"I'll take it," said Cochrane. "Jones wants you in the control-room. Cameras? Who was handling the cameras?"
"Mr. Bell," said Babs briskly. "It's his hobby, along with poker-playing and children."
"Tell him to get some pictures of the star-fields around us," said Cochrane, "and then you can see what Jones wants. I will do a little business!"
He settled down in the seat Babs had vacated. He faced the two press-association reporters in the screen. They had seen the ship's take off. It was verified beyond any reasonable question. The microwave beam to Earth was working at capacity to transmit statements from the Moon Observatory, which annoyedly conceded that the Spaceways, Inc., salvaged ship had taken off with an acceleration beyond belief. But, the astronomers said firmly, the ship and all its contents must necessarily have been destroyed by the shock of their departure. The acceleration must have been as great as the shock of a meteor hitting Luna.
"You can consider," Cochrane told them, "that I am now an angel, if you like. But how about getting a statement from Dabney?"
A press-association man, back on Luna, uttered the first profanity ever to travel faster than light.
"All he can talk about," he said savagely, "is how wonderful he is! He agrees with the Observatory that you must all be dead. He said so. Can you give us any evidence that you're alive and out in space? Visual evidence, for broadcast?"
At this moment the entire fabric of the space-ship moved slightly. There was no sound of rockets. The ship seemed to turn a little, but that was all. No gravity. No acceleration. It was a singularly uncomfortable sensation, on top of the discomfort of weightlessness.
"If you can't take my word that I'm alive, I'll try to get you some proof! Hm. I'll send you some pictures of the star-fields around us. Shoot them to observatories back on Earth and let them figure out for themselves where we are! Displacement of the relative positions of the stars ought to let them figure things out!"