news-association reporters in Lunar City. He confided that Spaceways,
Inc., had been organized and was backed to develop the Dabney
faster-than-light-signalling field into a faster-than-light-travel
field. The news men pumped him of all his extrapolations. Cynically,
they checked to see who might be preparing to unload stock. They found
no preparations for stock-sales. No registration of the company for
raising funds. It wasn't going to the public for money. It wasn't
selling anybody anything. Then Cochrane refused to see any reporters at
all, everybody connected with the enterprise shut up tighter than a
clam, and Jamison vanished into a hotel room where he was kept occupied
with beverages and food at Dabney's father-in-law's expense. None of
this was standard for a phoney promotion deal.

The news story exploded. Let loose on an overcrowded planet which had
lost all hope of relief after fifty years in which only the moon had
been colonized--and its colony had a population in the hundreds,
only--the idea of faster-than-light travel was the one impossible dream
that everybody wanted to believe in. The story spread in a manner that
could only be described as chain-reaction in character. And of course
Dabney--as the scientist responsible for the new hope--became known to
all peoples.

The experts of Kursten, Kasten, Hopkins and Fallowe checked on the
publicity given to Dabney. Strict advertising agency accounting figured
that to date the cost-per-customer-mention of Dabney and his discovery
were the lowest in the history of advertising. Surveys disclosed that
within three Earth-days less than 3.5 of every hundred interviews
questioned were completely ignorant of Dabney and the prospect of travel
to the stars through his discovery. More people knew Dabney's name than
knew the name of the President of the United States!