"What do you want me to say?"
"That's fine, sir. Now you, Mr. Raymond, and then after that I'd like to hear the lady speak."
It was a voice-test. Someone yelled out, "Harker's fine! Raymond could use more resonance!"
"Would you mind getting more chest into your voice, Mr. Raymond?"
"I'll do my best," Raymond said.
The man with the microphone scurried away.
Harker watched the time on the big clock above the dais. Ten minutes to ten. The room was slowly filling up, not only with newspapermen. Raymond pointed out a couple of well-known medical men; Harker spotted two lawyers, including one who had issued a ringing denunciation of reanimation a week before.
At ten sharp Senator Westmore rose, smiled apologetically at the video camera, and said, "Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. As acting chairman of the Senate Special Investigating Committee dealing with the problem of discoveries of the Beller Research Laboratories, I hereby ask for your attention and call this meeting to order."
The room fell silent. In the hush, the throbbing purr of the official stenographer's recording machine was clearly audible. After a pause Westmore went on, "We begin this session in the absence of our chairman, Senator Thurman of New York. I'm sure you'll all join me in the hope that the beloved Senator is safe, wherever he is, and that his unusual absence will soon be explained. However, the, shall we say, delicate nature of the Beller discoveries makes it imperative that this Committee elicit facts and present its findings to Congress immediately, and so we are proceeding on schedule despite our chairman's absence.
"Our purpose is to draw forth information on the subject of reanimation. First I think it is well to question the director of the laboratory which developed the technique, Mr. Martin Raymond."