Bennett.’ ‘Well, this time, you can’t blame optical science! The moon is six hundred times nearer than Mars, and yet our correspondence service is in regular operation with Mars. It can’t be telescopes we need…’ ‘No, it’s the inhabitants ,’ Corley replied. ‘You dare tell me that the moon is uninhabited?’ ‘On the face it turns towards us, at any rate, Mr Bennett.
Who knows whether on the other side…’ ‘Well, there’s a very simple method of finding out.’ 10th - - ‘And that is?’ ‘To turn the moon round!’ And that very day, the scientists of the Bennett factory started working out some mechanical means of turning our satellite right round. On the whole, Francis Bennett had reason to be satisfied. One of the Earth Herald’s astronomers had just determined the elements of the new planet Gandini. It is at a distance of , , , , metres and decimetres that this planet describes its orbit round the sun in years, days, hours, minutes, .
seconds. Francis Bennett was delighted with such precision. ‘Good!’ he exclaimed. ‘Hurry up and tell the reportage service about it.
You know what a passion the public has for these astronomical questions. I’m anxious for the news to appear in today’s issue!’ The next room, a broad gallery about a quarter of a mile long, was devoted to publicity, and it well may be imagined what the publicity for such a journal as the Earth Herald had to be. It brought in a daily average of three million dollars. They are gigantic signs reflected on the clouds, so large that they can be seen all over a whole country.
From that gallery a thousand projectors were unceasingly employed in sending to the clouds, on which they were reproduced in colour, these inordinate advertisements. At that moment the clock struck twelve. The director of the Earth Herald left the hall and sat down in a rolling armchair. In a few minutes he had reached his dining room half a mile away, at the far end of the office.