It was followed by a note from FitzMaugham to McLeod, dated 15 June:
_Dr. McLeod:_
_All best wishes on your great adventure. I trust you'll be
departing, as usual, from the Nairobi base within the next few days.
Please let me hear from you before departure._
_FitzM._
The file concluded with a final note from McLeod to the director, dated
19 June 2231:
_My dear Mr. FitzMaugham:_
_The X-72 will leave Nairobi in eleven hours, bound outward, manned
by a crew of sixteen, including myself. The men are all impatient
for the departure. I must offer my hearty thanks for the help you
have given us over the past years, without which we would never have
reached this step._
_Flight plans include visiting several of the nearer stars, with
the intention of returning either as soon as we have discovered a
habitable extrasolar world, or one year after departure, whichever
first occurs._
_Sincere good wishes, and may you have as much success when you
plead your case before the United Nations as we have had
here--though you'll forgive me for hoping that our work might make
any population equalization program on Earth totally superfluous!_
_McLeod_
Walton stared at the three notes for a moment, so shocked he was unable
to react. So a faster-than-light drive was not merely a hoped-for
dream, but an actuality--with the first scouting mission a year absent
already!
He felt a new burst of admiration for FitzMaugham. What a marvelous old
scoundrel he had been!
Faster-than-light achieved, and the terraforming group on Venus, and
neither fact released to the public ... or even specifically given to
FitzMaugham's own staff, his alleged confidants.
It had been shrewd of him, all right. He had made sure nothing could
go wrong. If something happened to Lang and his crew on Venus--and it
was quite possible, since word from them was a week overdue--it would
be easy to say that the terraforming project was still in the planning
stage. In the event of success, the excuse was that word of their
progress had been withheld for "security reasons."
And the same would apply to the space drive; if McLeod and his men
vanished into the nether regions of interstellar space and never
returned, FitzMaugham would not have had to answer for the failure of
a project which, as far as the public knew, was still in the planning
stage. It was a double-edged sword with the director controlling both
edges.
And now Walton was in charge. He hoped he would be able to continue
manipulations with an aplomb worthy of the late Director FitzMaugham.
The annunciator chimed. "Dr. Lamarre is here for his appointment with
you, Mr. Walton."
Walton was caught off guard. His mind raced furiously. _Lamarre? Who
the dickens--oh, that left-over appointment of FitzMaugham's._
"Tell Dr. Lamarre I'll be glad to see him in just a few minutes,
please. I'll buzz you when I'm ready."
Hurriedly he gathered up the space-flight documents and jammed them in
a file drawer near the data on terraforming. He surveyed his office;
it looked neat, presentable. Glancing around, he made sure no stray
documents were visible, documents which might reveal the truth about
the space drive.
"Send in Dr. Lamarre," he said.
Dr. Lamarre was a short, thin, pale individual, with an uncertain wave
in his sandy hair and a slight stoop of his shoulders. He carried a
large, black leather portfolio which seemed on the point of exploding.
"Mr. Walton?"
"That's right. You're Dr. Lamarre?"
The small man handed him an engraved business card.
_T. ELLIOT LAMARRE_
_Gerontologist_
Walton fingered the card uneasily and returned it to its owner.
"Gerontologist? One who studies ways of increasing the human life-span?"
"Precisely."
Walton frowned. "I presume you've had some previous dealings with the
late Director FitzMaugham?"