He stood watching the trim figure walk up the passage beyond the door.
As she came to its end, the door slid silently shut again. Arlene
looked back and waved at him, then disappeared around the corner.
Dr. Frank Harding thrust his hands into his pockets and started back
across the court, scowling absently at nothing.
* * * * *
The living room of the quarters assigned to Dr. Benjamin B. Lowry on
Cleaver Spaceport's security island was large and almost luxuriously
furnished. In pronounced contrast to the adjoining office and
work-rooms, it was also as a rule in a state of comfortable disorder.
An affinity appeared to exist between the complex and the man who
had occupied it for the past two years. Dr. Lowry, leading authority
in the rather new field of diex energy, was a large man of careless
and comfortable, if not downright slovenly personal habits, while a
fiendish precisionist at work.
He was slumped now in an armchair on the end of his spine, fingering
his lower lip and staring moodily at the viewphone field which formed
a pale-yellow rectangle across the living room's entire south wall,
projecting a few inches out into the room. Now and then, his gaze
shifted to a narrow, three-foot-long case of polished hardwood on
the table beside him. When the phone field turned clear white, Dr.
Lowry shoved a pair of rimless glasses back over his nose and sat up
expectantly. Then he frowned.
"Now look here, Weldon--!" he began.
Colors had played for an instant over the luminous rectangle of the
phone field, resolving themselves into a view of another room. A
short, sturdily built man sat at a desk there, wearing a neat business
suit. He smiled pleasantly out of the field at Dr. Lowry, said in a
casual voice, "Relax, Ben! As far as I'm concerned, this is a command
performance. Mr. Green just instructed me to let you know I'd be
sitting in when he took your call."
"Mr. Green did _what_?"
The man in the business suit said quickly, "He's coming in now, Ben!"
His hand moved on the desk, and he and the room about him faded to a
pale, colorless outline in the field. Superimposed on it appeared a
third room, from which a man who wore dark glasses looked out at Dr.
Lowry.
He nodded, said in a briskly amiable manner, "Dr. Lowry, I received
your message just a minute ago. As Colonel Weldon undoubtedly has
informed you, I asked him to be present during this discussion. There
are certain things to be told you, and the arrangement will save time
all around.
"Now, doctor, as I understand it, the situation is this. Your work on
the project has advanced satisfactorily up to what has been designated
as the Fourth Stage. That is correct, isn't it?"
Dr. Lowry said stiffly, "That is correct, sir. Without the use of a
trained telepath it is unlikely that further significant advances can
be made. Colonel Weldon, however, has seen fit now to introduce certain
new and astonishing conditions. I find these completely unacceptable as
they stand and...."
"You're entirely justified, Dr. Lowry, in protesting against an
apparently arbitrary act of interference with the work you've carried
out so devotedly at the request of your government." One of Mr. Green's
better-known characteristics was his ability to interrupt without
leaving the impression of having done it. "Now, would it satisfy you
to know that Colonel Weldon has been acting throughout as my personal
deputy in connection with the project--and that I was aware of the
conditions you mention before they were made?"
* * * * *
Dr. Lowry hesitated, said, "I'm afraid not. As a matter of fact, I do
know Weldon well enough to take it for granted he wasn't simply being
arbitrary. I...."
"You feel," said Mr. Green, "that there are certain extraneous
considerations involved of which you should have been told?"
Lowry looked at him for a moment. "If the President of the United
States," he said drily, "already has made a final decision in the
matter, I shall have to accept it."