Wine of the Dreamers

Eleven

Bard Lane heard his name called. He turned to see Major Tommy Leeber striding diagonally across the street from the mess hall to intercept him.

Major Leeber’s smile sat a shade stiffly on his lips and his eyes were narrowed.

“I hope you have a minute, Dr. Lane.”

“Not very much more than that, I’m afraid, Major. What seems to be the trouble?”

“According to the records, Dr. Lane, my loyalty check was tops. And my brain waves passed all Sharan’s witchdoctor techniques. So what’s with these two shadows I’ve picked up?” He jerked his thumb back over his shoulder toward the two guards who stood several paces behind him, obviously uncomfortable.

“Those men are assigned to you in accordance with new operating instructions, Major.”

“If you think you can chase me out of here by making me so uncomfortable that—”

“Major, I don’t care for your tone, and I can’t say much for your powers of observation. Everyone with access to fabrication zones and lab areas is subject to the new orders. You will notice that I have a guard too. We are in a critical phase. If you start acting irrational, you’ll be grabbed and held until you can be examined. Me too. As a matter of fact, you have it a bit easier than I do. Part of my job is to watch the guard while he watches me. We’re using this method as a defense against any... temporary insanity where Dr. Inly did not detect the susceptibility of the employee.”

“Look, how do I get rid of these boys?”

“Leave the project area, Major.”

Leeber knuckled his chin. “Look, Doc. I happen to know that you’re not getting new help in here. So where do the extra guards come from?”

“Other occupational classifications.”

“Which slows down the works plenty, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, it does.”

“Already you are in plenty of hot water because of being so far behind schedule, Dr. Lane. Doesn’t delaying it further seem to be a funny thing to do right now?”

For a moment Bard wondered how his knuckles would feel against the dark military moustache, the full lips. It would be a pleasure to see Major Leeber on the seat of his pants in the street.

“You may report this new development to General Sachson, Major. You may tell him that if he cares to, he can reverse this security regulation of mine. But it will be made a matter of record. Then, if someone else should get as destructive as Kornal did, the blame will be in his lap.”

“For my money, Doc, the old man won’t be too upset. He has it figured that inside of sixty days there won’t be anybody here but a survey and salvage outfit, making chalk marks on whatever is worth keeping.”

“I don’t think you should have said that, Major Leeber,” Bard said in a low voice. “I don’t think it was smart.”

He watched Leeber carefully, saw the greased wheels turning over slickly. Leeber grinned in his most charming way. “Hell, Doc. Don’t mind me. I’m being nasty because these two boys tailing me have fouled up an operation that was all briefed out.”

“I don’t expect loyalty from you, Leeber. Just a reasonable cooperation.”

“Then I apologize. I’m all lined up with a little blond cookie who runs a computer in the chem lab. And all I could think of was these two boys looking over my shoulder.”

“Then take her out of the area, Leeber. When you report back in at the gate they’ll make you wait until guards can be assigned.”

Leeber scuffed the dust with the edge of his shoe. “A noble suggestion, Doc. Will you join me for a quick one?”

“I can’t spare the time, thanks.”

“Okay, I guess I don’t want these boys joining in on my date. Guess I better take her out of the area, eh?”

“Either that or there’ll be four of you. Five, when you count the guard assigned to her. A female guard.”

Leeber shrugged, gave a mock salute, and sauntered away.

Bard Lane went into the mess hall. He took one of the small tables against the wall where he could be alone. He was lifting the glass of tomato juice to his lips when he felt the familiar pressure against his mind. He made no attempt to fight it. He held the glass poised in mid-air, then raised it to his lips. The sensation in his mind made him remember the first science courses he had taken in college. A hot afternoon, when he stared into the microscope, delicately adjusting the binocular vision until the tiny creatures in the droplet of swamp water had seemed to leap up at him. There had been one with a fringe of long cilia. It had slowly enfolded a smaller, more globular organism, merging with it, digesting it as he watched. He had long remembered the silent, microscopic ferocity, the instinctive ruthlessness of that struggle.

And now his mind was slowly devoured while he sat calmly drinking the juice. He replaced the glass in the saucer. To the onlooker he was Dr. Bard Lane — the boss — the chief — the “old man.” But he knew that as far as free will was concerned he had ceased to be Bard Lane.

The alien prescience was quickly interlaced through his engram structure, much as a bobbin might shuttle back and forth in a textile machine. He sensed the fingering of his thoughts.

