The General shook his head slowly, his eyes remaining on Paul's face.
"You aren't going to have anything like a year. You haven't got time to
run down one line of research and then another. Run them all at once--a
thousand of them if you want to. Why do you think you've got the budget
you have!"

"Some things," said Paul, "like threading a needle--or analysing a human
being--don't go much faster when a thousand men work at it than when
there's only one."

"They do when there're a thousand needles to thread--or brains to pick.
And that's what we're up against here. We need a volume of the kind of
men we've been talking about, and we need them quick!"

"We have to find out how to get the first one."

"And you haven't got as much time now as we thought you had when
Superman began. They're trying to close us up.

"We hadn't planned to build another Wheel right away, not until some
refinements of design had been worked out, and we had some results from
Superman.

"Now, all that's been scrapped. We've received orders from Washington
that erection of a second Wheel is to begin at once, using the plans of
the first one. Fabrication of structures is already under way."

"I don't understand," said Paul.

"If we don't get another one up there within a matter of weeks, this
hysterical opposition among the public is liable to prevent us ever
getting one there again. We have to act while we still have authority,
before the crackpots persuade Congress to take it away. And by the time
it's built, I want some men to put in it. Men who can be trusted to not
jeopardize it the moment they put their clumsy feet aboard. I want them,
Medick, and I intend to have them. That's by way of an order!"

The General rose, but Paul remained seated. "You can't get them that
way, and you know it," the latter said. "We'll do all we can, as I've
told you before."

"I think you'll do considerably more, now. That was quite a talk you
delivered to your boys a couple of weeks ago. We will 'ostensibly work
at the task of developing an errorless man', is the way I believe you
put it. You're going to do a lot more than ostensibly work at it,
Medick. Just how much do you think you can get away with?"

Paul remained motionless in the chair. Only his lips moved. "So you had
a report on our little meeting? I hope it was complete enough to give
you the rest of the things I said, that my basic purpose was not to
produce human robots, but to validate t