He thanked the priest for the advance information and hung up. Storm-clouds were beginning to gather already. But his earlier mood of gloom and desperation had washed away, he found.
He knew why. The battle had been joined. No more behind-the-scenes skulking; he was out in the open as the standard-bearer of Beller Labs. It promised to be a rough fight, but that didn't scare him.
"This is my second chance," he said to Lois.
She smiled palely. "I don't understand, Jim."
"I was elected Governor of New York on a reform platform that nobody in the party organization took seriously except me. I waded in and started to make reforms, and I got my teeth rammed down my throat for it. Okay. I lost round one. But now I'm in the thick of the fight again, fighting against ignorance and fear and hysteria. Maybe I'll lose again—but at least I'll have tried."
She touched his arm, almost timidly. Harker realized that he had never really seen into his wife before: seen the contradictions in her, the caution, the timidity, and the core of toughness that was there too.
"This time you'll win, Jim," she said simply.
It didn't look that way in the morning.
Thurman Spearheads Reanimation Inquiry, the Times announced, and the story revealed that Senator Clyde Thurman (N-L, N.Y.) had urged immediate Congressional investigation of the claims of Beller Research Laboratories, and from the tone of Thurman's statements it was obvious that he was hostile to the whole idea of reanimation. "Sinful—possibly a menace to the fabric of society," were two of the terms quoted in the newspaper.