Inside the ship, with the space-suits off, there was light and warmth, and a remarkably matter-of-fact atmosphere. The ship had been built to sell stock in a scheme for colonizing Mars. Prospective investors had been shown through it. It had been designed to be a convincing passenger-liner of space.
It was. But Cochrane found himself not needed for any consultation, and Jones was busy, and Bill Holden highly preoccupied. He saw Alicia Keith—but her name was Simms now. She smiled at him but took Babs by the arm. They went off somewhere.
Cochrane waited for somebody to tell him what to look at and to admire. He saw Jamison, and Bell, and he saw a man he had not seen before. He settled down in a deeply upholstered chair. He felt neglected. Everybody was busy. But mostly he felt tired.
He slept.
Then Babs was shaking his arm, her eyes shining.
"Mr. Cochrane!" she cried urgently. "Mr. Cochrane! Wake up! Go on up to the control-room! We're going to take off!"
He blinked at her.
"We!" Then he started up, and went five feet into the air from the violence of his uncalculated movement. "We? No you don't! You go back to Lunar City where you'll be safe!"
Then he heard a peculiar drumming, rumbling noise. He had heard it before. In the moonship. It was rockets being tested; being burned; rockets in the very last seconds of preparation before take-off for the stars.
He didn't drop back to the floor beside the chair he'd occupied. The floor rose to meet him.