"
Cochrane waved his hands at them. They went away, stumbling and holding
on to each other in the eerie dream-likeness and nightmarish situation
of no-weight-whatever. There were other passengers from the moon-rocket
in this great central space of the platform. There was a fat woman
looking indignantly at the picture of a weighing-scale painted on the
wall. Somebody had painted it, with a dial-hand pointing to zero pounds.
A sign said, "_Honest weight, no gravity._" There was the stewardess
from the rocket, off duty here. She smoked a cigarette in the blast of
an electric fan. There was a party of moon-tourists giggling foolishly
and clutching at everything and buying souvenirs to mail back to Earth.
"All right, Bill," said Cochrane. "They're gone. Now tell me why all the
not inconsiderable genius in the employ of Kursten, Kasten, Hopkins and
Fallowe, in my person, has been mobilized and sent up to the moon?"
Bill Holden swallowed. He stood up with his eyes closed, holding onto a
side-rail in the great central room of the platform.
"I have to keep my eyes shut," he explained, queasily. "It makes me ill
to see people walking on side-walls and across ceilings.
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