"Quite. But don't alarm yourself. They'll never get past the blue door."
Far from being soothing, Thorpe's reassurance had just the opposite
effect on Vickers. For the first time, he began to doubt that he could
get through that blue door himself. There was something so damned
complacent about the man behind the desk--
In sudden alarm, Vickers opened his nictitating lids, flicked a quick
glance around.
The room was quite real, but there was no sign of Luna City nor of the
moon's desolate surface. He sucked in his breath.
The office seemed to be part of a large windowless structure. He could
see, through the walls, a restless ochre sea outside and a red pebble
beach. Strange, sinuous vegetation cloaked the shore.
"Where are we?" he blurted out. "How did I get here?"
"I'm sorry," said Thorpe, "but that's one secret that isn't for sale."
Vickers closed the nictitating lids and the office recovered its
solidity.
"What's your proposition?"
Thorpe gave him a shrewd look. "This is Tani Fralick," he introduced
the girl. "I'm sure you've heard of her father. He's the physicist...."
* * * * *
Vickers sat bolt upright. Fralick was probably the most renowned man on
Earth, Mars or Venus. He certainly was the Systems greatest physicist.
Fralick was head of the United States' Bureau of Research. It was
practically treason for his daughter to be in the offices of such an
organization as "International Spy Ring, Inc."