Jennings himself was there, evidently having arrived that very morning, since he had not contacted them. Mart recognized other men from the AEC, from the Bureau of Standards, and top universities. There were a number of his former students who filled top scientific posts.
Don Wolfe was there, as was Joe Baird, the TV reporter. And then Mart saw, with a somewhat sinking sensation, the portly figure of his former colleague on Project Levitation, Professor Dykstra from MIT. Mart groaned, and nudged Berk as Dykstra took a seat at the rear of the room. “Nemesis is here,” said Mart.
There were five congressmen on the Committee in charge of the hearing. Berk and Mart studied them intently as they came in and took seats at the long table. There was nothing obviously outstanding about any of them — but neither was there about the group of scientists, Mart thought. He reflected on the situation wherein the decision of these five could affect the lives and work of all these others in the room. What made these five and their colleagues in the Congress competent to judge the limitations to be placed upon the men of science and channel their thinking?
His reflections were interrupted by the gavel banging of Senator Cogswell, who stood at the head of the Committee table and spoke into the cluster of microphones, calling for attention.
Mart watched Cogswell intently. He was the key to the Committee. The senator had come from a Midwestern state, a dealer in farm machinery before coming to the Senate. His face and neck and hands had the perpetual florrid tint of a man who has spent long years of his life in the sun and wind. The press called him Honest Abe Cogswell, and Mart was certain the name fitted.
But you couldn’t be honest if you didn’t have the data, Mart thought. It wasn’t honest to judge a thing concerning which you had no data. And what a fetish you could make of honesty if you didn’t even know you lacked the data! Somehow he would have to find the way to give it to Cogswell.
The farmer-politician announced: “The first to be called for testimony in this hearing will be Dr. Martin Nagle.”
Mart stood up and moved slowly to the seat before the microphones. There was a well filled press section, he noted. Evidently all the news services had been stirred into sending representatives on the off chance that something spectacular might develop.
Cogswell faced him across the microphones. “You are Dr. Nagle?”
“Yes.”