But no one raised the cry, perhaps because it was too obvious. A thousandth time, Harker was grateful for that momentary impulse of steely purposefulness that had led him to condemn Barchet to continuing death. Of the six people who had known the fate of Senator Thurman, only Barchet was likely to crack and reveal the truth—and Barchet was out of the picture now.
The eighth day of the hearing came and went; Vorys grilled poor Luric mercilessly on minor scientific details, while Brewster got Vogel to explain some of the surgical fine points of the reanimation technique.
"You have to admire those two boys," Harker said after that session. "They've really brushed up on the pertinent subjects."
"I haven't had a quizzing like that since I left medical school," Vogel said, nervously tugging at the dark strands of his beard.
"And for what?" Raymond wanted to know. "Just to use up the taxpayers' money. They've found out all they want to know about us."
Harker nodded gloomily. You only had to pick up any newspaper, listen to any reasonably right-wing news commentator, attend any church, even walk in the street and talk to people at random.
The response was the same. Fear.
Fear of reanimation, fear of that one-chance-out-of-six that the result would be a so-called zombie. Desperately Harker tried to counteract the swelling tide of fear. He scraped up money for a full-page ad in the Times, headed, Throw Out the Baby With the Bathwater?
His line of argument was that the reanimation process should not be condemned for its failures, but praised for its successes. It was in the early stages, the experimental years. What if aviation had been suppressed because of the early crashes? Research had to go on.