Holden stared away down the incredible, lifeless coastline at the distant storm.  There was darkness under many layers of cloud.  The sea foamed and lashed and instantly was free of foam again.  Because there were no plankton, no animalcules, no tiny, gluey, organic beings in it to give the water the property of making foam which endured.  There was thunder, yonder in the storm, and no ear heard it.  Over a vast world there was sunshine which no eyes saw.  There was night in which nothing rested, and somewhere dawn was breaking now, and nothing sang.

“Look at that, Jed,” said Holden heavily.  “There’s a reality none of us wants to face!  We’re all more or less fugitives from what we are afraid is reality.  That is real, and it makes me feel small and futile.  So I don’t like to look at it.  Johnny Simms didn’t want to face what one does grow up to face.  It made him feel futile.  So he picked a pleasanter role than realist.”

Cochrane nodded.

“But his unrealism of last night put him into a very realistic mess that he couldn’t dodge!  Will it change him?”

“Probably,” said Holden without any expression at all in his voice.  “They used to put lunatics in snake-pits.  When they were people who’d taken to lunacy for escape from reality, it made them go back to reality to escape from the snakes.  Shock-treatments used to be used, later, for the same effect.  We’re too soft to use either treatment now.  But Johnny gave himself the works.  The odds are that from now on he will never want to be alone even for an instant, and he will never again quite dare to be angry with anybody or make anybody angry.  You choked him and he ran away, and it was bad!  So from now on I’d guess that Johnny will be a very well-behaved little boy in a grown man’s body.”  He said very wryly indeed, “Alicia will be very happy, taking care of him.”

A moment later he added: 

“I look at that set-up the way I look at the landscape yonder.”

Cochrane said nothing.  Holden liked Alicia.  Too much.  It would not make any difference at all.  After a moment, though, he changed the subject.

“I think this is a pretty good bet, this planet.  You think it’s no good.  I’m going to talk to the chlorella companies.  They grow edible yeast in tanks, and chlorella in vats, and they produce an important amount of food.  But they have to grow the stuff indoors and they have a ghastly job keeping everything sterile.  Here’s a place where they can sow chlorella in the oceans!  They can grow yeast in lakes, out-of-doors!  Suppose they use this world to grow monstrous quantities of unattractive but useful foodstuff—­in a way—­wild?  It will be good return-cargo material for ships taking colonists out to our other planets.—­I suppose,” he added meditatively, “they’ll ship it back in bulk, dried.”

Holden blinked.  He was jolted out of even his depression.

“Jed!” he said warmly.  “Tell that to the world—­prove that—­and—­people will stop being afraid!  They won’t be afraid of starving before they can get to the stars!  Jed—­Jed!  This is the thing the world needs most of all!”