Harker had seen the phenomenon before, and had been helpless before it. The great insane raging tide of public opinion had sprung up from what had been a smoothly-flowing stream, and once its mighty power had been channelled toward a definite end, there was no standing against it.
He had the uncomfortable feeling that only a miracle could save things, now. And miracles were not easy to come by, in this secular age.
CHAPTER XVIII
As the hearing ground along into its third day, and its fourth, and then its fifth and sixth, things grew even worse. The "zombie" phrase became a favorite, not only of the press and the public, but even of Brewster and Vorys. The fact that seven of seventy-three reanimation subjects had been revived sans intellect had become the main issue. In his rare moments of relaxation, Harker wondered how the world would react if it were ever learned that one of those seven had been none other than the missing Senator Thurman.
Very much as Harker had expected, the American-Conservative Party intensified its previous belief in "caution" into what amounted to condemnation of the whole process. Maxwell of Vermont, the Senate Minority Leader, delivered an off-the-cuff but probably carefully rehearsed speech at a Chicago gathering of American-Conservative committeemen, in which he referred to reanimation as "That mess engineered by a one-time lame duck of a National-Liberal, that unholy conspiracy against human dignity."
Later the same day, the chairman of the Nat-Lib national committee was quick to announce that James Harker had voluntarily severed his party connections in January, was now a private citizen, and in no way represented the membership of the National-Liberal Party. It was a neat disavowal that took the Nat-Libs off the hook in case the reaction against reanimation grew stronger, but left them an avenue of entry just in case public opinion should swing back in favor of Harker.
Work at the lab had come practically to a standstill. "If we only had a few more weeks," Raymond mourned, "we might be able to lick the remaining defects and get public approval. But they won't leave us alone to work."
A delegation of FBI men and the four investigating senators visited the laboratory a week after the hearings had begun, and Raymond and Harker reluctantly showed them the data on the revivifications so far—excluding that of Senator Thurman, which had not been recorded in any way whatever.
They checked through the photos, compared them with those of Wayne Janson, and left. That night the FBI issued an official statement which read, in part, "Examination of the Beller Laboratories' records does not indicate that the late Mr. Janson ever received treatment there. Since there is nothing in Janson's own private papers that leads us to believe he as much as knew of the existence of the Beller organization prior to its public announcement, we must conclude that no reanimation did take place."