“Hm,” said Cochrane when the films were all run through.  “Ice-caps and land and seas.  Plenty of green vegetation, so presumably the air is normal for humans.  Since you’re alive, Holden, we can assume it isn’t instantly fatal, can’t we?  The gravity’s tolerable—­a little on the light side, maybe, compared to the glacier planet.”

He was silent, staring at the blank wall of the control-room.  He frowned.  Suddenly he said: 

“Does anybody back on Earth know that Babs and I were castaways?”

“No,” said Holden, still very quiet indeed.  “Alicia ran the control-board.  She told everybody you were too busy to be called to the communicator.  It was queer with you away!  Jamison and Bell tied themselves in chairs and spliced tape.  Johnny, of course”—­his voice was very carefully toneless—­“wouldn’t do anything useful.  I was space-sick a lot of the time.  But I did help Alicia figure out what to say on the communicator.  There must be hundreds of calls backed up for you to take.”

“Good!” said Cochrane.  “I’ll go take some of them.  Jones, could we make a flit to somewhere else on this planet?”

Jones said negligently,

“I told you we’ve got fuel to reach the Milky Way.  Where do you want to go?”

“Anywhere,” said Cochrane.  “The scenery isn’t dramatic enough here for a new broadcast.  We’ve got to have some lurid stuff for our next show.  Things are shaping up except for the need of just the right scenery to send back to Earth.”

“What kind of scenery do you want?”

“Animals preferred,” said Cochrane.  “Dinosaurs would do.  Or buffalo or a reasonable facsimile.  What I’d actually like more than anything else would really be a herd of buffalo.”

Jamison gasped.

“Buffalo?”

“Meat,” said Cochrane in an explanatory tone.  “On the hoof.  The public-relations job all this has turned into, demands a careful stimulation of all the basic urges.  So I want people to think of steaks and chops and roasts.  If I could get herds of animals from one horizon to another—.”

“Meat-herds coming up,” said Jones negligently.  “I’ll call you.”

Cochrane did not believe him.  He went down to the communicator again.  He prepared to take the calls from Earth that had been backed up behind the emergency demand for an immediate broadcast-show that he’d met while the ship came to its landing.  There was an enormous amount of business piled up.  And it was slow work handling it.  His voice took six seconds to pass through something over two hundred light-years of space in the Dabney field, and then two seconds in normal space from the relay in Lunar City.  It was twelve seconds between the time he finished saying something before the first word of the reply reached him.  It was very slow communication.  He reflected annoyedly that he’d have to ask Jones to make a special Dabney field communication field as strong as was necessary to take care of the situation.