His new familiarity with the reception of the thoughts of the alien made those thoughts as clear as though they had been softly whispered in his ear.

“No, Bard Lane. No. You and Sharan Inly have come to the wrong conclusion. We are not of this planet. This is not a clever device to trick you. We are friendly to your purpose. I am glad to see that you have taken the precautions that were suggested to you. Please make it very clear to all your trusted people that they must move quickly whenever there is the slightest doubt. Any faint peculiarity — any unexpected word or movement — will be the basis on which to move. Delay may be fatal.”

Bard made his thoughts as clear as he could by mentally thinking each word, mentally underlining each syllable. “How do we know you are friendly?”

“You can’t know. There’s no way of proving it to you. All I can say is that our ancestors of twelve thousand years ago are mutual. I told you about the Plan. The Plan is failing because the people in my world have forgotten the original purpose. One world — Marith — lives in barbaric savagery. Another — Ormazd — has found the key to the search for happiness on their planet. We are inbred and decadent. Your project is hope for mankind.”

“What are your motives?”

There was a silence in his mind. “If I am to be honest with you, Bard Lane, I must mention boredom, the desire for change, the wish to do important things. And now there is another reason.”

“What?”

Their sympathetic emotional structure had been so carefully interleafed that Bard Lane was disconcerted to feel the hot blush on his cheeks and neck. “I want to be able to meet Sharan face to face. I want to touch her hand with mine, not with the hand of someone whom I could inhabit.”

The thought broke hurriedly to other matters. “I have wondered if there is any way that I can give you technical help. I do not understand the formulas behind the operation of your ship. All I know is that propulsion is dependent on alternating frames of temporal reference. That is the same formula that was used for our ships long, long ago. As I told you, six of them stand outside our world. I have discovered micro-book operation manuals, but they are beyond me. I could memorize wiring charts and control panels and then, using your hand, draw them for you.”

“There are problems we haven’t licked yet. You could try to do that.”

“What should I look for?”

“The manner in which astrogation charts were coordinated with the time jump. Our astronomers and mathematical physicists believe, at this point, that once the jump is made, it will take weeks to make observations and reorient the ship. They are working on some method which will extend the time jump as a hypothetical line through space from the starting point to the new time frame. Then the coordinates of that hypothetical line, using opposed star clusters for reference points, would eliminate starting from scratch on orientation in the new position. Can you follow that?”

“Yes. I will see if I can find out how it was done in the past.”

The guard stepped closer and took a startlingly firm grasp of Bard Lane’s arm just above the elbow. His expression was respectful, but his grasp was like iron.

“Sir, you have been talking aloud to yourself.”

The alien prescience slid off to a spectator’s cubicle within Bard’s mind.

Bard smiled up at the guard. “Glad you’re alert, Robinson. I’m doing some practice dictation on an important letter I have to write after lunch.”

Robinson looked uncertain. Bard put his napkin beside his plate. “I’ll be glad to go along to Dr. Inly’s office, Robinson, but—”

“I think maybe you better, sir. The order was pretty strict.”

Heads turned as they walked out of the mess hall, the bruising grip still punishing Bard’s arm. He heard the buzz of conversation as the door swung shut behind them. The sunlight was a blow from a fist of gilt. They went down the street toward Sharan’s office.

And the alarm sirens began to shrill.

Bard ripped away from Robinson’s grasp and lifted his long legs into a hard run toward the communications center seventy yards away. The sirens died into a moan as he burst through the door. The man at the master switchboard, gray-pale with strain, glanced at Bard, cut in a wall baffle onto the circuit and said, “From the ship, sir. Go ahead. It’ll be picked up.”

“Who is this?” Bard demanded.

The answering voice was metallic. “Shellwand. On the ship. We’ve just found a guard on G level, near the shielding, laid out cold, sir. We’re trying to get everyone out of the ship, sir.”

“Who did it?”

“We won’t know, sir, until we— It’s beginning to tremble, sir! The whole—”

The diaphragm in the baffle began to pick up resonance and bray. The man at the master board cut it off. They all heard it then. Once heard, it could never be forgotten. Bard Lane had heard it many times.

It was like the low roll of muted thunder behind distant hills, combined with a thousand roaring male voices, singing a sustained note in discord.

It was the song of men who try to reach the stars. It was the resonating fury of fission, held just short of instantaneous detonation. At Hiroshima it had been one thunderous whip-crack of fate that brought a new age to man. Now the whip-crack was harnessed, controlled, directed, guided.

