A Stranger in a Strange Land

XI

AROUND A MINOR G-TYPE STAR fairly far out toward one edge of a medium-sized galaxy the planets of that star swung as usual, just as they had for billions of years, under the influence of a slightly modified inverse square law that shaped the space around them. Three of them were big enough, as planets go, to be noticeable; the rest were mere pebbles, concealed in the fiery skirts of the primary or lost in the black outer reaches of space. All of them, as is always the case, were infected with that oddity of distorted entropy called life; in the cases of the third and fourth planets their surface temperatures cycled around the freezing point of hydrogen monoxide - in consequence they had developed life forms similar enough to permit a degree of social contact.

On the fourth pebble out the ancient Martians were not in any important sense disturbed by the contact with Earth. The nymphs of the race still bounced joyously around the surface of Mars, learning to live, and eight out of nine of them dying in the process. The adult Martians, enormously different in body and mind from the nymphs, still huddled in or under the faerie, graceful cities, and were as quiet in their behavior as the nymphs were boisterous - yet were even busier than the nymphs, busy with a complex and rich life of the mind.

The lives of the adults were not entirely free of work in the human sense; they had still a planet to take care of and supervise, plants must be told when and where to grow, nymphs who had passed their 'prenticeships by surviving must be gathered in, cherished, fertilized, the resultant eggs must be cherished and contemplated to encourage them to ripen properly, the fulfilled nymphs must be persuaded to give up childish things and then metamorphosed into adults. All these things must be done - but they were no more the "life" of Mars than is walking the dog twice a day the "life" of a man who controls a planet-wide corporation in the hours between those pleasant walks� even though to a being from Arcturus III those daily walks might seem to be the tycoon's most significant activity - no doubt as a slave to the dog.

Martians and humans were both self-aware life forms but they had gone in vastly different directions. All human behavior, all human motivations, all man's hopes and fears, were heavily colored and largely controlled by mankind's tragic and oddly beautiful pattern of reproduction. The same was true of Mars, but in mirror corollary. Mars had the efficient bipolar pattern so common in that galaxy, but the Martians had it in a form so different from the Terran form that it would have been termed "sex" only by a biologist, and it emphatically would not have been "sex" to a human psychiatrist. Martian nymphs were female, all the adults were male.

But in each case in function only, not in psychology. The man-woman polarity which controlled all human lives could not exist on Mars. There was no possibility of "marriage." The adults were huge, reminding the first humans to see them of ice boats under sail; they were physically passive, mentally active. The nymphs were fat, furry spheres, full of bounce and mindless energy. There was no possible parallel between human and Martian psychological foundations. Human bipolarity was both the binding force and the driving energy for all human behavior, from sonnets to nuclear equations. If any being thinks that human psychologists exaggerate on this point, let it search Terran patent offices, libraries, and art galleries for creations of eunuchs.

Mars, being geared unlike Earth, paid little attention to the Envoy and the Champion. The two events had happened too recently to be of significance - if Martians had used newspapers, one edition a Terran century would have been ample. Contact with other races was nothing new to Martians; it had happened before, would happen again. When the new other race had been thoroughly grokked, then (in a Terran millennium or so) would be time for action, if needed.

On Mars the currently important event was of a different sort. The discorporate Old Ones had decided almost absent-mindedly to send the nestling human to grok what he could of the third planet, then turned attention back to serious matters. Shortly before, around the time of the Terran Caesar Augustus, a Martian artist had been engaged in composing a work of art. It could have been called with equal truth a poem, a musical opus, or a philosophical treatise; it was a series of emotions arranged in tragic, logical necessity. Since it could have been experienced by a human only in the sense in which a man blind from birth could have a sunset explained to him, it does not matter much to which category of human creativity it might be assigned. The important point was that the artist had accidentally discorporated before he finished his masterpiece.

Unexpected discorporation was always rare on Mars; Martian taste in such matters called for life to be a rounded whole, with physical death taking place at the appropriate and selected instant. This artist, however, had become so preoccupied with his work that he had forgotten to come in out of the cold; by the time his absence was noticed his body was hardly fit to eat. He himself had not noticed his own discorporation and had gone right on composing his sequence.

