He called Keeler and learned that no sign of Lamarre had come to light yet. From Percy he discovered that Citizen had added two hundred thousand subscribers overnight. The 1500 edition had a lengthy editorial praising Walton, and some letters that Percy swore were genuine, doing the same.
At 1515 Olaf Eglin called to announce that the big estates were in the process of being dismembered. "You'll be able to hear the howls from here to Batavia when we get going," Eglin warned.
"We have to be tough," Walton told him firmly.
At 1517 he devoted a few minutes to a scientific paper that proposed terraforming Pluto by establishing synthetic hydrogen-fusion suns on the icy planet. Walton skimmed through the specifications, which involved passing a current of several million amperes through a tube containing a mixture of tritium and deuterium. The general idea, he gathered, was to create electromagnetic forces of near-solar intensity; a pulsed-reaction engine would supply a hundred megawatts of power continuously at 10,000,000 degrees centigrade.
Has possibilities, Walton noted, and forwarded the plan on to Eglin. It sounded plausible enough, but Walton was personally skeptical of undertaking any more terraforming experiments after the Venus fiasco. There were, after all, limits to the public relations miracles Lee Percy could create.
At 1535 the annunciator chimed again. "Call from Nairobi, Africa, Mr. Walton."
"Okay."
McLeod appeared on the screen.
"We're here," he said. "Arrived safely half a microsecond ago, and all's well."
"How about the alien?"