Bard Lane turned and dived from the room. His shoulder caught the flimsy door and knocked it spinning from the torn hinges. He did not feel the pain. He ran out into an open space and stood with his feet planted, fists clenched, shoulders back, staring toward the Beatty One.

The thunder noise grew louder. Blue-white flame licked out around the fins. Heat cracked against his face and he turned his eyes from the unbearable glare. As the vast sound grew even greater the Beatty One nuzzled upwards at the camouflage tent. It rose with painful slowness, with the ponderousness of some unthinkable prehistoric beast. It ripped up through the tent, slowly gaining speed, profiling the tent to its ogive nose, tearing the tent from the towers, slipping through it, igniting it with the fierce tail flame. Now the blue-white unbearable flame was twice as tall as the ship had been. It reached from tail to earth, as though the Beatty One balanced on it.

The base of one tower, softened by heat-lick, settled and the tower leaned slowly toward the north, not gathering speed in the fall, just slowly bending over to lie gently against the ground. The steel of the elevator frame was puddled at the base, but stood miraculously erect. A tiny figure toppled from the elevator platform, crisping to blackness before it neared the ground.

The white gouting stern of the Beatty One was now thrice as high as the towers still standing. The thunder was lifting up through octave after octave as the speed of the Beatty One increased. A great flap of burning fabric fluttered down. The rest of the fabric slid off and the silvery length of the ship, a mirror in the sun, was revealed. Even with the despair that filled his heart, the horror and the great shock of failure, Bard Lane felt and recognized the strong sense of awe at the sheer beauty of the ship.

A tiny figure toppled from the high open port. The ship had moved just enough off the perpendicular so that the toy figure came down, not spinning, motionless in the sun-hot air, toward the street of the village. It hit in the dust, bursting work clothes, rebounding eighteen inches before lying still, a jellied, grotesque thing. The hard roar changed to shrillness and the Beatty One winked high in the sun. High and higher. Vapor trail. And higher. Then slowly canting over, as he knew it would do without the 20 Mohs stability plates which had not yet been installed in the A-six jet flow. It made a bright white line against the impossible blue of the sky, an arc, a parabola, as neat as any inscribed on graph paper. A line up to a peak and a line down. The shrillness was a scream that tore at the inner ear. A line down to the earth. He saw the flare and guessed the distance at fifteen to twenty miles, due south. The scream still continued after the explosion flare had filled half the sky, then stopped abruptly. The air pushed hard against them, then the earth shook as though a truck were going by. At last came the gutteral crack-boom of the explosion. And silence. Brown cloud lifting in mushroom shape toward the blue sky. A bit of the vapor trail was still high in the sky, wavering off in the prevailing wind.

Bard Lane took two steps to the curbing, sat down and held his face in his hands. Nearby, a wooden building crackled as the flames bit into it. The project fire engines screamed to a stop, sirens ridiculous in comparison to the memory of the scream of the dying Beatty One — a mosquito trying to outshout an eagle. Somebody rested a steady hand on Bard Lane’s shoulder. He looked up and saw the stolid, seamed face of Adamson. Tears had cut channels in the dust on his cheeks.

“Nick, I... I...”

Adamson’s voice was gruff. “I’ll take an emergency crew down and see what she did when she hit. If we’re lucky, she’ll be five miles from the village. Better go get on the radio, Bard, and give the word. Then I think you ought to make an announcement over the PA.” Adamson walked solidly away.

He walked to his office. The guard had voluntarily given up his assignment. The project personnel stood in the street. Not large groups. Two or three or four. Low voices. Long silences. They glanced quickly at him and then away. He went through the outer office. Bess Reilly sat at her desk. She sat with her forehead against the top of her typewriter. Her bony shoulders shook but she made no sound.

After he advised Sachson and Washington by coded radio, he obtained a clear circuit over the PA for every amplifier in the area.

