Part 1

It was almost a class reunion, and though it was marked by joylessness, there was no reason as yet to think it would be marred by tragedy.

            Edward Talliaferro, fresh from the Moon and without his gravity legs yet, met the other two in Stanley Kaunas’s room. Kaunas rose to greet him in a subdued manner. Battersley Ryger merely sat and nodded.

            Talliaferro lowered his large body carefully to the couch, very aware of its unusual weight. He grimaced a little, his plump lips twisting inside the rim of hair that surrounded his mouth on lip, chin, and cheek.

            They had seen one another earlier that day under more formal conditions. Now for the first time they were alone, and Talliaferro said, “This is a kind of occasion. We’re meeting for the first time in ten years. First time since graduation, in fact.”

            Ryger’s nose twitched. It had been broken shortly before that same graduation and he had received his degree in astronomy with a bandage disfiguring his face. He said grumpily, “ Anyone ordered, champagne? Or something?”

            Talliaferro said, “Come on! First big interplanetary astronomical convention in history is no place for glooming. And among friends, too!”

            Kaunas said suddenly, “It’s Earth. It doesn’t feel right. I can’t get used to it.” He shook his head but his look of depression was not detachable. It remained.

            Talliaferro said, “I know. I’m so heavy. It takes all the energy out of me. At that, you’re better off than I am, Kaunas. Mercurian gravity is 0.4 normal. On the Moon, it’s only 0.16.” He interrupted Ryger’s beginning of a sound by saying, “ And on Ceres they use pseudo-grav fields adjusted to 0.8. You have no problem at all, Ryger.”

            The Cerian astronomer looked annoyed, “It’s the open air. Going outside without a suit gets me.”

            “Right,” agreed Kaunas, “and letting the sun beat down on you. Just letting it.”

            Talliaferro found himself insensibly drifting back in time. They had not changed much. Nor, he thought, had he himself. They were all ten years older, of course. Ryger had put on some weight and Kaunas’s thin face had grown a bit leathery, but he would have recognized either if he had met him without warning.

            He said, “I don’t think it’s Earth getting us. Let’s face it.”

            Kaunas looked up sharply. He was a little fellow with quick, nervous movements of his hands. He habitually wore clothes that looked a shade too large for him.

            He said, “Villiers! I know. I think about him sometimes.” Then, with an air of desperation, “I got a letter from him.”

            Ryger sat upright, his olive complexion darkening further and said with energy, “You did? When?”

            “ A month ago.”

            Ryger turned to Talliaferro. “How about you?”

            Talliaferro blinked placidly and nodded.

            Ryger said, “He’s gone crazy. He claims he’s discovered a practical method of mass-transference through space. --He told you two also?--That’s it, then. He was always a little bent. Now he’s broken.”

            He rubbed his nose fiercely and Talliaferro thought of the day Villiers had broken it.

            For ten years, Villiers had haunted them like the vague shadow of a guilt that wasn’t really theirs. They had gone through their graduate work together, four picked and dedicated men being trained for a profession that had reached new heights in this age of interplanetary travel.

            The Observatories were opening on the other worlds, surrounded by vacuum, unblurred by air.

            There was the Lunar Observatory, from which Earth and the inner planets could be studied; a silent world in whose sky the home-planet hung suspended.

            Mercury Observatory, closest to the sun, perched at Mercury’s north pole, where the terminator moved scarcely at all, and the sun was fixed on the horizon and could be studied in the minutest detail.

            Ceres Observatory, newest, most modern, with its range extending from Jupiter to the outermost galaxies.

            There were disadvantages, of course. With interplanetary travel still difficult, leaves would be few, anything like normal life virtually impossible, but this was a lucky generation. Coming scientists would find the fields of knowledge well-reaped and, until the invention of an interstellar drive, no new horizon as capacious as this one would be opened.

            Each of these lucky four, Talliaferro, Ryger, Kaunas, and Villiers, was to be in the position of a Galileo, who by owning the first real telescope, could not point it anywhere in the sky without making a major discovery.

            But then Romero Villiers had fallen sick and it was rheumatic fever. Whose fault was that? His heart had been left leaking and limping.

            He was the most brilliant of the four, the most hopeful, the most intense--and he could not even finish his schooling and get his doctorate.

            Worse than that, he could never leave Earth; the acceleration of a spaceship’s take-off would kill him.

            Talliaferro was marked for the Moon, Ryger for Ceres, Kaunas for Mercury. Only Villiers stayed behind, a life-prisoner of Earth.

            They had tried telling their sympathy and Villiers had rejected it with something approaching hate. He had railed at them and cursed them. When Ryger lost his temper and lifted his fist, Villiers had sprung at him, screaming, and had broken Ryger’s nose.

            Obviously Ryger hadn’t forgotten that, as he caressed his nose gingerly with one finger.

            Kaunas’s forehead was an uncertain washboard of wrinkles. “He’s at the Convention, you know. He’s got a room in the hotel--405.”

            “I won’t see him,” said Ryger. “He’s coming up here. He said he wanted to see us. I thought--He said nine. He’ll be here any minute.”

            “In that case,” said Ryger, “if you don’t mind, I’m leaving.” He rose.

            Talliaferro said, “Oh, wait a while. What’s the harm in seeing him?”

            “Because there’s no point. He’s mad.”

            “Even so. Let’s not be petty about it. Are you afraid of him?”

            “ Afraid!” Ryger looked contemptuous.

            “Nervous, then. What is there to be so nervous about?”

            “I’m not nervous,” said Ryger.

            “Sure you are. We all feel guilty about him, and without real reason. Nothing that happened was our fault.” But he was speaking defensively and he knew it.

            And then, at that point, the door signal sounded, all three jumped and turned to stare uneasily at the barrier that stood between themselves and Villiers.

            The door opened and Romero Villiers walked in. The others rose stiffly to greet him, then remained standing in embarrassment, without one hand being raised.

            He stared them down sardonically.

            He’s changed, thought Talliaferro.

            He had. He had shrunken in almost every dimension. A gathering stoop made him seen even shorter. The skin of his scalp glistened through thinning hair, the skin on the back of his hands was ridged crookedly with bluish veins. He looked ill. There seemed nothing to link him to the memory of the past except for his trick of shading his eyes with one hand when he stared intently and, when he spoke, the even, controlled baritone of his voice.

            He said, “My friends! My space-trotting friends! We’ve lost touch.”

            Talliaferro said, “Hello, Villiers.”

            Villiers eyed him. “Are you well?”

            “Well enough.”

            “ And you two?”

            Kaunas managed a weak smile and a murmur. Ryger snapped, “All right, Villiers. What’s up?”

            “Ryger, the angry man,” said Villiers. “How’s Ceres?”

            “It was doing well when I left How’s Earth?”

            “You can see for yourself,” but Villiers tightened as he said that.

            He went on, “I am hoping that the reason all three of you have come to the Convention is to hear my paper day after tomorrow.”

            “Your paper? What paper?” asked Talliaferro.

            “I wrote you all about it. My method of mass-transference.”

            Ryger smiled with one corner of his mouth. “Yes, you did. You didn’t say anything about a paper, though, and I don’t recall that you’re listed as one of the speakers. I would have noticed it if you had been.”

            “You’re right. I’m not listed. Nor have I prepared an abstract for publication.”

            Villiers had flushed and Talliaferro said soothingly, “Take it easy, Villiers. You don’t look well.”

            Villiers whirled on him, lips contorted. “My heart’s holding out, thank you.”

            Kaunas said, “Listen, Villiers, if you’re not listed or abstracted--”

            “You listen. I’ve waited ten years. You have the jobs in space and I have to teach school on Earth, but I’m a better man than any of you or all of you.”

            “Granted--” began Talliaferro.

            “And I don’t want your condescension either. Mandel witnessed it. I suppose you’ve heard of Mandel. Well, he’s chairman of the astronautics division at the Convention and I demonstrated mass-transference for him. It was a crude device and it burnt out after one use but--Are you listening?”

            “We’re listening,” said Ryger coldly, “for what that counts.”

            “He’ll let me talk about it my way. You bet he will. No warning. No advertisement. I’m going to spring it at them like a bombshell. When I give them the fundamental relationships involved it will break up the Convention. They’ll scatter to their home labs to check on me and build devices. And they’ll find it works. I made a live mouse disappear at one spot in my lab and appear in another. Mandel witnessed it.”

            He stared at them, glaring first at one face, then at another. He said, “You don’t believe me, do you?”

            Ryger said, “If you don’t want advertisement, why do you tell us?”

            “You’re different. You’re my friends, my classmates. You went out into space and left me behind.”

            “That wasn’t a matter of choice,” objected Kaunas in a thin, high voice.

            Villiers ignored that. He said, “So I want you to know now. What will work for a mouse will work for a human. What will move something ten feet across a lab will move it a million miles across space. I’ll be on the Moon, and on Mercury, and on Ceres and anywhere I want to go. I’ll match every one of you and more. And I’ll have done more for astronomy just teaching school and thinking, than all of you with your observatories and telescopes and cameras and spaceships.”

            “Well,” said Talliaferro, “I’m pleased. More power to you. May I see a copy of the paper?”

            “Oh, no.” Villiers’ hands clenched close to his chest as though he were holding phantom sheets and shielding them from observation. “You wait like everyone else. There’s only one copy and no one will see it till I’m ready. Not even Mandel.”

            “One copy,” cried Talliaferro. “If you misplace it--”

            “I won’t. And if I do, it’s all in my head.”

            “If you--” Talliaferro almost finished that sentence with “die” but stopped himself. Instead, he went on after an almost imperceptible pause, “--have any sense, you’ll scan it at least. For safety’s sake.”

            “No,” said Villiers, shortly. “You’ll hear me day after tomorrow. You’ll see the human horizon expanded at one 6troke as it never has been before.”

            Again he stared intently at each face. “Ten years,” he said. “Good-by.”

            “He’s mad,” said Ryger explosively, staring at the door as though Villiers were still standing before it.

            “Is he?” said Talliaferro thoughtfully. “I suppose he is, in a way. He hates us for irrational reasons. And, then, not even to scan his paper as a precaution--”

            Talliaferro fingered his own small scanner as he said that. It was just a neutrally colored, undistinguished cylinder, somewhat thicker and somewhat shorter than an ordinary pencil. In recent years, it had become the hallmark of the scientist, much as the stethoscope was that of the physician and the micro-computer that of the statistician. The scanner was worn in a jacket pocket, or clipped to a sleeve, or slipped behind the ear, or swung at the end of a string.

            Talliaferro sometimes, in his more philosophical moments, wondered how it was in the days when research men had to make laborious notes of the literature or file away fullsized reprints. How unwieldy!

            Now it was only necessary to scan anything printed or written to have a micro-negative which could be developed at leisure. Talliaferro had already recorded every abstract included in the program booklet of the Convention. The other two, he assumed with full confidence, had done like.. wise.

            Talliaferro said, “Under the circumstances, refusal to scan is mad.”

            “Space!” said Ryger hotly. “There is no paper. There is no discovery. Scoring one on us would be worth any lie to him.”

            “But then what will he do day after tomorrow?” asked Kaunas.

            “How do I know? He’s a madman.”

            Talliaferro still played with his scanner and wondered idly if he ought to remove and develop some of the small slivers of film that lay stored away in its vitals. He decided against it. He said, “Don’t underestimate Villiers. He’s a brain.”

            “Ten years ago, maybe,” said Ryger. “Now he’s a nut. I propose we forget him.”

            He spoke loudly, as though to drive away Villiers and all that concerned him by the sheer force with which he discussed other things. He talked about Ceres and his work--the radio-plotting of the Milky Way with new radioscopes capable of the resolution of single stars.

            Kaunas listened and nodded, then chimed in with information concerning the radio emissions of sunspots and his own paper, in press, on the association of proton storms with the gigantic hydrogen flares on the sun’s surface.

            Talliaferro contributed little. Lunar work was unglamorous in comparison. The latest information on long-scale weather forecasting through direct observation of terrestrial jet-streams would not compare with radioscopes and proton storms.

            More than that, his thoughts could not leave Villiers. Villiers was the brain. They all knew it. Even Ryger, for all his bluster, must feel that if mass-transference were at all possible then Villiers was a logical discoverer.

            The discussion of their own work amounted to no more than an uneasy admission that none of them had come to much. Talliaferro had followed the literature and knew. His own papers had been minor. The others had authored nothing of great importance.

            None of them--face the fact--had developed into space-shakers. The colossal dreams of school days had not come true and that was that. They were competent routine workmen. No less. Unfortunately, no more. They knew that.

            Villiers would have been more. They knew that, too. It was that knowledge, as well as guilt, which kept them antagonistic.

            Talliaferro felt uneasily that Villiers, despite everything, was yet to be more. The others must be thinking so, too, and mediocrity could grow quickly unbearable. The mass-transference paper would come to pass and Villiers would be the great man after all, as he was always fated to be apparently, while his classmates, with all their advantages, would be forgotten. Their role would be no more than to applaud from the crowd.

            He felt his own envy and chagrin and was ashamed of it, but felt it none the less.

            Conversation died, and Kaunas said, his eyes turning away, “Listen, why don’t we drop in on old Villiers?”

            There was a false heartiness about it, a completely unconvincing effort at casualness. He added, “No use leaving bad feelings--unnecessarily--”

            Talliaferro thought: He wants to make sure about the mass-transference. He’s hoping it is only a madman’s nightmare so he can sleep tonight.

            But he was curious himself, so he made no objection, and even Ryger shrugged with ill grace and said, “Hell, why not?”

            It was a little before eleven then.

            Talliaferro was awakened by the insistent ringing of his door signal. He hitched himself to one elbow in the darkness and felt distinctly outraged. The soft glow of the ceiling indicator showed it to be not quite four in the morning.

            He cried out, “Who is it?”

            The ringing continued in short, insistent spurts.

            Growling, Talliaferro slipped into his bathrobe. He opened the door and blinked in the corridor light. He recognized the man who faced him from the trimensionals he had seen often enough.

            Nevertheless, the man said in an abrupt whisper, “My name is Hubert Mandel.”

            “Yes, sir,” said Talliaferro. Mandel was one of the Names in astronomy, prominent enough to have an important executive position with the World Astronomical Bureau, active enough to be Chairman of the Astronautics section here at the Convention.

            It suddenly struck Talliaferro that it was Mandel for whom Villiers claimed to have demonstrated mass-transference. The thought of Villiers was somehow a sobering one.

            Mandel said, “You are Dr. Edward Talliaferro?”

            “Yes, sir.”

            “Then dress and come with me. It is very important. It concerns a mutual acquaintance.”

            “Dr. Villiers?”

            Mandel’s eyes flickered a bit. His brows and lashes were so fair as to give those eyes a naked, unfringed appearance. His hair was silky-thin, his age about fifty.

            He said, “Why Villiers?”

            “He mentioned you last evening. I don’t know any other mutual acquaintance.”

            Mandel nodded, waited for Talliaferro to finish slipping into his clothes, then turned and led the way. Ryger and Kaunas were waiting in a room one floor above Talliaferro’s. Kaunas’s eyes were red and troubled. Ryger was smoking a cigarette with impatient puffs.

            Talliaferro said, “We’re all here. Another reunion.” It fell flat.

            He took a seat and the three stared at one another. Ryger shrugged.

            Mandel paced the floor, hands deep in his pockets. He said, ‘“I apologize for any inconvenience, gentlemen, and I thank you for your co-operation. I would like more of it. Our friend, Romero Villiers, is dead. About an hour ago, his body was removed from the hotel. The medical judgment is heart failure.”

            There was a stunned silence. Ryger’s cigarette hovered halfway to his lips, then sank slowly without completing its journey.

            “Poor devil,” said Talliaferro.

            “Horrible,” whispered Kaunas hoarsely. “He was--” His voice played out.

            Ryger shook himself. “Well, he had a bad heart. There’s nothing to be done.”

            “One little thing,” corrected Mandel quietly. “Recovery.”

            “What does that mean?” asked Ryger sharply.

            Mandel said, “When did you three see him last?”

            Talliaferro spoke, “Last evening. It turned out to be a reunion. We all met for the first time in ten years. It wasn’t a pleasant meeting, I’m sorry to say. Villiers felt he had cause for anger with us, and he was angry.”

            “That was--when?”

            “ About nine, the first time.”

            “The first time?”

            “We saw him again later in the evening.”

            Kaunas looked troubled. “He had left angrily. We couldn’t leave it at that. We had to try. It wasn’t as if we hadn’t all been friends at one time. So we went to his room and--”

            Mandel pounced on that. “You were all in his room?”

            “Yes,” said Kaunas, surprised.

            “About when?”

            “Eleven, I think.” He looked at the others. Talliaferro nodded.

            “And how long did you stay?”

            “Two minutes,” put in Ryger. “He ordered us out as though we were after his paper.” He paused as though expecting Mandel to ask what paper, but Mandel said nothing. He went on. “I think he kept it under his pillow. At least he lay across the pillow as he yelled at us to leave.”

            “He may have been dying then,” said Kaunas, in a sick whisper.

            “Not then,” said Mandel shortly. “So you probably all left fingerprints.”

            “Probably,” said Talliaferro. He was losing some of his automatic respect for Mandel and a sense of impatience was returning. It was four in the morning, Mandel or no. He said, “Now what’s all this about?”

