Cochrane felt the ship swinging in emptiness. He knew because it seemed
to turn while he felt that he stayed still.

"We've got a show to put on!" he raged. "We've got to fake something--."

Jamison looked aside from his telescope.

"Tell him, Bell," he said expansively.

"I wrote a script of sorts," said Bell apologetically. "The story-line's
not so good--that's why I wanted a castaway narrative to put in it,
though I wouldn't have had time, really. We spliced film and Jamison
narrated it, and you can run it off. It's a kind of show. We ran it as a
space-platform survey of the glacier-planet, basing it on pictures we
took while we were in orbit around it. It's a sort of travelogue.
Jamison did himself proud. Alicia can find the tape-can for you."

He went back to his cameras. Cochrane saw a monstrous globe swing past a
control-room port. It was a featureless mass of clouds, save for
striations across what must be its equator. It looked like the Lunar
Observatory pictures of Jupiter, back in the Sun's family of planets.

It went past the port, and a moon swam into view. It was a very large
moon. It had at least one ice-cap--and therefore an atmosphere--and
there were mottlings of its surface which could hardly be anything but
continents and seas.

"We've got to put a show on!" raged Cochrane. "And now!"

"It's all set," Bell assured him. "You can transmit it. I hope you like
it!"

Cochrane sputtered. But there was nothing to do but transmit whatever
Bell and Jamison had gotten ready. He swam with nightmarelike difficulty
back to the communicator. He shouted frantically for Babs. She and
Alicia came. Alicia found the film-tape, and Cochrane threaded it into
the transmitter, and bitterly ran the first few feet. Babs smiled at
him, and Alicia looked at him oddly. Evidently, Babs had confided the
consequence of their casting-away. But Cochrane faced an emergency. He
began to check timings with far-distant Earth.

When the ship approached a second planet, Cochrane saw nothing of it. He
was furiously monitoring the broadcast of a show in which he'd had no
hand at all. From his own, professional standpoint it was terrible.
Jamison spouted interminably, so Cochrane considered. Al, the pilot, was
actually interviewed by an offscreen voice! But the pictures from space
were excellent. While the ship floated in orbit, waiting to descend to
pick up Babs and Cochrane, Bell had hooked his camera to an amplifying
telescope