Martian art was divided sharply into two categories, that sort created by living adults, which was vigorous, often quite radical, and primitive, and that of the Old Ones, which was usually conservative, extremely complex, and was expected to show much higher standards of technique; the two sorts were judged separately.

By what standards should this opus be judged? It bridged from the corporate to the discorporate; its final form had been set throughout by an Old One - yet on the other hand the artist, with the detachment of all artists everywhere, had not even noticed the change in his status and had continued to work as if he were corporate. Was it possibly a new sort of art? Could more such pieces be produced by surprise discorporation of artists while they were working? The Old Ones had been discussing the exciting possibilities in ruminative rapport for centuries and all corporate Martians were eagerly awaiting their verdict.

The question was of greater interest because it had not been abstract art, but religious (in the Terran sense) and strongly emotional - it described the contact between the Martian Race and the people of the fifth planet, an event that had happened long ago but which was alive and important to Martians in the sense in which one death by crucifixion remained alive and important to humans after two Terran millennia. The Martian Race had encountered the people of the fifth planet, grokked them completely, and in due course had taken action; the asteroid ruins were all that remained, save that the Martians continued to cherish and praise the people they had destroyed. This new work of art was one of many attempts to grok all parts of the whole beautiful experience in all its complexity in one opus. But before it could be judged it was necessary to grok how to judge it.

It was a very pretty problem.

On the third planet Valentine Michael Smith was not concerned with the burning issue on Mars; he had never heard of it. His Martian keeper and his keeper's water brothers had not mocked him with things he could not grasp. Smith knew of the destruction of the fifth planet and its emotional importance - just as any human school boy learns of Troy and Plymouth Rock, but he had not been exposed to art that he could not grok. His education had been unique, enormously greater than that of his nestlings, enormously less than that of an adult; his keeper and his keeper's advisers among the Old Ones had taken a large passing interest in seeing just how much and of what sort this nestling alien could learn. The results had taught them more about the potentialities of the human race than that race had yet learned about itself, for Smith had grokked very readily things that no other human being had ever learned.

But just at present Smith was simply enjoying himself with a lightheartedness he had not experienced in many years. He had won a new water brother in Jubal, he had acquired many new friends, he was enjoying delightful new experiences in such kaleidoscopic quantity that he had no time to grok them; he could only file them away to be relived at leisure.

His brother Jubal had assured him that be would grok this strange and beautiful place more quickly if he would learn to read, so he had taken a full day off to learn to read really well and quickly, with Jill pointing to words and pronouncing them for him. It had meant staying out of the swimming pool all that day, which had been a great sacrifice, as swimming (once he got it through his head that it was actually permitted) was not merely an exuberant, sensuous delight but almost unbearable religious ecstasy. If Jill and Jubal had not told him to do otherwise, he would never have come out of the pool at all.

Since he was not permitted to swim at night he read all night long. He was zipping through the Encyclopedia Britannica and was sampling Jubal's medicine and law libraries as dessert. His brother Jubal had seen him leafing rapidly through one of the books, had stopped him and questioned him about what he had read. Smith had answered carefully, as it reminded him of the tests the Old Ones had occasionally given him. His brother had seemed a bit upset at his answers and Smith had found it necessary to go into an hour's contemplation on that account, for he had been quite sure that he had answered with the words written in the book even though he did not grok them all.

But he preferred the pool to the books, especially when Jill and Miriam and Larry and Anne and the rest were all splashing each other. He had not learned at once to swim as they did, but had discovered the first time that he could do something they could not. He had simply gone down to the bottom and lain there, immersed in quiet bliss - where upon they had hauled him out with such excitement that he had almost been forced to withdraw himself, had it not been evident that they were concerned for his welfare.

Later that day he had demonstrated the matter to Jubal, remaining on the bottom for a delicious time, and he had tried to teach it to his brother Jill� but she had become disturbed and he had desisted. It was his first clear realization that there were things that he could do that these new friends could not. He thought about it a long time, trying to grok its fullness.

