the source of the other sound.
In half an hour Cochrane was about to fire again. But they heard the
hysterical rat-tat-tat of firing. It seemed no nearer, but it could only
be Johnny Simms.
Cochrane and Holden fired together for assurance to Johnny. Bell took
pictures.
Again they marched toward where the shots had been fired. Again they
trudged on for a long time. Seemingly, Johnny had moved away from them
as they followed him. They breasted a hill, and there was a breeze with
the smell of water in it, and they saw that here the land sloped very
gradually toward the sea, and the sea was in view. It was infinitely
blue and it reached toward the most alluring of horizons. Between them
and the sea there was only low-growing stuff, brownish and sparse. There
was sand underfoot--a curious bluish sand. Only here and there did the
dry-seeming vegetation grow higher than their heads.
More shots. Between them and the sea. Cochrane and Holden fired again.
"What the devil's the matter with the fool?" demanded Holden irritably.
"He knows we're coming! Why doesn't he stand still or come to meet us?"
Cochrane shrugged. That thought was disturbing him too. They pressed
forward, and suddenly Holden exclaimed. "That looks like a man! Two
men!"
Cochrane caught the barest glimpse of something running about, far
ahead. It looked like naked human flesh. It was the size of a man. It
vanished. Another popped into view and darted madly out of sight. They
did not see the newcomers.
"He shot something like that, back where we first landed," said Cochrane
grimly. "We'd better hurry!"
They did hurry. There was a last flurry of shooting. It was automatic
fire. It is not wise to shoot on automatic if one's ammunition is
limited, Johnny Simms' firearm chattered furiously for part of a second.
It stopped short. He couldn't have fired so short a burst. He was out of
bullets.
They ran.
When they drew near him, a hooting set up. Things scattered away. Large
things. Birds the size of men. They heard Johnny Simms screaming.
They came panting to the very beach, on which foam-tipped waves broke in
absolutely normal grandeur. The sand was commonplace save for a slight
bluish tint. Johnny Simms was out on the beach, in the open. He was
down. He had flung his gun at something and was weaponless. He lay on
the sand, shrieking. There were four ungainly, monstrous birds like
oversized Cornish Game gamecocks pecking at him. Two ran crazily away at
sight of the humans. Two others remained. Then they fled. One of them
halted, darted back, and took a last peck at Johnny Simms before it fled
again.
Holden fired, and missed. Cochrane ran toward the kicking, shrieking
Johnny Simms. But Alicia got there first.
He was a completely pitiable object. His clothing had been almost
completely stripped away in the brief time since his last burst of
shots. There were wounds on his bare flesh. After all, the beak of a
bird as tall as a man is not a weapon to be despised. Johnny Simms would
have been pecked to death but for the party from the ship. He had been
spotted and harried by a huntingpack of the ostrich-sized creatures at
earliest dawn. A cooler-headed man would have stood still and killed
some of them, then the rest would either have run away or devoured their
slaughtered fellows. But Johnny Simms was not cool-headed. He had made a
career of being a rich man's spoiled little boy. Now he'd had a fright
great enough and an escape narrow enough to shatter the nerves of a
normal man. To Johnny Simms, the effect was catastrophic.
He could not walk, and the distance was too great to carry him. Holden
reported by walkie-talkie, and Jones proposed to butcher one of the
animals Johnny had killed and put it in a freezer emptied for the
purpose, and then lift the ship and land by the sea. It seemed a
reasonable proposal. Johnny was surely not seriously wounded.
But that meant time to wait. Alicia sat by her husband, soothing him.
Holden moved along the beach, examining the shells that had come ashore.
He picked up one shell more glorious in its coloring than any of the
pearl-making creatures of Earth. This shell grew neither in the flat
spiral nor the cone-shaped form of Earth mollusks. It grew in a
doubly-curved spiral, so that the result was an extraordinary, lustrous,
complex sphere. Bell fairly danced with excitement as he photographed it
with lavish pains to get all the colors just right.
