data they would need to
pass on the proposal.

* * * * *

And so presently the ship took off for home. It landed on the moon
first, and Johnny Simms was loaded into a space-suit and transferred to
Lunar City, where he could live without being extradited back to Earth.
He wouldn't stay there. Alicia guaranteed that. They'd move to the
glacier planet as soon as hotels were built. Maybe some day they'd
travel to the planet of the shaggy beasts. Johnny would never be
troublesome again. He was pathetically anxious, now, to have people like
him, and stay with him, and not under any circumstances be angry with
him or shut him away from them. Alicia would now have a full-time
occupation keeping people from taking advantage of him.

But the ship went back to Earth. And on Earth Jamison became the leading
television personality of all time, describing and extrapolating the
delicious dangers and the splendid industrial opportunities of
star-travel. Bell was his companion and co-star. Presently Jamison
conceded privately to Cochrane that he and Bell would need shortly to
take off on another journey of exploration with some other expedition.
Neither of them thought to retire, though they were well-off enough.
They were stock-holders in the Spaceways company, which guaranteed them
a living.

Cochrane put Spaceways, Inc., into full operation. He fought savagely
against personal publicity, but he worked himself half to death. He
spent hours every day in frenzied haggling, and in the cynical
examination of deftly booby-trapped business proposals. His lawyers
insisted that he needed an office--he did--and presently he had four
secretaries and there developed an entire hierarchy of persons under
him. One day his chief secretary told him commiseratingly that somebody
had waited two hours past appointment-time to see him.

It was Hopkins, who had not been willing to interrupt his dinner to
listen to a protest from Cochrane. Hopkins was still exactly as
important as ever. It was only that Cochrane was more so.

It woke Cochrane up. He stormed, to Babs, and ruthlessly cancelled
appointments and abandoned or transferred enterprises, and made
preparations for a more satisfactory way of life.

They went, in time, to the Spaceways terminal, to take ship for the
stars. The terminal was improvised, but it was busy. Already eighteen
ships a day went away from there in Dabney fields. Eighteen others
arrived. J