er, and a few who thought he was right--or at least hoped he
was.

"Five hundred years ago was the beginning of a new freedom from the
prison of a tiny, constricted world. Today, another freedom waits our
successful conquest of space. And whenever a freedom has been won there
have been more who jeered against it than have cheered for it. You are
today making a choice--"

He talked for ten minutes, and when he was through he knew that he'd
accomplished his goal. Even before the sound truck pulled out, the cars
of the Caravan were breaking away from the mass and disappearing in the
distance.

"Nice job," Metcalf congratulated, as if he'd been responsible for it
himself.

"Just a little feedback in the right place--" murmured Paul absently.

"Feedback? What's that--new kind of propaganda technique--?"

"Yeah, you might call it that. How could a guy have been so _blind_--?"
he said fiercely, more to himself than to his companions.

He hurried to the laboratory as soon as the truck got him back to Base.
He rounded up Barker and Nat Holt and a dozen of his other top men. "The
answer's been under our noses all the time," he said. "We've been too
busy fighting each other for the sake of our own preconceived notions to
have seen it!"

"What are you talking about?" Holt demanded.

"Feedback. Can't you guess what it is?"

"No."

"Are you willing to let us give you a small dose--something less than
the level given Harper and his men--and then tell us what you find out
about it?"

Nat Holt looked hesitant. "If you think you know what you're talking
about. There's no point in my getting in a condition like Harper's."

"We'll pull you out before you get anywhere near that far."

Still dubious, he took a seat amid the mass of pulse generating
equipment and electro-encephalograph recorders. A single pair of
feedback terminals were fitted to his skull. The generator was set to
duplicate his own feedback impulse taken from a moment of failure.

Paul switched on the circuits and advanced the controls carefully. A
look of pain and regret crossed Holt's face. He cried out with a
whimper. "Turn it off!"

"A second more--," Paul said. He advanced the control a hair and waited.
The technologist began to cry suddenly in a low, sobbing voice.

Paul cut the switch.

For a moment Holt continued to slump in the chair, his shoulders
jerking. Then he looked up, half-bewildered, half-furious. "What did you
do to me?" he demanded