            “Well, gentlemen,” said Mandel, “there’s more to Villiers’ death than the fact of death. Villiers’ paper, the only copy of it as far as I know, was stuffed into the cigarette flash-disposal unit and only scraps of it were left. I’ve never seen or read the paper, but I knew enough about the matter to be willing to swear in court if necessary that the remnants of unflashed paper in the disposal unit were of the paper he was planning to give at this Convention. --You seem doubtful, Dr. Ryger.”

            Ryger smiled sourly. “Doubtful that he was going to give it. If you want my opinion, sir, he was mad. For ten years he was a prisoner of Earth and he fantasied mass-transference as escape. It was all that kept him alive probably. He rigged up some sort of fraudulent demonstration. I don’t say it was deliberate fraud. He was probably madly sincere, and sincerely mad. Last evening was the climax. He came to our rooms--he hated us for having escaped Earth--and triumphed over us. It was what he had lived for for ten years. It may have shocked him back to some form of sanity. He knew he couldn’t actually give the paper; there was nothing to give. So he burnt it and his heart gave out. It is too bad.”

            Mandel listened to the Cerian astronomer, wearing a look of sharp disapproval. He said, “Very glib, Dr. Ryger, but quite wrong. I am not as easily fooled by fraudulent demonstrations as you may believe. Now according to the registration data, which I have been forced to check rather hastily, you three were his classmates at college. Is that right?”

            They nodded.

            “Are there any other classmates of yours present at the Convention?”

            “No,” said Kaunas. “We were the only four qualifying for a doctorate in astronomy that year. At least he would have qualified except--”

            “Yes, I understand,” said Mandel. “Well, then, in that case one of you three visited Villiers in his room one last time at midnight.”

            There was a short silence. Then Ryger said coldly, “Not I.” Kaunas, eyes wide, shook his head.

            Talliaferro said, “What are you implying?”

            “One of you came to him at midnight and insisted on seeing his paper. I don’t know the motive. Conceivably, it was with the deliberate intention of forcing him into heart failure. When Villiers collapsed, the criminal, if I may call him so, was ready. He snatched the paper which. I might add, probably was kept under his pillow and scanned it. Then he destroyed the paper itself in the flash-disposal, but he was in a hurry and destruction wasn’t complete.”

            Ryger interrupted. “How do you know all this? Were you a witness?”

            “ Almost,” said Mandel. “Villiers was not quite dead at the moment of his first collapse. When the criminal left, he managed to reach the phone and call my room. He choked out a few phrases, enough to outline what had occurred. Unfortunately I was not in my room; a late conference kept me away. However, my recording attachment taped it. I always play the recording tape back whenever I return to my room or office. Bureaucratic habit. I called back. He was dead.”

            “Well, then,” said Ryger, “who did he say did it?”

            “He didn’t. Or if he did, it was unintelligible. But one word rang out clearly. It was ‘classmate.’ “

            Talliaferro detached his scanner from its place in his inner jacket pocket and held it out toward Mandel. Quietly he said, “If you would like to develop the film in my scanner, you are welcome to do so. You will not find Villiers’ paper there.”

            At once, Kaunas did the same, and Ryger, with a scowl, joined.

            Mandel took all three scanners and said dryly, “Presumably, whichever one of you has done this has already disposed of the piece of exposed film with the paper on it. However--”

            Talliaferro raised his eyebrows. “You may search my person or my room.”

            But Ryger was still scowling. “Now wait a minute, wait one bloody minute. Are you the police?”

            Mandel stared at him. “Do you want the police? Do you want a scandal and a murder charge? Do you want the Convention disrupted and the System press to make a holiday out of astronomy and astronomers? Villiers’ death might well have been accidental. He did have a bad heart. Whichever one of you was there may well have acted on impulse. It may not have been a premeditated crime. If whoever it is will return the negative, we can avoid a great deal of trouble.”

            “Even for the criminal?” asked Talliaferro.

            Mandel shrugged. “There may be trouble for him. I will not promise immunity. But whatever the trouble, it won’t be public disgrace and life imprisonment, as it might be if the police are called in.”

            Silence.

            Mandel said, “It is one of you three.”

            Silence.

            Mandel went on, “I think I can see the original reasoning of the guilty person. The paper would be destroyed. Only we four knew of the mass-transference and only I had ever seen a demonstration. Moreover you had only his word, a madman’s word perhaps, that I had seen it. With Villiers dead of heart failure and the paper gone, it would be easy to believe Dr. Ryger’s theory that there was no mass-transference and never had been. A year or two might pass and our criminal, in possession of the mass-transference data, could reveal it little by little, rig experiments, publish careful papers, and end as the apparent discoverer with all that would imply in terms of money and renown. Even his own classmates would suspect nothing. At most they would believe that the long-past affair with Villiers had inspired him to begin investigations in the field. No more.”

            Mandel looked sharply from one face to another. “But none of that will work now. Any of the three of you who comes through with mass-transference is proclaiming himself the criminal. I’ve seen the demonstration; I know it is legitimate; I know that one of you possesses a record of the paper. The information is therefore useless to you. Give it up then.”

            Silence.

            Mandel walked to the door and turned again, “I’d appreciate it if you would stay here till I return. I won’t be long. I hope the guilty one will use the interval to consider. If he’s afraid a confession will lose him his job, let him remember that a session with police may lose him his liberty and cost him the Psychic Probe.” He hefted the three scanners, looked grim and somewhat in need of sleep. “I’ll develop these.”

            Kaunas tried to smile. “What if we make a break for it while you’re gone?”

            “Only one of you has reason to try,” said Mandel. “I think I can rely on the two innocent ones to control the third, if only out of self-protection.”

            He left.

            It was five in the morning. Ryger looked at his watch indignantly. “ A hell of a thing. I want to sleep.”

            “We can curl up here,” said Talliaferro philosophically. “Is anyone planning a confession?”

            Kaunas looked away and Ryger’s lip lifted.

            “I didn’t think so.” Talliaferro closed his eyes, leaned his large head back against the chair and said in a tired voice, “Back on the Moon, they’re in the slack season. We’ve got a two-week night and then it’s busy, busy. Then there’s two weeks of sun and there’s nothing but calculations, correlations and bull-sessions. That’s the hard time. I hate it. If there were more women, if I could arrange something permanent--”

            In a whisper, Kaunas talked about the fact that it was still impossible to get the entire Sun above the horizon and in view of the telescope on Mercury. But with another two miles of track soon to be laid down for the Observatory--move the whole thing, you know, tremendous forces involved, solar energy used directly--it might be managed. It would be managed.

            Even Ryger consented to talk of Ceres after listening to the low murmur of the other voices. There was the problem there of the two hour rotation period, which meant the stars whipped across the sky at an angular velocity twelve times that in Earth’s sky. A net of three light scopes, three radio scopes, three of everything, caught the fields of study from one another as they whirled past.

            “Could you use one of the poles?” asked Kaunas.

            “You’re thinking of Mercury and the Sun,” said Ryger impatiently. “Even at the poles, the sky would still twist, and half of it would be forever hidden. Now if Ceres showed only one face to the Sun, the way Mercury does, we could have a permanent night sky with the stars rotating slowly once in three years. “

            The sky lightened and it dawned slowly.

            Talliaferro was half asleep, but he kept hold of half-consciousness firmly. He would not fall asleep and leave the others awake. Each of the three, he thought, was wondering, “Who? Who?”--except the guilty one, of course.

            Talliaferro’s eyes snapped open as Mandel entered again. The sky, as seen from the window, had grown blue. Talliaferro was glad the window was closed. The hotel was air-conditioned, of course, but windows could be opened during the mild season of the year by those Earthmen who fancied the illusion of fresh air. Talliaferro, with Moon-vacuum on his mind, shuddered at the thought with real discomfort.

            Mandel said, “Have any of you anything to say?”

            They looked at him steadily. Ryger shook his head.

            Mandel said, “I have developed the film in your scanners, gentlemen, and viewed the results.” He tossed scanners and developed slivers of film on to the bed. “Nothing! --You’ll have trouble sorting out the film, I’m afraid. For that I’m sorry. And now there is still the question of the missing film.”

            “If any,” said Ryger, and yawned prodigiously.

            Mandel said, “I would suggest we come down to Villiers’ room, gentlemen.”

            Kaunas looked startled. “Why?”

            Talliaferro said, “Is this psychology? Bring the criminal to the scene of the crime and remorse will wring a confession from him?”

            Mandel said, “ A less melodramatic reason is that I would like to have the two of you who are innocent help me find the missing film of Villiers’ paper.”

            “Do you think it’s there?” asked Ryger challengingly.

            “Possibly. It’s a beginning. We can then search each of your rooms. The symposium on Astronautics doesn’t start till tomorrow at 10 A.M. We have till then.”

            “And after that?”

            “It may have to be the police.”

            They stepped gingerly into Villiers’ room. Ryger was red, Kaunas pale. Talliaferro tried to remain calm.

            Last night they had seen it under artificial lighting with a scowling, disheveled Villiers clutching his pillow, staring them down, ordering them away. Now there was the scentless odor of death about it.

            Mandel fiddled with the window-polarizer to let more light in, and adjusted it too far, so that the eastern Sun slipped in.

            Kaunas threw his arm up to shade his eyes and screamed, “The Sun!” so that all the others froze.

            Kaunas’s face showed a kind of terror, as though it were his Mercurian sun that he had caught a blinding glimpse of.

            Talliaferro thought of his own reaction to the possibility of open air and his teeth gritted. They were all bent crooked by their ten years away from Earth.

            Kaunas ran to the window, fumbling for the polarizer, and then the breath came out of him in a huge gasp.

            Mandel stepped to his side. “What’s wrong?” and the other two joined them.

            The city lay stretched below them and outward to the horizon in broken stone and brick, bathed in the rising sun, with the shadowed portions toward them. Talliaferro cast it all a furtive and uneasy glance.

            Kaunas, his chest seemingly contracted past the point where he could cry out, stared at something much closer. There, on the outer window sill, one corner secured in a trifling imperfection, a crack in the cement, was an inch-long strip of milky-gray film, and on it were the early rays of the rising sun.

            Mandel, with an angry, incoherent cry, threw up the window and snatched it away. He shielded it in one cupped hand, staring out of hot and reddened eyes.

            He said, “Wait here!”

            There was nothing to say. When Mandel left, they sat down and stared stupidly at one another.

            Mandel was back in twenty minutes. He said quietly (in a voice that gave the impression, somehow, that it was quiet only because its owner had passed far beyond the raving stage), “The corner in the crack wasn’t overexposed. I could make out a few words. It is Villiers’ paper. The rest is ruined; nothing can be salvaged. It’s gone.”

            “What next?” said Talliaferro.

            Mandel shrugged wearily. “Right now, I don’t care. Mass-transference is gone until someone as brilliant as Villiers works it out again. I shall work on it but I have no illusions as to my own capacity. With it gone, I suppose you three don’t matter, guilty or not. What’s the difference?” His whole body seemed to have loosened and sunk into despair.

            But Talliaferro’s voice grew hard. “Now, hold on. In your eyes, any of the three of us might be guilty. I, for instance. You are a big man in the field and you will never have a good word to say for me. The general idea may arise that I am incompetent or worse. I will not be ruined by the shadow of guilt. Now let’s solve this thing.”

            “I am no detective,” said Mandel wearily.

            “Then call in the police, damn it.”

            Ryger said, “Wait a while, Tal. Are you implying that I’m guilty?”

            “I’m saying that I’m innocent.”

            Kaunas raised his voice in fright. “It will mean the Psychic Probe for each of us. There may be mental damage--”

            Mandel raised both arms high in the air. “Gentlemen! Gentlemen! Please! There is one thing we might do short of the police; and you are right, Dr. Talliaferro, it would be unfair to the innocent to leave this matter here.”

            They turned to him in various stages of hostility. Ryger said, “What do you suggest?”

            “I have a friend named Wendell Urth. You may have heard of him, or you may not, but perhaps I can arrange to see him tonight.”

            “What if you can?” demanded Talliaferro. “Where does that get us?”

            “He’s an odd man,” said Mandel hesitantly, “very odd. And very brilliant in his way. He has helped the police before this and he may be able to help us now.”

Part 2

            Edward Talliaferro could not forbear staring at the room and its occupant with the greatest astonishment. It and he seemed to exist in isolation, and to be part of no recognizable world. The sounds of Earth were absent in this well-padded, windowless nest. The light and air of Earth had been blanked out in artificial illumination and conditioning.

            It was a large room, dim and cluttered. They had picked their way across a littered floor to a couch from which book-films had been brusquely cleared and dumped to one side in a tangle.

            The man who owned the room had a large, round face on a stumpy, round body. He moved quickly about on his short legs, jerking his head as he spoke until his thick glasses all but bounced off the thoroughly inconspicuous nubble that served as a nose. His thick-lidded, somewhat protuberant eyes gleamed in myopic good nature at them all, as he seated himself in his own chair-desk combination, lit directly by the one bright light in the room.

            “So good of you to come, gentlemen. Pray excuse the condition of my room.” He waved stubby fingers in a wide-sweeping gesture. “I am engaged in cataloguing the many objects of extraterrological interest I have accumulated. It is a tremendous job. For instance--”

            He dodged out of his seat and burrowed in a heap of objects beside the desk till he came up with a smoky-gray object, semi-translucent and roughly cylindrical. “This,” he said, “is a Callistan object that may be a relic of intelligent nonhuman entities. It is not decided. Not more than a dozen have been discovered and this is the most perfect single specimen I know of.”

            He tossed it to one side and Talliaferro jumped. The plump man stared in his direction and said, “It’s not breakable.” He sat down again, clasped his pudgy fingers tightly over his abdomen and let them pump slowly in and out as he breathed. “ And now what can I do for your’

            Hubert Mandel had carried through the introductions and Talliaferro was considering deeply. Surely it was a man named Wendell Urth who had written a recent book entitled Comparative Evolutionary Processes on Water-Oxygen Planets, and surely this could not be the man.

            He said, “ Are you the author of Comparative Evolutionary Processes, Dr. Urth?”

            A beatific smile spread across Urth’s face, “You’ve read it?”

            “Well, no, I haven’t, but--”

            Urth’s expression grew instantly censorious. “Then you should. Right now. Here, I have a copy--”

            He bounced out of his chair again and Mandel cried at once, “Now wait, Urth, first things first. This is serious.”

            He virtually forced Urth back into his chair and began speaking rapidly as though to prevent any further side issues from erupting. He told the whole story with admirable word-economy.

            Urth reddened slowly as he listened. He seized his glasses and shoved them higher up on his nose. “Mass-transference!” he cried.

            “I saw it with my own eyes,” said Mandel.

            “And you never told me.”

            “I was sworn to secrecy. The man was--peculiar. I explained that.”

            Urth pounded the desk. “How could you allow such a discovery to remain the property of an eccentric, Mandel? The knowledge should have been forced from him by Psychic Probe, if necessary.”

            “It would have killed him,” protested Mandel.

            But Urth was rocking back and forth with his hands clasped tightly to his cheeks. “Mass-transference. The only way a decent, civilized man should travel. The only possible way. The only conceivable way. If I had known it. If I could have been there. But the hotel is nearly thirty miles away.”

            Ryger, who listened with an expression of annoyance on his face, interposed, “I understand there’s a flitter line direct to Convention Hall. It could have gotten you there in ten minutes.”

            Urth stiffened and looked at Ryger strangely. His cheeks bulged. He jumped to his feet and scurried out of the room.

            Ryger said, “What the devil?”

            Mandel muttered, “Damn it. I should have warned you.”

            “About what?”

            “Dr. Urth doesn’t travel on any sort of conveyance. It’s a phobia. He moves about only on foot.”

            Kaunas blinked about in the dimness. “But he’s an extraterrologist, isn’t he? An expert on life forms of other planets?”

            Talliaferro had risen and now stood before a Galactic Lens on a pedestal. He stared at the inner gleam of the star systems. He had never seen a Lens so large or so elaborate.

            Mandel said, “He’s an extraterrologist, yes, but he’s never visited any of the planets on which he is expert and he never will. In thirty years, I doubt if he’s ever been more than a mile from this room.”

            Ryger laughed.

            Mandel flushed angrily. “You may find it funny, but I’d appreciate your being careful what you say when Dr. Urth comes back.”

            Urth sidled in a moment later. “My apologies, gentlemen,” he said in a whisper. “And now let us approach our problem. Perhaps one of you wishes to confess.”

            Talliaferro’s lips quirked sourly. This plump, self-imprisoned extraterrologist was scarcely formidable enough to force a confession from anyone. Fortunately, there would be no need of his detective talents, if any, after all.

            Talliaferro said, “Dr. Urth, are you connected with the police?”

            A certain smugness seemed to suffuse Urth’s ruddy face. “I have no official connection, Dr. Talliaferro, but my unofficial relationships are very good indeed.”

            “In that case, I will give you some information which you can carry to the police.”

            Urth drew in his abdomen and hitched at his shirttail. It came free, and slowly he polished his glasses with it. When he was quite through and had perched them precariously on his nose once more, he said, “ And what is that?”

            “I will tell you who was present when Villiers died and who scanned his paper.”

            “You have solved the mystery?”

            “I’ve thought about it all day. I think I’ve solved it.” Talliaferro rather enjoyed the sensation he was creating.

