wn in the seat Babs had vacated. He faced the two
press-association reporters in the screen. They had seen the ship's take
off. It was verified beyond any reasonable question. The microwave beam
to Earth was working at capacity to transmit statements from the Moon
Observatory, which annoyedly conceded that the Spaceways, Inc., salvaged
ship had taken off with an acceleration beyond belief. But, the
astronomers said firmly, the ship and all its contents must necessarily
have been destroyed by the shock of their departure. The acceleration
must have been as great as the shock of a meteor hitting Luna.

"You can consider," Cochrane told them, "that I am now an angel, if you
like. But how about getting a statement from Dabney?"

A press-association man, back on Luna, uttered the first profanity ever
to travel faster than light.

"All he can talk about," he said savagely, "is how wonderful he is! He
agrees with the Observatory that you must all be dead. He said so. Can
you give us any evidence that you're alive and out in space? Visual
evidence, for broadcast?"

At this moment the entire fabric of the space-ship moved slightly. There
was no sound of rockets. The ship seemed to turn a little, but that was
all. No gravity. No acceleration. It was a singularly uncomfortable
sensation, on top of the discomfort of weightlessness.

Cochrane said sardonically:

"If you can't take my word that I'm alive, I'll try to get you some
proof! Hm. I'll send you some pictures of the star-fields around us.
Shoot them to observatories back on Earth and let them figure out for
themselves where we are! Displacement of the relative positions of the
stars ought to let them figure things out!"

He left the communicator-board. Holden still looked greenish in his
strap-chair. The main saloon was otherwise empty. Cochrane made his way
gingerly to the stair going below. He stepped into thin air and
descended by a pull on the hand-rail.

This was the dining-saloon. The ship having been built to impress
investors in a stock-sales enterprise, it had been beautifully equipped
with trimmings. And, having had to rise from Earth to Luna, and needing
to take an acceleration of a good many gravities, it had necessarily to
be reasonably well-built. It had had, in fact, to be an honest job of
ship-building in order to put across a phoney promotion. But there were
trimmings that could have been spared. The ports opening upon emptiness,
for example, were n