They went on and on, admiring and amazed.  All about them were curiosities of adaptation, freaks of ecological adjustment, marvels of symbiotic cooperation.  A botanist would have swooned with joy at the material all about.  A biologist would have babbled happily.  Babs and Cochrane admired without information.  They walked interestedly but unawed among the unparalleled.  Back on Earth they knew as much as most people about nature—­practically nothing at all.  Babs had never seen any wild plants before.  She was fascinated by what she saw, and exclaimed at everything.  But she did not realize a fraction of the marvels on which her eyes rested.  On the whole, she survived.

“It’s a pity we haven’t got a helicopter,” Cochrane said regretfully.  “If we could fly around from place to place, and send back pictures ...  We can’t do it in the ship ...  It would burn more fuel than we’ve got.”

Babs wrinkled her forehead.

“Doctor Holden’s badly worried because we can’t make as alluring a picture as he’d like.”

Cochrane halted, to watch something which was flat like a disk of gray-green flesh and which moved slowly out of their path with disquieting writhing motions.  It vanished, and he said: 

“Yes.  Bill’s an honest man, even if he is a psychiatrist.  He wants desperately to do something for the poor devils back home who’re so pitifully frustrated.  There are tens of millions of men who can’t hope for anything better than to keep the food and shelter supply intact for themselves and their families.  They can’t even pretend to hope for more than that.  There isn’t more than so much to go around.  But Bill wants to give them hope.  He figures that without hope the world will turn madhouse in another generation.  It will.”

“You’re trying to do something about that!” said Babs quickly.  “Don’t you think you’re offering hope to everybody back on Earth?”

“No!” snapped Cochrane.  “I’m not trying anything so abstract as furnishing hope to a frustrated humanity!  Nobody can supply an abstraction!  Nobody can accomplish an abstraction!  Everything that’s actually done is specific and real!  Maybe you can find abstract qualities in it after it’s done, but I’m a practical man!  I’m not trying to produce an improved psychological climate, suitable for debilitated psychos!  I’m trying to get a job done!”

“I’ve wondered,” admitted Babs, “what the job is.”

Cochrane grimaced.

“You wouldn’t believe it, Babs.”

There was an odd quivering underfoot.  Trees shook.  There was no other peculiarity anywhere.  Nothing fell.  No rocks rolled.  In a valley among volcanoes, where the smoke from no less than six cones could be seen at once, temblors would not do damage.  What damage mild shakings could do would have been done centuries since.

Babs said uneasily: 

“That feels—­queer, doesn’t it?”

Cochrane nodded.  But just as he and Babs had never been conditioned to be afraid of animals, they had been conditioned by air-travel at home and space-travel to here against alarm at movements of their surroundings.  Temblors were evidently frequent at this place.  Trees were anchored against them as against prevailing winds in exposed situations.  Landslides did not remain poised to fall.  Really unstable slopes had been shaken down long ago.