Operation: Outer Space

Chapter Two

Cochrane stood when the stewardess' voice authorized the action. With sardonic docility he unfastened his safety–belt and stepped out into the spiral, descending aisle. It seemed strange to have weight again, even as little as this. Cochrane weighed, on the moon, just one–sixth of what he would weigh on Earth. Here he would tip a spring–scale at just about twenty–seven pounds. By flexing his toes, he could jump. Absurdly, he did. And he rose very slowly, and hovered—feeling singularly foolish—and descended with a vast deliberation. He landed on the ramp again feeling absurd indeed. He saw Babs grinning at him.

"I think," said Cochrane, "I'll have to take up toe–dancing."

She laughed. Then there were clankings, and something fastened itself outside, and after a moment the entrance–door of the moonship opened.

They went down the ramp to board the moon–jeep, holding onto the hand–rail and helping each other. The tourist giggled foolishly. They went out the thick doorway and found themselves in an enclosure very much like the interior of a rather small submarine. But it did have shielded windows—ports—and Babs instantly pulled herself into a seat beside one and feasted her eyes. She saw the jagged peaks nearby and the crenelated ring–mountain wall, miles off to one side, and the smooth frozen lava of the "sea." Across that dusty surface the horizon was remarkably near, and Cochrane remembered vaguely that the moon was only one–fourth the size of Earth, so its horizon would naturally be nearer. He glanced at the stars that shone even through the glass that denatured the sunshine. And then he looked for Holden.

The psychiatrist looked puffy and sleepy and haggard and disheveled. When a person does have space–sickness, even a little weight relieves the symptoms, but the consequences last for days.

"Don't worry!" he said sourly when he saw Cochrane's eyes upon him. "I won't waste any time! I'll find my man and get to work at once. Just let me get back to Earth…."

There were more clankings—the jeep–bus sealing off from the rocket. Then the vehicle stirred. The landscape outside began to move.

They saw Lunar City as they approached it. It was five giant dust–heaps, from five hundred–odd feet in height down to three. There were airlocks at their bases and dust–covered tunnels connecting them, and radar–bowls about their sides. But they were dust–heaps. Which was completely reasonable. There is no air on the moon. By day the sun shines down with absolute ferocity. It heats everything as with a furnace–flame. At night all heat radiates away to empty space, and the ground–temperature drops well below that of liquid air. So Lunar City was a group of domes which were essentially half–balloons—hemispheres of plastic brought from Earth and inflated and covered with dust. With airlocks to permit entrance and exit, they were inhabitable. They needed no framework to support them because there were no stormwinds or earthquakes to put stresses on them. They needed neither heating nor cooling equipment. They were buried under forty feet of moon–dust, with vacuum between the dust–grains. Lunar City was not beautiful, but human beings could live in it.

The jeep–bus carried them a bare half mile, and they alighted inside a lock, and another door and another opened and closed, and they emerged into a scene which no amount of television film–tape could really portray.

The main dome was a thousand feet across and half as high. There were green plants growing in tubs and pots. And the air was fresh! It smelled strange. There could be no vegetation on the rocket and it seemed new and blissful to breathe really freshened air after days of the canned variety. But this freshness made Cochrane realize that he'd feel better for a bath.

He took a shower in his hotel room. The room was very much like one on Earth, except that it had no windows. But the shower was strange. The sprays were tiny. Cochrane felt as if he were being sprayed by atomizers rather than shower–nozzles until he noticed that water ran off him very slowly and realized that a normal shower would have been overwhelming. He scooped up a handful of water and let it drop. It took a full second to fall two and a half feet.

It was unsettling, but fresh clothing from his waiting baggage made him feel better. He went to the lounge of the hotel, and it was not a lounge, and the hotel was not a hotel. Everything in the dome was indoors in the sense that it was under a globular ceiling fifty stories high. But everything was also out–doors in the sense of bright light and growing trees and bushes and shrubs.

He found Babs freshly garmented and waiting for him. She said in businesslike tones:

"Mr. Cochrane, I asked at the desk. Doctor Holden has gone to consult Mr. Dabney. He asked that we stay within call. I've sent word to Mr. West and Mr. Jamison and Mr. Bell."

Cochrane approved of her secretarial efficiency.

"Then we'll sit somewhere and wait. Since this isn't an office, we'll find some refreshment."