            “Well, then?”

            Talliaferro took a deep breath. This was not going to be easy to do, though he had been planning it for hours. “The guilty man,” he said, “is obviously Dr. Hubert Mandel.”

            Mandel stared at Talliaferro in sudden, hard-breathing indignation. “Look here, Doctor,” he began, loudly, “if you have any basis for such a ridiculous--”

            Urth’s tenor voice soared above the interruption. “Let him talk, Hubert, let us hear him. You suspected him and there is no law that forbids him to suspect you.”

            Mandel fell angrily silent.

            Talliaferro, not allowing his voice to falter, said, “It is more than just suspicion, Dr. Urth. The evidence is perfectly plain. Four of us knew about mass-transference, but only one of us, Dr. Mandel, had actually seen a demonstration. He knew it to be a fact. He knew a paper on the subject existed. We three knew only that Villiers was more or less unbalanced. Oh, we might have thought there was just a chance. We visited him at eleven, I think, just to check on that, though none of us actually said so--but he just acted crazier than ever.

            “Check special knowledge and motive then on Dr. Mandel’s side. Now, Dr. Urth, picture something else. Whoever it was who confronted Villiers at midnight, saw him collapse, and scanned his paper (let’s keep him anonymous for a moment) must have been terribly startled to see Villiers apparently come to life again and to hear him talking into the telephone. Our criminal, in the panic of the moment, realized one thing: he must get rid of the one piece of incriminating material evidence.

            “He had to get rid of the undeveloped film of the paper and he had to do it in such a way that it would be safe from discovery so that he might pick it up once more if he remained unsuspected. The outer window sill was ideal. Quickly he threw up Villiers’ window, placed the strip of film outside, and left. Now, even if Villiers survived or if his telephoning brought results, it would be merely Villiers’ word against his own and it would be easy to show that Villiers was unbalanced.”

            Talliaferro paused in something like triumph. This would be irrefutable.

            Wendell Urth blinked at him and ‘wiggled the thumbs of his clasped hands so that they slapped against his ample shirt front. He said, “ And the significance of all that?”

            “The significance is that the window was thrown open and the film placed in open air. Now Ryger has lived for ten years on Ceres, Kaunas on Mercury, Ion the Moon--barring short leaves and not many of them. We commented to one another several times yesterday on the difficulty of growing acclimated to Earth.

            “Our work-worlds are each airless objects. We never go out in the open without a suit. To expose ourselves to unenclosed space is unthinkable. None of us could have opened the window without a severe inner struggle. Dr. Mandel, however, has lived on Earth exclusively. Opening a window to him is only a matter of a bit of muscular exertion. He could do it. We couldn’t Ergo, he did it.”

            Talliaferro sat back and smiled a bit.

            “Space, that’s it!” cried Ryger, with enthusiasm.

            “That’s not it at all,” roared Mandel, half rising as though tempted to throw himself at Talliaferro. “I deny the whole miserable fabrication. What about the record I have of Villiers’ phone call? He used the word ‘classmate.’ The entire tape makes it obvious--”

            “He was a dying man,” said Talliaferro. “Much of what he said you admitted was incomprehensible. I ask you, Dr. Mandel, without having heard the tape, if it isn’t true that Villiers’ voice is distorted past recognition.”

            “Well--” said Mandel in confusion.

            “I’m sure it is. There is no reason to suppose, then, that you might not have rigged up the tape in advance, complete with the damning word ‘classmates.’ “

            Mandel said, “Good Lord, how would I know there were classmates at the Convention? How would I know they knew about the mass-transference?”

            “Villiers might have told you. I presume he did.”

            “Now, look,” said Mandel, “you three saw Villiers alive at eleven. The medical examiner, seeing Villiers’ body shortly after 3 A.M. declared he had been dead at least two hours. That was certain. The time of death, therefore, was between 11 P.M. and 1 A.M. I was at a late conference last night. I can prove my whereabouts, miles from the hotel, between 10:00 and 2:00 by a dozen witnesses no one of whom anyone can possibly question. Is that enough for you?”

            Talliaferro paused a moment. Then he went on stubbornly, “Even so. Suppose you got back to the hotel by 2:30. You went to Villiers’ room to discuss his talk. You found the door open, or you had a duplicate key. Anyway, you found him dead. You seized the opportunity to scan the paper--”

            “And if he were already dead, and couldn’t make phone calls, why should I hide the film?”

            “To remove suspicion. You may have a second copy of the film safe in your possession. For that matter, we have only your own word that the paper itself was destroyed.”

            “Enough. Enough,” cried Urth. “It is an interesting hypothesis, Dr. Talliaferro, but it falls to the ground of its own weight.”

            Talliaferro frowned. “That’s your opinion, perhaps--”

            “It would be anyone’s opinion. Anyone, that is, with the power of human thought. Don’t you see that Hubert Mandel did too much to be the criminal?”

            “No,” said Talliaferro.

            Wendell Urth smiled benignly. “As a scientist, Dr. Talliaferro, you undoubtedly know better than to fall in love with your own theories to the exclusion of facts and reasoning. Do me the pleasure of behaving similarly as a detective.

            “Consider that if Dr. Mandel had brought about the death of Villiers and faked an alibi, or if he had found Villiers dead and taken advantage of that, how little he would really have had to do! Why scan the paper or even pretend that anyone had done so? He could simply have taken the paper. Who else knew of its existence? Nobody, really. There is no reason to think Villiers told anyone else about it. Villiers was pathologically secretive. There would have been every reason to think that he told no one.

            “No one knew Villiers was giving a talk, except Dr. Mandel. It wasn’t announced. No abstract was published. Dr. Mandel could have walked off with the paper in perfect confidence.

            “Even if he had discovered that Villiers had talked to his classmates about the matter, what of it? What evidence would his classmates have except the word of one whom they are themselves half willing to consider a madman.

            “By announcing instead that Villiers’ paper had been destroyed, by declaring his death to be not entirely natural, by searching for a scanned copy of the film--in short by everything Dr. Mandel has done--he has aroused a suspicion that only he could possibly have aroused when he need only have remained quiet to have committed a perfect crime. If he were the criminal, he would be more stupid, more colossally obtuse than anyone I have ever known. And Dr. Mandel, after all, is none of that.”

            Talliaferro thought hard but found nothing to say.

            Ryger said, “Then who did do it?”

            “One of you three. That’s obvious.”

            “But which?”

            “Oh, that’s obvious, too. I knew which of you was guilty the moment Dr. Mandel had completed his description of events.”

            Talliaferro stared at the plump extraterrologist with distaste. The bluff did not frighten him, but it was affecting the other two. Ryger’s lips were thrust out and Kaunas’s lower jaw had relaxed moronically. They looked like fish, both of them.

            He said, “Which one, then? Tell us.”

            Urth blinked. “First, I want to make it perfectly plain that the important thing is mass-transference. It can still be recovered.”

            Mandel, scowling still, said querulously, “What the devil are you talking about, Urth?”

            “The man who scanned the paper probably looked at what he was scanning. I doubt that he had the time or presence of mind to read it, and if he did, I doubt if he could remember it--consciously. However, there is the Psychic Probe. If he even glanced at the paper, what impinged on his retina could be Probed.”

            There was an uneasy stir.

            Urth said at once, “No need to be afraid of the Probe. Proper handling is safe, particularly if a man offers himself voluntarily. When damage is done, it is usually because of unnecessary resistance, a kind of mental tearing, you know. So if the guilty man will voluntarily confess, place himself in my hands--”

            Talliaferro laughed. The sudden noise rang out sharply in the dim quiet of the room. The psychology was so transparent and artless.

            Wendell Urth looked almost bewildered at the reaction and stared earnestly at Talliaferro over his glasses. He said, “I have enough influence with the police to keep the Probing entirely confidential.”

            Ryger said savagely, “I didn’t do it.”

            Kaunas shook his head.

            Talliaferro disdained any answer.

            Urth sighed. “Then I will have to point out the guilty man. It will be traumatic. It will make things harder.” He tightened the grip on his belly and his fingers twitched. “Dr. Talliaferro pointed out that the film was hidden on the outer window sill so that it might remain safe from discovery and from harm. I agree with him.”

            “Thank you,” said Talliaferro dryly.

            “However, why should anyone think that an outer window sill is a particularly safe hiding place? The police would certainly look there. Even in the absence of the police it was discovered. Who would tend to consider anything outside a building as particularly safe? Obviously, some person who has lived a long time on an airless world and has had it drilled into him that no one goes outside an enclosed place without detailed precautions.

            “To someone on the Moon, for instance, anything hidden outside a Lunar Dome would be comparatively safe. Men venture out only rarely and then only on specific business. So he would overcome the hardship of opening a window and exposing himself to what he would subconsciously consider a vacuum for the sake of a safe hiding place. The reflex thought, Outside an inhabited structure is safe,’ would do the trick.”

            Talliaferro said between clenched teeth, “Why do you mention the moon, Dr. Urth?”

            Urth said blandly, “Only as an example. What I’ve said so far applies to all three of you. But now comes the crucial point, the matter of the dying night.”

            Talliaferro frowned. “You mean the night Villiers died?”

            “I mean any night. See here, even granted that an outer window sill was a safe hiding place, which of you would be mad enough to consider it a safe hiding place for a piece of unexposed film? Scanner film isn’t very sensitive, to be sure, and is made to be developed under all sorts of hit-and-miss conditions. Diffuse nighttime illumination wouldn’t seriously affect it, but diffuse daylight would ruin it in a few minutes, and direct sunlight would ruin it at once. Everyone knows that.”

            Mandel said, “Go ahead, Urth. What is this leading to?”

            “You’re trying to rush me,” said Urth, with a massive pout.

            “I want you to see this clearly. The criminal wanted, above all, to keep the film safe. It was his only record of something of supreme value to himself and to the world. Why would he put it where it would inevitably be ruined by the morning sun? --Only because he did not expect the morning sun ever to come. He thought the night, so to speak, was immortal.

            “But nights aren’t immortal. On Earth, they die and give way to daytime. Even the six-month polar night is a dying night eventually. The nights on Ceres last only two hours; the nights on the Moon last two weeks. They are dying nights, too, and Dr. Talliaferro and Ryger know that day must always come.”

            Kaunas was on his feet. “But wait--”

            Wendell Urth faced him full. “No longer any need to wait, Dr. Kaunas. Mercury is the only sizable object in the Solar System that turns only one face to the sun. Even taking libration into account, fully three-eighths of its surface is true dark-side and never sees the sun. The Polar Observatory is at the rim of that dark-side. For ten years, you have grown used to the fact that nights are immortal, that a surface in darkness remains eternally in darkness, and so you entrusted unexposed film to Earth’s night, forgetting in your excitement that night must die--“

            Kaunas stumbled forward. “Wait--”

            Urth was inexorable. “I am told that when Mandel adjusted the polarizer in Villiers’ room, you screamed at the sunlight. Was that your ingrained fear of Mercurian sun, or your sudden realization of what sunlight meant to your plans? You rushed forward. Was that to adjust the polarizer or to stare at the ruined film?”

            Kaunas fell to his knees. “I didn’t mean it. I wanted to speak to him, only to speak to him, and he screamed and collapsed. I thought he was dead and the paper was under his pillow and it all just followed. One thing led on to another and before I knew it, I couldn’t get out of it anymore. But I meant none of it. I swear it.”

            They had formed a semicircle about him and Wendell Urth stared at the moaning Kaunas with pity in his eyes.

            An ambulance had come and gone. Talliaferro finally brought himself to say stiffly to Mandel, “I hope, sir, there will be no hard feelings for anything said here.”

            And Mandel had answered, as stiffly, “I think we had all better forget as much as possible of what has happened during the last twenty-four hours.”

            They were standing in the doorway, ready to leave, and Wendell Urth ducked his smiling head, and said, “There’s the question of my fee, you know.”

            Mandel looked startled.

            “Not money,” said Urth at once. “But when the first mass-transference setup for humans is established, I want a trip arranged for me.”

            Mandel continued to look anxious. “Now, wait. Trips through outer space are a long way off.”

            Urth shook his head rapidly. “Not outer space. Not at all. I would like to step across to Lower Falls, New Hampshire.”

            “ All right. But why?”

            Urth looked up. To Talliaferro’s outright surprise, the extraterrologist’s face wore an expression compounded of shyness and eagerness.

            Urth said, “I once--quite a long time ago--knew a girl there. It’s been many years--but I sometimes wonder--”

Afterword

            Some readers may realize that this story, first published in 1956, has been overtaken by events. In 1965, astronomers discovered that Mercury does not keep one side always to the Sun, but has a period of rotation of about fifty-four days, so that all parts of it are exposed to sunlight at one time or another.

            Well, what can I do except say that I wish astronomers would get things right to begin with?

            And I certainly refuse to change the story to suit their whims.

Anniversary

The annual ritual was all set.

            It was the turn of Moore’s house this year, of course, and Mrs. Moore and the children had resignedly gone to her mother’s for the evening.

            Warren Moore surveyed the room with a faint smile. Only Mark Brandon’s enthusiasm kept it going at the first, but he himself had come to like this mild remembrance. It came with age, he supposed; twenty additional years of it. He had grown paunchy, thin-haired, soft-jowled, and--worst of all--sentimental.

            So all the windows were polarized into complete darkness and the drapes were drawn. Only occasional stipples of wall were illuminated, thus celebrating the poor lighting and the terrible isolation of that day of wreckage long ago.

            There were spaceship rations in sticks and tubes on the table and, of course, in the center an unopened bottle of sparkling green Jabra water, the potent brew that only the chemical activity of Martian fungi could supply.

            Moore looked at his watch. Brandon would be here soon; he was never late for this occasion. The only thing that disturbed him was the memory of Brandon’s voice on the tube: ”Warren, I have a surprise for you this time. Wait and see. Wait and see.”

            Brandon, it always seemed to Moore, aged little. The younger man had kept his slimness, and the intensity with which he greeted all in life, to the verge of his fortieth birthday. He retained the ability to be in high excitement over the good and in deep despair over the bad. His hair was going gray, but except for that, when Brandon walked up and down, talking rapidly at the top of his voice about anything at all, Moore didn’t even have to close his eyes to see the panicked youngster on the wreck of the Silver Queen.

            The door signal sounded and Moore kicked the release without turning around. “Come, Mark.”

            It was a strange voice that answered, though; softly, tentatively, “Mr. Moore?”

            Moore turned quickly. Brandon was there, to be sure, but only in the background, grinning with excitement. Someone else was standing before him; short, squat, quite bald, nut-brown and with the feel of space about him.

            Moore said wonderingly, “Mike Shea--Mike Shea, by all space.”

            They pounded hands together, laughing.

            Brandon said, “He got in touch with me through the office. He remembered I was with Atomic Products--”

            “It’s been years,” said Moore. “Let’s see, you were on Earth twelve years ago--”

            “He’s never been here on an anniversary,” said Brandon. “How about that? He’s retiring now. Getting out of space to a place he’s buying in Arizona. He came to say hello before he left--stopped off at the city just for that--and I was sure he came for the anniversary. ‘What anniversary?’ says the old jerk.”

            Shea nodded, grinning. “He said you made a kind of celebration out of it every year.”.

            “You bet,” said Brandon enthusiastically, “and this will be the first one with all three of us here, the first real anniversary. It’s twenty years, Mike; twenty years since Warren scrambled over what was left of the wreck and brought us down to Vesta.”

            Shea looked about. “Space ration, eh? That’s old home week to me. And Jabra. Oh, sure, I remember...twenty years. I never give it a thought and now, all of a sudden, it’s yesterday. Remember when we got back to Earth finally?”

            “Do I!” said Brandon. “The parades, the speeches. Warren was the only real hero of the occasion and we kept saying so, and they kept paying no attention. Remember?”

            “Oh, well,” said Moore. “We were the first three men ever to survive a spaceship crash. We were unusual and anything unusual is worth a celebration. These things are irrational.”

            “Hey,” said Shea. “any of you remember the songs they wrote? That marching one? ‘You can sing of routes through Space and the weary maddened pace of the--’ “

            Brandon joined in with his clear tenor and even Moore added his voice to the chorus so that the last line was loud enough to shake the drapes. “On the wreck of the Silver Que-e-en,” they roared out, and ended laughing wildly.

            Brandon said, “Let’s open the Jabra for the first little sip. This one bottle has to last all of us all night.”

            Moore said, “Mark insists on complete authenticity. I’m surprised he doesn’t expect me to climb out the window and human-fly my way around the building.”

            “Well, now, that’s an idea,” said Brandon.

            “Remember the last toast we made?” Shea held his empty glass before him and intoned, “ ‘Gentlemen, I give you the year’s supply of good old H₂O we used to have.’ Three drunken bums when we landed. Well, we were kids. I was thirty and I thought I was old. And now,” his voice was suddenly wistful, “they’ve retired me.”

            “Drink!” said Brandon. “Today you’re thirty again, and we remember the day on the Silver Queen even if no one else does. Dirty, fickle public.”

            Moore laughed. “What do you expect? A national holiday every year with space ration and Jabra, the ritual food and drink?”

            “Listen, we’re still the only men ever to survive a spaceship crash and now look at us. We’re in oblivion.”

            “It’s pretty good oblivion. We had a good time to begin with and the publicity gave us a healthy boost up the ladder. We are doing well, Mark. And so would Mike Shea be if he hadn’t wanted to return to space.”