Cochrane and Babs moved along the beach also. It was not possible to be
apprehensive. Cochrane talked largely. Presently he was saying with
infinite satisfaction:
"The chemical compounds here are bound to be the same! It's a new world,
bigger than the glacier planet. Those beasts last night--if they're good
food-stuff--will make this a place like the old west, and everybody
envies the pioneers! This is a new Earth! Everything's so nearly the
same--."
"I never," observed Babs, "heard of blue sand on Earth."
He frowned at her. He stooped and picked up a handful of the beach
stuff. It was not blue. The tiny, sea-broken pebbles were ordinary
quartz and granite rock. They would have to be. Yet there was a
blueness--The blue grains were very much smaller than the white and tan
and gray ones. Cochrane looked closely. Then he blew. All the sand blew
out of his hand except--at last--one tiny grain. It was white. It
glittered greasily. Cochrane moved four paces and wetted his hand in the
sea. He tried to wet the sand-grain. It would not wet.
He began to laugh.
"I did a show once," he told Babs, "about the old diamond-mines. Ever
hear of them? They used to find diamonds in blue clay which was as hard
as rock. Here, blue clay goes out from the land to under the waves. This
is a tiny diamond, washed out by the sea! This is the last thing we
need!" Then he looked at his watch. "We're due on the air in two hours
and a half! Now we've got what we want! Let's go have Holden tell Jones
to hurry!"
But Babs complained suddenly,
"Jed! What sort of life am I going to lead with you? Here we are,
and--nobody can see us--and you don't even notice!"
Cochrane was penitent. In fact, they had to hurry back down the beach to
join the others when the space-ship appeared as a silvery gleam, high in
the air, and then came swooping down with fierce flames underneath it to
settle a quarter-mile inland.
Bell had a picture of the tiny diamond by the time the ground was cool
enough for them to re-enter the ship. The way he photographed it,
against a background which had nothing by which its size could be
estimated, the little white stone looked like a Kohinoor. It was two
transparent pyramids set base to base, and he even got color-flashes
from it. And Jamison, forewarned, took pictures from the air of the
blue-sand areas. They showed the tint the one tiny diamond explained.
The broadcast was highly successful. It began with a four-minute
commercial in which the evils of faulty elimination were discussed with
infinite delicacy, and it was clearly proved--to an audience waiting to
look beyond the stars--that only Greshham's Intestinal Emollient allowed
the body to make full use of vitamins, proteins, and the very newest
enzymatic foundation-substances which everybody needed for really
perfect health. There followed the approach shots to this planet, shots
of the great beast-herds on the plains, views of luxuriant, waving
foliage, the tide of shaggy animals as they came at dusk to their
drinking-place, and there was an all-too-brief picturing of the
blue-tinted soil which the last film-clip of all declared to be
diamondiferous.
Cochrane's direction of this show was almost inspired. The views of the
animal herd were calculated to make any member of his audience think in
simultaneous terms of glamour and adventure--with perfect personal
safety, of course!--and of steaks, chops and roasts. The more gifted
viewers back on Earth might even envision filets mignon. The
infinitesimal diamond with its prismatic glitterings, of course, roused
cupidity of another sort.
There were four commercials cut into these alluring views, the last was
superimposed upon a view Bell had taken of the sunset-colors. And it
might have seemed that the television audience would confuse the charm
of the new world as pictured with the product insistently praised. But
the public was pretty well toughened up against commercials nowadays. It
was not deceived. As usual, it only deceived itself.
But there was no deception about the fact that there was a new and
unoccupied planet fit for human habitation. That was true. And the
fretting overcrowded cities immediately became places where everybody
made happy plans for his neighbor to move there. But the more irritable
people would begin to think vaguely that it might be worth going to, for
themselves.
The ship took off two hours after the broadcast. Part of that time was
taken up with astrogational conferences with astronomers on Earth.
Cochrane had this conference taped for the auxiliary broadcast-program
in which the audience shared the problems as well as the triumphs of the
star-voyagers. Cochrane wanted to get back to Earth. So far as
television was concerned, it would be unwise. The ship and its crew
would travel indefinitely without a lack of sponsors. But for once,
Cochrane agreed entirely with Holden.