They asked for a table and got one near the swimming pool. And Babs wore her office manner, all crispness and business, until they were seated. But this swimming pool was not like a pool on Earth. The water was deeply sunk beneath the pool's rim, and great waves surged back and forth. The swimmers—.

Babs gasped. A man stood on a board quite thirty feet above the water. He prepared to dive.

"That's Johnny Simms!" she said, awed.

"Who's he?"

"The playboy," said Babs, staring. "He's a psychopathic personality and his family has millions. They keep him up here out of trouble. He's married."

"Too bad—if he has millions," said Cochrane.

"I wouldn't marry a man with a psychopathic personality!" protested Babs.

"Keep away from people in the advertising business, then," Cochrane told her.

Johnny Simms did not jounce up and down on the diving board to start. He simply leaped upward, and went ceilingward for easily fifteen feet, and hung stationary for a full breath, and then began to descend in literal slow motion. He fell only two and a half feet the first second, and five feet more the one after, and twelve and a half after that…. It took him over four seconds to drop forty–five feet into the water, and the splash that arose when he struck the surface rose four yards and subsided with a lunatic deliberation.

Watching, Babs could not keep her businesslike demeanor. She was bursting with the joyous knowledge that she was on the moon, seeing the impossible and looking at fame.

They sipped at drinks—but the liquid rose much too swiftly in the straws—and Cochrane reflected that the drink in Babs' glass would cost Dabney's father–in–law as much as Babs earned in a week back home, and his own was costing no less.

Presently a written note came from Holden:

"Jed: send West and Jamison right away to Dabney's lunar laboratory to get details of discovery from man named Jones. Get moon–jeep and driver from hotel. I will want you in an hour.—Bill."

"I'll be back," said Cochrane. "Wait."

He left the table and found West and Jamison in Bell's room, all three in conference over a bottle. West and Jamison were Cochrane's scientific team for the yet unformulated task he was to perform. West was the popularizing specialist. He could make a television audience believe that it understood all the seven dimensions required for some branches of wave–mechanics theory. His explanation did not stick, of course. One didn't remember them. But they were singularly convincing in cultural episodes on television productions. Jamison was the prophecy expert. He could extrapolate anything into anything else, and make you believe that a one–week drop in the birthdate on Kamchatka was the beginning of a trend that would leave the Earth depopulated in exactly four hundred and seventy–three years. They were good men for a television producer to have on call. Now, instructed, they went out to be briefed by somebody who undoubtedly knew more than both of them put together, but whom they would regard with tolerant suspicion.

Bell, left behind, said cagily:

"This script I've got to do, now—Will that laboratory be the set? Where is it? In the dome?"

"It's not in the dome," Cochrane told him. "West and Jamison took a moon–jeep to get to it. I don't know what the set will be. I don't know anything, yet. I'm waiting to be told about the job, myself."

"If I've got to cook up a story–line," observed Bell, "I have to know the set. Who'll act? You know how amateurs can ham up any script! How about a part for Babs? Nice kid!"

Cochrane found himself annoyed, without knowing why.

"We just have to wait until we know what our job is," he said curtly, and turned to go.

Bell said:

"One more thing. If you're planning to use a news cameraman up here—don't! I used to be a cameraman before I got crazy and started to write. Let me do the camera–work. I've got a better idea of using a camera to tell a story now, than—"

"Hold it," said Cochrane. "We're not up here to film–tape a show. Our job is psychiatry—craziness."

To a self–respecting producer, a psychiatric production would seem craziness. A script–writer might have trouble writing out a psychiatrist's prescription, or he might not. But producing it would be out of all rationality! No camera, the patient would be the star, and most lines would be ad libbed. Cochrane viewed such a production with extreme distaste. But of course, if a man wanted only to be famous, it might be handled as a straight public–relations job. In any case, though, it would amount to flattery in three dimensions and Cochrane would rather have no part in it. But he had to arrange the whole thing.

He went back to the table and rejoined Babs. She confided that she'd been talking to Johnny Simms' wife. She was nice! But homesick. Cochrane sat down and thought morbid thoughts. Then he realized that he was irritated because Babs didn't notice. He finished his drink and ordered another.

Half an hour later, Holden found them. He had in tow a sad–looking youngish man with a remarkably narrow forehead and an expression of deep anxiety. Cochrane winced. A neurotic type if there ever was one!

