She showed him a neatly typed statement.  For the original run of the torp-test film-tape, so much.  It was to be re-run with a popularization of the technical details by West, and a lurid extrapolation of things to come by Jamison.  The sponsors who got hold of commercial time with that expanded and souped-up version would expect, and get, an audience-rating unparalleled in history.  Dabney was to take a bow on the rebroadcast, too—­very much the dignified and 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.