Alicia Keith showed herself on the screen and gave the woman’s viewpoint as written about by Bell.  She talked pleasantly about how it felt to move about on a planet never before trodden by human beings.  She was interrupted by the pictured face of the lady editor of Joint Networks’ feminine programs, who asked sweetly: 

“Tell me, Alicia, what do you think the attainment of the stars will mean to the Average American housewife in the immediate future?  Right now?”

Then Dabney came on.  His appearance was fitted into the sequence from Lunar City, and his gestures were extravagant as anybody’s gestures will be where their hands and arms weigh so small a fraction of Earth-normal.

“I wish,” said Dabney impressively, “to congratulate the men who have so swiftly adapted my discovery of faster-than-light travel to practical use.  I am overwhelmed at having been able to achieve a scientific triumph which in time will mean that mankind’s future stretches endlessly and splendidly into the future!”

Here there was canned applause.  Dabney held up his hand for attention.  He thought.  Visibly.

“But,” he said urgently, “I admit that I am disturbed by the precipitancy of the action that has been taken.  I feel as if I were like some powerful djinni giving gifts which the recipients may use without thought.”

More canned applause, inserted because he had given instructions for it whenever he paused.  The communicator-operator at Luna City took pleasure in following instructions exactly.  Dabney held up his hand again.  Again he performed feats of meditation in plain view.

“At the moment,” he said anxiously, “as the author of this truly magnificent achievement, I have to use the same intellect which produced it, to examine the possibility of its ill-advised use.  May not explorers—­who took off without my having examined their plans and precautions—­may not over-hasty users of my gift to humanity do harm?  May they not find bacteria the human body cannot resist?  May they not bring back plagues and epidemics?  Have they prepared themselves to use my discovery only for the benefit of mankind?  Or have they been precipitous?  I shall have to apply myself to the devising of methods by which my discovery—­made so that Humanity might attain hitherto undreamed-of-heights—­I shall have to devise means by which it will be truly a blessing to mankind!”

Dabney, of course, had tasted the limelight.  All the world considered him the greatest scientist of all time—­except, of course, the people who knew something about science.  But the first actual voyagers in space had become immediately greater heroes than himself.  It was intolerable to Dabney to be restricted to taking bows on programs in which they starred.  So he wrote a star part for himself.