Smith was happy; Harshaw was not. He continued his usual routine of aimless loafing, varied only by casual and unplanned observation of his laboratory animal, the Man from Mars. He arranged no schedule for Smith, no programme of study, no regular physical examinations, but simply allowed Smith to do as he pleased, run wild, like a puppy growing up on a ranch. What supervision Smith received came from Jill: more than enough, in Jubal's grumpy opinions as he took a dim view of males being reared by females.

However, Gillian Boardman did little more than coach Valentine Smith in the rudiments of human social behavior - and he needed very little coaching. He ate at the table with the others now, dressed himself (at least Jubal thought he did; he made a mental note to ask Jill if she still had to assist him); he conformed acceptably to the household's very informal customs and appeared able to cope with most new experiences on a "monkey-see-monkey" basis. Smith started his first meal at the table using only a spoon and Jill had cut up his meat for him. By the end of the meal he was attempting to eat as the others ate. At the next meal his table manners were a precise imitation of Jill's, including superfluous mannerisms.

Even the twin discovery that Smith had taught himself to read with the speed of electronic scanning and appeared to have total recall of all that he read did not tempt Jubal Harshaw to make a "project" of Smith, one with controls, measurements, and curves of progress. Harshaw had the arrogant humility of the man who has learned so much that he is aware of his own ignorance and he saw no point in "measurements" when he did not know what he was measuring. Instead he limited himself to notes made privately, without even any intention of publishing his observations.

But, while Harshaw enjoyed watching this unique animal develop into a mimicry copy of a human being, his pleasure afforded him no happiness.

Like Secretary General Douglas, Harshaw was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Waiting with increasing tenseness. Having found himself coerced into action by the expectation of action against him on the part of the government, it annoyed and exasperated him that nothing as yet had happened. Damn it, were the Federation cops so stupid that they couldn't track an unsophisticated girl dragging an unconscious man all across the countryside? Or (as seemed more likely) had they been on her heels the whole way? - and even now were keeping a stake-out on his place? The latter thought was infuriating; to Harshaw the notion that the government might be spying on his home, his castle, with anything from binoculars to radar, was as repulsive as the idea of having his mail opened.

And they might be doing that too, he reminded himself morosely. Government! Three fourths parasitic and the other fourth stupid fumbling - oh, he conceded that man, a social animal, could not avoid having government, any more than an individual man could escape his lifelong bondage to his bowels. But Harshaw did not have to like it. Simply because an evil was inescapable was no reason to term it a "good." He wished that government would wander off and get lost?

But it was certainly possible, or even probable, that the administration knew exactly where the Man from Mars was hiding� and for reasons of their own preferred to leave it that way, while they prepared - what?

If so, how long would it go on? And how long could he keep his defensive "time bomb" armed and ready?

And where the devil was that reckless young idiot Ben Caxton?

Jill Boardman forced him out of his spiritual thumb-twiddling. "Jubal?"

"Eh? Oh, it's you, bright eyes. Sorry, I was preoccupied. Sit down. Have a drink?"

"Uh, no, thank you. Jubal, I'm worried."

"Normal. Who isn't? That was a mighty pretty swan dive you did. Let's see another one just like it."

Jill bit her lip and looked about twelve years old. "Jubal? Please listen! I'm terribly worried."

He sighed. "In that case, dry yourself off. The breeze is getting chilly."

"I'm warm enough. Uh, Jubal? Would it be all right if I left Mike here? Would you take care of him?"

Harshaw blinked. "Of course he can stay here. You know that. The girls will look out for him - and I'll keep an eye on him from time to time. He's no trouble. I take it you're leaving?"

She didn't meet his eye. "Yes."

"Mmmm� you're welcome here. But you're welcome to leave, too, if that's what you want."

"Huh? But, Jubal - I don't want to leave!"

"Then don't."

"But I must!"

"Better play that back. I didn't scan it."

"Don't you see, Jubal? I like it here - you've been wonderful to us! But I can't stay any longer. Not with Ben missing. I've got to go look for him."