"Jed," said Holden heartily, "here's Mr. Dabney. Mr. Dabney, Jed Cochrane is here as a specialist in public–relations set–ups. He'll take charge of this affair. Your father–in–law sent him up here to see that you are done justice to!"

Dabney seemed to think earnestly before he spoke.

"It is not for myself," he explained in an anxious tone. "It is my work! That is important! After all, this is a fundamental scientific discovery! But nobody pays any attention! It is extremely important! Extremely! Science itself is held back by the lack of attention paid to my discovery!"

"Which," Holden assured him, "is about to be changed. It's a matter of public relations. Jed's a specialist. He'll take over."

The sad–faced young man held up his hand for attention. He thought. Visibly. Then he said worriedly:

"I would take you over to my laboratory, but I promised my wife I would call her in half an hour from now. Johnny Simms' wife just reminded me. My wife is back on Earth. So you will have to go to the laboratory without me and have Mr. Jones show you the proof of my work. A very intelligent man, Jones—in a subordinate way, of course. Yes. I will get you a jeep and you can go there at once, and when you come back you can tell me what you plan. But you understand that it is not for myself that I want credit! It is my discovery! It is terribly important! It is vital! It must not be overlooked!"

Holden escorted him away, while Cochrane carefully controlled his features. After a few moments Holden came back, his face sagging.

"This your drink, Jed?" he asked dispiritedly. "I need it!" He picked up the glass and emptied it. "The history of that case would be interesting, if one could really get to the bottom of it! Come along!" His tone was dreariness itself. "I've got a jeep waiting for us."

Babs stood up, her eyes shining.

"May I come, Mr. Cochrane?"

Cochrane waved her along. Holden tried to stalk gloomily, but nobody can stalk in one–sixth gravity. He reeled, and then depressedly accommodated himself to conditions on the moon.

There was an airlock with a smaller edition of the moon–jeep that had brought them from the ship to the city. It was a brightly–polished metal body, raised some ten feet off the ground on outrageously large wheels. It was very similar to the straddle–trucks used in lumberyards on Earth. It would straddle boulders in its path. It could go anywhere in spite of dust and detritus, and its metal body was air–tight and held air for breathing, even out on the moon's surface.

They climbed in. There was the sound of pumping, which grew fainter. The outer lock–door opened. The moon–jeep rolled outside.

Babs stared with passionate rapture out of a shielded port. There were impossibly jagged stones, preposterously steep cliffs. There had been no weather to remove the sharp edge of anything in a hundred million years. The awkward–seeming vehicle trundled over the lava sea toward the rampart of mighty mountains towering over Lunar City. It reached a steep ascent. It climbed. And the way was remarkably rough and the vehicle springless, but it was nevertheless a cushioned ride. A bump cannot be harsh in light gravity. The vehicle rode as if on wings.

"All right," said Cochrane. "Tell me the worst. What's the trouble with him? Is he the result of six generations of keeping the money in the family? Or is he a freak?"

Holden groaned a little.

"He's practically a stock model of a rich young man without brains enough for a job in the family firm, and too much money for anything else. Fortunately for his family, he didn't react like Johnny Simms—though they're good friends. A hundred years ago, Dabney'd have gone in for the arts. But it's hard to fool yourself that way now. Fifty years ago he'd have gone in for left–wing sociology. But we really are doing the best that can be done with too many people and not enough world. So he went in for science. It's non–competitive. Incapacity doesn't show up. But he has stumbled on something. It sounds really important. It must have been an accident! The only trouble is that it doesn't mean a thing! Yet because he's accomplished more than he ever expected to, he's frustrated because it's not appreciated! What a joke!"

Cochrane said cynically:

"You paint a dark picture, Bill. Are you trying to make this thing into a challenge?"

"You can't make a man famous for discovering something that doesn't matter," said Holden hopelessly. "And this is that!"

"Nothing's impossible to public relations if you spend enough money," Cochrane assured him. "What's this useless triumph of his?"

The jeep bounced over a small cliff and fell gently for half a second and rolled on. Babs beamed.

"He's found," said Holden discouragedly, "a way to send messages faster than light. It's a detour around Einstein's stuff—not denying it, but evading it. Right now it takes not quite two seconds for a message to go from the moon to Earth. That's at the speed of light. Dabney has proof—we'll see it—that he can cut that down some ninety–five per cent. Only it can't be used for Earth–moon communication, because both ends have to be in a vacuum. It could be used to the space platform, but—what's the difference? It's a real discovery for which there's no possible use. There's no place to send messages to!"

