fresh! It smelled
strange. There could be no vegetation on the rocket and it seemed new
and blissful to breathe really freshened air after days of the canned
variety. But this freshness made Cochrane realize that he'd feel better
for a bath.

He took a shower in his hotel room. The room was very much like one on
Earth, except that it had no windows. But the shower was strange. The
sprays were tiny. Cochrane felt as if he were being sprayed by atomizers
rather than shower-nozzles until he noticed that water ran off him very
slowly and realized that a normal shower would have been overwhelming.
He scooped up a handful of water and let it drop. It took a full second
to fall two and a half feet.

It was unsettling, but fresh clothing from his waiting baggage made him
feel better. He went to the lounge of the hotel, and it was not a
lounge, and the hotel was not a hotel. Everything in the dome was
indoors in the sense that it was under a globular ceiling fifty stories
high. But everything was also out-doors in the sense of bright light and
growing trees and bushes and shrubs.

He found Babs freshly garmented and waiting for him. She said in
businesslike tones:

"Mr. Cochrane, I asked at the desk. Doctor Holden has gone to consult
Mr. Dabney. He asked that we stay within call. I've sent word to Mr.
West and Mr. Jamison and Mr. Bell."

Cochrane approved of her secretarial efficiency.

"Then we'll sit somewhere and wait. Since this isn't an office, we'll
find some refreshment."

They asked for a table and got one near the swimming pool. And Babs wore
her office manner, all crispness and business, until they were seated.
But this swimming pool was not like a pool on Earth. The water was
deeply sunk beneath the pool's rim, and great waves surged back and
forth. The swimmers--.

Babs gasped. A man stood on a board quite thirty feet above the water.
He prepared to dive.

"That's Johnny Simms!" she said, awed.

"Who's he?"

"The playboy," said Babs, staring. "He's a psychopathic personality and
his family has millions. They keep him up here out of trouble. He's
married."

"Too bad--if he has millions," said Cochrane.

"I wouldn't marry a man with a psychopathic personality!" protested
Babs.

"Keep away from people in the advertising business, then," Cochrane told
her.

Johnny Simms did not jounce up and down on the diving board to start. He
simply leaped upward, and went ceilingward for easily fifteen feet, and