Harshaw said one word, emotive, earthy, and vulgar, then added, "How do you propose to look for him?"

She frowned. "I don't know. But I can't just lie around here any longer, loafing and swimming - with Ben missing."

"Gillian, as I pointed out to you before, Ben is a big boy now. You're not his mother - and you're not his wife. And I'm not his keeper. Neither of us is responsible for him� and you haven't any call to go looking for him. Have you?"

Jill looked down and twisted one toe in the grass. "No," she admitted. "I haven't any claim on Ben. I just know� that if I turned up missing Ben would look for me - until he found me. So I've got to look for him!"

Jubal breathed a silent malediction against all elder gods in any way involved in contriving the follies of the human race, then said aloud, "All right, all right, if you must, then let's try to get some logic into it. Do you plan to hire professionals? Say a private detective firm that specializes in missing persons?"

She looked unhappy. "I suppose that's the way to go about it. Uh, I've never hired a detective. Are they expensive?"

"Quite."

Jill gulped. "Do you suppose they would let me arrange to pay, uh, in monthly installments? Or something?"

"Cash at the stairs is their usual way. Quit looking so grim, child; I brought that up to dispose of it. I've already hired the best in the business to try to find Ben - so there is no need for you to hock your future to hire the second best."

"You didn't tell me!"

"No need to tell you."

"But- Jubal, what did they find out?"

"Nothing," he said shortly. "Nothing worth reporting, so there was no need to put you any further down in the dumps by telling you." Jubal scowled. "When you showed up here, I thought you were unnecessarily nervy about Ben - I figured the same as his assistant, that fellow Kilgallen, that Ben had gone yipping off on some new trail� and would check in when he had the story wrapped up. Ben does that sort of stunt - it's his profession." He sighed. "But now I don't think so. That knothead Kilgallen - he really does have a statprint message on file, apparently from Ben, telling Kilgallen that Ben would be away a few days; my man not only saw it but sneaked a photograph and checked. No fake - the message was sent."

Jill looked puzzled. "I wonder why Ben didn't send me a statprint at the same time? It isn't like him - Ben's very thoughtful."

Jubal repressed a groan. "Use your head, Gillian. Just because a package says 'Cigarettes' on the outside does not prove that the package contains cigarettes. You got here last Friday; the code groups on that statprint message show that it was filed from Philadelphia-Paoli Station Landing Flat, to be exact - just after ten thirty the morning before - 10.34 AM. Thursday. It was transmitted a couple of minutes after it was filed and was received at once, because Ben's office has its own statprinter. All right, now you tell me why Ben sent a printed message to his own office - during working hours - instead of telephoning?"

"Why, I don't think he would, ordinarily. At least I wouldn't. The telephone is the normal-"

"But you aren't Ben. I can think of half a dozen reasons, for a man in Ben's business. To avoid garbles. To insure a printed record in the files of I.T. amp;T. for legal purposes. To send a delayed message. All sorts of reasons. Kilgallen saw nothing odd about it - and the simple fact that Ben, or the syndicate he sells to, goes to the expense of maintaining a private statprinter in his office shows that Ben uses it regularly.

"However," Jubal went on, "the snoops I hired are a suspicious lot; that message placed Ben at Paoli flat at ten thirty-four on Thursday - so one of them went there. Jill, that message was not sent from there."

"But-"

"One moment. The message was filed from there but did not originate there. Messages are either handed over the counter or telephoned. If one is handed over the counter, the customer can have it typed or he can ask for facsimile transmission of his handwriting and signature� but if it is filed by telephone, it has to be typed by the filing office before it can be photographed."

"Yes, of course."

"Doesn't that suggest anything, Jill?"

"Uh� Jubal, I'm so worried that I'm not thinking straight. What should it suggest?"

