oyed. "Took you to
the nightclub; but not to see the ship!"

"The ship's farther," explained Babs. "I could always be found at the
nightclub if you needed me. I went when you were asleep."

"Damn!" said Cochrane. "Hm ... You ought to get a bonus. What would you
rather have, Babs, a bonus in cash or Spaceways stock?"

"I've got some stock," said Babs. "Mr. Bell--the writer, you know--got
in a poker game. He was cleaned out. So I gave him all the money I
had--I told you I cleared out my savings-account before we came up, I
think--for half his shares."

"Either you got very badly stuck," Cochrane told her cynically, "or else
you'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 or
something, 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 promised
you'd go. I meant to mention it in time."

Cochrane did not notice her tone. He was dead-tired, as only a man can
be who has driven himself at top speed for days on end over a business
deal. Business deals are stimulating only in their major aspects. Most
of the details are niggling, tedious, routine, and boring--and very
often bear-trapped. Cochrane had done, with only Babs' help, an amount
of mental labor that in the offices of Kursten, Kasten, Hopkins and
Fallowe would have been divided among two vice-presidents, six lawyers,
and at least twelve account executives. The work, therefore, would
actually have been done by not less than twenty secretaries. But Babs
and Cochrane had done it all.

In the moon-jeep on the way to the ship he felt that heavy, exhausted
sense of relaxation which is not pleasurable at all. Babs annoyed him a
little, too. She was late getting to the airlock, and seemed breathless
when she arrived.

The moon-jeep crunched and clanked and rumbled over the gently
undulating lava sea beneath its giant wheels. Babs looked zestfully out
of the windows. The picture was, of course, quite incredible. In the
relatively dim Earthlight the moonscape was somehow softened, and yet
the impossibly jagged mountains and steep cliffsides and the razor-edged
passes of monstrous stone,--these things remained daunting. It was like
riding through a dream in which everything nearby seemed fey and
glamorous, but the background was deathly-still and ominous.

There were the usual