Sunshine blinked, and then shone again in the ports around the saloon
walls. The second shining came from a different direction--as if
somebody had switched off one exterior light and turned on another--and
at a different angle to the floor.
Cochrane reached the communicator. He felt no weight. He strapped
himself into the chair. He switched on the vision-phone which sent
radiation along the field to a balloon two hundred odd light-years from
Earth--that was the balloon near the glacier planet--and then switched
to the field traveling to a second balloon then the last hundred
seventy-odd light-years back to the moon, and then from Luna City down
to Earth.
He put in his call. He got an emergency message that had been waiting
for him. Seconds later he fought his way frantically through no-weight
to the control-room again.
"Jamison! Bell!" he cried desperately. "We've got a broadcast due in
twenty minutes! I lost track of time! We're sponsored on four continents
and we damwell have to put on a show! What the devil! Why didn't
somebody--"
Jamison said obviously from a blister-port where he swung a squat
star-telescope from one object to another:
"Noo-o-o.
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