"To be quite frank, then, the subjects in Block Nineteen are getting restless. I don't think we could keep them here more than ten years longer, no matter how many diversions we tried. They want to do something, be something. And yet I don't believe they could be any more miserable than back in a world which has been growing away from them for a hundred years, a world which doesn't want or understand them any more than you want Avery in your company. So I'd naturally rather see them go all at once, wanting to go, than one at a time, confused and hopeless. None of them want to go back to their great-great-grandchildren to die. I'd like to see them stay together. As for my research, I'm only up to the Hundred-and-Ten group. Those in Block Nineteen are all over a hundred and fifty. Do you want to help ... or would you rather go to Washington to lobby for a bill to control Avery and others with even more ancient ideas before they get loose?"
"But old people are set in their ways, as you know, Doctor." Jeremy Brill had memorized the salesman's book. "The Company would naturally have to have some assurance that the old ones are willing to go before we put a lot of time and money into pushing their acceptance as colonists."
"I can let you know by midnight tonight," Dr. Farrar stated positively. "They're holding their monthly meeting and I can see that the matter is given full consideration."
Somewhere inside Dr. Farrar, the conspiratorial feeling was joined by a great jubilation. He wanted to shout aloud, but instead he added, "The officers of The Company will naturally want time to consider this fully, with care and deliberation. It is fortunate that you will have a good many hours in which to prepare a sound and compelling statement about the benefit to all humanity which will accrue to a project which will settle at once the great problem of a goal for old age as well as end the bitter wrangling among national and political groups for first passage on the Colonia.
"You are right. I must get back to the home office at once." Brill scribbled on a card. "Here is my private phone. Let me know at once what is decided at the meeting."
He rose, extending his hand. "You are a great man, Doctor, a truly great and kind man." He wheeled and walked abruptly from the office, the weight of a noble enterprise sitting comfortably on his shoulders. Miss Herrington caught a few of his departing words and the admiring tone. "One stone ... so many birds."
Jules Farrar's call to Jeremy Brill at 10:57 that night was necessarily brief. Mr. Daneshaw told him nothing of the wrangle with Avery and several others about the inevitable failure of any scheme so economically unsound as extraterrestrial colonization, nor did he tell the doctor that the number who wanted to go for the sake of going was considerably smaller than the number of those who would do anything that he, Tim Daneshaw, urged them to do. He reported only two things from the meeting: first, that they were willing to go on one condition; second, that the condition was that they were to be taught to man the Colonia and that no younger "snippets" of officers, crew, and particularly medical and nursing staff should go along to hamper them. That was Avery's one victory.
In the three hours' talk about Daneshaw's trip to U. A. headquarters that followed the phone call, the excited doctor almost forgot to ask how the Block Association had taken the morning's deaths.
The old professor ran his hand through his white mane. "You know, Jules, I told them we'd discuss it after the other business and they never got around to it. Even if the trip doesn't come off, the crisis has been smoothed over for now. It's really rather shocking, isn't it?"