He spoke slowly. “This is Lane. We don’t know what happened. We may never know who or what was responsible. You will be wondering about your jobs. I doubt very much whether we will be given a second chance. By the day after tomorrow we’ll have the checks ready for termination pay for most of you. Certain clerical, stock record, and lab employees will be retained for a time. A list of those who will be needed will be posted on the bulletin board tomorrow afternoon. One thing. Don’t ever feel that because of what just happened, all of what we have done is wasted. We learned things. If we’re not given a chance to use them, someone else will, sooner or later. They will learn from the mistakes we made. All employees will please proceed immediately to the time clocks and remove their time cards. Turn them in to Mr. Nolan. Mr. Nolan, after there has been time for all cards to be picked up, send someone to gather up the unclaimed ones. That’s the only way, I’m afraid, that we’ll ever learn who made the... first and last trip on the Beatty One. Dr. Inly, please report to my office. Benton, rope off the takeoff area, and advise me when the count is down to a one hour safety period. Those of you who lost personal possessions in the barracks fire, prepare the standard claim form. You can get forms and instructions from Miss Mees in the Accounting Office. Brainard, start your labor crews to work torch-cutting, for scrap, the tower that fell outside the radiation area. The club will be closed tonight. And... I don’t know how to say this properly, but I want to thank every single individual for... devotion and loyalty beyond anything I ever experienced before. Thank you.”

He released the switch and looked up. Sharan Inly was standing in the doorway. She walked to his desk. “You wanted to see me.”

He grinned in a very tired way. “Thanks, Sharan.”

“For what?”

“For being bright enough not to start commiserating with me, telling me how sorry you are and how it wasn’t my fault and all that.”

She sat down, hung one denimed leg over the arm of the chair. “There isn’t anything to say. Our good pal who calls himself Raul got to one of the group and fixed us. On the other side of the world somebody feels very, very good, I imagine.”

“What are you going to do, Sharan?”

“They’ll find another slot to put me in. Maybe I’ll be back in the Pentagon, testing the Oedipus complexes of quartermaster second lieutenants. Something frightfully thrilling along that line. But now I have a hobby.”

“Hobby?”

“Finding out how they worked that long-range hypnosis. There are a few people I can trust not to think I’ve lost my mind when I give them the story.”

“But you won’t be taking off immediately, I’m afraid. There’ll be an investigation. We’ll have the star parts. You and I and Adamson and Leeber and Kornal and a few of the others. Stick around, Dr. Inly. See the big three-ring circus. Hear the tigers howl for meat. Pay your money and see the seven wonders of the world.”

A storm front was moving in from the north. The day was unexpectedly and unusually muggy. Extra chairs had been brought into General Sachson’s conference room. Two bored girls sat at a small table near the windows, supplementing the recording devices with the aid of two stenotype machines. They had covered several yards of the white tape with the staggered letters. The door was closed against the reporters and photographers who waited in the corridor.

Bard Lane sat at the witness table. His armpits were sodden and he had a dry, stained taste in his mouth.

Senator Leedry was a dry wisp of a man, tiny and withered, but with a plump and arrogant little paunch. He smiled as he spoke. His baritone voice was alternately scalpel, cutting torch, and caress.

“I appreciate, Dr. Lane, your attempts to explain technical data in a manner that we poor laymen can understand. Believe me, we appreciate it. But I guess we’re not as bright as you imagine. At least, I’m not. Now, if it isn’t too much trouble, would you explain once again to us, your theory about the accident.”

“The A-six uses what they call, in Army slang, ‘soft’ radiation. The shielding also acts as an inhibitor. When actuated, the pellets are fed down to the CM chamber for combustion. The CM chamber utilizes the principles of the old shaped charge to achieve thrust. The controls had not been installed for the A-six drive. There is no possibility of an accidental transfer of pellets to the drive chamber.”

The Secretary of War, Logan Brightling, cleared his throat to interrupt. Cartoons depicted him perfectly as a hairless Kodiak bear wearing a wing collar. “Why was the Beatty One equipped with the hot stuff for the A-six drive before the controls were installed?”

“In spite of the inhibitors, the pellets generate appreciable heat. The Beatty One had an efficient method of utilizing this heat for self-contained power. To use that power for the necessary welding and structural work was more efficient than attempting to bring outside power to the ship. You could say that once we had the internal power source working, the Beatty One was helping to build herself. To continue, I have explained that I do not feel that it could have been an accident. The wall chart shows a schematic cross section.” Bard Lane walked over to the chart. “A man could enter here. It is the normal inspection procedure to check the shielding at regular intervals and take a careful count of all escaping radiation to determine whether or not it is well within safety limits. From this passage a man can work his way completely around the shielding and the drive chamber. At this point is a port that can only be used when the storage section contains no pellets. Beyond the port the radiation will kill a man in approximately twelve minutes. Once through that port it would take a person not more than three minutes to manually dislodge the pellets from their niches in the conveyor and drop them down onto the plate above the drive chamber. In a few minutes more the person could clamber down there, activate the motor on the plate and let the pellets drop into the drive chamber itself. Without the required inhibition, the CM would be instantaneously achieved and the ship would take off. Inspection of the area where the Beatty One stood has shown us that there is more residual radiation than would normally be expected. Thus we assume that the drive chamber was fed with more pellets than would normally have been carried there at one time by the conveyor, and thus we can assume that it was not an accidental actuation of the conveyor itself.”

