“I see,” said Jamison above the rocket-thunder, “forests of giant trees like the sequoias of Mother Earth.  I see rushing rivers, foaming along their rocky beds, taking their rise in glaciers.  We are still too high to look for living creatures, but we descend swiftly.  Now we are level with the highest of the mountains.  Now we descend below their smoking tops.  Under us there is a vast valley, miles wide, leagues long.  Here a city could be built.  Over it looms a gigantic mountain-spur, capped with green.  One would expect a castle to be built there.”

He raised his eyebrows at Cochrane.  They were well in atmosphere, now, and it had been an obvious defect—­condition—­necessity of the Dabney field that both of its plates should be in a vacuum.  One was certainly in air now.  But Cochrane made that gesture which in television production-practice informs the actors that time to cutting is measured in tens of seconds, and he held up two fingers.  Twenty seconds.

“We gaze, and you gaze with us,” said Jamison, “upon a world that future generations will come to know as home—­the site of the first human colony among the stars!”

Cochrane began to beat time.  Ten, nine, eight—.

“We are about to land,” Jamison declaimed.  “We do not know what we shall find—­What’s that?” He paused dramatically.  “A living creature?—­A living creature sighted down below!  We sign off now—­from the stars!”

The ending had been perfectly timed.  Allowing for a three-second interval for the broadcast to reach the moon, and just about two more for it to be relayed to Earth, his final word, “Stars!” had been uttered at the precise instant to allow a four-minute commercial by Intercity Credit, in the United States, by Citroen in Europe, by Fabricanos Unidos in South and Central America, and Near East Oil along the Mediterranean.  At the end of that four minutes it would be time for station identification and a time-signal, and the divers eight-second flashes before other programs came on the air.

The rockets roared and thundered.  The ship went down and down.  Jamison said: 

“I thought we’d be cut off when we hit air!”

“That’s what Jones thought,” Cochrane assured him.  He bellowed above the outside tumult, “Bell!  See anything alive down below?”

Bell shook his head.  He stayed at the camera aimed out a blister-port, storing up film-tape for later use.  There was the feel of gravitation, now.  Actually, it was the fact that the ship slowed swiftly in its descent.

Cochrane went to a port.  The ship continued its descent.

“Living creature?  Where?”