Cochrane squinted at it
with light-dazzled eyes.
Then Babs cried softly:
"Beautiful! Oh, beautiful!"
And Cochrane shielded his eyes and saw the world new-born before him.
The arc of light became an arch and then a crescent, and swelled even as
he looked. Dawn flowed below the space platform, and it seemed that seas
and continents and clouds and beauty poured over the disk of darkness
before him.
He stood here, staring, until the steel shutters slowly closed. Babs
said in regret:
"You have to keep your hand on the button to keep the shutters open.
Else the window might get pitted with dust."
Cochrane said cynically:
"And how much good will it have done me to see that, Babs? How can that
be faked in a studio--and how much would a television screen show of
it?"
He turned away. Then he added sourly:
"You stay and look if you like, Babs. I've already had my vanity smashed
to little bits. If I look at that again I'll want to weep in pure
frustration because I can't do anything even faintly as well worth
watching. I prefer to cut down my notions of the cosmos to a tolerable
size. But you go ahead and look!"
He went back to Holden.
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