He had no qualms of conscience about taking the post now. General Oglethorpe had been forewarned and knew what Paul Med.i.c.k's hopes and intentions were.

"You can build your staff as big as you need it," the General was saying. "This Project has crash priority over everything else. We've got the machines to go to s.p.a.ce. The machines need the men.

"You can have anybody you want and do anything you like to them. We hope you can put them back together again in reasonable shape, but that doesn't matter too much."

Paul turned about the bare room that would serve adequately as office s.p.a.ce. "All right," he said. "Consider Project Superman begun. Remember, I have no hope of finding a solution in an errorless human being. I'll find whatever answer there is to be found. If you have any objections to my working of those terms, say so now. I don't intend to get fired again with a Project in the middle of its course."

"You won't be. You'll find the way to give us what we need. I want you to come down to the other end of the building and meet a man who will be working closely with you."

There had been sounds of activity in the distance, and General Oglethorpe led Paul towards them. They entered a large area in which instrumental equipment was being set up. A tall, thin, dark-haired man came up as they entered.

"Dr. Nat Holt," said the General, "instrument and electronics expert.

This is Dr. Med.i.c.k, the country's foremost man in psychology and psychometric a.n.a.lysis.

"Dr. Holt will be your instrument man. He will design and build whatever special equipment your researches call for. Let me know soon what you'll need in the way of furniture and a.s.sistants."

He left them standing in the nearly bare room. Through the window they watched his stiff form march back to his own office.

Nat Holt shifted position and grinned at Paul. "I may as well tell you that the General has briefed me thoroughly on what he considered your probable reaction to the Project. I'm just curious enough to want to know if he was right."

"The General and I understand each other--I think," said Paul. "He knows I'm contemptuous of his approach to a problem of human behavior by ordering it solved. But he knows I'll take his money and spend it on the biggest, deepest investigation of human behavior via psychometrical a.n.a.lysis that has ever been conducted."

"It ought to be enough to buy gold fringed couches for all the a.n.a.lysts in the country."

Paul raised his brows. "If it's that way with you, then why are you joining me?" he asked.

"Because I have a stake in this, too! I want to see the problem solved just as much as the General does. And I think it _can_ be solved. But not this way!

"There's only one way to produce men of superior abilities. The method of adequate training. Hard, brutal discipline and training of oneself.

I'm going to convince Oglethorpe of it after he's seen the failure you intend to produce for him."

"That shouldn't be hard," said Paul. "It's the General's own view. The Project is simply to implement that view.

"But let's not have any misunderstanding about my intentions. I expect to give honest value in research for every dollar spent. I expect to turn up data that will go a long way toward providing better s.p.a.cemen for the Command--and to give Captain West the monument he asked for!"

Alone in his hotel room that night, Paul stood at the window overlooking the desert. Beyond the distant hills a faint glow in the sky marked the location of s.p.a.ce Command Base. He regarded it, and considered the enormity of the thing that was being brewed for the world in that isolated outpost. Now the chance was his to prove that manhood was a quality to be proud of, that machines could be built and junked and built again, but that a man's life was unique in the universe and could never be replaced once it was crushed.

For years he'd struggled to probe the basic nature of Man and find out what divorces him from the merely mechanical. He'd known there would probably never be enough money to reach his goal. And then Oglethorpe had come, offering him all the money in the world to reach a nebulous objective that s.p.a.ce Command did not know was un.o.btainable.

_Somebody_ was going to spend that money. With clear conscience, Paul rationalized that it might as well be him. He'd see that the country got value for what it spent, even if this was not quite what the s.p.a.ce Command expected.

Nat Holt was going to be a most difficult obstacle. Paul wished the General had let him pick his own technical director, but obviously the two men understood each other. In their separate fields, they were alike in their approach to human performance. Whip a man into line, make him come to heel like a reluctant hound. Beat him, shape him, twist him to the form you want him to bear.

_Discipline_ him. That was the magic word, the answer to all things.