"We're heading back," he told Babs, "because if we keep on, people will
accept our shows as just another superior kind of escape-entertainment.
They'll have the dream quality of 'You Win a Million' and the
lottery-shows. They'll be things to dream about but never to think of
doing anything about. We're going to make the series disappointingly
short, in order to make it more convincingly factual. We won't spin it
out for its entertainment-value until it practically loses everything
else."
"No," said Babs. She put her hand in his. She'd found it necessary to
remind him, now and then.
So the ship started home. And it would not return direct to Earth--or
Lunar City--for a very definite reason. Cochrane meant to have all his
business affairs neatly wrapped up before landing. They could get
another show or two across, and some highly involved contracts could be
haggled to completion more smoothly if one of the parties--Spaceways,
Inc.--was not available except when it felt like being available. The
other parties would be more anxious.
So the astrogation-conference did not deal with a direct return to
Earth, but with a small sol-type star not too far out of the direct
line. The Pole Star could have been visited, but it was a double star.
Cochrane had no abstract scientific curiosity. His approach was strictly
that of a man of business. He did the business.
There was, of course, a suitable pause not too far from the second
planet--the planet of the shaggy beasts. They put out a plastic balloon
with a Dabney field generator inside it. It would float in emptiness
indefinitely. The field would hold for not less than twenty years. It
would serve as a beacon, a highway, a railroad track through space for
other ships planning to visit the third world now available to men.
Ultimately, better arrangements could be made.
Jones was already ecstatically designing ground-level Dabney field
installations. There would be Dabney fields extending from star to star.
Along them, as along pneumatic tubes, ships would travel at unthinkable
speeds toward absolutely certain destinations. True, at times they could
not be used because of the bulk of planets between starting-points and
landing-stations. But with due attention to scheduling, it would be a
simple matter indeed to arrange for something close to commuters'
service between star-clusters. He explained all this to Cochrane, with
Holden listening in.
"Oh, surely!" said Cochrane cynically. "And you'll have tax-payers
objecting because you make money. You'll be regulated out of existence.
Were you thinking that Spaceways would run this transportation system
you're planning, without cutting anybody else in on even the glory of
it?"
Jones looked at him, dead-pan. But he was annoyed.
"I want some money," he said. "I thought we could get this thing set up,
and then I could get myself a ship and facilities for doing some really
original work. I'd like to work something out and not have to sell the
publicity-rights to it!"
"I'll arrange it," promised Cochrane. "I've got our lawyers setting up a
deal right now. You're going to get as many tricky patents as you can on
this field, and assign them all to Spaceways. And Spaceways is going to
assign them all to a magnificent Space Development Association, a sort
of Chamber of Commerce for all the outer planets, and all the stuffed
shirts in creation are going to leap madly to get honorary posts on it.
And it will be practically beyond criticism, and it will have the public
interest passionately at its heart, and it will be practically beyond
interference and it will be as inefficient as hell! And the more
inefficient it is, the more it will have to take in to allow for its
inefficiency--and for your patents it has to give us a flat cut of its
gross! And meanwhile we'll get ours from the planets we've landed on and
publicized. We've got customers. We've built up a market for our
planets!"
"Eh?" said Jones in frank astonishment.
"We," said Cochrane, "rate as first inhabitants and therefore
proprietors and governments of the first two planets ever landed on
beyond Earth. When the Moon-colony was formed, there were elaborate laws
made to take care of surviving nation prides and so on. Whoever first
stays on a planet a full rotation is its proprietor and
government--until other inhabitants arrive. Then the government is all
of them, but the proprietorship remains with the first. We own two
planets. Nice planets. Glamorized planets, too! So I've already made
deals for the hotel-concessions on the glacier world."
Holden had listened with increasing uneasiness. Now he said doggedly:
"That's not right, Jed! I don't mind making money, but there are things
that are more important! Millions of people back home--hundreds of
millions of poor devils--spend their lives scared to death of losing
their jobs, not daring to hope for more than bare subsistence! I want to
do something for them! People need hope, Jed, simply to be healthy!
Maybe I'm a fool, but the human race needs hope more than I need money!"
Cochrane looked patient.