            Shea grinned and shrugged his shoulder. “That’s where I like to be. I’m not sorry, either. What with the insurance compensation I got, I have a nice piece of cash now to retire on.”

            Brandon said reminiscently, “The wreck set back Transspace. Insurance a real packet Just the same, there’s still something missing. You say ‘Silver Queen’ to anyone these days and he can only think of Quentin, if he can think of anyone.”

            “Who?” said Shea.

            “Quentin. Dr. Horace Quentin, He was one of the nonsurvivors on the ship. You say to anyone, “What about the three men who survived?” and they’ll just stare at you. ‘Huh?’ they’ll say.”

            Moore said calmly, “Come, Mark, face it. Dr. Quentin was one of the world’s great scientists and we three are just three of the world’s nothings.”

            “We survived. We’re still the only men on record to survive.”

            “So? Look, John Hester was on the ship, and he was an important scientist too. Not in Quentin’s league, but important. As a matter of fact, I was next to him at the last dinner before the rock hit us. Well, just because Quentin died in the same wreck, Hester’s death was drowned out. No one ever remembers Hester died on the Silver Queen. They only remember Quentin. We may be forgotten too, but at least we’re alive.”

            “I tell you what,” said Brandon after a period of silence during which Moore’s rationale had obviously failed to take, “we’re marooned again. Twenty years ago today, we were marooned off Vesta. Today, we’re marooned in oblivion. Now here are the three of us back together again at last, and what happened before can happen again. Twenty years ago, Warren pulled us down to Vesta. Now let’s solve this new problem.”

            “Wipe out the oblivion, you mean?” said Moore. “Make ourselves famous?”

            “Sure. Why not? Do you know of any better way of celebrating a twentieth anniversary?”

            “No, but I’d be interested to know where you expect to start. I don’t think people remember the Silver Queen at all, except for Quentin, so you’ll have to think of some way of bringing the wreck back to mind. That’s just to begin with.”

            Shea stirred uneasily and a thoughtful expression crossed his blunt countenance. “Some people remember the Silver Queen. The insurance company does, and you know that’s a funny thing, now that you bring up the matter. I was on Vesta about ten-eleven years ago, and I asked if the piece of wreck we brought down was still there and they said sure, who would cart it away? So I thought I’d take a look at it and shot over by reaction motor strapped to my back. With Vestan gravity, you know, a reaction motor is all you need. Anyway, I didn’t get to see it except from a distance. It was circled off by force field.”

            Brandon’s eyebrows went sky-high. “Our Silver Queen? For what reason?”

            “I went back and asked how come? They didn’t tell me and they said they didn’t know I was going there. They said it belonged to the insurance company.”

            Moore nodded. “Surely. They took over when they paid off. I signed a release, giving up my salvage rights when I accepted the compensation check. You did too, I’m sure.”

            Brandon said, “But why the force field? Why all the privacy?”

            “I don’t know.”

            “The wreck isn’t worth anything even as scrap metal. It would cost too much to transport it.”

            Shea said, “That’s right. Funny thing, though; they were bringing pieces back from space. There was a pile of it there. I could see it and it looked like just junk, twisted pieces of frame, you know. I asked about it and they said ships were always landing and unloading more scrap, and the insurance company had a standard price for any piece of the Silver Queen brought back, so ships in the neighborhood of Vesta were always looking. Then, on my last voyage in, I went to see the Silver Queen again and that pile was a lot bigger.”

            “You mean they’re still looking?” Brandon’s eyes glittered.

            “I don’t know. Maybe they’ve stopped. But the pile was bigger than it was ten-eleven years ago so they were still looking then.”

            Brandon leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs. “Well, now, that’s very queer. A hard-headed insurance company is spending all kinds of money, sweeping space near Vesta, trying to find pieces of a twenty-year-old wreck.”

            “Maybe they’re trying to prove sabotage,” said Moore. “After twenty years? They won’t get their money back even if they do. It’s a dead issue.”

            “They may have quit looking years ago.”

            Brandon stood up with decision. “Let’s ask. There’s something funny here and I’m just Jabrified enough and anniversaried enough to want to find out.”

            “Sure,” said Shea, “but ask who?”

            “Ask Multivac,” said Brandon.

            Shea’s eyes opened wide. “Multivac! Say, Mr. Moore, do you have a Multivac outlet here?”

            “Yes.”

            “I’ve never seen one, and I’ve always wanted to.”

            “It’s nothing to look at, Mike. It looks just like a typewriter. Don’t confuse a Multivac outlet with Multivac itself. I don’t know anyone who’s seen Multivac.”

            Moore smiled at the thought. He doubted if ever in his life he would meet any of the handful of technicians who spent most of their working days in a hidden spot in the bowels of Earth tending a mile-long super-computer that was the repository of all the facts known to man, that guided man’s economy, directed his scientific research, helped make his political decisions, and had millions of circuits left over to answer individual questions that did not violate the ethics of privacy.

            Brandon said as they moved up the power ramp to the second floor, “I’ve been thinking of installing a Multivac, Jr., outlet for the kids. Homework and things, you know. And yet I don’t want to make it just a fancy and expensive crutch for them. How do you work it, Warren?”

            Moore said tersely. “They show me the questions first. If I don’t pass them, Multivac does not see them.”

            The Multivac outlet was indeed a simple typewriter arrangement and little more.

            Moore set up the co-ordinates that opened his portion of the planet-wide network of circuits and said, “Now listen. For the record, I’m against this and I’m only going along because it’s the anniversary and because I’m just jackass enough to be curious. Now how ought I to phrase the question?”

            Brandon said, “Just ask: Are pieces of the wreck of the Silver Queen still being searched for in the neighborhood of Vesta by Trans-space Insurance? It only requires a simple yes or no.”

            Moore shrugged and tapped it out, while Shea watched with awe.

            The spaceman said, “How does it answer? Does it talk?”

            Moore laughed gently, “Oh, no. I don’t spend that kind of money. This model just prints the answer on a slip of tape that comes out that slot.”

            A short strip of tape did come out as he spoke. Moore removed it and, after a glance, said, “Well, Multivac says yes.”

            “Hah!” cried Brandon. “Told you. Now ask why.”

            “Now that’s silly. A question like that would obviously be against privacy. You’ll just get a yellow state-your-reason.”

            “Ask and find out. They haven’t made the search for the pieces secret. Maybe they’re not making the reason secret.”

            Moore shrugged. He tapped out: Why is Trans-space Insurance conducting its Silver Queen search-project to which reference was made in the previous question?

            A yellow slip clicked out almost at once: State Your Reason For Requiring The Information Requested.

            “All right,” said Brandon unabashed. “You tell it we’re the three survivors and have a right to know. Go ahead. Tell it.”

            Moore tapped that out in unemotional phrasing and another yellow slip was pushed out at them: Your Reason Is Insufficient. No Answer Can Be Given.

            Brandon said, “I don’t see they have a right to keep that secret.”

            “That’s up to Multivac,” said Moore. “It judges the reasons given it and if it decides the ethics of privacy is against answering, that’s it. The government itself couldn’t break those ethics without a court order, and the courts don’t go against Multivac once in ten years. So what are you going to do?”

            Brandon jumped to his feet and began the rapid walk up and down the room that was so characteristic of him” All right, then let’s figure it out for ourselves. It’s something important to justify all their trouble. We’re agreed they’re not trying to find evidence of sabotage, not after twenty years. But Trans-space must be looking for something, something so valuable that it’s worth looking for all this time. Now what could be that valuable?”

            “Mark, you’re a dreamer,” said Moore.

            Brandon obviously didn’t hear him. “It can’t be jewels or money or securities. There just couldn’t be enough to pay them back for what the search has already cost them. Not if the Silver Queen were pure gold. What would be more valuable?”

            “You can’t judge value, Mark,” said Moore. “A letter might be worth a hundredth of a cent as wastepaper and yet make a difference of a hundred million dollars to a corporation, depending on what’s in the letter.”

            Brandon nodded his head vigorously. “Right. Documents. Valuable papers. Now who would be most likely to have papers worth billions in his possession on that trip?”

            “How could anyone possibly say?”

            “How about Dr. Horace Quentin? How about that, Warren? He’s the one people remember because he was so important. What about the papers he might have had with him? Details of a new discovery, maybe. Damn it, if I had only seen him on that trip, he might have told me something, just in casual conversation, you know. Did you ever see him, Warren?”

            “Not that I recall. Not to talk to. So casual conversation with me is out too. Of course, I might have passed him at some time without knowing it.”

            “No, you wouldn’t have,” said Shea, suddenly thoughtful. “I think I remember something. There was one passenger who never left his cabin. The steward was talking about it. He wouldn’t even come out for meals.”

            “And that was Quentin?” said Brandon, stopping his pacing and staring at the spaceman eagerly.

            “It might have been, Mr. Brandon. It might have been him. I don’t know that anyone said it was. I don’t remember. But it must have been a big shot, because on a spaceship you don’t fool around bringing meals to a man’s cabin unless he is a big shot.”

            “And Quentin was the big shot on the trip,” said Brandon, with satisfaction. “So he had something in his cabin. Something very important. Something he was concealing.”

            “He might just have been space sick,” said Moore, “except that--” He frowned and fell silent.

            “Go ahead,” said Brandon urgently. “You remember something too?”

            “Maybe. I told you I was sitting next to Dr. Hester at the last dinner. He was saying something about hoping to meet Dr. Quentin on the trip and not having any luck.”

            “Sure,” cried Brandon, “because Quentin wouldn’t come out of his cabin.”

            “He didn’t say that. We got to talking about Quentin, though. Now what was it he said?” Moore put his hands to his temples as though trying to squeeze out the memory of twenty years ago by main force. “I can’t give you the exact words, of course, but it was something about Quentin being very theatrical or a slave of drama or something like that, and they were heading out to some scientific conference on Ganymede and Quentin wouldn’t even announce the title of his paper.”

            “It all fits.” Brandon resumed his rapid pacing. “He had a new, great discovery, which he was keeping absolutely secret, because he was going to spring it on the Ganymede conference and get maximum drama out of it. He wouldn’t come out of his cabin because he probably thought Hester would pump him--and Hester would, I’ll bet. And then the ship hit the rock and Quentin was killed. Trans-space Insurance investigated, got rumors of this new discovery and figured that if they gained control of it they could make back their losses and plenty more. So they took ownership of the ship and have been hunting for. Quentin’s papers among the pieces ever since.”

            Moore smiled, in absolute affection for the other man. “Mark, that’s a beautiful story. The whole evening is worth it, just watching you make something out of nothing.”

            “Oh, yeah? Something out of nothing? Let’s ask Multivac again. I’ll pay the bill for it this month.”

            “It’s all right. Be my guest. If you don’t mind, though, I’m going to bring up the bottle of Jabra. I want one more little shot to catch up with you.”

            “Me, too,” said Shea.

            Brandon took his seat at the typewriter. His fingers trembled with eagerness as he tapped out: What was the nature of Dr. Horace Quentin’s final investigations?

            Moore had returned with the bottle and glasses, when the answer came back, on white paper this time. The answer was long and the print was fine, consisting for the most part of references to scientific papers in journals twenty years old.

            Moore went over it. “I’m no physicist, but it looks to me as though he was interested in optics.”

            Brandon shook his head impatiently. “But all that is published. We want something he had not published yet.”

            “We’ll never find out anything about that.”

            “The insurance company did.”

            “That’s just your theory.”

            Brandon was kneading his chin with an unsteady hand. “Let me ask Multivac one more question.”

            He sat down again and tapped out: Give me the name and tube number of the surviving colleagues of Dr. Horace Quentin from among those associated with him at the University on whose faculty he served.

            “How do you know he was on a University faculty?” asked Moore.

            “If not, Multivac will tell us. “

            A slip popped out. It contained only one name.

            Moore said, “ Are you planning to call the man?”

            “I sure am,” said Brandon. “Otis Fitzsimmons, with a Detroit tube number. Warren, may I--”

            “Be my guest, Mark. It’s still part of the game.”

            Brandon set up the combination on Moore’s tube keyboard. A woman’s voice answered. Brandon asked for Dr. Fitzsimmons and there was a short wait.

            Then a thin voice said, “Hello.” It sounded old.

            Brandon said, “Dr. Fitzsimmons, I’m representing Transspace Insurance in the matter of the late Dr. Horace Quentin--”

            “For heaven’s sake, Mark,” whispered Moore, but Brandon held up a sharply restraining hand.

            There was a pause so long that a tube breakdown began to seem possible and then the old voice said, “ After all these years? Again?”

            Brandon snapped his fingers in an irrepressible gesture of triumph. But he said smoothly, almost glibly, “We’re still trying to find out, Doctor, if you have remembered further details about what Dr. Quentin might have had with him on that last trip that would pertain to his last unpublished discovery.”

            “Well”--there was an impatient clicking of the tongue--”I’ve told you, I don’t know. I don’t want to be bothered with this again. I don’t know that there was anything. The man hinted, but he was always hinting about some gadget or other.”

            “What gadget, sir?”

            “I tell you I don’t know. He used a name once and I told you about that. I don’t think it’s significant.”

            “We don’t have the name in our records, sir.”

            “Well, you should have. Uh, what was that name? An optikon, that’s it.”

            “With a K?”

             “C or K. I don’t know or care. Now, please, I do not wish to be disturbed again about this. Good-bye.” He was still mumbling querulously when the line went dead.

            Brandon was pleased.

            Moore said, “Mark, that was the stupidest thing you could have done. Claiming a fraudulent identity on the tube is illegal. If he wants to make trouble for you--”

            “Why should he? He’s forgotten about it already. But don’t you see, Warren? Trans-space has been asking him about this. He kept saying he’d explained all this before.”

            “All right. But you’d assumed that much. What else do you know?”

            “We also know,” said Brandon, “that Quentin’s gadget was called an optikon. “

            “Fitzsimmons didn’t sound certain about that. And even so, since we already know he was specializing in optics toward the end, a name like optikon does not push us any further forward.”

            “ And Trans-space Insurance is looking either for the optikon or for papers concerning it. Maybe Quentin kept the details in his hat and just had a model of the instrument. After all, Shea said they were picking up metal objects. Right?”

            “There was a bunch of metal junk in the pile,” agreed Shea.

            “They’d leave that in space if it were papers they were after. So that’s what we want, an instrument that might be called an optikon.”

            “Even if all your theories were correct, Mark, and we’re looking for an optikon, the search is absolutely hopeless now,” said Moore flatly. “I doubt that more than ten per cent of the debris would remain in orbit about Vesta. Vesta’s escape velocity is practically nothing. It was just a lucky thrust in a lucky direction and at a lucky velocity that put our section of the wreck in orbit. The rest is gone, scattered. all over the Solar System in any conceivable orbit about the Sun.”

            “They’ve been picking up pieces,” said Brandon.

            “Yes, the ten per cent that managed to make a Vestan orbit out of it. That’s all.”

            Brandon wasn’t giving up. He said thoughtfully, “Suppose it were there and they hadn’t found it. Could someone have beat them to it?”

            Mike Shea laughed. “We were right there, but we sure didn’t walk off with anything but our skins, and glad to do that much. Who else?”

            “That’s right,” agreed Moore, “and if anyone else picked it up, why are they keeping it a secret?”

            “Maybe they don’t know what it is.”

            “Then how do we go about--” Moore broke off and turned to Shea, “What did you say?”

            Shea looked blank. “Who, me?”

            “Just now, about us being there.” Moore’s eyes narrowed. He shook his head as though to clear it, then whispered, “Great Galaxy!”

            “What is it?” asked Brandon tensely. “What’s the matter, Warren?”

            “I’m not sure. You’re driving me mad with your theories; so mad, I’m beginning to take them seriously, I think. You know, we did take some things out of the wreck with us. I mean besides our clothes and what personal belongings we still had. Or a~ least I did.”

            “What?”

            “It was when I was making my way across the outside of the wreckage--space, I seem to be there now, I see it so clearly--I picked up some items and put them in the pocket of my spacesuit. I don’t know why; I wasn’t myself, really. I did it without thinking. And then, well, I held on to them. Souvenirs, I suppose. I brought them back to Earth.”

            “Where are they?”

            “I don’t know. We haven’t stayed in one place, you know.”

            “You didn’t throw them out, did you?”

            “No, but things do get lost when you move.”

            “If you didn’t throw them out, they must be somewhere in this house.”.

            “If they didn’t get lost. I swear I don’t recall seeing them in fifteen years.”

            “What were they?”

            Warren Moore said, “One was a fountain pen, as I recall; a real antique, the kind that used an ink-spray cartridge. What gets me, though, is that the other was a small field glass, not more than about six inches long. You see what I mean? A field glass?”

            “An optikon,” shouted Brandon. “Sure!”

            “It’s just a coincidence,” said Moore, trying to remain level-headed. “Just a curious coincidence.”

            But Brandon wasn’t having it. “A coincidence, nuts! Transspace couldn’t find the optikon on the wreck and they couldn’t find it in space because you had it all along.”

            “You’re crazy.”

            “Come on, we’ve got to find the thing now.”

            Moore blew out his breath. “Well, I’ll look, if that’s what you want, but I doubt that I’ll find it. Okay, let’s start with the storage level. That’s the logical place.”

