ochrane. His sense of the ironic deepened. He'd thought he
was an executive and reasonably important. But somebody higher up than
he was had disposed of him with absent-minded finality, and that man's
secretary and his own had determined all the details, and he didn't
count at all. He was a pawn in the hands of firm-partners and assorted
secretaries. "Let me know what my job's to be and how to do it, Babs."

Babs nodded. She didn't catch the sarcasm. But she couldn't think very
straight, just now. She was on the space platform, which was the second
most glamorous spot in the universe. The most glamorous spot, of course,
was the moon.

Cochrane hobbled ashore into the platform, having no weight whatever. He
was able to move only by the curious sticky adhesion of his
magnetic-soled slippers to the steel floor-plates beneath him. Or--were
they beneath? There was a crew member walking upside down on a floor
which ought to be a ceiling directly over Cochrane's head. He opened a
door in a side-wall and went in, still upside down. Cochrane felt a
sudden dizziness, at that.

But he went on, using hand-grips. Then he saw Dr. William Holden looking
greenish and ill and trying sickishly to answer questions from West and
Jamison and Bell, who had been plucked from their private lives just as
Cochrane had and were now clamorously demanding of Bill Holden that he
explain what had happened to them.

Cochrane snapped angrily:

"Leave the man alone! He's space-sick! If you get him too much upset
this place will be a mess!"

Holden closed his eyes and said gratefully:

"Shoo them away, Jed, and then come back."

Cochrane waved his hands at them. They went away, stumbling and holding
on to each other in the eerie dream-likeness and nightmarish situation
of no-weight-whatever. There were other passengers from the moon-rocket
in this great central space of the platform. There was a fat woman
looking indignantly at the picture of a weighing-scale painted on the
wall. Somebody had painted it, with a dial-hand pointing to zero pounds.
A sign said, "_Honest weight, no gravity._" There was the stewardess
from the rocket, off duty here. She smoked a cigarette in the blast of
an electric fan. There was a party of moon-tourists giggling foolishly
and clutching at everything and buying souvenirs to mail back to Earth.

"All right, Bill," said Cochrane. "They're gone. Now tell me why all the
not inconsiderable genius in the employ of Kurste