"Results! We've just started housekeeping. In a year, maybe two, we'll have an idea where to begin a concentrated search for what you want to know."
The General shook his head slowly, his eyes remaining on Paul's face. "You aren't going to have anything like a year. You haven't got time to run down one line of research and then another. Run them all at once—a thousand of them if you want to. Why do you think you've got the budget you have!"
"Some things," said Paul, "like threading a needle—or analysing a human being—don't go much faster when a thousand men work at it than when there's only one."
"They do when there're a thousand needles to thread—or brains to pick. And that's what we're up against here. We need a volume of the kind of men we've been talking about, and we need them quick!"
"We have to find out how to get the first one."
"And you haven't got as much time now as we thought you had when Superman began. They're trying to close us up.
"We hadn't planned to build another Wheel right away, not until some refinements of design had been worked out, and we had some results from Superman.
"Now, all that's been scrapped. We've received orders from Washington that erection of a second Wheel is to begin at once, using the plans of the first one. Fabrication of structures is already under way."
"I don't understand," said Paul.
"If we don't get another one up there within a matter of weeks, this hysterical opposition among the public is liable to prevent us ever getting one there again. We have to act while we still have authority, before the crackpots persuade Congress to take it away. And by the time it's built, I want some men to put in it. Men who can be trusted to not jeopardize it the moment they put their clumsy feet aboard. I want them, Medick, and I intend to have them. That's by way of an order!"