            Shea chuckled. “The logical place is usually the worst place to look.” But they all headed for the power ramp once more and the additional flight upward.

            The storage level had a musty, unused odor to it. Moore turned on the precipitron. “I don’t think we’ve precipitated the dust in two years. That shows you how often I’m up here. Now, let’s see--if it’s anywhere at all, it would be in with the bachelor collection. I mean the junk I’ve been hanging on to since bachelor days. We can start here.”

            Moore started leafing through the contents of plastic collapsibles while Brandon kept peering anxiously over his shoulder.

            Moore said, “What do you know? My college yearbook. I was a sonist in those days; a real bug on it. In fact, I managed to get a voice recording with the picture of every senior in this book.” He tapped its cover fondly. “You could swear there was nothing there but the usual trimensional photos, but each one has an imprisoned--”

            He grew aware of Brandon’s frown and said, “Okay, I’ll keep looking.”

            He gave up the collapsibles and opened a trunk of heavy, old-fashioned woodite. He separated the contents of the various compartments.

            Brandon said, “Hey, is that it?”

            He pointed to a small cylinder that rolled out on the floor with a small clunk.

            Moore said, “I don’t--Yes! That’s the pen. There it is. And here’s the field glass. Neither one works, of course. They’re both broken. At least, I suppose the pen’s broken. Something’s loose and rattles in it. Hear? I wouldn’t have the slightest idea about how to fill it so I can check whether it really works. They haven’t even made ink-spray cartridges in years.”

            Brandon held it under the light. “It has initials on it.”

            “Oh? I don’t remember noticing any.”

            “It’s pretty worn down. It looks like J.K.Q.”

            “Q. ?”

            “Right, and that’s an unusual letter with which to start a last name. This pen might have belonged to Quentin. An heirloom he kept for luck or sentiment. It might have belonged to a great-grandfather in the days when they used pens like this; a great-grandfather called Jason Knight Quentin or Judah Kent Quentin or something like that. We can check the names of Quentin’s ancestors through Multivac.”

            Moore nodded. “I think maybe we should. See, you’ve got me as crazy as you are.”

            “And if this is so, it proves you picked it up in Quentin’s room. So you picked up the field glass there too.”

            “Now hold it. I don’t remember that I picked them both up in the same place. I don’t remember the scrounging over the outside of the wreck that well.”

            Brandon turned the small field glass over and over under the light. “No initials here.”

            “Did you expect any?”

            “I don’t see anything, in fact, except this narrow joining mark here.” He ran his thumbnail into the fine groove that circled the glass near its thicker end. He tried to twist it unsuccessfully. “One piece.” He put it to his eye. “This thing doesn’t work.”

            “I told you it was broken. No lenses--”

            Shea broke in. “You’ve got to expect a little damage when a spaceship hits a good-sized meteor and goes to pieces.”

            “So even if this were it,” said Moore, pessimistic again, “if this were the optikon, it would not do us any good.”

            He took the field glass from Brandon and felt along the empty rims. “You can’t even tell where the lenses belonged. There’s no groove I can feel into which they might have been seated. It’s as if there never--Hey!” He exploded the syllable violently.

            “Hey what?” said Brandon.

            “The name! The name of the thing!”

            “Optikon, you mean?”

            “Optikon, I don’t mean! Fitzsimmons, on the tube, called it an optikon and we thought he said ‘an optikon.’ “

            “Well, he did,” said Brandon.

            “Sure,” said Shea. “I heard him.”

            “You just thought you heard him. He said ‘anoptikon.’ Don’t you get it? Not ‘an optikon,’ two words, ‘anoptikon,’ one word.”

            “Oh,” said Brandon blankly. “And what’s the difference?”

            “ A hell of a difference. ‘ An optikon’ would mean an instrument with lenses, but ‘anoptikon,’ one word, has the Greek prefix ‘an-’ which means ‘no.’ Words of Greek derivation use it for ‘no.’ Anarchy means ‘no government,’ anemia means ‘no blood,’ anonymous means ‘no name,’ and anoptikon means--”

            “No lenses,” cried Brandon.

            “Right! Quentin must have been working on an optical device without lenses and this may be it and it may not be broken.”

            Shea said, “But you don’t see anything when you look through it.”

            “It must be set to neutral,” said Moore. “There must be some way of adjusting it.” Like Brandon, he placed it in both hands and tried to twist it about that circumscribing groove. He placed pressure on it, grunting.

            “Don’t break it,” said Brandon.

            “It’s giving. Either it’s supposed to be stiff or else it’s corroded shut.” He stopped, looked at the instrument impatiently, and put it to his eye again. He whirled, unpolarized a window and looked out at the lights of the city.

            “I’ll be dumped in space,” he breathed.

            Brandon said, “What? What?”

            Moore handed the instrument to Brandon wordlessly. Brandon put it to his eyes and cried out sharply, “It’s a telescope.”

            Shea said at once, “Let me see.”

            They spent nearly an hour with it, converting it into a telescope with turns in one direction, a microscope with turns in the other.

            “How does it work?” Brandon kept asking.

            “I don’t know,” Moore kept saying. In the end he said, “I’m sure it involves concentrated force fields. We are turning against considerable field resistance. With larger instruments, power adjustment will be required.”

            “It’s a pretty cute trick,” said Shea.

            “It’s more than that,” said Moore. “I’ll bet it represents a completely new turn in theoretical physics. It focuses light without lenses, and it can be adjusted to gather light over a wider and wider area without any change in focal length. I’ll bet we could duplicate the five-hundred-inch Ceres telescope in one direction and an electron microscope in the other. What’s more, I don’t see any chromatic aberration, so it must bend light of all wavelengths equally. Maybe it bends radio waves and gamma rays also. Maybe it distorts gravity, if gravity is some kind of radiation. Maybe--”

            “Worth money?” asked Shea, breaking in dryly.

            “All kinds if someone can figure out how it works.”

            “Then we don’t go to Trans-space Insurance with this. We go to a lawyer first. Did we sign these things away with our salvage rights or didn’t we? You had them already in your possession before signing the paper. For that matter, is the paper any good if we didn’t know what we were signing anyway? Maybe it might be considered fraud.”

            “ As a matter of fact,” said Moore, “with something like this, I don’t know if any private company ought to own it. We ought to check with some government agency. If there’s money in it--”

            But Brandon was pounding both fists on his knees. “To hell with the money, Warren. I mean, I’ll take any money that comes my way but that’s not the important thing. We’re going to be famous, man, famous! Imagine the story. A fabulous treasure lost in space. A giant corporation combing space for twenty years to find it and all the time we, the forgotten ones, have it in our possession. Then, on the twentieth anniversary of the original loss, we find it again. If this thing works, if anoptics become a great new scientific technique, they’ll never forget us.”

            Moore grinned, then started laughing. “That’s right. You did it, Mark. You did just what you set out to do. You’ve rescued us from being marooned in oblivion.”

            “We all did it,” said Brandon. “Mike Shea started us off with the necessary basic information. I worked out the theory, and you had the instrument.”

            “Okay. It’s late, and the wife will be back soon, so let’s get the ball rolling right away. Multivac will tell us which agency would be appropriate and who--”

            “No, no,” said Brandon. “Ritual first. The closing toast of the anniversary, please, and with the appropriate change. Won’t you oblige, Warren?” He passed over the still half-full bottle of Jabra water.

            Carefully, Moore filled each small glass precisely to the brim. “Gentlemen,” he said solemnly, “a toast.” The three raised the glasses in unison. “Gentlemen, I give you the Silver Queen souvenirs we used to have.”

The Billiard Ball

            James Priss--I suppose I ought to say Professor James Priss, though everyone is sure to know whom I mean even without the title--always spoke slowly.

            I know. I interviewed him often enough. He had the greatest mind since Einstein, but it didn’t work quickly. He admitted his slowness often. Maybe it was because he had so great a mind that it didn’t work quickly.

            He would say something in slow abstraction, then he would think, and then he would say something more. Even over trivial matters, his giant mind would hover uncertainly, adding a touch here and then another there.

            Would the Sun rise tomorrow, I can imagine him wondering. What do we mean by “rise”? Can we be certain that tomorrow will come? Is the term “Sun” completely unambiguous in this connection?

            Add to this habit of speech a bland countenance, rather pale, with no expression except for a general look of uncertainty; gray hair, rather thin, neatly combed; business suits of an invariably conservative cut; and you have what Professor James Priss was--a retiring person, completely lacking in magnetism.

            That’s why nobody in the world, except myself, could possibly suspect him of being a murderer. And even I am not sure. After all, he was slow-thinking; he was always slow-thinking. Is it conceivable that at one crucial moment he managed to think quickly and act at once?

            It doesn’t matter. Even if he murdered, he got away with it. It is far too late now to try to reverse matters and I wouldn’t succeed in doing so even if I decided to let this be published.

            Edward Bloom was Priss’s classmate in college, and an associate, through circumstance, for a generation afterward. They were equal in age and in their propensity for the bachelor life, but opposites in everything else that mattered.

            Bloom was a living flash of light; colorful, tall, broad, loud, brash, and self-confident. He had a mind that resembled a meteor strike in the sudden and unexpected way it could seize the essential. He was no theroetician, as Priss was; Bloom had neither the patience for it, nor the capacity to concentrate intense thought upon a single abstract point. He admitted that; he boasted of it.

            What he did have was an uncanny way of seeing the application of a theory; of seeing the manner in which it could be put to use. In the cold marble block of abstract structure, he could see, without apparent difficulty, the intricate design of a marvelous device. The block would fall apart at his touch and leave the device.

            It is a well-known story, and not too badly exaggerated, that nothing Bloom ever built had failed to work, or to be patentable, or to be profitable. By the time he was forty-five, he was one of the richest men on Earth.

            And if Bloom the Technician were adapted to one particular matter more than anything else, it was to the way of thought of Priss the Theoretician. Bloom’s greatest gadgets were built upon Priss’s greatest thoughts, and as Bloom grew wealthy and famous, Priss gained phenomenal respect among his colleagues.

            Naturally it was to be expected that when Priss advanced his Two-Field Theory, Bloom would set about at once to build the first practical anti-gravity device.

            My job was to find human interest in the Two-Field Theory for the subscribers to Tele-News Press, and you get that by trying to deal with human beings and not with abstract ideas. Since my interviewee was Professor Priss, that wasn’t easy.

            Naturally, I was going to ask about the possibilities of anti-gravity, which interested everyone; and not about the Two-Field Theory, which no one could understand--

            “Anti-gravity?” Priss compressed his pale lips and considered. “I’m not entirely sure that it is possible, or ever will be. I haven’t--uh--worked the matter out to my satisfaction. I don’t entirely see whether the Two-Field equations would have a finite solution, which they would have to have, of course, if--” And then he went off into a brown study.

            I prodded him. “Bloom says he thinks such a device can be built.”

            Priss nodded. “Well, yes, but I wonder. Ed Bloom has had an amazing knack at seeing the unobvious in the past. He has an unusual mind. It’s certainly made him rich enough.”

            We were sitting in Priss’s apartment. Ordinary middle-class. I couldn’t help a quick glance this way and that. Priss was not wealthy.

            I don’t think he read my mind. He saw me look. And I think it was on his mind. He said, “Wealth isn’t the usual reward for the pure scientist. Or even a particularly desirable one.”

            Maybe so, at that, I thought. Priss certainly had his own kind of reward. He was the third person in history to win two Nobel Prizes, and the first to have both of them in the sciences and both of then unshared. You can’t complain about that. And if he wasn’t rich, neither was he poor.

            But he didn’t sound like a contented man. Maybe it wasn’t Bloom’s wealth alone that irked Priss; maybe it was Bloom’s fame among the people of Earth generally; maybe it was the fact that Bloom was a celebrity wherever he went, whereas Priss, outside scientific conventions and faculty clubs, was largely anonymous.

            I can’t say how much of all this was in my eyes or in the way I wrinkled the creases in my forehead, but Priss went on to say, “But we’re friends, you know. We play billiards once or twice a week. I beat him regularly.”

            (I never published that statement. I checked it with Bloom, who made a long counterstatement that began “He beats me at billiards. That jackass--” and grew increasingly personal thereafter. As a matter of fact, neither one was a novice at billiards. I watched them play once for a short while, after the statement and counterstatement, and both handled the cue with professional aplomb. What’s more, both played for blood, and there was no friendship in the game that I could see.)

            I said, “Would you care to predict whether Bloom will manage to build an anti-gravity device?”

            “You mean would I commit myself to anything? Hmm. Well, let’s consider, young man. Just what do we mean by anti-gravity? Our conception of gravity is built around Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, which is now a century and a half old but which, within its limits, remains firm. We can picture it--”

            I listened politely. I’d heard Priss on the subject before, but if I was to get anything out of him--which wasn’t certain--I’d have to let him work his way through in his own way.

            “We can picture it,” he said, “by imagining the Universe to be a Oat, thin, superflexible sheet of untearable rubber. If we picture mass as being associated with weight, as it is on the surface of the Earth, then we would expect a mass, resting upon the rubber sheet, to make an indentation. The greater the mass, the deeper the indentation.

            “In the actual Universe,” he went on, “all sorts of masses exist, and so our rubber sheet must be pictured as riddled with indentations. Any object rolling along the sheet would dip into and out of the indentations it passed, veering and changing direction as it did so. It is this veer and change of direction that we interpret as demonstrating the existence of a force of gravity. If the moving object comes close enough to the center of the indentation and is moving slowly enough, it gets trapped and whirls round and round that indentation. In the absence of friction, it keeps up that whirl forever. In other words, what Isaac Newton interpreted as a force, Albert Einstein interpreted as geometrical distortion.”

            He paused at this point. He had been speaking fairly frequently--for him--since he was saying something he had said often before. But now he began to pick his way.

            He said, “So in trying to produce anti-gravity, we are trying to alter the geometry of the Universe. If we carry on our metaphor, we are trying to straighten out the indented rubber sheet. We could imagine ourselves getting under the indenting mass and lifting it upward, supporting it so as to prevent it from making an indentation. If we make the rubber sheet Oat in that way, then we create a Universe--or at least a portion of the Universe--in which gravity doesn’t exist. A rolling body would pass the non-indenting mass without altering its direction of travel a bit, and we could interpret this as meaning that the mass was exerting no gravitational force. In order to accomplish this feat, however, we need a mass equivalent to the indenting mass. To produce antigravity on Earth in this way, we would have to make sure of a mass equal to that of Earth and poise it above our heads, so to speak.”

            I interrupted him. “But your Two-Field Theory--”

            “Exactly. General Relativity does not explain both the gravitational field and the electromagnetic field in a single set of equations. Einstein spent half his life searching for that single set--for a Unified Field Theory--and failed. All who followed Einstein also failed. I, however, began with the assumption that there were two fields that could not be unified and followed the consequences, which I can explain, in part, in terms of the ‘rubber sheet’ metaphor.”

            Now we came to something I wasn’t sure I had ever heard before. “How does that go?” I asked.

            “Suppose that, instead of trying to lift the indenting mass, we try to stiffen the sheet itself, make it less indentable. It would contract, at least over a small area, and become flatter. Gravity would weaken, and so would mass, for the two are essentially the same phenomenon in terms of the indented Universe. If we could make the rubber sheet completely flat, both gravity and mass would disappear altogether.

            “Under the proper conditions, the electromagnetic field could be made to counter the gravitational field, and serve to stiffen the indented fabric of the Universe. The electromagnetic field is tremendously stronger than the gravitational field, so the former could be made to overcome the latter.”

            I said uncertainly, “But you say ‘under the proper conditions. ‘ Can those proper conditions you speak of be achieved, Professor?”

            “That is what I don’t know,” said Priss thoughtfully and slowly. “If the Universe were really a rubber sheet, its stiffness would have to reach an infinite value before it could be expected to remain completely flat under an indenting mass. If that is also so in the real Universe, then an infinitely intense electromagnetic field would be required and that would mean anti-gravity would be impossible.”

            “But Bloom says--”

            “Yes, I imagine Bloom thinks a finite field will do, if it can be properly applied. Still, however ingenious he is,” and Priss smiled narrowly, “we needn’t take him to be infallible. His grasp on theory is quite faulty. He--he never earned his college degree, did you know that?”

            I was about to say that I knew that. After all, everyone did. But there was a touch of eagerness in Priss’s voice as he said it and I looked up in time to catch animation in his eye, as though he were delighted to spread that piece of news. So I nodded my head as if I were filing it for future reference.

            “Then you would say, Professor Priss,” I prodded again, “that Bloom is probably wrong and that anti-gravity is impossible?”

            And finally Priss nodded and said, “The gravitational field can be weakened, of course, but if by anti-gravity we mean a true zero-gravity field--no gravity at all over a significant volume of space--then I suspect anti-gravity may turn out to be impossible, despite Bloom.”

            And I had, after a fashion, what I wanted.

            I wasn’t able to see Bloom for nearly three months after that, and when I did see him he was in an angry mood.

            He had grown angry at once, of course, when the news first broke concerning Priss’s statement. He let it be known that Priss would be invited to the eventual display of the antigravity device as soon as it was constructed, and would even be asked to participate in the demonstration. Some reporter--not I, unfortunately--caught him between appointments and asked him to elaborate on that and he said:

            “I’ll have the device eventually; soon, maybe. And you can be there, and so can anyone else the press would care to have there. And Professor James Priss can be there. He can represent Theoretical Science and after I have demonstrated antigravity, he can adjust his theory to explain it. I’m sure he will know how to make his adjustments in masterly fashion and show exactly why I couldn’t possibly have failed. He might do it now and save time, but I suppose he won’t.”