"What would you suggest?"
"I think," said Holden heavily, "that we ought to give what we've got to
the world. Let the governments of the world take over and assist
emigration. There's not one but will be glad to do it ..."
"Unfortunately," said Cochrane, "you are perfectly right. They would!
There have been resettlement projects and such stuff for generations.
I'm very much afraid that just what you propose will be done to some
degree somewhere or other on other planets as they're turned up. But on
the glacier planet there will be hotels. The rich will want to go there
to stay, to sight-see, to ride, to hunt, to ski, and to fly in
helicopters over volcanoes. The hotels will need to be staffed. There
will be guides and foresters and hunters. It will cost too much to bring
food from Earth, so farms will be started. It will be cheaper to buy
food from independent farmers than to raise it with hired help. So the
farmers will be independent. There will have to be stores to supply them
with what they need, and tourists with what they don't need but want.
From the minute the glacier planet starts up as a tourist resort, there
will be jobs for hundreds of people. It won't be long before there are
jobs for thousands. There'll be a man-shortage there. Anybody who wants
to can go there to work, and if he doesn't go there expecting a
certified, psychologically conditioned environment, but just a good job
with possible or probable advancement ... That's the environment we
humans want! Presently the hotels won't even be tourist hotels. They'll
just be the normal hotels that exist everywhere that there are cities
and people moving about among them! Then it won't be a tourist-planet,
and tourists will be a nuisance. It'll be home for one hell of a lot of
people! And they'll have made every bit of it themselves!"
Holden said uncomfortably:
"It'll be slow ..."
"It'll be sure!" snapped Cochrane. "The first settlements in America
were failures until the people started to work for themselves! Look at
this planet we're leaving! How many people will come to work that silly
diamond mine! How many will hunt to supply them with meat? How many will
farm to supply the hunters and the miners with other food? And how many
others will be along to run stores and manufacture things ..." He made
an impatient gesture. "You're thinking of encouraging people to move to
the stars to make more room on Earth. You'd get nice passive colonists
who'd obediently move because the long-hairs said it was wise and the
government paid for it. I'm thinking of colonists who'll fight and quite
possibly cheat and lie a little to get jobs where they can take care of
their families the way they want to! I want people to move to get what
they want in spite of any discouragement anybody throws at them. Now
shoo! I'm busy!"
Jones asked mildly:
"At what?"
"The latest proposed deal," said Cochrane impatiently, "is for rights to
bore for oil. The uranium concessions are farmed out. Water-power is
pending--not for cash, but a cut--and--."
Holden said uneasily:
"There's one other thing, Jed. All your plans and all your scheming
could still be blocked if back on Earth they think we might bring
plagues back to Earth. Remember Dabney suggested that? And some
biologist or other agreed with him?"
Cochrane grinned.
"There's a diamond-mine. There are herds of what people will call
cattle. There's food and riches. There's scenery and adventure. There's
room to do things! Nobody could keep political office if he tried to
keep his constituents from food and cash and adventure--even by proxy
when they send expendable Cousin Albert out to see if he can make a
living there. We've got to take reasonable precautions against germs, of
course. We'll have trouble enforcing them. But we'll manage!"
Al called down from the control-room. The ship was sufficiently aligned,
he thought, for their next stopping-place. He wanted Jones to charge the
booster-circuit and flash it over. Jones went.
A little later there was the peculiar sensation of a sound that was not
a sound, but was felt all through one. The result was not satisfactory.
The ship was still in empty space, and the nearest star was still a
star. There was a repetition of the booster-jump. Still not too good.
Thereafter the ship drove, and jumped, and jumped, and drove.
Jamison came down to where Cochrane conducted business via communicator.
He waited. Cochrane said:
"Dammit, I won't agree! I want twelve per cent or I take up another
offer!--What?"
The last was to Jamison. Jamison said uneasily:
"We found another planet. About Earth-size. Ice-caps. Clouds. Oceans.
Seas. Even rivers! But there's no green on it! It's all bare rocks!"