Paul turned from the window in revulsion, drawing the curtains on the skyglow of the Base.

Human error!

When would Man cease to indulge in this most monumental of all errors?

When would he cease to regard himself and his fellows as brute creatures to be beaten into line?

He had to find the right answer before Oglethorpe and his kind found some flimsy validation for the one they had already chosen long ago.

He stood up and glanced at the clock, deciding he wanted dinner, after all. Tomorrow he'd wire Betty and the kids to get packed and be on their way. No--he'd phone tonight. She had a right to know immediately the outcome of his interview.

The dining room was almost empty. He ordered absently and clipped the speaker of his small personal radio behind his ear while waiting. He seldom used it, but here in the desert was a sense of isolation that made him seize almost compulsively upon any contact with the bright, distant world. The music was dull, and the news uninspiring. He was about to turn it off when his order arrived.

The wine was very bad; the steak, however, was good, so Paul considered it about even. His finger touched the radio switch once more. The newscaster's voice changed its tone of pounding urgency. "Repercussions of the recent crash of the world's first s.p.a.ce station are still being heard," he said. "Murmurs of protest against construction of a new Wheel are rising in many quarters. Today they approach the proportions of a roar.

"The influential New England Times states that it is 'unqualifiedly opposed' to any restoration of the Wheel. 'In its three years' existence the structure proved beyond any question of doubt its utter lack of utility. Now its fall to Earth demonstrates the menace const.i.tuted by its presence over every city on the face of the globe.'

"Senator Elbert echoes these sentiments. 'It was utter folly in the first place to spend billions of dollars to construct this Sword of Damocles in the sky of all the world. I propose that our Government go on record denying any further intention to rebuild such a threat to the peace and well-being of nations who stand now on the threshold of understanding and friendliness which they have sought for so long.'"

Paul switched it off. He remembered the hours of world-wide tension while the Wheel was falling toward the city of San Francisco. In panic, the whole population of the Bay Area attempted evacuation, but there wasn't time. The bridges became clogged with traffic, and some hysterical drivers left their cars and jumped to the waters below.

As the wreckage neared Earth, the computers narrowed their circle of error until it was certain at last that the city would not be struck.

But the damage was done. The fear remained, and now was congealing in angry determination that another Wheel would not be built.

Paul finished his meal, wondering what effect this would have on the plans to build a new Wheel--and on Project Superman. Maybe Congress would react in anger that would cut off all appropriations to the Project.

He wondered, in sudden weariness, if this would not be an unmixed blessing, after all.

The next three days were spent in telephone and telegraph communication with members of his profession as he proceeded to recruit a staff.

On Friday, Betty arrived with the kids. By the end of the following week, laboratory furniture had been installed and the first trickle of potential staff members was coming in to see what Superman was all about. Nat, too, had been busy forming his own staff and setting up basic equipment.

Paul had the feeling that they were opposing camps setting up on the same site of exploration. He tried to tell himself it was completely irrational, until Nat approached him a few days later.

"Quite a crew you're getting in here," the technician said. "You'll have to take Oglethorpe up on his offer of new buildings if you expect to find couch s.p.a.ce for all your boys."

"That's what you're here for," Paul suggested mildly, "to do away with couches."

"Right." Nat nodded. "Anything a couch can do, a meter can do twice as efficiently."

"Sometimes both are necessary. You forget my specialty is psychometry."

"No, I'm not forgetting," said Nat. "But that's what makes it so hard for me to figure out. You're attempting to span two completely incompatible fields: science and humanities. Man behaves either as a machine or as a creature of unstable emotion. To function as one you have to suppress the other."

"Splitting Man in two has never produced an answer to anything. It has been tried even longer than couches--and with far less result."

"I'll make you a small side bet. We're going to have to work together on Superman, and coordinate all our procedures and results. But I'll bet the final answer turns up on the side of a completely mechanistic man, shorn of all other responses and motivations."

"I'll take that!" Paul said with a grim smile. "I don't know how much of an answer we'll find, but I know _that_ won't be it!"