            It was all said very politely, but you could hear the snarl under the rapid flow of words.

            Yet he continued his occasional game of billiards with Priss and when the two met they behaved with complete propriety. One could tell the progress Bloom was making by their respective attitudes to the press. Bloom grew curt and even snappish, while Priss developed an increasing good humor.

            When my umpteenth request for an interview with Bloom was finally accepted, I wondered if perhaps that meant a break in Bloom’s quest. I had a little daydream of him announcing final success to me.

            It didn’t work out that way. He met me in his office at Bloom Enterprises in upstate New York. It was a wonderful setting, well away from any populated area, elaborately landscaped, and covering as much ground as a rather large industrial establishment. Edison at his height, two centuries ago, had never been as phenomenally successful as Bloom.

            But Bloom was not in a good humor. He came striding in ten minutes late and went snarling past his secretary’s desk with the barest nod in my direction. He was wearing a lab coat, unbuttoned.

            He threw himself into his chair and said, “I’m sorry if I’ve kept you waiting, but I didn’t have as much time as I had hoped.” Bloom was a born showman and knew better than to antagonize the press, but I had the feeling he was having a great deal of difficulty at that moment in adhering to this principle.

            I had the obvious guess. “I am given to understand, sir, that your recent tests have been unsuccessful.”

            “Who told you that?”

            “I would say it was general knowledge, Mr. Bloom.”

            “No, it isn’t. Don’t say that, young man. There is no general knowledge about what goes on in my laboratories and workshops. You’re stating the Professor’s opinions, aren’t you? Priss’s, I mean.”

            “No I’m--”

            “Of course you are. Aren’t you the one to whom he made that statement--that anti-gravity is impossible?”

            “He didn’t make the statement that flatly.”

            “He never says anything flatly, but it was flat enough for him, and not as flat as I’ll have his damned rubber-sheet Universe before I’m finished.”

            “Then does that mean you’re making progress, Mr. Bloom?”

            “You know I am,” he said with a snap. “Or you should know. Weren’t you at the demonstration last week?”

            “Yes, I was.”

            I judged Bloom to be in trouble or he wouldn’t be mentioning that demonstration. It worked but it was not a world beater. Between the two poles of a magnet a region of lessened gravity was produced.

            It was done very cleverly. A Mossbauer Effect Balance was used to probe the space between the poles. If you’ve never seen an M-E Balance in action, it consists primarily of a tight monochromatic beam of gamma rays shot down the low-gravity field. The gamma rays change wavelength slightly but measurably under the influence of the gravitational field and if anything happens to alter the intensity of the field, the wavelength change shifts correspondingly. It is an extremely delicate method for probing a gravitational field and it worked like a charm. There was no question but that Bloom had lowered gravity.

            The trouble was that it had been done before by others. Bloom, to be sure, had made use of circuits that greatly increased the ease with which such an effect had been achieved--his system was typically ingenious and had been duly patented--and he maintained that it was by this method that anti-gravity would become not merely a scientific curiosity but a practical affair with industrial applications.

            Perhaps. But it was an incomplete job and he didn’t usually make a fuss over incompleteness. He wouldn’t have done so this time if he weren’t desperate to display something.

            I said, “It’s my impression that what you accomplished at that preliminary demonstration was 0.82 g and better than that was achieved in Brazil last spring.”

            “That so? Well, calculate the energy input in Brazil and here, and then tell me the difference in gravity decrease per kilowatt-hour. You’ll be surprised.”

            “But the point is, can you reach zero g-zero gravity? That’s what Professor Priss thinks may be impossible. Everyone agrees that merely lessening the intensity of the field is no great feat.”

            Bloom’s fist clenched. I had the feeling that a key experiment had gone wrong that day and he was annoyed almost past endurance. Bloom hated to be balked by the Universe.

            He said, “Theoreticians make me sick.” He said it in a low, controlled voice, as though he were finally tired of not saying it, and he was going to speak his mind and be damned. “Priss has won two Nobel Prizes for sloshing around a few equations, but what has he done with it? Nothing! I have done something with it and I’m going to do more with it, whether Priss likes it or not.

            “I’m the one people will remember. I’m the one who gets the credit. He can keep his damned title and his prizes and his kudos from the scholars. Listen, I’ll tell you what gripes him. Plain old-fashioned jealousy. It kills him that I get what I get for doing. He wants it for thinking.

            “I said to him once--we play billiards together, you know--”

            It was at this point that I quoted Priss’s statement about billiards and got Bloom’s counterstatement. I never published either. That was just trivia.

            “We play billiards,” said Bloom, when he had cooled down, “and I’ve won my share of games. We keep things friendly enough. What the hell--college chums and all that--though how he got through, I’ll never know. He made it in physics, of course, and in math, but he got a bare pass--out of pity, I think--in every humanities course he ever took.”

            “You did not get your degree, did you, Mr. Bloom?” That was sheer mischief on my part. I was enjoying his eruption.

            “I quit to go into business, damn it. My academic average, over the three years I attended, was a strong B. Don’t imagine anything else, you hear? Hell, by the time Priss got his Ph.D., I was working on my second million.”

            He went on, clearly irritated, “ Anyway, we were playing billiards and I said to him, ‘Jim, the average man will never understand why you get the Nobel Prize when I’m the one who gets the results. Why do you need two? Give me one!, He stood there, chalking up his cue, and then he said in his soft namby-pamby way, ‘You have two billions, Ed. Give me one.’ So you see, he wants the money.”

            I said, “I take it you don’t mind his getting the honor?”

            For a minute I thought he was going to order me out, but he didn’t. He laughed instead, waved his hand in front of him, as though he were erasing something from an invisible blackboard in front of him. He said, “Oh, well, forget it. All that is off the record. Listen, do you want a statement? Okay. Things didn’t go right today and I blew my top a bit, but it will clear up. I think I know what’s wrong. And if I don’t, I’m going to know.

            “Look, you can say that I say that we don’t need infinite electromagnetic intensity; we will flatten out the rubber sheet; we will have zero gravity. And when we get it, I’ll have the damnedest demonstration you ever saw, exclusively for the press and for Priss, and you’ll be invited. And you can say it won’t be long. Okay?”

            “Okay!”

            I had time after that to see each man once or twice more. I even saw them together when I was present at one of their billiard games. As I said before, both of them were good.

            But the call to the demonstration did not come as quickly as all that. It arrived six weeks less than a year after Bloom gave me his statement. And at that, perhaps it was unfair to expect quicker work.

            I had a special engraved invitation, with the assurance of a cocktail hour first. Bloom never did things by halves and he was planning to have a pleased and satisfied group of reporters on hand. There was an arrangement for trimensional TV, too. Bloom felt completely confident, obviously; confident enough to be willing to trust the demonstration in every living room on the planet.

            I called up Professor Priss, to make sure he was invited too. He was.

            “Do you plan to attend, sir?”

            There was a pause and the professor’s face on the screen was a study in uncertain reluctance. “ A demonstration of this sort is most unsuitable where a serious scientific matter is in question. I do not like to encourage such things.”

            I was afraid he would beg off, and the dramatics of the situation would be greatly lessened if he were not there. But then, perhaps, he decided he dared not play the chicken before the world. With obvious distaste he said, “Of course, Ed Bloom is not really a scientist and he must have his day in the sun. I’ll be there.”

            “Do you think Mr. Bloom can produce zero gravity, sir?”

            “Uh...Mr. Bloom sent me a copy of the design of his device and...and I’m not certain. Perhaps he can do it, if...uh...he says he can do it. Of course”--he paused again for quite a long time--”I think I would like to see it.”

            So would I, and so would many others.

            The staging was impeccable. A whole floor of the main building at Bloom Enterprises--the one on the hilltop--was cleared. There were the promised cocktails and a splendid array of hors d’oeuvres, soft music and lighting, and a carefully dressed and thoroughly jovial Edward Bloom playing the perfect host, while a number of polite and unobtrusive menials fetched and carried. All was geniality and amazing confidence.

            James Priss was late and I caught Bloom watching the corners of the crowd and beginning to grow a little grim about the edges. Then Priss arrived, dragging a volume of colorlessness in with him, a drabness that was unaffected by the noise and the absolute splendor (no other word world describe it--or else it was the two martinis glowing inside me) that filled the room.

            Bloom saw him and his face was illuminated at once. He bounced across the floor, seized the smaller man’s hand and dragged him to the bar.

            “Jim! Glad to see you! What’ll you have? Hell, man, I’d have called it off if you hadn’t showed. Can’t have this thing without the star, you know.” He wrung Priss’s hand. “It’s your theory, you know. We poor mortals can’t do a thing without you few, you damned few few, pointing the way.”

            He was being ebullient, handing out the flattery, because he could afford to do so now. He was fattening Priss for the kill.

            Priss tried to refuse a drink, with some sort of mutter, but a glass was pressed into his hand and Bloom raised his voice to a bull roar.

            “Gentlemen! A moment’s quiet, please. To Professor Priss, the greatest mind since Einstein, two-time Nobel Laureate, father of the Two-Field Theory, and inspirer of the demonstration we are about to see--even if he didn’t think it would work, and had the guts to say so publicly.”

            There was a distinct titter of laughter that quickly faded out and Priss looked as grim as his face could manage.

            “But now that Professor Priss is here,” said Bloom, “and we’ve had our toast, let’s get on with it. Follow me, gentlemen!”

            The demonstration was in a much more elaborate place than had housed the earlier one. This time it was on the top floor of the building. Different magnets were involved--smaller ones, by heaven--but as nearly as I could tell, the same M-E Balance was in place.

            One thing was new, however, and it staggered everybody, drawing much more attention than anything else in the room. It was a billiard table, resting under one pole of the magnet. Beneath it was the companion pole. A round hole, about a foot across, was stamped out of the very center of the table and it was obvious that the zero-gravity field, if it was to be produced, would be produced through that hole in the center of the billiard table.

            It was as though the whole demonstration had been designed, surrealist fashion, to point up the victory of Bloom over Priss. This was to be another version of their everlasting billiards competition and Bloom was going to win.

            I don’t know if the other newsmen took matters in that fashion, but I think Priss did. I turned to look at him and saw that he was still holding the drink that had been forced into his hand. He rarely drank, I knew, but now he lifted the glass to his lips and emptied it in two swallows. He stared at that billiard table and I needed no gift of ESP to realize that he took it as a deliberate snap of fingers under his nose.

            Bloom led us to the twenty seats that surrounded three sides of the table, leaving the fourth free as a working area. Priss was carefully escorted to the seat commanding the most convenient view. Priss glanced quickly at the trimensional cameras which were now working. I wondered if he were thinking of leaving but deciding that he couldn’t in the full glare of the eyes of the world.

            Essentially, the demonstration was simple; it was the production that counted. There were dials in plain view that measured the energy expenditure. There were others that transferred the M-E Balance readings into a position and a size that were visible to all. Everything was arranged for easy trimensional viewing.

            Bloom explained each step in a genial way, with one or two pauses in which he turned to Priss for a confirmation that had to come. He didn’t do it often enough to make it obvious, but just enough to turn Priss upon the spit of his own torment. From where I sat I could look across the table and see Priss on the other side.

            He had the look of a man in Hell.

            As we all know, Bloom succeeded. The M-E Balance showed the gravitational intensity to be sinking steadily as the electromagnetic field was intensified. There were cheers when it dropped below the 0.52 g mark. A red line indicated that on the dial.

            “The 0.52 g mark, as you know,” said Bloom confidently, “represents the previous record low in gravitational intensity. We are now lower than that at a cost in electricity that is less than ten percent what it cost at the time that mark was set. And we will go lower still.”

            Bloom--I think deliberately, for the sake of the suspense--slowed the drop toward the end, letting the trimensional cameras switch back and forth between the gap in the billiard table and the dial on which the M-E Balance reading was lowering.

            Bloom said suddenly, “Gentlemen, you will find dark goggles in the pouch on the side of each chair. Please put them on now. The zero gravity field will soon be established and it will radiate a light rich in ultraviolet.”

            He put goggles on himself, and there was a momentary rustle as others went on too.

            I think no one breathed during the last minute, when the dial reading dropped to zero and held fast. And just as that happened a cylinder of light sprang into existence from pole to pole through the hole in the billiard table.

            There was a ghost of twenty sighs at that. Someone called out, “Mr. Bloom, what is the reason for the light?”

            “It’s characteristic of the zero-gravity field,” said Bloom smoothly, which was no answer, of course.

            Reporters were standing up now, crowding about the edge of the table. Bloom waved them back. “Please, gentlemen, stand clear!”

            Only Priss remained sitting. He seemed lost in thought and I have been certain ever since that it was the goggles that obscured the possible significance of everything that followed. I didn’t see his eyes. I couldn’t. And that meant neither I nor anyone else could even begin to make a guess as to what was going on behind those eyes. Well, maybe we couldn’t have made such a guess, even if the goggles hadn’t been there, but who can say?

            Bloom was raising his voice again. “Please! The demonstration is not yet over. So far, we’ve only repeated what I have done before. I have now produced a zero-gravity field and I have shown it can be done practically. But I want to demonstrate something of what such a field can do. What we are going to see next will be something that has never been seen, not even by myself. I have not experimented in this direction, much as I would have liked to, because I have felt that Professor Priss deserved the honor of--”

            Priss looked up sharply. “What--what--”

            “Professor Priss,” said Bloom, smiling broadly, “I would like you to perform the first experiment involving the interaction of a solid object with a zero-gravity field. Notice that the field has been formed in the center of a billiard table. The world knows your phenomenal skill in billiards, Professor, a talent second only to your amazing aptitude in theoretical physics. Won’t you send a billiard ball into the zero-gravity volume?”

            Eagerly he was handing a ball and cue to the professor. Priss, his eyes hidden by the goggles, stared at them and only very slowly, very uncertainly, reached out to take them.

            I wonder what his eyes were showing. I wonder, too, how much of the decision to have Priss play billiards at the demonstration was due to Bloom’s anger at Priss’s remark about their periodic game, the remark I had quoted. Had I been, in my way, responsible for what followed?

            “Come, stand up, Professor,” said Bloom, “and let me have your seat. The show is yours from now on. Go ahead!”

            Bloom seated himself, and still talked, in a voice that grew more organlike with each moment. “Once Professor Priss sends the ball into the volume of zero gravity, it will no longer be affected by Earth’s gravitational field. It will remain truly motionless while the Earth rotates about its axis and travels about the Sun. In this latitude, and at this time of day, I have calculated that the Earth, in its motions, will sink downward. We will move with it and the ball will stand still. To us it will seem to rise up and away from the Earth’s surface. Watch.”

            Priss seemed to stand in front of the table in frozen paralysis. Was it surprise? Astonishment? I don’t know. I’ll never know. Did he make a move to interrupt Bloom’s little speech, or was he just suffering from an agonized reluctance to play the ignominious part into which he was being forced by his adversary?

            Priss turned to the billiard table, looking first at it, then back at Bloom. Every reporter was on his feet, crowding as closely as possible in order to get a good view. Only Bloom himself remained seated, smiling and isolated. He, of course, was not watching the table, or the ball, or the zero-gravity field. As nearly as I could tell through the goggles, he was watching Priss.

            Perhaps he felt there was no way out. Or perhaps--

            With a sure stroke of his cue, he set the ball into motion. It was not going quickly, and every eye followed it. It struck the side of the table and caromed. It was going even slower now as though Priss himself were increasing the suspense and making Bloom’s triumph the more dramatic.

            I had a perfect view, for I was standing on the side of the table opposite from that where Priss was. I could see the ball moving toward the glitter of the zero-gravity field and beyond it I could see those portions of the seated Bloom which were not hidden by that glitter.

            The ball approached the zero-gravity volume, seemed to “hang on the edge for a moment, and then was gone, with a streak of light, the sound of a thunderclap, and the sudden smell of burning cloth.

            We yelled. We all yelled.

            I’ve seen the scene on television since--along with the rest of the world. I can see myself in the film during the fifteen-second period of wild confusion, but I don’t really recognize my face.

            Fifteen seconds!

            And then we discovered Bloom. He was still sitting in the chair, his arms still folded, but there was a hole the size of a billiard ball through forearm, chest, and back. The better part of his heart, as it later turned out under autopsy, had been neatly punched out.

            They turned off the device. They called in the police. They dragged off Priss, who was in a state of utter collapse. I wasn’t much better off, to tell the truth, and if any reporter then on the scene ever tried to say he remained a cool observer of that scene, then he’s a cool liar.

            It was some months before I got to see Priss again. He had lost some weight but seemed well otherwise. Indeed, there was color in his cheeks and an air of decision about him. He was better dressed than I had ever seen him to be.

            He said, “I know what happened now. If I had had time to think, I would have known then. But I am a slow thinker, and poor Ed Bloom was so intent on running a great show and doing it so well that he carried me along with him. Naturally, I’ve been trying to make up for some of the damage I unwittingly caused.”

            “You can’t bring Bloom back to life,” I said soberly.