Leedry pursed his dry lips. “Then, Dr. Lane, you would have us believe that someone went into that... that searing hell of radiation and sabotaged the ship?”

Bard returned to his chair. “I can see no other answer. After five seconds by the open port to the storage section, there would be not the slightest hope of living more than twenty minutes no matter what medical attention was given. The person sacrificed his life. There were twelve technicians on the ship at the time, along with twelve guards watching them under a new security bulletin I issued four days before the accident. Evidently the saboteur overpowered his guard. The elevator operator and two laborers too close to the ship perished, bringing the total death toll in the takeoff to twenty-seven. A large section of the burning camouflage cover fell on a typist from the accounting office. She died yesterday of her burns. So the total is twenty-eight.”

General Sachson went over to Leedry, bent down and whispered in his ear. Leedry did not change expression. He said, “Dr. Lane, would you please move over to the other table for a few minutes. Dr. Inly, will you please come forward.”

Leedry let the seconds mount up. Sharan concealed the thud of her pulse, the sick nervousness that gave her mouth a metallic taste.

“Dr. Inly, you have previously testified as to your duties and the operating regulations which have covered those duties. As I understand your regulations, once you have committed any project employee for detailed observation, the minimum length of time in hospital is seven days. Yet, according to your records, we find that Dr. Lane was sent in for observation and released after only three days. I trust you have some explanation of this deviation from your stated regulations.”

There was a buzz of conversation in the room. The chairman of the investigating committee rapped for order.

Sharan bit her lip.

“Come, Dr. Inly. Surely you know why you ordered Dr. Lane’s release!”

“I discovered that... the evidence on which I had committed Dr. Lane was not what... I had first thought.”

“Is it true that you have been very friendly with Dr. Lane? Is it not true that you have often been alone together? Is it not true that there was a very strong rumor among the project employees that your relationship was — shall we say — a bit closer than a normal professional relationship would indicate?” Leedry leaned forward in his chair, as intent as a questing hawk.

“I resent your implication, Senator.”

“Merely answer the questions, Dr. Inly.”

“Dr. Lane is my very good friend. Nothing more. We were often together and we often discussed what courses of action would be best for the project.”

“Indeed?” Leedry asked.

Bard stood up. “Senator, I consider this line of investigation as wholesome as scribbling on a lavatory wall.”

“You’re out of order!” the chairman snapped. “Sit down, please.”

“Take the stand again, Dr. Lane,” Leedry said. “We will need you again in a few moments, Dr. Inly.”

Bard took the stand. Leedry again waited for his fellow committee members to stop their whispers. “Dr. Inly is quite attractive, don’t you think?” he asked Bard in a jovial manner.

“She is a competent psycholgist,” Bard said.

“Ah, undoubtedly. Now then, Dr. Lane. Yesterday we took testimony from one of the hospital supervisors. Can you explain how it was that you were seen in the hospital making love to a young nurse named Anderson?”

“May I ask what you are trying to prove?” Bard asked. His voice was low.

“I’ll be glad to tell you, Dr. Lane. I can best tell you by asking you one more question. Dr. Lane, you are quite a famous man, you know. You are quite young for the enormous responsibilities which were given you. You have spent a trifle more than one billion dollars of the taxpayers’ money. Money that came from a great number of little people who work hard for a living. Surely you felt the weight of that responsibility. Now answer me this question, Dr. Lane. During the period of time since you permitted one William Kornal to return to his duties after having smashed key control equipment, have you at any time sincerely felt that you are and have been unsuited for the responsibilities which were given you?”

Bard Lane doubled his big brown fists. He glanced at Sharan Inly and saw that her eyes were misty. “Yes, I have.”

“And yet you did not ask to be relieved?”

“No, sir.”

“Dismissed. Wait in the anteroom. Please take the stand, Major Leeber. I understand that you have been in the position of an observer ever since the Kornal incident.”