Cochrane thought concentratedly. Then he said impatiently:
"The whiskered people back home said that life couldn't have gotten
started on all the planets suited for it. They said there must be
planets where life hasn't reached, though they're perfectly suited for
it. Make a landing and try the air with algae like we did on the first
planet."
He turned back to the communicator.
"You reason," he snapped to a man on far-away Earth, "that all this is
only on paper. But that's the only reason you're getting a chance at it!
I'll guarantee that Jones will install drives on ships that meet our
requirements of space-worthiness--or government standards, whichever are
strictest--for ten per cent of your company stock plus twelve per cent
cash of the cost of each ship. Nothing less!"
He heard the rockets make the louder sound that was the symptom of
descent against gravity.
The world was lifeless. The ship had landed on bare stone, when Cochrane
looked out the control-room ports. There had been trouble finding a flat
space on which the three landing-fins would find a suitable foundation.
It had taken half an hour of maneuvering to locate such a place and to
settle solidly on it. Then the look of things was appalling.
The landing-spot was a naked mass of what seemed to be basalt polygons,
similar to the Giants' Causeway of Ireland back on Earth. There was no
softness anywhere. The stone which on other planets underlay soil, here
showed harshly. There was no soil. There was no microscopic life to
nibble at rocks and make soil in which less minute life could live. The
nudity of the stones led to glaring colors everywhere. The colors were
brilliant as nowhere else but on Earth's moon. There was no vegetation
at all.
That was somehow shocking. The ship's company stared and stared, but
there could be no comment. There was a vast, dark sea to the left of the
landing-place. Inland there were mountains and valleys. But the
mountains were not sloped. There were heaps of detritus at the bases of
their cliffs, but it was simply detritus. No tiniest patch of lichen
grew anywhere. No blade of grass. No moss. No leaf. Nothing.
The air was empty. Nothing flew. There were clouds, to be sure. The sky
was even blue, though a darker blue than Earth's, because there was no
vegetation to break stone down to dust, or to form dust by its own
decay.
The sea was violently active. Great waves flung themselves toward the
harsh coastline and beat upon it with insensate violence. They shattered
into masses of foam. But the foam broke--too quickly--and left the
surging water dark again. Far down the line of foam there were dark
clouds, and rain fell in masses, and lightning flashed. But it was a
scene of desolation which was somehow more horrible even than the
scarred and battered moon of Earth.
Cochrane looked out very carefully. Alicia came to him, a trifle
hesitant.
"Johnny's asleep now. He didn't sleep at first, and while we were out of
gravity he was unhappy. But he went off to sleep the instant we landed.
He needs rest. Could we--just stay landed here until he catches up on
sleep?"
Cochrane nodded. Alicia smiled at him and went away. There was still the
mark of a bruise on her cheek. She went down to where her husband needed
her. Holden said dourly:
"This world's useless. So is her husband."
"Wait till we check the air," said Cochrane absently.
"I've checked it," Holden told him indifferently. "I went in the port
and sniffed at the cracked outer door. I didn't die, so I opened the
door. There is a smell of stone. That's all. The air's perfectly
breathable. The ocean's probably absorbed all soluble gases, and
poisonous gases are soluble. If they weren't, they couldn't be
poisonous."
"Mmmmmm," said Cochrane thoughtfully.
Jamison came over to him.
"We're not going to stay here, are we?" he asked. "I don't like to look
at it. The moon's bad enough, but at least nothing could live there!
Anything could live here. But it doesn't! I don't like it!"
"We'll stay here at least while Johnny has a nap. I do want Bell to take
all the pictures he can, though. Probably not for broadcast, but for
business reasons. I'll need pictures to back up a deal."
Jamison went away. Holden said without interest:
"You'll make no deals with this planet! This is one you can do what you
like with! I don't want any part of it!"
Cochrane shrugged.
"Speaking of things you don't want any part of--what about Johnny Simms?
Speaking as a psychiatrist, what effect will that business of being in
the dark all night and nearly being pecked to death--what will it do to
him? Are psychopaths the way they are because they can't face reality,
or because they've never had to?"
