"Yes! Just as we're going to have to build a real Maizie. Everything
we've done until now have been emergency measures."
"Really?"
Jorj stared at him. "Look here, Jan," he said, gripping his knees with
his hands, "you and I are going to have to talk things through."
"Are you quite sure of that?" Jan's voice was very cool. "I have a
feeling that it might be best if you said nothing and accepted things
as they are."
"No!"
"Very well." Tregarron settled himself in his chair.
"I helped you organize the Thinkers," Jorj said, and waited. "At least,
I was your first partner."
Tregarron barely nodded.
"Our basic idea was that the time had come to apply science to the life
of man on a large scale, to live rationally and realistically. The
only things holding the world back from this all-important step were
the ignorance, superstition, and inertia of the average man, and the
stuffiness and lack of enterprise of the academic scientists--their
worship of facts, even when facts were clearly dangerous.
"Yet we knew that in their deepest hearts the average man and
the professionals were both on our side. They wanted the new
world visualized by science. They wanted the simplifications and
conveniences, the glorious adventures of the human mind and body. They
wanted the trips to Mars and into the depths of the human psyche, they
wanted the robots and the thinking machines. All they lacked was the
nerve to take the first big step--and that was what we supplied.
"It was no time for half measures, for slow and sober plodding. The
world was racked by wars and neurosis, in danger of falling into the
foulest hands. What was needed was a tremendous and thrilling appeal
to the human imagination, an Earth-shaking affirmation of the power of
science for good.
"But the men who provided that appeal and affirmation couldn't afford
to be cautious. They wouldn't check and double check. They couldn't
wait for the grudging and jealous approval of the professionals. They
had to use stunts, tricks, fakes--_anything to get over the big point_.
Once that had been done, once mankind was headed down the new road, it
would be easy enough to give the average man the necessary degree of
insight to heal the breach with the professionals, to make good in
actuality what had been made good only in pretense.
"Have I stated our position fairly?"
* * * * *