But Babs complained suddenly,

“Jed!  What sort of life am I going to lead with you?  Here we are, and—­nobody can see us—­and you don’t even notice!”

Cochrane was penitent.  In fact, they had to hurry back down the beach to join the others when the space-ship appeared as a silvery gleam, high in the air, and then came swooping down with fierce flames underneath it to settle a quarter-mile inland.

Bell had a picture of the tiny diamond by the time the ground was cool enough for them to re-enter the ship.  The way he photographed it, against a background which had nothing by which its size could be estimated, the little white stone looked like a Kohinoor.  It was two transparent pyramids set base to base, and he even got color-flashes from it.  And Jamison, forewarned, took pictures from the air of the blue-sand areas.  They showed the tint the one tiny diamond explained.

The broadcast was highly successful.  It began with a four-minute commercial in which the evils of faulty elimination were discussed with infinite delicacy, and it was clearly proved—­to an audience waiting to look beyond the stars—­that only Greshham’s Intestinal Emollient allowed the body to make full use of vitamins, proteins, and the very newest enzymatic foundation-substances which everybody needed for really perfect health.  There followed the approach shots to this planet, shots of the great beast-herds on the plains, views of luxuriant, waving foliage, the tide of shaggy animals as they came at dusk to their drinking-place, and there was an all-too-brief picturing of the blue-tinted soil which the last film-clip of all declared to be diamondiferous.

Cochrane’s direction of this show was almost inspired.  The views of the animal herd were calculated to make any member of his audience think in simultaneous terms of glamour and adventure—­with perfect personal safety, of course!—­and of steaks, chops and roasts.  The more gifted viewers back on Earth might even envision filets mignon.  The infinitesimal diamond with its prismatic glitterings, of course, roused cupidity of another sort.

There were four commercials cut into these alluring views, the last was superimposed upon a view Bell had taken of the sunset-colors.  And it might have seemed that the television audience would confuse the charm of the new world as pictured with the product insistently praised.  But the public was pretty well toughened up against commercials nowadays.  It was not deceived.  As usual, it only deceived itself.

But there was no deception about the fact that there was a new and unoccupied planet fit for human habitation.  That was true.  And the fretting overcrowded cities immediately became places where everybody made happy plans for his neighbor to move there.  But the more irritable people would begin to think vaguely that it might be worth going to, for themselves.