Holden stared away down the incredible, lifeless coastline at the
distant storm. There was darkness under many layers of cloud. The sea
foamed and lashed and instantly was free of foam again. Because there
were no plankton, no animalcules, no tiny, gluey, organic beings in it
to give the water the property of making foam which endured. There was
thunder, yonder in the storm, and no ear heard it. Over a vast world
there was sunshine which no eyes saw. There was night in which nothing
rested, and somewhere dawn was breaking now, and nothing sang.
"Look at that, Jed," said Holden heavily. "There's a reality none of us
wants to face! We're all more or less fugitives from what we are afraid
is reality. That is real, and it makes me feel small and futile. So I
don't like to look at it. Johnny Simms didn't want to face what one does
grow up to face. It made him feel futile. So he picked a pleasanter role
than realist."
Cochrane nodded.
"But his unrealism of last night put him into a very realistic mess that
he couldn't dodge! Will it change him?"
"Probably," said Holden without any expression at all in his voice.
"They used to put lunatics in snake-pits. When they were people who'd
taken to lunacy for escape from reality, it made them go back to reality
to escape from the snakes. Shock-treatments used to be used, later, for
the same effect. We're too soft to use either treatment now. But Johnny
gave himself the works. The odds are that from now on he will never want
to be alone even for an instant, and he will never again quite dare to
be angry with anybody or make anybody angry. You choked him and he ran
away, and it was bad! So from now on I'd guess that Johnny will be a
very well-behaved little boy in a grown man's body." He said very wryly
indeed, "Alicia will be very happy, taking care of him."
A moment later he added:
"I look at that set-up the way I look at the landscape yonder."
Cochrane said nothing. Holden liked Alicia. Too much. It would not make
any difference at all. After a moment, though, he changed the subject.
"I think this is a pretty good bet, this planet. You think it's no good.
I'm going to talk to the chlorella companies. They grow edible yeast in
tanks, and chlorella in vats, and they produce an important amount of
food. But they have to grow the stuff indoors and they have a ghastly
job keeping everything sterile. Here's a place where they can sow
chlorella in the oceans! They can grow yeast in lakes, out-of-doors!
Suppose they use this world to grow monstrous quantities of unattractive
but useful foodstuff--in a way--wild? It will be good return-cargo
material for ships taking colonists out to our other planets.--I
suppose," he added meditatively, "they'll ship it back in bulk, dried."
Holden blinked. He was jolted out of even his depression.
"Jed!" he said warmly. "Tell that to the world--prove that--and--people
will stop being afraid! They won't be afraid of starving before they can
get to the stars! Jed--Jed! This is the thing the world needs most of
all!"
But Cochrane grimaced.
"Maybe," he admitted it. "But I've tasted the stuff. I think it's foul!
Still, if people want it ..."
He went back down to the communicator to contact the chlorella companies
of Earth, to find out if there was any special data they would need to
pass on the proposal.
* * * * *
And so presently the ship took off for home. It landed on the moon
first, and Johnny Simms was loaded into a space-suit and transferred to
Lunar City, where he could live without being extradited back to Earth.
He wouldn't stay there. Alicia guaranteed that. They'd move to the
glacier planet as soon as hotels were built. Maybe some day they'd
travel to the planet of the shaggy beasts. Johnny would never be
troublesome again. He was pathetically anxious, now, to have people like
him, and stay with him, and not under any circumstances be angry with
him or shut him away from them. Alicia would now have a full-time
occupation keeping people from taking advantage of him.
But the ship went back to Earth. And on Earth Jamison became the leading
television personality of all time, describing and extrapolating the
delicious dangers and the splendid industrial opportunities of
star-travel. Bell was his companion and co-star. Presently Jamison
conceded privately to Cochrane that he and Bell would need shortly to
take off on another journey of exploration with some other expedition.
Neither of them thought to retire, though they were well-off enough.
They were stock-holders in the Spaceways company, which guaranteed them
a living.
Cochrane put Spaceways, Inc., into full operation. He fought savagely
against personal publicity, but he worked himself half to death. He
spent hours every day in frenzied haggling, and in the cynical
examination of deftly booby-trapped business proposals. His lawyers
insisted that he needed an office--he did--and presently he had four
secretaries and there developed an entire hierarchy of persons under
him. One day his chief secretary told him commiseratingly that somebody
had waited two hours past appointment-time to see him.
