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,