still, and twelve million in yet another ... Big cities. Swarming
millions of people, all desperately anxious--so Cochrane realized
bitterly--all desperately anxious about their jobs and keeping them.

"Even as me and I," said Cochrane harshly to himself. "Sure! I'm shaking
in my shoes right along with the rest of them!"

But it hurt to realize that he'd been kidding himself. He'd thought he
was important. Important, at least, to the advertising firm of Kursten,
Kasten, Hopkins and Fallowe. But right now he was on the way--like a
common legman--to take the moon-rocket to Lunar City, and he'd been
informed of it just thirty minutes ago. Then he'd been told casually to
get to the rocket-port right away. His secretary and two technical men
and a writer were taking the same rocket. He'd get his instructions from
Dr. William Holden on the way.

A part of his mind said indignantly, "_Wait till I get Hopkins on the
phone! It was a mixup! He wouldn't send me off anywhere with the
Dikkipatti Hour depending on me! He's not that crazy!_" But he was on
his way to the space-port, regardless. He'd raged when the message
reached him. He'd insisted that he had to talk to Hopkins in person
before he obeyed any such instructions. But he was on his way to the
space-port. He was riding in a helicab, and he was making adjustments in
his own mind to the humiliation he unconsciously foresaw. There were
really three levels of thought in his mind. One had adopted a defensive
cynicism, and one desperately insisted that he couldn't be as
unimportant as his instructions implied, and the third watched the other
two as the helicab flew with cushioned booming noises over the dark
canyons of the city and the innumerable lonely lights of the rooftops.