e're about ready to begin running tests on Superman, and I'd like you
to be the first to help us out. Can you arrange it?"

"We're tied up like a ball of string on getting the nucleus ship in
orbit. I know Oglethorpe gave orders we were to jump when you called,
but I'll have to check on replacements for those of us you take. What
kind of test are you going to run on me?"

"I want to find out how long it takes you to make a serious error, and
what happens to you when you do!"

* * * * *

Arrangements were made for initiating this series of tests two days
later. Paul had designed them, and Nat Holt's crew had built the
equipment.

But before they were started, Paul grew increasingly aware of the clamor
and public agitation against the Wheel. Instead of dying out after a
small spurt of anger, it was accumulating momentum in every corner of
the nation.

A rabble rouser named Morgan in the middle-west had proposed a motor
caravan to Space Command Base, where the participants would go on a
sit-down strike until assurance was given that no Wheel would be built
again. And on the heels of this came the demand by an increasing number
of Senators for a full investigation of the Base.

Paul met Barker after seeing the newscast of Morgan's revivalist type
appeal for a caravan of protest against the Base. "This looks like it
could get to be something that would be hard to handle," Barker said.
"It doesn't seem reasonable that the near-crash of the first Wheel at
San Francisco could be responsible for all this commotion."

"I don't think it is," Paul answered reflectively. "The sinking of a big
ocean liner doesn't produce hysterical demands that no more ships be
built. The crash of an airship with a hundred people aboard is accepted
for what it is, without this kind of reaction. I think these broadcasts
and write-ups of Captain West's appeal have sunk in deeper than
Oglethorpe or anyone else ever intended.

"For a long time there has been building up a sense of man's inferiority
to his machines. Now this incident of the Wheel and the world-wide
broadcast of West's final words have triggered that inferiority into a
genuine fear. They're afraid to have another Wheel up there over their
heads. They're afraid that no man is capable of mastering such a piece
of machinery."

Not only the public was infected with this fear, but the very men on
whom the operation of the ships depended. Harper was rig