Raymond shrugged. "Pretty big. I guess you can have three or four hundred thousand, if you need it." "Three or four hundred _million_ is more in line with what we'll need," Harker said. He saw the stunned expression on Raymond's face and added, "Certainly at least a million, to begin with." "But why? Why should it be necessary to _sell_ the idea of restoring life? You'd think the people of America would rise up and acclaim us as saviors." "You'd think so, wouldn't you?" Harker shook his head bleakly. "It doesn't work that way, Mart. For one thing, they'll be afraid to try it. There'll be plenty of 'zombie' jokes, and behind those jokes will be unvoiced fear. Uh-uh, Mart. If we're going to put this thing across, we'll need a big public-relations budget. And we can't let a bubble-head like Mitchison handle the job." "It'll take a little time to fire him." "Why?" "You heard Barchet. Mitchison's Barchet's man. We'll have to go through shareholder channels to get rid of Mitchison." "How long will that take?" "Two weeks, maybe three," Raymond said. "Will that hold things up too badly?" "We'll manage," Harker said tiredly. * * * * * Harker spent the next morning, Wednesday, at his office, tidying up unfinished business. The delayer on the Bryant hearing had come through, and he read the document carefully, scowled, and jammed it into his desk drawer. He phoned the Bryant home and learned that the old man was very low; the penguinoid doctor refused to let Harker speak with him. Harker suspected the fine hand of Jonathan Bryant lurking behind that ukase, but there wasn't much he could do about it. The old man wasn't going to last forever, anyway--but Harker genuinely wanted him to hold out until after the hearing, at least. Nasty business. Jonathan had deliberately obtained the stay of hearing in hopes that his father would die before the case came up. He left the office at noon, spent some time downtown in the public library trying to find some books that would give him a little scientific background, and headed for home about four that afternoon. His home life had been suffering, a bit, in the week since he had plunged himself fully into the Beller Labs project. He had been coming home at odd hours, which upset Lois' routine, and his attitude was one of withdrawn introversion, which made things tough on the children. Still, they all were very cooperative about it, Harker thought. He hoped he could make it up to them when the pressure let up. _If_ the pressure ever let up. Thursday passed slowly. Harker remained at home, in his study, and tried to read the books he had brought from the library. He was surprised to learn that formal resuscitation research dated from the middle years of the past century. He traced down a few of the terms Raymond had thrown at him, and learned a bit about the mechanics of the Beller reanimation technique.