It fell utterly flat on completely non-understanding ears. Paul looked over the mass of faces and knew it had failed. Something far more than this was needed. A little feedback, he thought grimly. A little feedback of the idiocy of their present situation to correct their course and return it to normalcy.
"Five hundred years ago there might have been a crowd of people just like you," he said suddenly in low tones. "There was a harbor, and some small ships, and a man who believed he could sail them over the edge of the world. On the shore were people who thought he was a fool and a blasphemer, and a few who thought he was right—or at least hoped he was.
"Five hundred years ago was the beginning of a new freedom from the prison of a tiny, constricted world. Today, another freedom waits our successful conquest of space. And whenever a freedom has been won there have been more who jeered against it than have cheered for it. You are today making a choice—"
He talked for ten minutes, and when he was through he knew that he'd accomplished his goal. Even before the sound truck pulled out, the cars of the Caravan were breaking away from the mass and disappearing in the distance.
"Nice job," Metcalf congratulated, as if he'd been responsible for it himself.
"Just a little feedback in the right place—" murmured Paul absently.
"Feedback? What's that—new kind of propaganda technique—?"
"Yeah, you might call it that. How could a guy have been so blind—?" he said fiercely, more to himself than to his companions.
He hurried to the laboratory as soon as the truck got him back to Base. He rounded up Barker and Nat Holt and a dozen of his other top men. "The answer's been under our noses all the time," he said. "We've been too busy fighting each other for the sake of our own preconceived notions to have seen it!"
"What are you talking about?" Holt demanded.