A rabble rouser named Morgan in the middle-west had proposed a motor caravan to Space Command Base, where the participants would go on a sit-down strike until assurance was given that no Wheel would be built again. And on the heels of this came the demand by an increasing number of Senators for a full investigation of the Base.
Paul met Barker after seeing the newscast of Morgan's revivalist type appeal for a caravan of protest against the Base. "This looks like it could get to be something that would be hard to handle," Barker said. "It doesn't seem reasonable that the near-crash of the first Wheel at San Francisco could be responsible for all this commotion."
"I don't think it is," Paul answered reflectively. "The sinking of a big ocean liner doesn't produce hysterical demands that no more ships be built. The crash of an airship with a hundred people aboard is accepted for what it is, without this kind of reaction. I think these broadcasts and write-ups of Captain West's appeal have sunk in deeper than Oglethorpe or anyone else ever intended.
"For a long time there has been building up a sense of man's inferiority to his machines. Now this incident of the Wheel and the world-wide broadcast of West's final words have triggered that inferiority into a genuine fear. They're afraid to have another Wheel up there over their heads. They're afraid that no man is capable of mastering such a piece of machinery."
Not only the public was infected with this fear, but the very men on whom the operation of the ships depended. Harper was right, Paul thought, as he reached his own office again. It must be terrible to be in their shoes, fighting constantly the conviction that they were poor miserable creatures hardly fit to polish the shining hulls of their creations!
They were trained in the best of military traditions, crushing their weaknesses by sheer force. And they had concluded their own breakdown was inevitable, in spite of their training and traditions. How could such men even hope for the stars!
But where was the flaw in it all? If the answer was not in men who were more nearly like their own machines, where was it?
They needed a year or two to even approach the problem properly, and some kind of answer was demanded within weeks!
Oglethorpe came to the laboratory the morning Harper was to begin his test runs. "We're going on a complete crash-priority basis, with round-the-clock shifts," he said. "It's been a toss-up whether to close Superman and put everything we had on the new Wheel, or leave it open in the hope of getting something out of it.
"For the time being I'm leaving it open, but remember that every hour Harper or one of his men spends here is an hour away from the job on the Wheel.