            “No, I can’t,” he said, just as soberly. “But there’s Bloom Enterprises to think of, too. What happened at the demonstration, in full view of the world, was the worst possible advertisement for zero gravity, and it’s important that the story be made clear. That is why I have asked to see you.”

            “Yes?”

            “If I had been a quicker thinker, I would have known Ed was speaking the purest nonsense when he said that the billiard ball would slowly rise in the zero-gravity field. It couldn’t be so! If Bloom hadn’t despised theory so, if he hadn’t been so intent on being proud of his own ignorance of theory, he’d have known it himself.

            “The Earth’s motion, after all, isn’t the only motion involved, young man. The Sun itself moves in a vast orbit about the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. And the Galaxy moves too, in some not very clearly defined way. If the billiard ball were subjected to zero gravity, you might think of it as being unaffected by any of those motions and therefore of suddenly falling into a state of absolute rest--when there is no such thing as absolute rest.”

            Priss shook his head slowly. “The trouble with Ed, I think, was that he was thinking of the kind of zero gravity one gets in a spaceship in free fall, when people float in mid-air. He expected the ball to float in mid-air. However, in a spaceship, zero gravity is not the result of an absence of gravitation, but merely the result of two objects, a ship and a man within the ship, falling at the same rate, responding to gravity in precisely the same way, so that each is motionless with respect to the other.

            “In the zero-gravity field produced by Ed, there was a flattening of the rubber-sheet Universe, which means an actual loss of mass. Everything in that field, including molecules of air caught within it, and the billiard ball I pushed into it, was completely massless as long as it remained within it. A completely massless object can move in only one way.”

            He paused, inviting the question. I asked, “What motion would that be?”

            “Motion at the speed of light. Any massless object, such as a neutron or a photon, must travel at the speed of light as long as it exists. In fact, light moves at that speed only because it is made up of photons. As soon as the billiard ball entered the zero-gravity field and lost its mass, it too assumed the speed of light at once and left.”

            I shook my head. “But didn’t it regain its mass as soon as it left the zero-gravity volume?”

            “It certainly did, and at once it began to be affected by the gravitational field and to slow up in response to the friction of the air and the top of the billiard table. But imagine how much friction it would take to slow up an object the mass of a billiard ball going at the speed of light. It went through the hundred-mile thickness of our atmosphere in a thousandth of a second and I doubt that it was slowed more than a few miles a second in doing so, a few miles out of 186,282 of them. On the way, it scorched the top of the billiard table, broke cleanly through the edge, went through poor Ed and the window too, punching out neat circles because it had passed through before the neighboring portions of something, even as brittle as glass had a chance to split a splinter.

            “It is extremely fortunate we were on the top floor of a building set in a countrified area. If we were in the city, it might have passed through a number of buildings and killed a number of people. By now that billiard ball is off in space, far beyond the edge of the Solar System and it will continue to travel so forever, at nearly the speed of light, until it happens to strike an object large enough to stop it. And then it will gouge out a sizable crater.”

            I played with the notion and was not sure I liked it. “How is that possible? The billiard ball entered the zero-gravity volume almost at a standstill. I saw it. And you say it left with an incredible quantity of kinetic energy. Where did the energy come from?”

            Priss shrugged. “It came from nowhere! The law of conservation of energy only holds under the conditions in which general relativity is valid; that is, in an indented-rubber-sheet universe. Wherever the indentation is flattened out, general relativity no longer holds, and energy can be created and destroyed freely. That accounts for the radiation along the cylindrical surface of the zero-gravity volume. That radiation, you remember, Bloom did not explain, and, I fear, could not explain. If he had only experimented further first; if he had only not been so foolishly anxious to put on his show--”

            “What accounts for the radiation, sir?”

            “The molecules of air inside the volume. Each, assumes the speed of light and comes smashing outward. They’re only molecules, not billiard balls, so they’re stopped, but the kinetic energy of their motion is converted into energetic radiation. It’s continuous because new molecules are always drifting in, and attaining the speed of light and smashing out.”

            “Then energy is being created continuously?”

            “Exactly. And that is what we must make clear to the public. Anti-gravity is not primarily a device to lift spaceships or to revolutionize mechanical movement. Rather, it is the source of an endless supply of free energy, since part of the energy produced can be diverted to maintain the field that keeps that portion of the Universe flat. What Ed Bloom invented, without knowing it, was not just anti-gravity, but the first successful perpetual-motion machine of the first class--one that manufactures energy out of nothing.”

            I said slowly, “Anyone of us could have been killed by that billiard ball, is that right, Professor? It might have come out in any direction.”

            Priss said, “Well, massless photons emerge from any light source at the speed of light in any direction; that’s why a candle casts light in all directions. The massless air molecules come out of the zero-gravity volume in all directions, which is why the entire cylinder radiates. But the billiard ball was only one object. It could have come out in any direction, but it had to come out in some one direction, chosen at random, and the chosen direction happened to be the one that caught Ed.”

            That was it. Everyone knows the consequences. Mankind had free energy and so we have the world we have now. Professor Priss was placed in charge of its development by the board of Bloom Enterprises, and in time he was as rich and famous as ever Edward Bloom had been. And Priss still has two Nobel Prizes in addition.

            Only...

            I keep thinking. Photons smash out from a light source in all directions because they are created at the moment and there is no reason for them to move in one direction more than in another. Air molecules come out of a zero-gravity field in all directions because they enter it in all directions.

            But what about a single billiard ball, entering a zero-gravity field from one particular direction? Does it come out in the same direction or in any direction?

            I’ve inquired delicately, but theoretical physicists don’t seem to be sure, and I can find no record that Bloom Enterprises, which is the only organization working with zero-gravity fields, has ever experimented in the matter. Someone at the organization once told me that the uncertainty principle guarantees the random emersion of an object entering in any direction. But then why don’t they try the experiment?

            Could it be, then...

            Could it be that for once Priss’s mind had been working quickly? Could it be that, under the pressure of what Bloom was trying to do to him, Priss had suddenly seen everything? He had been studying the radiation surrounding the zero-gravity volume. He might have realized its cause and been certain of the speed-of-light motion of anything entering the volume.

            Why, then, had he said nothing?

            One thing is certain. Nothing Priss would do at the billiard table could be accidental. He was an expert and the billiard ball did exactly what he wanted it to. I was standing right there. I saw him look at Bloom and then at the table as though he were judging angles.

            I watched him hit that ball. I watched it bounce off the side of the table and move into the zero-gravity volume, heading in one particular direction.

            For when Priss sent that ball toward the zero-gravity volume--and the tri-di films bear me out--it was already aimed directly at Bloom’s heart!

            Accident? Coincidence?

            ...Murder?

Mirror Image

The Three Laws of Robotics

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

            Lije Baley had just decided to relight his pipe, when the door of his office opened without a preliminary knock, or announcement, of any kind. Baley looked up in pronounced annoyance and then dropped his pipe. It said a good deal for the state of his mind that he left it lie where it had fallen.

            “R. Daneel Olivaw,” he said, in a kind of mystified excitement. “Jehoshaphat! It is you, isn’t it?”

            “You are quite right, “ said the tall, bronzed newcomer, his even features never flicking for a moment out of their accustomed calm. “I regret surprising you by entering without warning, but the situation is a delicate one and there must be as little involvement as possible on the part of the men and robots even in this place. I am, in any case, pleased to see you again, friend Elijah.”

            And the robot held out his right hand in a gesture as thoroughly human as was his appearance. It was Baley who was so unmanned by his astonishment as to stare at the hand with a momentary lack of understanding.

            But then he seized it in both his, feeling its warm firmness. “But Daneel, why? You’re welcome any time, but--What is this situation that is a delicate one? Are we in trouble again? Earth, I mean?”

            “No, friend Elijah, it does not concern Earth. The situation to which I refer as a delicate one is, to outward appearances, a small thing. A dispute between mathematicians, nothing more. As we happened, quite by accident, to be within an easy Jump of Earth--”

            “This dispute took place on a starship, then?”

            “Yes, indeed. A small dispute, yet to the humans involved astonishingly large.”

            Baley could not help but smile. “I’m not surprised you find humans astonishing. They do not obey the Three Laws.”

            “That is, indeed, a shortcoming,” said R. Daneel, Gravely, “and I think humans themselves are puzzled by humans. It may be that you are less puzzled than are the men of other worlds because so many more human beings live on Earth than on the Spacer worlds. If so, and I believe it is so, you could help us.”

            R. Daneel paused momentarily and then said, perhaps a shade too quickly, “And yet there are rules of human behavior which I have learned. It would seem, for instance, that I am deficient in etiquette, by human standards, not to have asked after your wife and child.”

            “They are doing well. The boy is in college and Jessie is involved in local politics. The amenities are taken care of. Now tell me how you come to be here.”

            “As I said, we were within an easy J ump of Earth,” said R. Daneel, “so I suggested to the captain that we consult you.”

            “And the captain agreed?” Baley had a sudden picture of the proud and autocratic captain of a Spacer starship consenting to make a landing on Earth--of all worlds--and to consult an Earthman--of all people.

            “I believe,” said R. Daneel, “that he was in a position where he would have agreed to anything. In addition, I praised you very highly; although, to be sure, I stated only the truth. Finally, I agreed to conduct all negotiations so that none of the crew, or passengers, would need to enter any of the Earthman cities.”

            “And talk to any Earthman, yes. But what has happened?”

            “The passengers of the starship, Eta Carina, included two mathematicians who were traveling to Aurora to attend an interstellar conference on neurobiophysics. It is about these mathematicians, Alfred Ban Humboldt and Gennao Sabbat, that the dispute centers. Have you perhaps, friend Elijah, heard of one, or both, of them?”

            “Neither one,” said Baley, firmly. “I know nothing about mathematics. Look, Daneel, surely you haven’t told anyone I’m a mathematics buff or--”

            “Not at all, friend Elijah. I know you are not. Nor does it matter, since the exact nature of the mathematics involved is in no way relevant to the point at issue.”

            “Well, then, go on.”

            “Since you do not know either man, friend Elijah, let me tell you that Dr. Humboldt is well into his twenty-seventh decade--pardon me, friend Elijah?”

            “Nothing. Nothing,” said Baley, irritably. He had merely muttered to himself, more or less incoherently, in a natural reaction to the extended life-spans of the Spacers. “And he’s still active, despite his age? On Earth, mathematicians after thirty or so.”

            Daneel said, calmly; “Dr. Humboldt is one of the top three mathematicians, by long-established repute, in the galaxy. Certainly he is still active. Dr. Sabbat, on the other hand, is quite young, not yet fifty, but he has already established himself as the most remarkable new talent in the most abstruse branches of mathematics.”

            “They’re both great, then,” said Baley. He remembered his pipe and picked it up. He decided there was no point in lighting it now and knocked out the dottle. “What happened? Is this a murder case? Did one of them apparently kill the other?”

            “Of these two men of great reputation, one is trying to destroy that of the other. By human values, I believe this may be regarded as worse than physical murder.”

            “Sometimes, I suppose. Which one is trying to destroy the other?”

            “Why, that, friend Elijah, is precisely the point at issue. Which?”

            “Go on.”

            “Dr. Humboldt tells the story clearly. Shortly before he boarded the starship, he had an insight into a possible method for analyzing neural pathways from changes in microwave absorption patterns of local cortical areas. The insight was a purely mathematical technique of extraordinary subtlety, but I cannot, of course, either understand or sensibly transmit the details. These do not, however, matter. Dr. Humboldt considered the matter and was more convinced each hour that he had something revolutionary on hand, something that would dwarf all his previous accomplishments in mathematics. Then he discovered that Dr. Sabbat was on board.”

            “Ah. And he tried it out on young Sabbat?”

            “Exactly. The two had met at professional meetings before and knew each other thoroughly by reputation. Humboldt went into it with Sabbat in great detail. Sabbat backed Humboldt’s analysis completely and was unstinting in his praise of the importance of the discovery and of the ingenuity of the discoverer. Heartened and reassured by this, Humboldt prepared a paper outlining, in summary, his work and, two days later, prepared to have it forwarded subetherically to the co-chairmen of the conference at Aurora, in order that he might officially establish his priority and arrange for possible discussion before the sessions were closed. To his surprise, he found that Sabbat was ready with a paper of his own, essentially the same as Humboldt’s, and Sabbat was also preparing to have it subetherized to Aurora.”

            “I suppose Humboldt was furious.”

            “Quite!”

            “And Sabbat? What was his story?”

            “Precisely the same as Humboldt’s. Word for word.”

            “Then just what is the problem?”

            “Except for the mirror-image exchange of names. According to Sabbat, it was he who had the insight, and he who consulted Humboldt; it was Humboldt who agreed with the analysis and praised it.”

             “Then each one claims the idea is his and that the other stole it. It doesn’t sound like a problem to me at all. In matters of scholarship, it would seem only necessary to produce the records of research, dated and initialed. Judgment as to priority can be made from that. Even if one is falsified, that might be discovered through internal inconsistencies.”

            “Ordinarily, friend Elijah, you would be right, but this is mathematics, and not in an experimental science. Dr. Humboldt claims to have worked out the essentials in his head. Nothing was put in writing until the paper itself was prepared. Dr. Sabbat, of course, says precisely the same.”

            “Well, then, be more drastic and get it over with, for sure. Subject each one to a psychic probe and find out which of the two is lying.”

            R. Daneel shook his head slowly, “Friend Elijah, you do not understand these men. They are both of rank and scholarship, Fellows of the Imperial Academy. As such, they cannot be subjected to trial of professional conduct except by a jury of their peers--their professional peers--unless they personally and voluntarily waive that right.”

            “Put it to them, then. The guilty man won’t waive the right because he can’t afford to face the psychic probe. The innocent man will waive it at once. You won’t even have to use the probe.”

            “It does not work that way, friend Elijah. To waive the right in such a case--to be investigated by laymen--is a serious and perhaps irrecoverable blow to prestige. Both men steadfastly refuse to waive the right to special trial, as a matter of pride. The question of guilt, or innocence, is quite subsidiary.”

            “In that case, let it go for now. Put the matter in cold storage until you get to Aurora. At the neurobiophysical conference, there will be a huge supply of professional peers, and then--”

            “That would mean a tremendous blow to science itself, friend Elijah. Both men would suffer for having been the instrument of scandal. Even the innocent one would be blamed for having been party to a situation so distasteful. It would be felt that it should have been settled quietly out of court at all costs.”

            “All right. I’m not a Spacer, but I’ll try to imagine that this attitude makes sense. What do the men in question say?”

            “Humboldt agrees thoroughly. He says that if Sabbat will admit theft of the idea and allow Humboldt to proceed with transmission of the paper--or at least its delivery at the conference, he will not press charges. Sabbat’s misdeed will remain secret with him; and, of course, with the captain, who is the only other human to be party to the dispute.”

            “But young Sabbat will not agree?”

            “On the contrary, he agreed with Dr. Humboldt to the last detail--with the reversal of names. Still the mirror-image.”

            “So they just sit there, stalemated?”

            “Each, I believe, friend Elijah, is waiting for the other to give in and admit guilt.”

            “Well, then, wait.”

            “The captain has decided this cannot be done. There are two alternatives to waiting, you see. The first is that both will remain stubborn so that when the starship lands on Aurora, the intellectual scandal will break. The captain, who is responsible for justice on board ship will suffer disgrace for not having been able to settle the matter quietly and that, to him, is quite insupportable.”

            “And the second alternative?”

            “Is that one, or the other, of the mathematicians will indeed admit to wrongdoing. But will the one who confesses do so out of actual guilt, or out of a noble desire to prevent the scandal? Would it be right to deprive of credit one who is sufficiently ethical to prefer to lose that credit than to see science as a whole suffer? Or else, the guilty party will confess at the last moment, and in such a way as to make it appear he does so only for the sake of science, thus escaping the disgrace of his deed and casting its shadow upon the other. The captain will be the only man to know all this but he does not wish to spend the rest of his life wondering whether he has been a party to a grotesque miscarriage of justice.”

            Baley sighed. “A game of intellectual chicken. Who’ll break first as Aurora comes nearer and nearer? Is that the whole story now, Daneel?”

            “Not quite. There are witnesses to the transaction.”

            “Jehoshaphat! Why didn’t you say so at once. What witnesses?

            “Dr. Humboldt’s personal servant--”

            “A robot, I suppose.”

            “Yes, certainly. He is called R. Preston. This servant, R. Preston, was present during the initial conference and he bears out Dr. Humboldt in every detail.”

            “You mean he says that the idea was Dr. Humboldt’s to begin with; that Dr. Humboldt detailed it to Dr. Sabbat; that Dr. Sabbat praised the idea, and so on.”

            “Yes, in full detail.”

            “I see. Does that settle the matter or not? Presumably not.”

            “You are quite right. It does not settle the matter, for there is a second witness. Dr. Sabbat also has a personal servant, R. Idda, another robot of, as it happens, the same model as R. Preston, made, I believe, in the same year in the same factory. Both have been in service for an equal period of time.

            “An odd coincidence--very odd.”

            “A fact, I am afraid, and it makes it difficult to arrive at any judgment based on obvious differences between the two servants.”

            “R. Idda, then, tells the same story as R. Preston?”

            “Precisely the same story, except for the mirror-image reversal of the names.”

