He had to look hard for the Venus story. Finally he found it tucked away at the bottom of the sheet.
ACCIDENT ON VENUS
A big blowup took place on the planet Venus earlier today. Sky-men who watched the popoff say it was caused by an atomic explosion in the planet's atmosphere.
Meanwhile, attempts are being made to reach the team of Earth engineers working on Venus. No word from them yet. They may be dead.
Walton chuckled. They may be dead, indeed! By now Lang and his team, and the rescue mission as well, lay dead under showers of radioactive formaldehyde, and Venus had been turned into a blazing hell ten times less livable than it had been before.
Percy had mishandled the news superbly. For one thing, he had carefully neglected to link Lang with Popeek in any way. That was good connotative thinking. It would be senseless to identify Popeek in the public mind with disasters or fiascos of any kind.
For another, the skimpy insignificance of the piece implied that it had been some natural phenomenon that sent Venus up in flames, not the fumbling attempts of the terraformers. Good handling there, too.
Walton felt cheerful. He slept soundly, knowing that the public consciousness was being properly shaped.
By 0900, when he arrived at his office, the pollsters had reported a ten percent swing in public opinion, in the direction of Popeek and Walton. At 1000, Citizen hit the slots with an extra announcing that prospects for peaceful occupation of New Earth looked excellent. The editorial praised Walton. The letters-to-the-editor column, carefully fabricated by Lee Percy, showed a definite upswing of opinion.
The trend continued, and it was contagious. By 1100, when Walton left the Cullen Building and caught a jetcopter for United Nations Headquarters, the pro-Popeek trend in public opinion was almost overwhelming.
The copter put down before the gleaming green-glass facade of UN Headquarters; Walton handed the man a bill and went inside, where a tense-faced Ludwig was waiting for him.