Cochrane's eyes grew bright and hard. There were some three thousand million suns in the immediate locality of Earth—and more only a relatively short distance way—and it had not mattered to anybody. The situation did not seem likely to change. But—The moon–jeep climbed and climbed. It was a mile above the bay of the lava sea and the dust–heaps that were a city. It looked like ten miles, because of the curve of the horizon. The mountains all about looked like a madman's dream.

"But he wants appreciation!" said Holden angrily. "People on Earth almost trampling on each other for lack of room, and people like me trying to keep them sane when they've every reason for despair—and he wants appreciation!"

Cochrane grinned. He whistled softly.

"Never underestimate a genius, Bill," he said kindly. "I refer modestly to myself. In two weeks your patient—I'll guarantee it—will be acclaimed the hope, the blessing, the greatest man in all the history of humanity! It'll be phoney, of course, but we'll have Marilyn Winters—Little Aphrodite herself—making passes at him in hopes of a publicity break! It's a natural!"

"How'll you do it?" demanded Holden.

The moon–jeep turned in its crazy, bumping progress. A flat area had been blasted in rock which had been unchanged since the beginning of time. Here there was a human structure. Typically, it was a dust–heap leaning against a cliff. There was an airlock and another jeep waited outside, and there were eccentric metal devices on the flat space, shielded from direct sunshine and with cables running to them from the airlock door.

"How?" repeated Cochrane. "I'll get the details here. Let's go! How do we manage?"

It was a matter, he discovered, of vacuum–suits, and they were tricky to get into and felt horrible when one was in. Struggling, Cochrane thought to say:

"You can wait here in the jeep, Babs—"

But she was already climbing into a suit very much oversized for her, with the look of high excitement that Cochrane had forgotten anybody could wear.

They got out of a tiny airlock that held just one person at a time. They started for the laboratory. And suddenly Cochrane saw Babs staring upward through the dark, almost–opaque glass that a space–suit–helmet needs in the moon's daytime if its occupant isn't to be fried by sunlight. Cochrane automatically glanced up too.

He saw Earth. It hung almost in mid–sky. It was huge. It was gigantic. It was colossal. It was four times the diameter of the moon as seen from Earth, and it covered sixteen times as much of the sky. Its continents were plain to see, and its seas, and the ice–caps at its poles gleamed whitely, and over all of it there was a faintly bluish haze which was like a glamour; a fey and eerie veiling which made Earth a sight to draw at one's heart–strings.

Behind it and all about it there was the background of space, so thickly jeweled with stars that there seemed no room for another tiny gem.

Cochrane looked. He said nothing. Holden stumbled on to the airlock. He remembered to hold the door open for Babs.

And then there was the interior of the laboratory. It was not wholly familiar even to Cochrane, who had used sets on the Dikkipatti Hour of most of the locations in which human dramas can unfold. This was a physics laboratory, pure and simple. The air smelled of ozone and spilled acid and oil and food and tobacco–smoke and other items. West and Jamison were already here, their space–suits removed. They sat before beer at a table with innumerable diagrams scattered about. There was a deep–browed man rather impatiently turning to face his new visitors.

Holden clumsily unfastened the face–plate of his helmet and gloomily explained his mission. He introduced Cochrane and Babs, verifying in the process that the dark man was the Jones he had come to see. A physics laboratory high in the fastnesses of the Lunar Apennines is an odd place for a psychiatrist to introduce himself on professional business. But Holden only explained unhappily that Dabney had sent them to learn about his discovery and arrange for a public–relations job to make it known.

Cochrane saw Jones' expression flicker sarcastically just once during Holden's explanation. Otherwise he was poker–faced.

"I was explaining the discovery to these two," he observed.

"Shoot it," said Cochrane to West. It was reasonable to ask West for an explanation, because he would translate everything into televisable terms.

West said briskly—exactly as if before a television camera—that Mr. Dabney had started from the well–known fact that the properties of space are modified by energy fields. Magnetic and gravitational and electrostatic fields rotate polarized light or bend light or do this or that as the case may be. But all previous modifications of the constants of space had been in essentially spherical fields. All previous fields had extended in all directions, increasing in intensity as the square of the distance …

"Cut," said Cochrane.