“That is correct.” Major Leeber sat very straight in his chair. Each bit of brass on his uniform was a tiny golden mirror. His voice had lost the lazy tone. It was crisp. His mouth was a firm line.

“Will you give us your opinion of the quality of Dr. Lane’s management?”

“I can best do that by giving the committee a verbatim quote from a report I sent to General Sachson, my commanding officer, three days before the ‘accident’ occurred. I am quoting paragraph three of my report. ‘It appears that Dr. Lane is best suited to perform supervised technical work in the research field and that he has neither the temperament nor the training for administrative work that is required of the head of a project such as this one. The informality here is indicative of a lack of discipline. Dr. Lane goes to ridiculous lengths in his new security regulations, detailed above, yet permits fraternization between high-level personnel and CAF-two typists on the clerical staff. The undersigned officer strongly recommends that every attempt be made to bring this situation to the attention of those persons in Washington who are in a position to direct a full scale investigation of the project.’ ”

Leedry turned to Sachson. “General, don’t bother taking the stand. Just tell us what you did with the major’s report.”

“I endorsed it, stating my approval of Leeber’s conclusions and sent it by courier officer through the Chief of Ordnance to the Commanding General, Armed Forces. I assumed that it would be taken up with the Secretary of Defense.”

The Secretary of Defense rumbled, “It was on my desk for my personal attention when the flash came that the Beatty One had taken off prematurely. I compliment the General and Major Leeber on their handling of this matter. I shall see that it is made a matter of record for their two-oh-one files.”

Sharan Inly laughed. The sound was out of place in the room. The laugh was as chill as the tinkling of crystal. “Gentlemen, you amuse me. The Army has resented Project Tempo from the beginning. The Army feels that space travel attempts are absurd unless carried on in an atmosphere of company formations, service ribbons and seventh endorsements. Dr. Lane is caught in the middle and he’ll be disgraced. The sad truth is that he has more integrity in his little finger than Major Leeber is even capable of visualizing.” She turned to Leeber and said mildly, “You really are a rather despicable little man, you know. Gentlemen, this whole affair makes me sick at heart and rather close to being ill in quite another manner. I am leaving and you can cite me for contempt or restrain me physically. I imagine the latter will be more your style. So nice to have known you.”

She brushed by the sergeant at arms at the door. It closed gently behind her.

“Let her go,” Leedry said. “I rather imagine that she’ll have a long, long wait before Civil Service is able to place her in another government position. And she just told us all we need to know. Her infatuation with Lane, and the effect of that infatuation on her judgment is now a matter of record. I suggest that we consider arriving at a conclusion. My personal opinion is that Project Tempo failed due to the gross negligence and mental instability of Dr. Bard Lane. We should clear out the witnesses and poll the committee.”

General Sachson, as he stood up, said, “If I could have the privilege of making one comment, Senator.”

“Of course, General,” Leedry said warmly.

“You will find in my record that two years ago when Project Tempo was being considered, I read the survey reports and filed a negative opinion. That girl — I should say Dr. Inly — inferred that the military has attempted to block Project Tempo. I wish to deny that allegation. I am a soldier. I follow orders. Once Project Tempo was approved, I gave it my wholehearted cooperation. The minutes of my staff meetings in connection with Tempo are available as proof of this cooperation.

“However, in all honesty, I must confess that from the beginning I considered Tempo to be a wild scheme. I believe that with persistence, with the application of discipline and effort, we will succeed in conquering space in accordance with the plan outlined by General Roamer sixteen years ago. First we must beef up our moon base. The moon is the stepping stone to Mars and Venus. Gentlemen, it is sound military thought to consolidate your own area before advancing further. Project Tempo put the cart several miles ahead of the horse. The old ways are the best. The known methods are tried, and they will be true.

“Is this time-jump theory something you can see, feel, hold on to? No. It is a theory. I personally do not believe that there is any variation. I think time is a constant throughout all the galaxies and all the universe. Lane was a dreamer. I am a doer. You know my record. I do not want this fiasco to make you turn your backs on space flight. We need a vastly augmented moon base. From a moon base we can look down the throat of Pan-Asia. We must reinforce that base, and not dissipate our efforts in humoring the more lunatic fringe of our nation’s physicists. Thank you, gentlemen.”

Leedry led the round of polite but enthusiastic applause. Major Leeber rose quickly to his feet and clapped with the rest.