The only obvious furnishings in Jan Tregarron's office were a flat-topped desk and a few chairs. Tregarron sat behind the desk, the top of which was completely bare. He looked almost bored, except that his little eyes were smiling. Jorj Helmuth sat across the desk from him, a few feet back, erect and grim-faced, while shadowy in the muted light, Caddy stood against the wall behind Tregarron. She still wore the fur-trimmed skylon frock she'd put on that afternoon. She took no part in the conversation, seemed almost unaware of it. "So you just went ahead and canceled the conference without consulting me?" Jorj was saying. "You called it without consulting me." Tregarron playfully wagged a finger. "Shouldn't do that sort of thing, Jorj." "But I tell you I was completely prepared. I was absolutely sure of my ground." "I know, I know," Tregarron said lightly. "But it's not the right time for it. I'm the best judge of that." "When will be the right time?" Tregarron shrugged. "Look here, Jorj," he said, "every man should stick to his trade, to his forte. Technology isn't ours." Jorj's lips thinned. "But you know as well as I do that we are going to have to have a nuclear spaceship and actually go to Mars someday." Tregarron lifted his eyebrows. "Are we?" "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.