West automatically abandoned his professional delivery. He placidly re–addressed himself to his beer.

"How about it, Jones?" asked Cochrane. "Dabney's got a variation? What is it?"

"It's a field of force that doesn't spread out. You set up two plates and establish this field between them," said Jones curtly. "It's circularly polarized and it doesn't expand. It's like a searchlight beam or a microwave beam, and it stays the same size like a pipe. In that field—or pipe—radiation travels faster than it does outside. The properties of space are changed between the plates. Therefore the speed of all radiation. That's all."

Cochrane meditatively seated himself. He approved of this Jones, whose eyebrows practically met in the middle of his forehead. He was not more polite than politeness required. He did not express employer–like rapture at the mention of his employer's name.

"But what can be done with it?" asked Cochrane practically.

"Nothing," said Jones succinctly. "It changes the properties of space, but that's all. Can you think of any use for a faster–than–light radiation–pipe? I can't."

Cochrane cocked an eye at Jamison, who could extrapolate at the drop of an equation. But Jamison shook his head.

"Communication between planets," he said morosely, "when we get to them. Chats between sweethearts on Earth and Pluto. Broadcasts to the stars when we find that another one's set up a similar plate and is ready to chat with us. There's nothing else."

Cochrane waved his hand. It is good policy to put a specialist in his place, occasionally.

"Demonstration?" he asked Jones.

"There are plates across the crater out yonder," said Jones without emotion. "Twenty miles clear reach. I can send a message across and get it relayed twice and back through two angles in about five per cent of the time radiation ought to take."

Cochrane said with benign cynicism:

"Jamison, you work by guessing where you can go. Jones works by guessing where he is. But this is a public relations job. I don't know where we are or where we can go, but I know where we want to take this thing."

Jones looked at him. Not hostilely, but with the detached interest of a man accustomed to nearly exact science, when he watches somebody work in one of the least precise of them all.

Holden said:

"You mean you've worked out some sort of production."

"No production," said Cochrane blandly. "It isn't necessary. A straight public–relations set–up. We concoct a story and then let it leak out. We make it so good that even the people who don't believe it can't help spreading it." He nodded at Jamison. "Right now, Jamison, we want a theory that the sending of radiation at twenty times the speed of light means that there is a way to send matter faster than light—as soon as we work it out. It means that the inertia–mass which increases with speed—Einstein's stuff—is not a property of matter, but of space, just as the air–resistance that increases when an airplane goes faster is a property of air and not of the plane. Maybe we need to work out a theory that all inertia is a property of space. We'll see if we need that. But anyhow, just as a plane can go faster in thin air, so matter—any matter—will move faster in this field as soon as we get the trick of it. You see?"

Holden shook his head.

"What's that got in it to make Dabney famous?" he asked.

"Jamison will extrapolate from there," Cochrane assured him. "Go ahead, Jamison. You're on."

Jamison said promptly, with the hypnotic smoothness of the practiced professional:

"When this development has been completed, not only will messages be sent at multiples of the speed of light, but matter! Ships! The barrier to the high destiny of mankind; the limitation of our race to a single planet of a minor sun—these handicaps crash and will shatter as the great minds of humanity bend their efforts to make the Dabney faster–than–light principle the operative principle of our ships. There are thousands of millions of suns in our galaxy, and not less than one in three has planets, and among these myriads of unknown worlds there will be thousands with seas and land and clouds and continents, fit for men to enter upon, there to rear their cities. There will be starships roaming distant sun–clusters, and landing on planets in the Milky Way. We ourselves will see freight–lines to Rigel and Arcturus, and journey on passenger–liners singing through the void to Andromeda and Aldebaran! Dabney has made the first breach in the barrier to the illimitable greatness of humanity!"

Then he stopped and said professionally:

"I can polish that up a bit, of course. All right?"

"Fair," conceded Cochrane. He turned to Holden. "How about a public–relations job on that order? Won't that sort of publicity meet the requirements? Will your patient be satisfied with that grade of appreciation?"

Holden drew a deep breath. He said unsteadily:

"As a neurotic personality, he won't require that it be true. All he'll want is the seeming. But—Jed, could it be really true? Could it?"