            “R. Idda stated, then, that young Sabbat, the one not yet fifty”--Lije Baley did not entirely keep the sardonic note out of his voice; he himself was not yet fifty and he felt far from young--”had the idea to begin with; that he detailed it to Dr. Humboldt, who was loud in his praises, and so on.”

            “Yes, friend Elijah.”

            “And one robot is lying, then.”

            “So it would seem.”

            “It should be easy to tell which. I imagine even a superficial examination by a good roboticist--”

            “A roboticist is not enough in this case, friend Elijah. Only a qualified robopsychologist would carry weight enough and experience enough to make a decision in a case of this importance. There is no one so qualified on board ship. Such an examination can be performed only when we reach Aurora--”

            “And by then the crud hits the fan. Well, you’re here on Earth. We can scare up a robopsychologist, and surely anything that happens on Earth will never reach the ears of Aurora and there will be no scandal.”

            “Except that neither Dr. Humboldt, nor Dr. Sabbat, will allow his servant to be investigated by a robopsychologist of Earth. The Earthman would have to--” He paused.

            Lije Baley said stolidly, “He’d have to touch the robot.”

            “These are old servants, well thought of--”

            “And not to be sullied by the touch of Earthman. Then what do you want me to do, damn it?” He paused, grimacing. “I’m sorry, R. Daneel, but I see no reason for your having involved me.”

            “I was on the ship on a mission utterly irrelevant to the problem at hand. The captain turned to me because he had to turn to someone. I seemed human enough to talk to, and robot enough to be a safe recipient of confidences. He told me the whole story and asked what I would do. I realized the next Jump could take us as easily to Earth as to our target. I told the captain that, although I was at as much a loss to resolve the mirror-image as he was, there was on Earth one who might help.”

            “Jehoshaphat!” muttered Baley under his breath.

            “Consider, friend Elijah, that if you succeed in solving this puzzle, it would do your career good and Earth itself might benefit. The matter could not be publicized, of course, but the captain is a man of some influence on his home world and he would be grateful.”

            “You just put a greater strain on me.”

            “I have every confidence,” said R. Daneel, stolidly, “that you already have some idea as to what procedure ought to be followed.”

            “Do you? I suppose that the obvious procedure is to interview the two mathematicians, one of whom would seem to be a thief.”

            “I’m afraid, friend Elijah, that neither one will come into the city. Nor would either one be willing to have you come to them.”

            “And there is no way of forcing a Spacer to allow contact with an Earthman, no matter what the emergency. Yes, I understand that, Daneel--but I was thinking of an interview by closed-circuit television.”

            “Nor that. They will not submit to interrogation by an Earthman.”

            “Then what do they want of me? Could I speak to the robots?”

            “They would not allow the robots to come here, either.”

            “Jehoshaphat, Daneel. You’ve come.”

            “That was my own decision. I have permission, while on board ship, to make decisions of that sort without veto by any human being but the captain himself--and he was eager to establish the contact. I, having known you, decided that television contact was insufficient. I wished to shake your hand.”

            Lije Baley softened. “I appreciate that, Daneel, but I still honestly wish you could have refrained from thinking of me at all in this case. Can I talk to the robots by television at least?”

            “That. I think, can be arranged.”

            “Something, at least. That means I would be doing the work of a robopsychologist--in a crude sort of way.”

            “But you are a detective, friend Elijah, not a robopsychologist.”

            “Well, let it pass. Now before I see them, let’s think a bit. Tell me: is it possible that both robots are telling the truth? Perhaps the conversation between the two mathematicians was equivocal. Perhaps it was of such a nature that each robot could honestly believe its own master was proprietor of the idea. Or perhaps one robot heard only one portion of the discussion and the other another portion, so that each could suppose its own master was proprietor of the idea.”

            “That is quite impossible, friend Elijah. Both robots repeat the conversation in identical fashion. And the two repetitions are fundamentally inconsistent.”

            “Then it is absolutely certain that one of the robots is lying?”

            “Yes.”

            “Will I be able to see the transcript of all evidence given so far in the presence of the captain, if I should want to?”

            “I thought you would ask that and I have copies with me.”

            “Another blessing. Have the robots been cross-examined at all, and is that cross-examination included in the transcript?”

            “The robots have merely repeated their tales. Cross-examination would be conducted only by robopsychologists.”

            “Or by myself?”

            “You are a detective, friend Elijah, not a--”

            “All right, R. Daneel. I’ll try to get the Spacer psychology straight. A detective can do it because he isn’t a robopsychologist. Let’s think further. Ordinarily a robot will not lie, but he will do so if necessary to maintain the Three Laws. He might lie to protect, in legitimate fashion, his own existence in accordance with the Third Law. He is more apt to lie if that is necessary to follow a legitimate order given him by a human being in accordance with the Second Law. He is most apt to lie if that is necessary to save a human life, or to prevent harm from coming to a human in accordance with the First Law.”

            “Yes.”

            “And in this case, each robot would be defending the professional reputation of his master, and would lie if it were necessary to do so. Under the circumstances, the professional reputation would be nearly equivalent to life and there might be a near-First-Law urgency to the lie.”

            “Yet by the lie, each servant would be harming the professional reputation of the other’s master, friend Elijah.”

            “So it would, but each robot might have a clearer conception of the value of its own master’s reputation and honestly judge it to be greater than that of the other’s. The lesser harm would be done by his lie, he would suppose, than by the truth.”

            Having said that, Lije Baley remained quiet for a moment. Then he said, “A1l right, then, can you arrange to have me talk to one of the robots--to R. Idda first, I think?”

            “Dr. Sabbat’s robot?”

            “Yes,” said Baley, dryly, “the young fellow’s robot.”

            “It will take me but a few minutes,” said R. Daneel. “I have a micro-receiver outfitted with a projector. I will need merely a blank wall and I think this one will do if you will allow me to move some of these film cabinets.”

            “Go ahead. Will I have to talk into a microphone of some sort?”

            “No, you will be able to talk in an ordinary manner. Please pardon me, friend Elijah, for a moment of further delay. I will have to contact the ship and arrange for R. Idda to be interviewed.”

            “If that will take some time, Daneel, how about giving me the transcripted material of the evidence so far.”

            Lije Baley lit his pipe while R. Daneel set up the equipment, and leafed through the flimsy sheets he had been handed.

            The minutes passed and R. Daneel said, “If you are ready, friend Elijah, R. Idda is. Or would you prefer a few more minutes with the transcript?”

            “No,” sighed Baley, “I’m not learning anything new. Put him on and arrange to have the interview recorded and transcribed.”

            R. Idda, unreal in two-dimensional projection against the wall, was basically metallic in structure--not at all the humanoid creature that R. Daneel was. His body was tall but blocky, and there was very little to distinguish him from the many robots Baley had seen, except for minor structural details.

            Baley said, “Greetings, R. Idda.”

            “Greetings, sir,” said R. Idda, in a muted voice that sounded surprisingly humanoid.

            “You are the personal servant of Gennao Sabbat, are you not?”

            “I am sir.”

            “For how long, boy?”

            “For twenty-two years, sir.”

            “And your master’s reputation is valuable to you?”

            “Yes, sir.”

            “Would you consider it of importance to protect that reputation?”

            “Yes, sir.”

            “As important to protect his reputation as his physical life?”

            “No, sir.”

            “As important to protect his reputation as the reputation of another.”

            R. Idda hesitated. He said, “Such cases must be decided on their individual merit, sir. There is no way of establishing a general rule.”

            Baley hesitated. These Spacer robots spoke more smoothly and intellectually than Earth-models did. He was not at all sure he could outthink one.

            He said, “If you decided that the reputation of your master were more important than that of another, say, that of Alfred Barr Humboldt, would you lie to protect your master’s reputation?”

            “I would, sir.”

            “Did you lie in your testimony concerning your master in his controversy with Dr. Humboldt?”

            “No, sir.”

            “But if you were lying, you would deny you were lying in order to protect that lie, wouldn’t you?”

            “Yes, sir.”

            “Well, then,” said Baley, “let’s consider this. Your master, Gennao Sabbat, is a young man of great reputation in mathematics, but he is a young man. If, in this controversy with Dr. Humboldt, he had succumbed to temptation and had acted unethically, he would suffer a certain eclipse of reputation, but he is young and would have ample time to recover. He would have many intellectual triumphs ahead of him and men would eventually look upon this plagiaristic attempt as the mistake of a hot-blooded youth, deficient in judgment. It would be something that would be made up for in the future.

            “If, on the other hand, it were Dr. Humboldt who succumbed to temptation, the matter would be much more serious. He is an old man whose great deeds have spread over centuries. His reputation has been unblemished hitherto. All of that, however, would be forgotten in the light of this one crime of his later years, and he would have no opportunity to make up for it in the comparatively short time remaining to him. There would be little more that he could accomplish. There would be so many more years of work ruined in Humboldt’s case than in that of your master and so much less opportunity to win back his position. You see, don’t you, that Humboldt faces the worse situation and deserves the greater consideration?”

            There was a long pause. Then R. Idda said, with unmoved voice, “My evidence was a lie. It was Dr. Humboldt whose work it was, and my master has attempted, wrongfully, to appropriate the credit.”

            Baley said, “Very well, boy. You are instructed to say nothing to anyone about this until given permission by the captain of the ship. You are excused.”

            The screen blanked out and Baley puffed at his pipe. “Do you suppose the captain heard that, Daneel?”

            “I am sure of it. He is the only witness, except for us.”

            “Good. Now for the other.”

            “But is there any point to that, friend Elijah, in view of what R. Idda has confessed?”

            “Of course there is. R. Idda’s confession means nothing.”

            “Nothing?”

            “Nothing at all. I pointed out that Dr. Humboldt’s position was the worse. Naturally, if he were lying to protect Sabbat, he would switch to the truth as, in fact, he claimed to have done. On the other hand, if he were telling the truth, he would switch to a lie to protect Humboldt. It’s still mirror-image and we haven’t gained anything.”

            “But then what will we gain by questioning R. Preston?”

            “Nothing, if the minor-image were perfect--but it is not. After all, one of the robots is telling the truth to begin with, and one is lying to begin with, and that is a point of asymmetry. Let me see R. Preston. And if the transcription of R. Idda’s examination is done, let me have it.

            The projector came into use again. R. Preston stared out of it; identical with R. Idda in every respect, except for some trivial chest design.

            Baley said, “Greetings, R. Preston.” He kept the record of R. Idda’s examination before him as he spoke.

            “Greetings, sir,” said R. Preston. His voice was identical with that of R. Idda.

            “You are the personal servant of Alfred Ban Humboldt are you not?”

            “I am, sir.”

            “For how long, boy?”

            “For twenty-two years, sir.”

            “And your master’s reputation is valuable to you?”

            “Yes, sir.”

            “Would you consider it of importance to protect that reputation?”

            “Yes, sir.”

            “As important to protect his reputation as his physical life?”

            “No, sir.”

            “As important to protect his reputation as the reputation of another?”

            R. Preston hesitated. He said, “Such cases must be decided on their individual merit, sir. There is no way of establishing a general rule.”

            Baley said, “If you decided that the reputation of your master were more important than that of another, say, that of Gennao Sabbat, would you lie to protect your master’s reputation?”

            “I would, sir.”

            “Did you lie in your testimony concerning your master in his controversy with Dr. Sabbat?”

            “No, sir.”

            “But if you were lying, you would deny you were lying, in order to protect that lie, wouldn’t you?”

            “Yes, sir.”

            “Well, then,” said Baley, “let’s consider this. Your master, Alfred Barr Humboldt, is an old man of great reputation in mathematics, but he is an old man. If, in this controversy with Dr. Sabbat, he had succumbed to temptation and had acted unethically, he would suffer a certain eclipse of reputation, but his great age and his centuries of accomplishments would stand against that and would win out. Men would look upon this plagiaristic attempt as the mistake of a perhaps-sick old man, no longer certain in judgment.

            “If, on the other hand, it were Dr. Sabbat who had succumbed to temptation, the matter would be much more serious. He is a young man, with a far less secure reputation. He would ordinarily have centuries ahead of him in which he might accumulate knowledge and achieve great things. This will be closed to him, now, obscured by one mistake of his youth. He has a much longer future to lose than your master has. You see, don’t you, that Sabbat faces the worse situation and deserves the greater consideration?”

            There was a long pause. Then R. Preston said, with unmoved voice, “My evidence was as I--”

            At that point, he broke off and said nothing more. Baley said, “Please continue, R. Preston.”

            There was no response.

            R. Daneel said, “I am afraid, friend Elijah, that R. Preston is in stasis. He is out of commission.”

            “Well, then,” said Baley, “we have finally produced an asymmetry. From this, we can see who the guilty person is.”

            “In what way, friend Elijah?”

            “Think it out. Suppose you were a person who had committed no crime and that your personal robot were a witness to that. There would be nothing you need do. Your robot would tell the truth and bear you out. If, however, you were a person who had committed the crime, you would have to depend on your robot to lie. That would be a somewhat riskier position, for although the robot would lie, if necessary, the greater inclination would be to tell the truth, so that the lie would be less firm than the truth would be. To prevent that, the crime-committing person would very likely have to order the robot to lie. In this way, First Law would be strengthened by Second Law; perhaps very substantially strengthened.”

            “That would seem reasonable,” said R. Daneel.

            “Suppose we have one robot of each type. One robot would switch from truth, unreinforced, to the lie, and could do so after some hesitation, without serious trouble. The other robot would switch from the lie, strongly reinforced, to the truth, but could do so only at the risk of burning out various positronic-track-ways in his brain and falling into stasis.”

            “And since R. Preston went into stasis--”

            “R. Preston’s master, Dr. Humboldt, is the man guilty of plagiarism. If you transmit this to the captain and urge him to face Dr. Humboldt with the matter at once, he may force a confession. If so, I hope you will tell me immediately.”

            “I will certainly do so. You will excuse me, friend Elijah? I must talk to the captain privately.”

            “Certainly. Use the conference room. It is shielded.”

            Baley could do no work of any kind in R. Daneel’s absence. He sat in uneasy silence. A great deal would depend on the value of his analysis, and he was acutely aware of his lack of expertise in robotics.

            R. Daneel was back in half an hour--very nearly the longest half hour of Baley’s life.

            There was no use, of course, in trying to determine what had happened from the expression of the humanoid’s impassive face. Baley tried to keep his face impassive.

            “Yes, R. Daneel?” he asked.

            “Precisely as you said, friend Elijah. Dr. Humboldt has confessed. He was counting, he said, on Dr. Sabbat giving way and allowing Dr. Humboldt to have this one last triumph. The crisis is over and you will find the captain grateful. He has given me permission to tell you that he admires your subtlety greatly and I believe that I, myself, will achieve favor for having suggested you.”

            “Good,” said Baley, his knees weak and his forehead moist now that his decision had proven correct, “but Jehoshaphat, R. Daneel, don’t put me on the spot like that again, will you?”

            “I will try not to, friend Elijah. All will depend, of course, on the importance of a crisis, on your nearness, and on certain other factors. Meanwhile, I have a question--”

            “Yes?”

            “Was it not possible to suppose that passage from a lie to the truth was easy, while passage from the truth to a lie was difficult? And in that case, would not the robot in stasis have been going from a truth to a lie, and since R. Preston was in stasis, might one not have drawn the conclusion that it was Dr. Humboldt who was innocent and Dr. Sabbat who was guilty?”

            “Yes, R. Daneel. It was possible to argue that way, but it was the other argument that proved right. Humboldt did confess, didn’t he?”

            “He did. But with arguments possible in both directions, how could you, friend Elijah, so quickly pick the correct one?”

            For a moment, Baley’s lips twitched. Then he relaxed and they curved into a smile. “Because, R. Daneel, I took into account human reactions, not robotic ones. I know more about human beings than about robots. In other words, I had an idea as to which mathematician was guilty before I ever interviewed the robots. Once I provoked an asymmetric response in them, I simply interpreted it in such a way as to place the guilt on the one I already believed to be guilty. The robotic response was dramatic enough to break down the guilty man; my own analysis of human behavior might not have been sufficient to do so.”

            “I am curious to know what your analysis of human behavior was?”

            “Jehoshaphat, R. Daneel; think, and you won’t have to ask. There is another point of asymmetry in this tale of mirror-image besides the matter of true-and-false. There is the matter of the age of the two mathematicians; one is quite old and one is quite young.”

            “Yes, of course, but what then?”

            “Why, this. I can see a young man, flushed with a sudden, startling and revolutionary idea, consulting in the matter an old man whom he has, from his early student days, thought of as a demigod in the field. I can not see an old man, rich in honors and used to triumphs, coming up with a sudden, startling and revolutionary idea, consulting a man centuries his junior whom he is bound to think of as a young whippersnapper--or whatever term a Spacer would use. Then, too, if a young man had the chance, would he try to steal the idea of a revered demigod? It would be unthinkable. On the other hand, an old man, conscious of declining powers, might well snatch at one last chance of fame and consider a baby in the field to have no rights he was bound to observe. In short, it was not conceivable that Sabbat steal Humboldt’s idea; and from both angles, Dr. Humboldt was guilty.”

            R. Daneel considered that for a long time. Then he held out his hand. “I must leave now, friend Elijah. It was good to see you. May we meet again soon.”

            Baley gripped the robot’s hand, warmly, “If you don’t mind, R. Daneel,” he said, “not too soon.”