The idea that he might be carrying a message in invisible ink excited him and he started thinking of ways to bring out the message. Heat? Chemical reagents? Radiation? Even as he considered it he realized regretfully that, supposing there were such a message, it was not his place to try to make it legible; he was simply to deliver it to his father.
He decided, too, that it was more likely that this was a dummy package sent along by the police. He had no way of telling what they might have forced out of Dr. Jefferson. Which reminded him that there was still one thing he could do to check up, futile as it probably would be; he stepped to the phone and asked for Dr. Jefferson’s residence. True, the doctor had told him not to phone—but the circumstances had changed.
He had to wait a bit, then the screen lighted up—and he found himself staring into the face of the security police lieutenant who had grilled him. The police officer stared back. “Oh, me!” he said in a tired voice, “so you didn’t believe me? Go back to bed; you have to be up in an hour or so.”
Don switched off without saying anything.
So Dr. Jefferson was either dead or still in the hands of the police. Very well; he would assume that the paper came from the doctor—and he would deliver that paper in spite of all the slimily polite stormtroopers New Chicago could muster! The dodge the doctor had apparently used to fake the purpose of the paper caused him to wonder what he could do to cover up its importance. Presently he got his stylus from his pouch, smoothed out the paper, and started a letter. The paper looked enough like writing paper to make a letter on it seem reasonable—it might be writing paper in truth. He started in. “Dear Mother and Dad, I got your radiogram this morning and was I excited!” He continued, simply covering space in a sprawling hand and finishing, when he was about to run out of paper, by mentioning an intention to add to the letter and have the whole thing sent off as soon as his ship was in radio range of Mars. He then folded it, tucked it into his wallet, and put the whole into his pouch.
He looked at the clock as he finished. Good heavens! He should be up in an hour; it was hardly worthwhile going to bed. But his eyes were trying to close even as he thought it; he saw that the alarm dial of the bed was graduated from “Gentle Reminder” to “Earthquake”; he picked the extreme setting and crawled in.
He was being bounced around, a blinding light was flashing in his eyes, and a siren was running up and down the scale. Don gradually became aware of himself, scrambled out of bed. Mollified, the bed ceased its uproar.
He decided against breakfast in his room for fear that he might go back to sleep, choosing instead to stumble into his clothes and seek out the hotel’s coffee shop. Four cups of coffee and a solid meal later, checked out and armed with hard money for an autocab, he headed for Gary Station. At the reservation office of Interplanet Lines he asked for his ticket. A strange clerk hunted around, then said, “I don’t see it. It’s not with the security clearances.”
This, Don thought, is the last straw. “Look around. It’s bound to be there”
“But it’s—Wait a moment!” The clerk picked up a slip. “Donald James Harvey? You’re to pick up your ticket in room 4012, on the mezzanine.”
“Why?”
“Search me; I just work here. That’s what it says.”
Mystified and annoyed, Don sought out the room named. The door was plain except for a notice “Walk In”; he did and found himself again facing the security lieutenant of the night before.
The officer looked up from a desk. “Get that sour look off your puss, Don,” he snapped. “I haven’t had much sleep either.”
“What do you want of me?”
‘Take off your clothes.”
“Why?”
“Because we are going to search you. You didn’t really think I’d let you take off without it, did you?”