Cochrane laughed unpleasantly. He did not admire himself. His laughter showed it.

"What do you want?" he demanded. "You got me a job I didn't want. You shoved it down my throat! Now there's the way to get it done! What more can you ask?"

Holden winced. Then he said heavily:

"I'd like for it to be true."

Jones moved suddenly. He said in an oddly surprised voice:

"D'you know, it can be! I didn't realize! It can be true! I can make a ship go faster than light!"

Cochrane said with exquisite irony:

"Thanks, but we don't need it. We aren't getting paid for that! All we need is a modicum of appreciation for a neurotic son–in–law of a partner of Kursten, Kasten, Hopkins and Fallowe! A public–relations job is all that's required. You give West the theory, and Jamison will do the prophecy, and Bell will write it out."

Jones said calmly:

"I will like hell! Look! I discovered this faster–than–light field in the first place! I sold it to Dabney because he wanted to be famous! I got my pay and he can keep it! But if he can't understand it himself, even to lecture about it … Do you think I'm going to throw in some extra stuff I noticed, that I can fit into that theory but nobody else can—Do you think I'm going to give him starships as a bonus?"

Holden said, nodding, with his lips twisted:

"I should have figured that! He bought his great discovery from you, eh? And that's what he gets frustrated about!"

Cochrane snapped:

"I thought you psychiatrists knew the facts of life, Bill! Dabney's not unusual in my business! He's almost a typical sponsor!"

"When you ask me to throw away starships," said Jones coldly, "for a publicity feature, I don't play. I won't take the credit for the field away from Dabney. I sold him that with my eyes open. But starships are more important than a fool's hankering to be famous! He'd never try it! He'd be afraid it wouldn't work! I don't play!"

Holden said stridently:

"I don't give a damn about any deal you made with Dabney! But if you can get us to the stars—all us humans who need it—you've got to!"

Jones said, again calmly:

"I'm willing. Make me an offer—not cash, but a chance to do something real—not just a trick for a neurotic's ego!"

Cochrane grinned at him very peculiarly.

"I like your approach. You've got illusions. They're nice things to have. I wouldn't mind having some myself. Bill," he said to Dr. William Holden, "how much nerve has Dabney?"

"Speaking unprofessionally," said Holden, "he's a worm with wants. He hasn't anything but cravings. Why?"

Cochrane grinned again, his head cocked on one side.

"He wouldn't take part in an enterprise to reach the stars, would he?" When Holden shook his head, Cochrane said zestfully, "I'd guess that the peak of his ambition would be to have the credit for it if it worked, but he wouldn't risk being associated with it until it had worked! Right?"

"Right," said Holden. "I said he was a worm. What're you driving at?"

"I'm outlining what you're twisting my arm to make me do," said Cochrane, "in case you haven't noticed. Bill, if Jones can really make a ship go faster than light—"

"I can," repeated Jones. "I simply didn't think of the thing in connection with travel. I only thought of it for signalling."

"Then," said Cochrane, "I'm literally forced, for Dabney's sake, to do something that he'd scream shrilly at if he heard about it. We're going to have a party, Bill! A party after your and my and Jones' hearts!"

"What do you mean?" demanded Holden.

"We make a production after all," said Cochrane, grinning. "We are going to take Dabney's discovery—the one he bought publicity rights to—very seriously indeed. I'm going to get him acclaim. First we break a story of what Dabney's field means for the future of mankind—and then we prove it! We take a journey to the stars! Want to make your reservations now?"

"You mean," said West incredulously, "a genuine trip? Why?"

Cochrane snapped at him suddenly.

"Because I can't kid myself any more," he rasped. "I've found out how little I count in the world and the estimation of Kursten, Kasten, Hopkins and Fallowe! I've found out I'm only a little man when I thought I was a big one, and I won't take it! Now I've got an excuse to try to be a big man! That's reason enough, isn't it?"

Then he glared around the small laboratory under the dust–heap. He was irritated because he did not feel splendid emotions after making a resolution and a plan which ought to go down in history—if it worked. He wasn't uplifted. He wasn't aware of any particular feeling of being the instrument of destiny or anything else. He simply felt peevish and annoyed and obstinate about trying the impossible trick.

It annoyed him additionally, perhaps, to see the expression of starry–eyed admiration on Babs' face as she looked at him across the untidy laboratory table, cluttered up with beer–cans.