"Quit the breast-beating; it wouldn't have suggested anything to me, either. But the pro who was working for me is a very sneaky character; he arrived at Paoli with a convincing statprint made from the photograph that was taken under Kilgallen's nose - and with business cards and credentials that made it appear that he himself was 'Osbert Kilgallen,' the addressee. Then, with his fatherly manner and sincere face, he hornswoggled a young lady employee of I.T. amp;T. into telling him things which, under the privacy amendment to the Constitution, she should have divulged only under court order - very sad. Anyhow, she did remember receiving that message for file and processing. Ordinarily she wouldn't remember one message out of hundreds - they go in her ears and out her fingertips and are gone, save for the filed microprint. But, luckily, this young lady is one of Ben's faithful fans; she reads his 'Crow's Nest' column every night - a hideous vice." Jubal blinked his eyes thoughtfully at the horizon. "Front!"

Anne appeared, dripping. "Remind me," Jubal said to her, "to write a popular article on the compulsive reading of news. The theme will be that most neuroses and some psychoses can be traced to the unnecessary and unhealthy habit of daily wallowing in the troubles and sins of five billion strangers. The title is 'Gossip Unlimited' - no, make that 'Gossip Gone Wild.'"

"Boss, you're getting morbid."

"Not me. But everybody else is. See that I write it some time next week. Now vanish; I'm busy." He turned back to Gillian. "She noticed Ben's name, so she remembered the message - quite thrilled about it, because it let her speak to one of her heroes� and was irked, I gather, because Ben hadn't paid for vision as well as voice. Oh, she remembers it and she remembers, too, that the service was paid for by cash from a public booth - in Washington."

"'In Washington'?" repeated Jill. "But why would Ben call from-"

"Of course, of course!" Jubal agreed pettishly. "If he's at a public phone booth anywhere in Washington, he can have both voice and vision direct to his office, face to face with his assistant, cheaper, easier, and. quicker than he could phone a stat message to be sent back to Washington from a point nearly two hundred miles away. It doesn't make sense. Or, rather, it makes just one kind of sense. Hanky-panky. Ben is as used to hanky-panky as a bride is to kisses. He didn't get to be one of the best winchells in the business through playing his cards face up."

"Ben is not a winchell! He's a Lippmann!"

"Sorry, I'm color-blind in that range. Keep quiet. He might have believed that his phone was tapped but his statprinter was not. Or he might have suspected that both were tapped - and I've no doubt they are, by now, if not then - and that he could use this round-about relay to convince whoever was tapping him that he really was away from Washington and would not be back for several days." Jubal frowned. "In the latter case we would be doing him no favor by finding him. We might be endangering his life."

"Jubal! No!"

"Jubal, yes," he answered wearily. "That boy skates close to the edge, he always has. He's utterly fearless and that's how he's made his reputation. But the rabbit is never more than two jumps ahead of the coyote and this time maybe one jump. Or none, Jill, Ben has never tackled a more dangerous assignment than this. If he has disappeared voluntarily - and he may have - do you want to risk stirring things up by bumbling around in your amateur way, calling attention to the fact that he has dropped out of sight? Kilgallen still has him covered, as Ben's column has appeared every day. I don't ordinarily read it - but I've made it my business to know, this time."

"Canned columns! Mr. Kilgallen told me so."

"Of course. Some of Ben's perennial series on corrupt campaign funds. That's a subject as safe as being in favor of Christmas. Maybe they're kept on file for such emergencies - or perhaps Kilgallen is writing them. In any case, Ben Caxton, the ever-ready Advocate of the Peepul, is still officially on his usual soap box. Perhaps he planned it that way, my dear - because he found himself in such danger that he did not dare get in touch even with you. Well?"

Gillian glanced fearfully around her - at a scene almost unbearably peaceful, bucolic, and beautiful - then covered her face with her hands. "Jubal� I don't know what to do!"

"Snap out of it," he said gruffly. "Don't bawl over Ben - not in my presence. The worst that can possibly have happened to him is death and that we are all in for - if not this morning, then in days, or weeks, or years at most. Talk to your protg Mike about it. He regards 'discorporation' as less to be feared than a scolding - and he may be right. Why, if I told Mike we were going to roast him and serve him for dinner tonight, he would thank me for the honor with his voice choked with gratitude."

