a-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 t