smoothness of the far horizon had been broken at last; two tiny, twinkling stars had appeared on that perfect arc dividing Sea and space. The dust-skis were coming up over the face of the Moon.
Even with the longest focus of the zoom lens, they looked small and distant. That was the way Jules wanted it; he was anxious to give the impression of loneliness, emptiness. He shot a quick glance at the ship's main screen, now tuned to the Interplanet channel. Yes, they were carrying him.
He reached into his pocket, pulled out a small diary, and laid it on top of the camera. He lifted the cover, which locked into position just short of the vertical - and immediately became alive with color and movement. At the same time a faint gnat-sized voice started to tell him that this was a special program of the Interplanet News Service, Channel One Oh Seven - and We Will Now Be Taking You Over to the Moon.
On the tiny screen was the picture he was seeing directly on his monitor. No - not quite the same picture. This was the one he had captured two and a half seconds ago; he was looking that far into the past. In those two and a halt million microseconds - to change to the time scale of the electronic engineer - this scene had undergone many adventures and transformations. From his camera it had been piped to Auriga's transmitter, and beamed straight up to Lagrange, fifty thousand kilometers overhead. There it had been snatched out of space, boosted a few hundred times, and sped Earthward to be caught by one or another of the satellite relays. Then down through the ionosphere - that last hundred kilometers the hardest of all - to the Interplanet Building, where its adventures really began, as it joined the ceaseless flood of sounds and sights and electrical impulses which informed and amused a substantial fraction of the human race.
And here it was again, after passing through the hands of program directors and special-effects departments and engineering assistants - right back where it started, broadcast over the whole of Earthside from the high-power transmitter on Lagrange II, and over the whole of Farside from Lagrange I. To span the single hand's breadth from Jules's TV camera to his pocket-diary receiver, that image had traveled three quarters of a million kilometers.
He wondered if it was worth the trouble. Men had been wondering that ever since television was invented.
Chapter 21
Lawrence spotted Auriga while he was still fifteen kilometers away; he could scarcely have failed to do so, for she was a conspicuous object, as the sunlight glistened from her plastic and metal.
What the devil's that? he asked himself, and answered the question at once. It was obviously a ship, and he remembered hearing vague rumors that some news network had chartered a flight to the mountains. That was not his business, though at one time he himself had looked into the question of landing equipment there, to cut out this tedious haul across the Sea. Unfortunately, the plan wouldn't work. There was no safe landing point within five hundred meters of Sea level; the ledge that had been so convenient for Spenser was at too great an altitude to be of use.
The Chief Engineer was not sure that he liked the idea of having his every move watched by long-focus lenses up in the hills - not that there was anything he could do about it. He had already vetoed an attempt to put a camera on his ski-to the enormous relief, though Lawrence did not know it, of Interplanet News, and the extreme frustration of the other services. Then he realized that it might well be useful having a ship only a few kilometers away. It would provide an additional information channel, and perhaps they could utilize its services in some other way. It might even provide hospitality until the igloos could be ferried out.
Where was the marker? Surely it should be in sight by now! For an uncomfortable moment Lawrence thought that it had fallen down and disappeared into the dust. That would not stop them finding Selene, of course, but it might delay them five or ten minutes at a time when every second was vital.
He breathed a sigh of relief; he had overlooked the thin shaft against the blazing background of the mountains. His pilot had already spotted their goal and had changed course slightly to head toward it.
The skis