"I know he would," Jill agreed in a small voice, "but I don't have his philosophical attitude about such things."

"Nor do I," Harshaw agreed cheerfully, "but I'm beginning to grasp it - and I must say that it is a consoling one to a man of my age. A capacity for enjoying the inevitable - why, I've been cultivating that all my life� but this infant from Mars, barely old enough to vote and too unsophisticated to stand clear of the horse cars, has me convinced that I've just reached the kindergarten class in this all-important subject. Jill, you asked if Mike was welcome to stay on. Child, he's the most welcome guest I've ever had. I want to keep that boy around until I've found out what it is that he knows and I don't! This 'discorporation' thing in particular it's not the Freudian 'death-wish' clich, I'm sure of that. It has nothing to do with life being unbearable. None of that 'Even the weariest river' stuff - it's more like Stevenson's 'Glad did I live and gladly die and I lay me down with a will!' Only I've always suspected that Stevenson was either whistling in the dark, or, more likely, enjoying the compensating euphoria of consumption. But Mike has me halfway convinced that he really knows what he is talking about."

"I don't know," Jill answered dully. "I'm just worried about Ben."

"So am I," agreed Jubal. "So let's discuss Mike another time. Jill, I don't think that Ben is simply hiding any more than you do."

"But you said-"

"Sorry. I didn't finish. My hired men didn't limit themselves to Ben's office and Paoli Flat. On Thursday morning Ben called at Bethesda Medical Center in company with the lawyer he uses and a Fair Witness - the famous James Oliver Cavendish, in case you follow such things."

"I don't, I'm afraid."

"No matter. The fact that Ben retained Cavendish shows how seriously he took the matter; you don't hunt rabbits with an elephant gun. The three were taken to see the 'Man from Mars'-"

Gillian gaped, then said explosively, "That's impossible! They couldn't have come on that floor without my knowing it!"

"Take it easy, Jill. You're disputing a report by a Fair Witness and not just any Fair Witness. Cavendish himself. If he says it, it's gospel."

"I don't care if he's the Twelve Apostles! He wasn't on my floor last Thursday morning!"

"You didn't listen closely. I didn't say that they were taken to see our friend Mike - I said they were taken to see 'The Man from Mars.' The phony one, obviously - that actor fellow they stereovised."

"Oh. Of course, And Ben caught them out!"

Jubal looked pained. "Little girl, count to ten thousand by twos while I finish this. Ben did not catch them out. In fact, even the Honorable Mr. Cavendish did not catch them out - at least he won't say so. You know how Fair Witnesses behave."

"Well� no, I don't. I've never had any dealings with Fair Witnesses."

"So? Perhaps you weren't aware of it. Anne!"

Anne was seated on the springboard; she turned her head. Jubal called out, "That new house on the far hilltop - can you see what color they've painted it?"

Anne looked in the direction in which Jubal was pointing and answered, "It's white on this side." She did not inquire why Jubal had asked, nor make any comment.

Jubal went on to Jill in normal tones, "You see? Anne is so thoroughly indoctrinated that it doesn't even occur to her to infer that the other side is probably white, too. All the King's horses and all the King's men couldn't force her to commit herself as to the far side - unless she herself went around to the other side and looked - and even then she wouldn't assume that it stayed whatever color it might be after she left because they might repaint it as soon as she turned her back,"

"Anne is a Fair Witness?"

"Graduate, unlimited license, and admitted to testify before the High Court. Sometime ask her why she decided to give up public practice. But don't plan on anything else that day - the wench will recite the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and that takes time. Back to Mr. Cavendish - Ben retained him for open witnessing, full disclosure, without enjoining him to privacy. So when Cavendish was questioned, he answered, in full and boring detail. I've got a tape of it upstairs. But the interesting part of his report is what he does not say. He never states that the man they were taken to see was not the Man from Mars� but not one word can be construed as indicating that Cavendish accepted the exhibit he was called to view as being in fact the Man from Mars. If you knew Cavendish - and I do - this would be conclusive. If Cavendish had seen Mike, even for a few minutes, he would have reported what he had seen with such exactness that you and I, who know Mike, would know that he had seen him. For example, Cavendish reports in precise professional jargon the shape of this exhibit's ears� and it does not match Mike's ear shape at all. Q.E.D.; he didn't see Mike. Nor did Ben. They were shown a phony. Furthermore Cavendish knows it, even though he is professionally restrained from giving opinions or conclusions."