It was Hopkins, who had not been willing to interrupt his dinner to
listen to a protest from Cochrane. Hopkins was still exactly as
important as ever. It was only that Cochrane was more so.
It woke Cochrane up. He stormed, to Babs, and ruthlessly cancelled
appointments and abandoned or transferred enterprises, and made
preparations for a more satisfactory way of life.
They went, in time, to the Spaceways terminal, to take ship for the
stars. The terminal was improvised, but it was busy. Already eighteen
ships a day went away from there in Dabney fields. Eighteen others
arrived. Jones was already off somewhere in a ship built according to
his own notions. Officially he was doing research for Spaceways, Inc.,
but actually nobody told him what to do. He puttered happily with
improbable contrivances and sometimes got even more improbable results.
Holden was already off of Earth. He was on the planet of the shaggy
beasts, acting as consultant on the cases of persons who arrived there
and became emotionally disturbed because they could do as they pleased,
instead of being forced by economic necessity to do otherwise.
But this day Babs and Cochrane went together into the grand concourse of
the Spaceways terminal. There were people everywhere. The hiring-booths
of enterprises on the three planets now under development took
applications for jobs on those remote worlds, and explained how long one
had to contract to work in order to have one's fare paid. Chambers of
Commerce representatives were prepared to give technical information to
prospective entrepreneurs. There were reservation-desks, and
freight-routing desks, and tourist-agency desks ...
"Hmmm," said Cochrane suddenly. "D'you know, I haven't heard of Dabney
in months! What happened to him?"
"Dabney?" said Babs. She beamed. Women in the terminal saw the clothes
she was wearing. They did not recognize her--Cochrane had kept her off
the air--but they envied her. She felt very nice indeed. "Dabney?--Oh, I
had to use my own judgment there, Jed. You were so busy! After all, he
was scientific consultant to Spaceways. He did pay Jones cold cash for
fame-rights. When everything else got so much more important than just
the scientific theory, he got in a terrible state. His family consulted
Doctor Holden, and we arranged it. He's right down this way!"
She pointed. And there was a splendid plate-glass office built out from
the wall of the grand concourse. It was elevated, so that it was
charmingly conspicuous. There was a chastely designed but highly visible
sign under the stairway leading to it. The sign said; "_H. G. Dabney,
Scientific Consultant._"
Dabney sat at an imposing desk in plain view of all the thousands who
had shipped out and the millions who would ship out in time to come. He
thought, visibly. Presently he stood up and paced meditatively up and
down the office which was as eye-catching as a gold-fish bowl of equal
size in the same place. He seemed to see someone down in the concourse.
He could have recognized Cochrane, of course. But he did not.
He bowed. He was a great man. Undoubtedly he returned to his wife each
evening happily convinced that he had done the world a great favor by
permitting it to glimpse him.
Cochrane and Babs went on. Their baggage was taken care of. The
departure of a ship for the stars, these days, was much less complicated
and vastly more comfortable than it used to be when a mere moon-rocket
took off.
When they were in the ship, Babs heaved a sigh of absolute relief.
"Now," she said zestfully, "now you're retired, Jed! You don't have to
worry about anything! And so now I'm going to try to make you worry
about me--not worry about me, but think about me!"
"Of course," said Cochrane. He regarded her with honest affection.
"We'll take a good long vacation. First on the glacier planet. Then
we'll build a house somewhere in the hills back of Diamondville ..."
"Jed!" said Babs accusingly.
"There's a fair population there already," said Cochrane,
apologetically. "It won't be long before a local television station will
be logical. I was just thinking, Babs, that after we get bored with
loafing, I could start a program there. Really sound stuff. Not
commercial. And of course with the Dabney field it could be piped back
to Earth if any sponsor wanted it. I think they would ..."
Presently the ship with Babs and Cochrane among its passengers took off
to the stars. It was a perfectly routine flight. After all, star-travel
was almost six months old. It wasn't a novelty any longer.
Operation Outer Space was old stuff.