Murray Leinster (Duke Classic SiFi) by Operation: Outer Space

aloof scientist. There were other
interviews. Dabney again, from a script written by Bell. And Jones.
Jones hated the idea of being interviewed, but he had faced a
beam-camera and answered idiotic questions, and gone angrily back to his
work.
    Spaceways, Inc., had a bank-account already amounting to more than
twenty years of Cochrane's best earning-power. He was selling publicity
for sponsors to hang their commercials on, in a strict parallel to
Christopher Columbus' selling of spices to come. But Cochrane was
delivering for cash. Freight-rockets were on the way moonward now, whose
cargoes of supplies for a space-journey Cochrane was accepting only when
a bonus in money was paid for the right to brag about it. So-and-so's
oxygen paid for the privilege of supplying air-reserves.
What's-his-name's dehydrated vegetables were accepted on similar terms,
with whoosit's instant coffee and somebody else's noodle soup in bags.
    "If," said Cochrane tiredly, looking up from the statement, "we could
only start off in a fleet instead of a single ship, Babs, we'd not only
be equipped but so rich before we started that we'd want to stay home to
enjoy it!" He yawned prodigiously. "I'm going to get some sleep. Don't
let me sleep too long!"
    He went off to his hotel-room and was out cold before his head had
drifted down to its pillow. But he was not pleased with himself. It
annoyed him that his revolt against being an expendable employee had
taken the form of acting like one of his former bosses in collecting
ruthlessly for the brains—in the case of Jones—and the neurotic
idiosyncrasies—in the case of Dabney—of other men. The gesture by
which he had become independent was not quite the splendid, scornful one
he'd have liked. The fact that this sort of gesture worked, and nothing
else would have, did not make him feel better.
    But he slept.
    He dreamed that he was back at his normal business of producing a
television show. Nobody but himself cared whether the show went on or
not. The actual purpose of all his subordinates seemed to be to cut as
many throats among their fellow-workers as possible—in a business way,
of course—so that by their own survival they might succeed to a better
job and higher pay. This is what is called the fine spirit of teamwork
by which things get done, both in private and public enterprise.
    It was a very realistic dream, but it was not restful.
    While he slept, the world wagged on and the cosmos continued on its
normal course. The two moons of Earth—one natural and one
artificial—swung in splendid circles about. A psychiatrist should not
be the means of associ-
(Missing text)
that planet's divided rings. The
red spot of Jupiter and the bands on that gas-giant world moved in
orderly fashion about its circumference. Light-centuries away, giant
Cepheid suns expanded monstrously and contracted again, rather more
rapidly than their gravitational fields could account for. Double stars
sedately swung about each other. Comets reached their farthest points
and, mere aggregations of frigid jagged stones and metal, prepared for
another plunge back into light and heat and warmth.
    And various prosaic actions took place on Luna.
    When Cochrane waked and went back to the hotel-room in use as an office,
he found Babs talking confidentially to a woman—girl, rather—whom
Cochrane vaguely remembered. Then he did a double take. He did remember
her. Three or four years before she'd been the outstanding television
personality of the year. She'd been pretty, but not so pretty that you
didn't realize that she was a person. She was everything that Marilyn
Winters was not—and she'd been number two name in television.
    Cochrane said blankly:
    "Aren't you Alicia Keith?"
    The girl smiled faintly. She wasn't as pretty as she had been. She
looked patient. And an expression of patience, on a woman's face, is
certainly not unpleasant. But it isn't glamorous, either.
    "I was," she said. "I married Johnny Simms."
    Cochrane looked