The men were silent, uncertain.
"Go ahead," Fetzer said. "But make it fast."
"Would you fight with a knife if you had a machine gun? Would you attack on horseback if you had a jet loaded with atom bombs?"
"Keep talking," said Fetzer.
"The answer is obvious. You would use the best weapon available. Yet here you sit with clubs and wooden spears, ignoring a weapon so potentially powerful that it makes our H-Bomb, or some undoubtedly greater weapon of Huth's, seem like an old crossbow!"
He had their attention now. He felt the force of concentration on his words. He sensed the awareness in Nina, though her eyes were hidden in the shadows beyond the wavering circle of torchlight.
"Think of what I learned from Huth—what Albert Fetzer has told you. Every person was brought here because they were psi positives, because they possessed some individual psi talent. Some of you have been ashamed of that talent. Perhaps you tried to hide it back on Earth—because it made you different from other people. But you know something about it. You may have learned more about it—even experimented with it—during your months and years on this planet. You may know what even limited talents have done in perception, clairvoyance and the moving of objects through telekinesis.
"These things were done by individual people, operating, as we might say, on single generators.
"But now for the first time in history we have more than three thousand psi talents grouped together in one small area.
"What if all the psi power here could be focused on one objective? All the men and women of Mendel's Planet—all the children—especially the children! ... focusing their combined power!