After a long pause she said, "When--when would you do this thing?" "I don't know. I'd have to discuss it with the others here first. And we'd need to arrange for proper publicity. Unless the whole world finds out about it, there's no sense in doing it." _Forty-three years of life converging toward one moment of decision in a bare little room on a rain-soaked New Jersey hill_, Harker thought. _And this is probably the weirdest motive for suicide in the history of the human species._ Lois said, "Do you have that much faith in those men?" "Yes. How can we expect the people to trust us, if we don't trust ourselves?" "All right," she said. Her voice held undertones of quiet resignation. "I guess I ought to fight and cry and tell you not to do it, but I know you too well, Jim. Go ahead, if you think you have to do this thing. I--I guess you might as well have my permission, because I know you'll go ahead and do it anyway." There was the hint of a crack in her voice. Harker smiled palely, thankful that the roughly-furnished office he had here did not have a visual pickup on the phone. He did not want her to see his face now, for he knew his face was that of a frightened man. "Everything's going to be okay," he told her, and broke the contact. It was still raining. He pulled a waterproof from the closet, slung it over his shoulders, and dashed across the clearing to Mart Raymond's office. The sky was dark, gray, bleak. Raymond was working on records when Harker entered--proceeding mechanically, with the air of a man marking time. They were all marking time, waiting for the Congressional decision. Harker said, "Mart, tell me something." "Go ahead." "How close are you to ironing out the business of loss of mind?" Raymond shrugged. "I told you. A month's more work, maybe. A little less, if we're lucky." Nodding, Harker said quietly, "Look here, Mart: I'm going to pull a Mitchison." "Huh?" "I mean, I'm going to jump the gun and announce that you've _already_ straightened things up, and that from now on reanimation will work every time, provided no vital organs are damaged and that decay hasn't begun." "What's the point of doing that? It isn't so." "It _will_ be so, sooner or later. Sooner, I hope. But I have an idea for a sort of publicity stunt, a grandstand play that should clinch the idea of reanimation's safety. Or else finish us altogether." Harker walked to the window and stared out. Raymond said, "Jim, what the dickens are you talking about?" Harker turned sharply. "Very simple. We're going to give a public demonstration of reanimation, sometime in the next couple of days. In order to prove the absolute safety of the process, I'm going to allow you to kill me under laboratory conditions and bring me back to life." "Are you crazy?" "Desperate. It's not quite the same thing." "But suppose it doesn't work? What if--you remember how Thurman looked?"