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. Holden was painfully dragging himself back into the rocket-ship. Cochrane went with him. They returned, weightless, to the admirably designed contour-chairs in which they had traveled to this place, and in which they would travel farther. Cochrane settled down to stare numbly at the wall above him. He had been humiliated enough by the actions of one of the heads of an advertising agency. He found himself resenting, even as he experienced, the humbling which had been imposed upon him by the cosmos itself. Presently the other passengers returned, and the moonship was maneuvered out of the lock and to emptiness again, and again presently rockets roared and there was further feeling of intolerable weight. But it was not as bad as the take-off from Earth. There followed some ninety-six hours of pure tedium. After the first accelerating blasts, the rockets were silent. There was no weight. There was nothing to hear except the droning murmur of unresting electric fans, stirring the air ceaselessly so that excess moisture from breathing could be extracted by the dehumidifiers. But for them--if the air had been left stagnant--the journey would have been insupportable. There was nothing to see, because ports opening on outer space were not safe for passengers to look through. Mere humans, untrained to keep their minds on technical matters, could break down at the spectacle of the universe. There could be no activity. Some of the passengers took dozy-pills. Cochrane did not. It was against the law for dozy-pills to produce a sensation of euphoria, of well-being. The law considered that pleasure might lead to addiction. But if a pill merely made a person drowsy, so that he dozed for hours halfway between sleeping and awake, no harm appeared to be done. Yet there were plenty of dozy-pill addicts. Many people were not especially anxious to feel good. They were quite satisfied not to feel anything at all.