Operation: Outer Space | Page 5

carefully. She was remarkably pretty. But her
manner was strictly detached. She said:
"There's a button. You can reach it if you need anything. You may call
me by pushing it."
He shrugged. He lay still as she went on to inspect the other passengers.
There was nothing to do and nothing to see. Travellers were treated
pretty much like parcels, these days. Travel, like television
entertainment and most of the other facilities of human life, was
designed for the seventy-to-ninety-per-cent of the human race whose
likes and dislikes and predilections could be learned exactly by surveys.
Anybody who didn't like what everybody liked, or didn't react like
everybody reacted, was subject to annoyances. Cochrane resigned
himself to them.
The red light-letters changed again, considerably later. This time they
said: "Free flight, thirty seconds."
They did not say "free fall," which was the technical term for a rocket

coasting upward or downward in space. But Cochrane braced himself,
and his stomach-muscles were tense when the rockets stopped again
and stayed off. The sensation of continuous fall began. An electronic
speaker beside his chair began to speak. There were other such
mechanisms beside each other passenger-chair, and the interior of the
rocket filled with a soft murmur which was sardonically like choral
recitation.
"The sensation of weightlessness you now experience," said the voice
soothingly, "is natural at this stage of your flight. The ship has attained
its maximum intended speed and is still rising to meet the space
platform. You may consider that we have left atmosphere and its
limitations behind. Now we have spread sails of inertia and glide on a
wind of pure momentum toward our destination. The feeling of
weightlessness is perfectly normal. You will be greatly interested in the
space platform. We will reach it in something over two hours of free
flight. It is an artificial satellite, with an air-lock our ship will enter for
refueling. You will be able to leave the ship and move about inside the
Platform, to lunch if you choose, to buy souvenirs and mail them back
and to view Earth from a height of four thousand miles through
quartz-glass windows. Then, as now, you will feel no sensation of
weight. You will be taken on a tour of the space platform if you wish.
There are rest-rooms--."
Cochrane grimly endured the rest of the taped lecture. He thought
sourly to himself: "I'm a captive audience without even an interest in
the production tricks."
Presently he saw Bill Holden's head. The psychiatrist had squirmed
inside the straps that held him, and now was staring about within the
rocket. His complexion was greenish.
"I understand you're to brief me," Cochrane told him, "on the way up.
Do you want to tell me now what all this is about? I'd like a nice
dramatic narrative, with gestures."
Holden said sickly:

"Go to hell, won't you?"
His head disappeared. Space-nausea was, of course, as definite an
ailment as seasickness. It came from no weight. But Cochrane seemed
to be immune. He turned his mind to the possible purposes of his
journey. He knew nothing at all. His own personal share in the
activities of Kursten, Kasten, Hopkins and Fallowe--the biggest
advertising agency in the world--was the production of the Dikkipatti
Hour, top-talent television show, regularly every Wednesday night
between eight-thirty and nine-thirty o'clock central U. S. time. It was a
good show. It was among the ten most popular shows on three
continents. It was not reasonable that he be ordered to drop it and take
orders from a psychiatrist, even one he'd known unprofessionally for
years. But there was not much, these days, that really made sense.
In a world where cities with populations of less than five millions were
considered small towns, values were peculiar. One of the deplorable
results of living in a world over-supplied with inhabitants was that
there were too many people and not enough jobs. When one had a good
job, and somebody higher up than oneself gave an order, it was obeyed.
There was always somebody else or several somebodies waiting for
every job there was--hoping for it, maybe praying for it. And if a good
job was lost, one had to start all over.
This task might be anything. It was not, however, connected in any way
with the weekly production of the Dikkipatti Hour. And if that
production were scamped this week because Cochrane was away, he
would be the one to take the loss in reputation. The fact that he was on
the moon wouldn't count. It would be assumed that he was slipping.
And a slip was not good. It was definitely not good!
"I could do a documentary right now," Cochrane told himself angrily,
"titled 'Man-afraid-of-his-job.' I could make a very authentic
production. I've