At last Raymond said, "Jim, I'm sorry. We didn't play it square with you."
"Go on. Bare your soul to me now, Raymond. I want to know everything."
"Well—ah—the process doesn't always work. About one out of twenty times, we can't bring the patient back to life."
"Understandable. If that's the whole trouble—"
"It isn't. Jim, you have to understand that death is a tremendous shock to the nervous system—the biggest shock there is. That goes without saying. Sometimes the shock is so great that it short-circuits the brain, so to speak. And so even though we can achieve physiological reanimation, the mind—ah—the mind is not always reanimated with the body."
Harker was stunned as if by a physical blow. He took one step backward, groped for a chair, and lowered himself into it. Forcing himself to keep calm he said, "Just how often does this happen?"
"About one out of every six tries, so far."
"I see." He drew in his breath sharply, cleared his throat, and fought to hang on to his self-control. The whole thing had taken on an unreal dreamlike atmosphere in the past two hours. And this was the crusher.
So one out of six revivifications produced a live idiot? Great, Harker thought. So a public demonstration will be like a game of Russian Roulette. One-chance-out-of-six that the whole show will blow up in our faces.
"How long will it take you to iron this thing out?" he asked.