"But I told you so. They never came near my floor."

"Yes. But it tells us something more. This occurred hours before you pulled your jail break for Mike - about eight hours earlier, as Cavendish sets their arrival in the presence of the phony 'Man from Mars' at 9.14 Thursday morning. That is to say, the government still had Mike under their thumb at that moment. In the same building. They could have exhibited him. Yet they took the really grave risk of offering a phony for inspection by the most noted Fair Witness in Washington - in the country. Why?"

He waited. Jill answered slowly, "You're asking me? I don't know. Ben told me that he intended to ask Mike if he wanted to leave the hospital - and help him to do so if he said, 'Yes.'"

"Which Ben did try, with the phony."

"So? Out, Jubal, they couldn't have known that Ben intended to do that� and, anyhow, Mike wouldn't have left with Ben."

"Why not? Later that day he left with you."

"Yes - but I was already his 'water brother,' just as you are now. He has this crazy Martian idea that he can trust utterly anyone with whom he has shared a drink of water. With a 'water brother' he is completely docile and with anybody else he is stubborn as a mule. Ben couldn't have budged him." She added, "At least that is the way he was last week - he's changing awfully fast."

"So he is. Too fast, maybe. I've never seen muscle tissue develop so rapidly - I'm sorry I didn't weigh him the day you arrived. Never mind, back to Ben - Cavendish reports that Ben dropped him and the lawyer, a chap named Frisby, at nine thirty-one, and Ben kept the cab. We don't know where Ben went then. But an hour later he - or let's say somebody who said he was Ben - phoned that message to Paoli Flat."

"You don't think it was Ben?"

"I do not. Cavendish reported the license number of the cab and my scouts tried to get a look at the daily trip tape for that cab. If Ben used his credit card, rather than feeding coins into the cab's meter, his charge number should be printed on the tape - but even if he paid cash the tape should show where the cab had been and when."

"Well?"

Harshaw shrugged. "The records show that that cab was in for repairs and was never in use Thursday morning. That gives us two choices: either a Fair Witness misread or misremembered a cab's serial number or somebody tampered with the record." He added grimly, "Maybe a jury would decide that even a Fair Witness could glance at a cab's serial number and misread it, especially if he had not been asked to remember it - but I don't believe it� not when the Witness is James Oliver Cavendish. Cavendish would either be certain of that serial number - or his report would never mention it."

Harshaw scowled and went on, "Jill, you're forcing me to rub my own nose in it - and I don't like it, I don't like it at all! Granted that Ben could have sent that message, it is most unlikely that he could have tampered with the daily record of that cab� and still less believable that he had any reason to. No, let's face it. Ben went somewhere in that cab - and somebody who could get at the records of a public carrier went to a lot of trouble to conceal where he went� and sent a phony message to keep anyone from realizing that he had disappeared."

"'Disappeared!' Kidnapped, you mean!"

"Softly, Jill. 'Kidnapped' is a dirty word."

"It's the only word for it! Jubal, how can you sit there and do nothing when you ought to be shouting it from the-"

"Stop it, Jill! There's another word. Instead of kidnapped, he might be dead."

Gillian slumped. "Yes," she agreed dully. "That's what I'm really afraid of."

"So am I. But we'll assume he is not, until we have seen his bones. But it's one or the other - so we assume that he is kidnapped. Jill, what's the greatest danger about kidnapping? No, don't bother your pretty head; I'll tell you. The greatest danger to the victim is a hue-and-cry - because if a kidnapper is frightened, he will almost always kill his victim. Had you thought of that?"

