In vain, Agamemnon tried to stop the rush. He even shouted at them what they had only guessed before, that more was at stake than his brother's runaway wife. If Troy was crushed, the Greeks would own the trading and colonizing routes to the rich Black Sea area. But no one paid any attention to him. They were too concerned with knocking each other over in their haste to get the ships ready to sail.
At this time, the only people from the spaceship on the scene were some cameramen and technicians. They were paralyzed by the unexpectedness of the situation, and they were afraid to use their emotion-stimulating projectors. By the flick of a few switches the panic could be turned into aggression. But it would have been aggression without a leader. The Greeks, instead of automatically turning to fight the Trojans, would have killed each other, sure that their fellows were trying to stop them from embarking for home.
The technicians did not dare to waken the Director and acknowledge they could not handle a simple mob scene. But one of them did put a call through to one of the Director's daughters, Athena.
Athena zipped down to Odysseus and found him standing to one side, looking glum. He had not panicked, but he also was not interfering. Poor fellow, he longed to go home to Penelope. In the beginning of this useless war, he had pretended madness to get out of being drafted. But, once he had sworn loyalty to the King, he would not abandon him.
Athena flicked off her light-bender so he could see her. She shouted, "Odysseus, don't just stand there like a lump on a bog! Do something or all will be lost—the war, the honor of the Greeks, the riches you will get from the loot of Troy! Get going!"
Odysseus, never at a loss, tore the wand of authority from the King's numbed hand and began to run through the crowd. Everybody he met he reproached with cowardice, and backed the sting of his words with the hard end of the wand on their backs. Athena signaled to the technicians to project an aggression-stimulating frequency. Now that the Greeks had a leader to channel their courage, they could be diverted back to fighting.
There was only one obstacle, Thersites. He was a lame hunchback with the face of a baboon and a disposition to match.
Thersites cried out in a hoarse, jeering voice, "Agamemnon, don't you have enough loot? Do you still want us to die so you may gather more gold and beautiful Trojan women in your greedy arms? You Greeks, you're not men. You're women who will do anything this disgrace to a crown tells you to do. Look what he did to Achilles. Robbed him of Briseis and in so doing robbed us of the best warrior we have. If I were Achilles, I'd knock Agamemnon's head off."
"We've put up with your outrageous abuse long enough!" shouted Odysseus. He began thwacking Thersites on the head and the back until blood ran. "Shut up or I'll kill you!"
At this the whole army, which hated Thersites, roared with laughter. Odysseus had relieved the tension; now they were ready to march under Agamemnon's orders.