hung stationary for a full breath, and then began to descend in literal
slow motion. He fell only two and a half feet the first second, and five
feet more the one after, and twelve and a half after that.... It took
him over four seconds to drop forty-five feet into the water, and the
splash that arose when he struck the surface rose four yards and
subsided with a lunatic deliberation.

Watching, Babs could not keep her businesslike demeanor. She was
bursting with the joyous knowledge that she was on the moon, seeing the
impossible and looking at fame.

They sipped at drinks--but the liquid rose much too swiftly in the
straws--and Cochrane reflected that the drink in Babs' glass would cost
Dabney's father-in-law as much as Babs earned in a week back home, and
his own was costing no less.

Presently a written note came from Holden:

"_Jed: send West and Jamison right away to Dabney's lunar laboratory to
get details of discovery from man named Jones. Get moon-jeep and driver
from hotel. I will want you in an hour.--Bill._"

"I'll be back," said Cochrane. "Wait."

He left the table and found West and Jamison in Bell's room, all three
in conference over a bottle. West and Jamison were Cochrane's scientific
team for the yet unformulated task he was to perform. West was the
popularizing specialist. He could make a television audience believe
that it understood all the seven dimensions required for some branches
of wave-mechanics theory. His explanation did not stick, of course. One
didn't remember them. But they were singularly convincing in cultural
episodes on television productions. Jamison was the prophecy expert. He
could extrapolate anything into anything else, and make you believe that
a one-week drop in the birthdate on Kamchatka was the beginning of a
trend that would leave the Earth depopulated in exactly four hundred and
seventy-three years. They were good men for a television producer to
have on call. Now, instructed, they went out to be briefed by somebody
who undoubtedly knew more than both of them put together, but whom they
would regard with tolerant suspicion.

Bell, left behind, said cagily:

"This script I've got to do, now--Will that laboratory be the set? Where
is it? In the dome?"

"It's not in the dome," Cochrane told him. "West and Jamison took a
moon-jeep to get to it. I don't know what the set will be. I don't know
anything, yet. I'm waiting to be told about the job, myself."

"If I've g