They came from everywhere in the colony, and from every trade and profession. Who was this man? And was he friend or foe?
The crowd grew slowly. Despite the shouts and the sudden stir of excitement which had greeted the speaker on his arrival, there was no headlong rush to surround him. The colonists emerged from their lodgings and converged calmly upon the square, some having the look of tradesfolk concerned with a possible interruption of business, and others seemingly intent only on what the stranger might have to say.
It was unusually warm for so early an hour, the temperature well up in the mid-forties, and there was no need for the heat-generating inner garments, only for oxygen masks and heavy outdoor clothing and the careful avoidance of too much muscular exertion in the absence of weighted shoes.
This is madness, Corriston told himself. I am in no condition to convince these people, to make them understand. I should have rested first. Three hours' sleep would have helped. I should have asked for food.
Corriston felt suddenly tongue-tied. Words were failing him when he needed them most. His speech became halting and confused. He had been talking for twenty minutes—twenty minutes at least—but suddenly he was quite sure that he hadn't succeeded in convincing anyone that he was speaking only the simple truth.
He looked at the faces before him a little more intently and saw what he had not noticed before: everyone was waiting for him to go on; everyone seemed to be hanging on his words.
Had he misjudged them after all? Or had he misjudged his own capacity to be persuasive, to talk with conviction when his very life hung in the balance?
There could be no doubt on that score. His life did hang in the balance. They'd make short shift of him if they thought he was on Ramsey's side.
"It isn't Ramsey I'm concerned about," he heard himself saying. "I'm pleading with you to face up to the truth about yourselves. You trusted Henley because you were desperate. You couldn't put your trust in a weak or indecisive man. You needed a tool with a cutting edge. That I can understand. But you picked the wrong man. Henley doesn't want to see justice done. He doesn't want to help you at all. He wants to help himself at your expense, to help himself in a vicious, brutal way."
"That's a lie," someone in the crowd said. "Henley's a good man."