Babs hesitated, and then said very cheerfully: 

“You only see things the way a man sees them.  This show, this trip—­this whole business doesn’t thrill you because you don’t see it the way a woman would.”

“Such as how?  What does a woman see that I don’t?”

“A woman,” said Babs, “sees this planet as a place that men and women will come to live on.  To live on!  You don’t.  You miss all the real implications of people actually living here.  But they’re the things a woman sees first of all.”

Cochrane frowned.

“I’m not so conceited I can’t listen to somebody else.  If you’ve got an idea—­”

“Not an idea,” said Babs.  “Just a reaction.  And you can’t explain a reaction to somebody who hasn’t had it.  Goodnight!”

She vanished down the stairs.  Some time later, Cochrane heard the extremely minute sound of a door closing on one of the cabins three decks down in the space-ship.

He went back to his restless inspection of the night outside.  He tried to make sense of what Babs had said.  He failed altogether.  In the end he settled in one of the over-elaborately cushioned chairs that had made this ship so attractive to deluded investors.  He intended to think out what Babs might have meant.  She was, after all, the most competent secretary he’d ever had, and he’d been wryly aware of how helpless he would be without her.  Now he tried painstakingly to imagine what changes in one’s view the inclusion of women among pioneers would involve.  He worked out some seemingly valid points.  But it was not a congenial mental occupation.

He fell asleep without realizing it, and was waked by the sound of voices all about him.  It was morning again, and Johnny Simms was shouting boyishly at something he saw outside.

“Get at it, boy!” he cried enthusiastically.  “Grab him!  That’s the way—­”

Cochrane opened his eyes.  Johnny Simms gazed out and down from a blister-port, waving his arms.  His wife Alicia looked out of the same port without seeming to share his excited approval.  Bell had dragged a camera across the control-room and was in the act of focussing it through a particular window.

“What’s the matter?” demanded Cochrane.

He struggled out of his chair.  And Johnny Simms’ pleasure evaporated abruptly.  He swore nastily, viciously, at something outside the ship.  His wife touched his arm and spoke to him in a low tone.  He turned furiously upon her, mouthing foulnesses.

Cochrane was formidably beside him, and Johnny Simms’ expression of fury smoothed out instantly.  He looked pleasant and amiable.

“The fight stopped,” he explained offhandedly.  “It was a good fight.  But one of the creatures wouldn’t stay and take his licking.”

Alicia said steadily: 

“There were some animals there.  They looked rather like bears, only they had enormous ears.”