atmosphere, now,
and it had been an obvious defect--condition--necessity of the Dabney
field that both of its plates should be in a vacuum. One was certainly
in air now. But Cochrane made that gesture which in television
production-practice informs the actors that time to cutting is measured
in tens of seconds, and he held up two fingers. Twenty seconds.

"We gaze, and you gaze with us," said Jamison, "upon a world that future
generations will come to know as home--the site of the first human
colony among the stars!"

Cochrane began to beat time. Ten, nine, eight--.

"We are about to land," Jamison declaimed. "We do not know what we shall
find--What's that?" He paused dramatically. "A living creature?--A
living creature sighted down below! We sign off now--from the stars!"

The ending had been perfectly timed. Allowing for a three-second
interval for the broadcast to reach the moon, and just about two more
for it to be relayed to Earth, his final word, "Stars!" had been uttered
at the precise instant to allow a four-minute commercial by Intercity
Credit, in the United States, by Citroen in Europe, by Fabricanos Unidos
in South and Central America, and Near East Oil along the Mediterranean.
At the end of that four minutes it would be time for station
identification and a time-signal, and the divers eight-second flashes
before other programs came on the air.

The rockets roared and thundered. The ship went down and down. Jamison
said:

"I thought we'd be cut off when we hit air!"

"That's what Jones thought," Cochrane assured him. He bellowed above the
outside tumult, "Bell! See anything alive down below?"

Bell shook his head. He stayed at the camera aimed out a blister-port,
storing up film-tape for later use. There was the feel of gravitation,
now. Actually, it was the fact that the ship slowed swiftly in its
descent.

Cochrane went to a port. The ship continued its descent.

"Living creature? Where?"

Jamison shrugged. He had used it as a sign-off line. An extrapolation
from the fact that there was vegetation below. He looked somehow
distastefully out the port at a swiftly rising green ground below. He
was a city man. He had literally never before seen what looked like
habitable territory of such vast extent, with no houses on it. In a
valley easily ten miles long and two wide, there was not a square inch
of concrete or of glass. There was not a man made object in view. The
sky was blue and there were cl