"What a gesture!" Baxter went on, hardly speaking directly to me at
all. "Inter-nation harmony! Good will! If these mere boys can get
together and travel the voids of space, then so can everyone else! Why
should there be tensions between the various nations comprising the
World Government, when there's none between these fine lads, one from
every civilized nation on Earth?"
"You sound disillusioned, sir," I interjected.
He stared at me as though I'd just fallen in from the ceiling or
somewhere. "Huh? Oh, yes, Delvin, isn't it? Sorry, I got carried away.
Where was I?"
"You were telling about how this gesture, the WG sending these kids
off for an extraterrestrial romp, will cement relations between those
nations who have remained hostile despite the unification of all
governments on Earth. Personally, I think it was a pretty good idea,
myself. Everybody likes kids. Take this jam we were trying to push.
Pomegranate Nectar, it was called. Well, sir, it just wouldn't sell,
and then we got this red-headed kid with freckles like confetti all
over his slightly bucktoothed face, and we--Sir?"
I'd paused, because he was staring at me like a man on the brink of
apoplexy. I swallowed, and tried to look relaxed.
After a moment, he found his voice. "To go on, Delvin. Do you recall
what happened to the Space Scouts last week?"
I thought a second, then nodded. "They've been having such a good time
that the government extended their trip by--Why are you shaking your
head that way, sir?"
"Because it's not true, Delvin," he said. His voice was suddenly old
and tired, and very much in keeping with his snowy hair. "You see, the
Space Scouts have vanished."
I came up in the chair, ramrod-straight. "Their mothers--they've been
getting letters and--"
"Forgeries, Fakes. Counterfeits."
"You mean whoever took the Scouts is falsifying--"
"No. _My_ men are doing the work. Handpicked crews, day and night,
have been sending those letters to the trusting mothers. It's been
ghastly, Delvin. Hard on the men, terribly hard. Undotted _i_'s,
misuse of tenses, deliberate misspellings. They take it out of an
adult, especially an adult with a mind keen enough to get him into
Interplanetary Security. We've limited the shifts to four hours per man
per day. Otherwise, they'd all be gibbering by now!"
"And your men haven't found out anything?" I marvelled.
Baxter shook his head.
"And you finally had to resort to the Brain, and it gave you my name,
but no reason for it?"
Baxter cupped his slightly jowled cheeks in his hands and propped his
elbows on the desktop, suddenly slipping out of his high position to
talk to me man-to-man. "Look, son, an adding machine--which is a minor
form of an electronic brain, and even works on the same principle--can
tell you that two and two make four. But can it tell you why?
"Well, no, but--"
"That, in a nutshell is our problem. We coded and fed to the Brain
every shred of information at our disposal; the ages of the children,
for instance, and all their physical attributes, and where they were
last seen, and what they were wearing. Hell, everything! The machine
took the factors, weighed them, popped them through its billions of
relays and tubes, and out of the end of the answer slot popped a single
sheet. The one you just saw. Your dossier."
"Then I'm to be sent to Mars?" I said, nervously.
"That's just it," Baxter sighed. "We don't even know that! We're like a
savage who finds a pistol: used correctly, it's a mean little weapon;
pointed the wrong way, it's a quick suicide. So, you are our weapon.
Now, the question is: Which way do we point you?"
"You got me!" I shrugged hopelessly.
"However, since we have nothing else to go on but the locale from which
the children vanished, my suggestion would be to send you there."
"Mars, you mean," I said.
"No, to the spaceship _Phobos II_. The one they were returning to Earth
in when they disappeared."
"They disappeared from a spaceship? While in space?"
Baxter nodded.
"But that's impossible," I said, shaking my head against this
disconcerting thought.
"Yes," said Baxter. "That's what bothers me."
3
_Phobos II_, for obvious reasons, was berthed in a Top Security
spaceport. Even so, they'd shuttled it into a hangar, safe from the
eyes of even their own men, and as a final touch had hidden the ship's
nameplate beneath magnetic repair-plates.
I had a metal disk--bronze and red, the Security colors--insigniaed
by Baxter and counterembossed with the President's special device, a
small globe surmounted by clasping hands. It gave me authority to do
anything. With such an identification disc, I could go to Times Square
and start machine gunning the passers-by, and not one of New York's
finest would raise a hand to stop me.
And, snugly enholstered, I carried a collapser, the restricted weapon
given only to Security Agents, so deadly was its molecule-disrupting
beam. Baxter had spent a tremulous hour showing me how to use the
weapon, and especially how to turn the beam off. I'd finally gotten the
hang of it, though not before half his kidney-shaped desk had flashed
into nothingness, along with a good-sized swath of carpeting and six
inches of concrete floor.