The bright light of the video cameras flooded the room. Percy had
done a good job; there was a representative from every network, every
telefax, every blare of any sort at all. The media had been corralled.
Walton's words would echo round the world.
He was seated behind his desk--seated, because he could shape his words
more forcefully that way, and also because he was terribly tired. He
smiled into the battery of cameras.
"Good evening," he said. "I'm Roy Walton, speaking to you from the
offices of the Bureau of Population Equalization. I've been director
of Popeek for a little less than a week, now, and I'd like to make a
report--a progress report, so to speak.
"We of Popeek regard ourselves as holding a mandate from you, the
people. After all, it was the world-wide referendum last year that
enabled the United Nations to put us into business. And I want to tell
you how the work of Popeek is going.
"Our aim is to provide breathing space for human beings. The world is
vastly overcrowded, with its seven billion people. Popeek's job is to
ease that overcrowdedness, to equalize the population masses of the
world so that the empty portions of the globe are filled up and the
extremely overcrowded places thinned out a little. But this is only
part of our job--the short-range, temporary part. We're planning for
the future here. We know we can't keep shifting population from place
to place on Earth; it won't work forever. Eventually every square inch
is going to be covered, and then where do we go?
"You know the answer. We go _out_. We reach for the stars. At present
we have spaceships that can take us to the planets, but the planets
aren't suitable for human life. All right, we'll _make_ them suitable!
At this very moment a team of engineers is on Venus, in that hot, dry,
formaldehyde atmosphere, struggling to turn Venus into a world fit for
oxygen-breathing human beings. They'll do it, too--and when they're
done with Venus they'll move on to Mars, to the Moon, perhaps to the
big satellites of Jupiter and Saturn too. There'll be a day when the
solar system will be habitable from Mercury to Pluto--we hope."
"But even that is short-range," Walton said pointedly. "There'll be
a day--it may be a hundred years from now, or a thousand, or ten
thousand--when the entire solar system will be as crowded with humanity
as Earth is today. We have to plan for that day, too. It's the _lack_
of planning on the part of our ancestors that's made things so hard for
us. We of Popeek don't want to repeat the tragic mistakes of the past.
"My predecessor, the late Director FitzMaugham, was aware of this
problem. He succeeded in gathering a group of scientists and
technicians who developed a super space drive, a faster-than-light ship
that can travel to the stars virtually instantaneously, instead of
taking years to make the trip as our present ships would.
"The ship was built and sent out on an exploratory mission. Director
FitzMaugham chose to keep this fact a secret. He was afraid of arousing
false hopes in case the expedition should be a failure.
"The expedition was _not_ a failure! Colonel Leslie McLeod and his men
discovered a planet similar to Earth in the system of the star Procyon.
I have seen photographs of New Earth, as they have named it, and I can
tell you that it is a lovely planet ... and one that will be receptive
to our pioneers."
Walton paused a moment before launching into the main subject of his
talk.
"Unfortunately, there is a race of intelligent beings living on a
neighboring planet of this world. Perhaps you have seen the misleading
and inaccurate reports blared today to the effect that these people
refuse to allow Earth to colonize in their system. Some of you have
cried out for immediate war against these people, the Dirnans.
"I must confirm part of the story the telefax carried today: the
Dirnans are definitely not anxious to have Earth set up a colony on a
world adjoining theirs. We are strangers to them, and their reaction is
understandable. After all, suppose a race of strange-looking creatures
landed on Mars, and proceeded with wholesale colonization of our
neighboring world? We'd be uneasy, to say the least.
"And so the Dirnans are uneasy. However, I've summoned a Dirnan
ambassador--our first diplomatic contact with intelligent alien
creatures!--and I hope he'll be on Earth shortly. I plan to convince
him that we're peaceful, neighborly people, and that it will be to our
mutual benefit to allow Earth colonization in the Procyon system.
"I'm going to need your help. If, while our alien guest is here, he
discovers that some misguided Earthmen are demanding war with Dirna,
he's certainly not going to think of us as particularly desirable
neighbors to welcome with open arms. I want to stress the importance of
this. Sure, we can go to war with Dirna for possession of Procyon VIII.
But why spread wholesale destruction on two worlds when we can probably
achieve our goal peacefully?
"That's all I have to say tonight, people of the world. I hope you'll
think about what I've told you. Popeek works twenty-four hours a day
in your behalf, but we need your full cooperation if we're going to
achieve our aims and bring humanity to its full maturity. Thank you."
* * * * *
The floodlights winked out suddenly, leaving Walton momentarily
blinded. When he opened his eyes again he saw the cameramen moving
their bulky apparatus out of the office quickly and efficiently. The
regular programs had returned to the channels--the vapid dancing and
joke-making, the terror shows, the kaleidowhirls.
Now that it was over, now that the tension was broken, Walton
experienced a moment of bitter disillusionment. He had had high hopes
for his speech, but had he really put it over? He wasn't sure.
He glanced up. Lee Percy stood over him.
"Roy, can I say something?" Percy said diffidently.
"Go ahead," Walton said.
"I don't know how many millions I forked over to put you on the media
tonight, but I know one thing--we threw a hell of a lot of money away."