The rockets cut off.

The airlock door opened.  Cochrane and Babs waved cheerfully from the edge of the clearing.  Holden appeared in the door and shouted down: 

“Sorry to be so long coming back.”

He waved and vanished.  They had, of course, to wait until the ground at least partly cooled before the landing-sling could be used.  Around them the noises of the forest continued.  There were cooling, crackling sounds from the ship.

“I wonder how they found their way back!” said Babs.  “I didn’t think they ever could.  Did you?”

“Babs,” said Cochrane, “you lied to me!  You said you’d wake me in two hours.  But you let me sleep all night!”

“You’d let me sleep the night before,” she told him composedly.  “I was fresher than you were, and today’d have been a pretty bad one.  We were going to try to kill some animals.  You needed the rest.”

Cochrane said slowly: 

“I found out something, Babs.  Why you could face things.  Why we humans haven’t all gone mad.  I think I’ve gotten the woman’s viewpoint now, Babs.  I like it.”

She inspected the looming blister-ports of the ship, now waiting for the ground to cool so they could come aboard.

“I think we’d have made out if the ship hadn’t come,” Cochrane told her.  “We’d have had a woman’s viewpoint to work from.  Yours.  You looked ahead to building a house.  Of course you thought of finding food, but you were thinking of the possibility of winter and—­building a house.  You weren’t thinking only of survival.  You were thinking far ahead.  Women must think farther ahead than men do!”

Babs looked at him briefly, and then returned to her apparently absorbed contemplation of the ship.

“That’s what’s the matter with people back on Earth,” Cochrane said urgently.  “There’s no frustration as long as women can look ahead—­far ahead, past here and now!  When women can do that, they can keep men going.  It’s when there’s nothing to plan for that men can’t go on because women can’t hope.  You see?  You saw a city here.  A little city, with separate homes.  On Earth, too many people can’t think of more than living-quarters and keeping food enough for them—­them only!—­coming in.  They can’t hope for more.  And it’s when that happens—­You see?”

Babs did not answer.  Cochrane fumbled.  He said angrily: 

“Confound it, can’t you see what I’m trying to say?  We’d have been better off, as castaways, than back on Earth crowded and scared of our jobs!  I’m saying I’d rather stay here with you than go back to the way I was living before we started off on this voyage!  I think the two of us could make out under any circumstances!  I don’t want to try to make out without you!  It isn’t sense!” Then he scowled helplessly.  “Dammit, I’ve staged plenty of shows in which a man asked a girl to marry him, and they were all phoney.  It’s different, now that I mean it!  What’s a good way to ask you to marry me?”