Gillian looked woeful and did not answer. Harshaw went on gently, "I am forced to say that I think it is extremely likely that Ben is dead. He has been gone too long. But we've agreed to assume that he is alive - until we know otherwise. Now you intend to look for him. Gillian, can you tell me how you will go about this? Without increasing the risk that Ben will be done away with by the unknown party or parties who kidnapped him?"

"Uh- But we know who they are!"

"Do we?"

"Of course we do! The same people who were keeping Mike a prisoner - the government!"

Harshaw shook his head. "We don't know it. That's an assumption based on what Ben was doing when last seen. But it's not a certainty. Ben has made lots of enemies with his column and by no means all of them are in the government. I can think of several who would willingly kill him if they could get away with it. However-" Harshaw frowned. "Your assumption is all we have to go on. But not 'the government' - that's too sweeping a term. 'The government' is several million people, nearly a million in Washington alone. We have to ask ourselves: Whose toes were being stepped on? What person or persons? Not 'the government' - but what individuals?"

"Why, that's plain enough, Jubal. I told you, just as Ben told it to me. It's the Secretary General himself."

"No," Harshaw denied. "While that may be true, it's not useful to us. No matter who did what, if it is anything rough or illegal, it won't be the Secretary General who did it, even if he benefits by it. Nobody would ever be able to prove that he even knew about it. It is likely that he would not know about it - not the rough stuff. No, Jill, we need to find out which lieutenant in the Secretary General's large staff' of stooges handled this operation. But that isn't as hopeless as it sounds - I think. When Ben was taken in to see that phony 'Man from Mars,' one of Mr. Douglas's executive assistants was with him - tried to talk him out of it, then went with him. It now appears that this same top-level stooge also dropped out of sight last Thursday - and I don't think it is a coincidence, not when he appears to have been in charge of the phony 'Man from Mars.' If we find him, we may find Ben, Gilbert Berquist is his name and I have reason-"

"Berquist?"

"That's the name. And I have reason to suspect that - Jill, what's the trouble? Stop it! Don't faint, or swelp me, I'll dunk you in the pool!"

"Jubal. This 'Berquist.' Is there more than one Berquist?"

"Eh? I suppose so� though from all I can find out he does seem to be a bit of a bastard; there might be only one. Out I mean the one on the Executive staff. Why? Do you know him?"

"I don't know. But if it is the same one� I don't think there's any use looking for him."

"Mmm� talk, girl."

"Jubal, I'm sorry - I'm terribly sorry - but I didn't tell you quite everything."

"People rarely do. All right, out with it."

Stumbling, stuttering, and stammering, Gillian managed to tell about the two men who suddenly were not there. Jubal Simply listened. "And that's all," she concluded sadly. "I screamed and scared Mike� and he went into that trance you saw him in - and then I had a simply terrible time getting here. But I told you about that."

"Mmm� yes, so you did. I wish that you had told me about this, too."

She turned red. "I didn't think anybody would believe me. And I was scared. Jubal, can they do anything to us?"

"Eh?" Jubal seemed surprised. "Do what?"

"Send us to jail, or something?"

"Oh. My dear, it has not yet been declared a crime to be present at a miracle. Nor to work one. But this matter has more aspects than a cat has hair. Keep quiet and let me think."

Jill kept quiet. Jubal held still about ten minutes. At last he opened his eyes and said, "I don't see your problem child. He's probably lying on the bottom of the pool again-"

"He is."

"-so dive in and get him. Dry him off and bring him up to my study. I want to find out if he can repeat this stunt at will� and I don't think we need an audience. No, we do need an audience. Tell Anne to put on her Witness robe and come along - tell her I want her in her official capacity. I want Duke, too."

"Yes, Boss."

"You're not privileged to call me 'Boss'; you're not tax deductible."

"Yes, Jubal."

"That's better. Mmm� I wish we had somebody here who never would be missed. Regrettably we are all friends. Do you suppose Mike can do this stunt with inanimate objects?"

"I don't know."

"We'll find out. Well, what are you standing there for? Haul that boy out of the water and wake him up." Jubal blinked thoughtfully. "What a way to dispose of - no, I mustn't be tempted. See you upstairs, girl."