"Umhm-m—you mean we should back down," Freeman replied softly. "Set out for the wide-open spaces that we were meant for. Leave the poor clodhoppers behind. Young fella, could be that you and me see things bigger. For others like us, it ought to be like that, only it ain't—yet. Most of the new people are butcher, baker and candlestick maker, Earth-born, and Earth-tied in their minds, like anybody. There's a ship, sure. But the stars are still awful far off, and never touched, and you can go addled just thinkin' about them. Lots of our sort would leave in their own sweet time, same as regular folks, sure. It's in their blood. You might say they got wings. But who really knows how to use 'em yet? And crowd our kinfolks off their home world? When they're spunky and sore like any human being? Nope. Sorry!"
Ed's faint hope faded before the old android's realism. For years the movement of migration had been farther and farther outward into space. It was at once a fact, a dream and a philosophy, like getting nearer to the Eternal Unknown. But most of the worth-while solar system was already owned by the original dominant species. Beyond was only the distance, not a beaten path at all, an untried and fearsome novelty. One star ship was about completed, yes. Fast it would be, but its speed would still fall far short of the velocity of light. So the nearer stars were decades, centuries, millenniums away.
An idea so familiar that it seems almost an accomplished fact can lose some of its charm in the hard glare of real obstacles. Ed felt something like a chill inside him. Though he knew the strangeness of a micro-cosmic viewpoint, others did not have this training and boldness for the unknown. He saw the majority of them balking fatally. But he still had to try something, to change as much of this as he could—if he could change any of it at all.
"I don't know whether or not to blame you and the others for the revenge you say is rigged here and elsewhere, Freeman," he said. "I can see why both sides felt driven to do it. But I'm going to borrow your newscast facilities, Freeman. Or someone else's. Because rumor can be a powerful force. And I think I can give it a little push."
Mitchell Prell was still beside him. His grin was encouraging and sly. "Best of luck in what you intend, Eddie," he remarked. "Need a charge for your Midas Touch?... Meanwhile, I might try drawing the teeth of some dragons, as you seem to have been doing. Got to be careful, though, that both sides don't blame each other and get nervous. Granger, poor knothead, was easy. I hope that somehow circumstances will be right so that he can come back and learn. About Loman and the things he made, I can feel differently."
"You heard?" Ed asked.
"It was on the air," Prell replied. "Somebody phoned the news in from near that lab. At least the overwise ones will know that they guessed wrong about which faction contrived a biological horror: a rabid old-race sympathizer, but an android, too! Can that make either side proud?"
A minute later Ed landed on the roof of the trailer which housed Freeman's wireless equipment. He crept past an immense drop of rain water that loomed like a rounded mesa beside him and entered a vent. Soon he touched the terminals of his microphone to the proper contacts. The transmitter was active. During the first pause between the temblors of other words and signals and coded information, Ed spoke quickly, half like a mischievous sprite. "This is no ghost voice. We hear that many androids want to take all of their kind beyond the solar system."
The station did not stop sending at once. Blame that on the startled monitor, who must have been listening. Ed took advantage of his opportunity. He was granted another moment to speak: "It is only natural that they should want to do that. Their kind of vigor matches the stars. They don't need, or really want, the Earth. Their departure in peace could be a perfect answer to everything."