And Rowe’s views were changing. It was no longer totally obvious to him that it was ludicrous to erect crush-barriers outside the Institute and assemble local crowds to put behind them. If he began to think, the people who got things done did in fact get things done they could not be the fools that people who did not have to get things done sometimes took them for. If, they got things done they must be fairly sound and reasonable people. And if they were fairly sound and reasonable people, the things they got done must be fairly sound and reasonable things to do.

The whole field of arguments both For and Against had always seemed to him to be incredibly confused. He wasn’t exactly sure, he realised when he put a snap question to himself in the middle of the night, what the arguments were for and against. He couldn’t see exactly where the arguments for left off and the arguments against started. Or rather, he could see some of the arguments on both sides. Or to be even more precise, he could almost see some of the arguments on both sides.

The only thing he could see with absolute clarity in this wild lunar landscape was himself. There he stood, he could see, making sense of the terrible complexities around him with a hard intellectual pertinacity and an engaging modesty. ‘Devastating analysis of the problems of our time,’ said the extracts from the reviews that seemed to hang in the sky above the chaos below. ‘A refreshing ability to go straight to the heart of the matter.’ ‘Here is a man who refuses to be fooled.’