“Well, yes.”
“Just a moment, then. I came for another reason.” He faced Don. “Mr. Harvey, I owe you an apology.”
“Oh, that’s all right.”
“No, let me say my say. I had no business trying to bullyrag you into cooperating. Don’t mistake me; we want that ring—we must have it. And I mean to argue until we get it. But I’ve been under great strain and I went about it the wrong way. Very great strain—that’s my only excuse.”
“Well,” said Don, “come to think about it, so have I. So let’s forget it.” He turned to his host. “Sir Isaac, may I?” He reached toward Sir Isaac’s handling tentacles, putting out his palm. The ring dropped into it; he turned and handed it to Phipps.
Phipps stared at it stupidly for a moment. When he looked up Don was surprised to see that the man’s eyes were filled with tears. “I won’t thank you,” he said, “because when you see what will come of this it will mean more to you than any person’s thanks. What is in this ring is of life and death importance to many, many people. You’ll see.”
Don was embarrassed by the man’s naked emotion. “I can guess,” he said gruffly. “Mr. Costello told me that it meant bomb protection and faster ships—and I bet on my hunch that you people and I are on the same side in the long run. I just hope I didn’t guess wrong.”
“Guess wrong? No, you haven’t guessed wrong—and not just in the long run, as you put it, but right now! Now that we have this—” he held up the ring, “we stand a fighting chance to save our people on Mars.”
“Mars?” repeated Don. “Hey, wait a minute—what’s this about Mars? Who’s going to be saved? And from what?”
Phipps looked just as puzzled. “Eh? But wasn’t that what persuaded you to turn over the ring?”
“Wasn’t what persuaded me?”
“Didn’t Jim Costello—” “Why, I thought of course you had—” and Sir Isaac’s voder interrupted with, “Gentlemen, apparently it was assumed that… ”
“Quiet!” Don shouted as Phipps opened his mouth again; Don hurriedly added, “Things seem to have gotten mixed up again. Can somebody—just one of you—tell me what goes on?”
Costello could and did. The Organization had for many years been quietly building a research center on Mars. It was the one place in the system where the majority of humans were scientists. The Federation maintained merely an outpost there, with a skeleton garrison. Mars was not regarded as being of any real importance—just a place where harmless longhairs could dig among the ruins and study the customs of the ancient and dying race.
The security officers of the I.B.I. gave Mars little attention; there seemed no need. The occasional agent who did show up could be led around and allowed to see research of no military importance.
The group on Mars did not have the giant facilities available on Earth—the mastodonic cybernetic machines, the unlimited sources of atomic power, the superpowerful particle accelerators, the enormous laboratories—but they did have freedom. The theoretical groundwork for new advances in physics had been worked out on Mars, spurred on by certain mystifying records of the First Empire—that almost mythical earlier epoch when the solar system had been one political unit. Don was warmly pleased to hear that his parents’ researches had contributed largely at this point in the problem. It was known-or so the ancient Martian records seemed to state-that the ships of the First Empire had traveled between the planets, not in journeys of weary months, or even weeks, but of days.
The descriptions of these ships and of their motive power were extensive, but differences in language, in concept, and in technology created obstacles enough to give comparative semanticists nervous breakdowns—had done so, in fact. A treatise on modern electronics written in Sanskrit poetry with half the thoughts taken for granted would have been lucid in comparison.
It had simply been impossible to make fully intelligible translation of the ancient records. What was missing had to be worked out by genius and sweat.
When the theoretical work had been carried as far as it could be the problem was sent to Earth via members of the Organization for sub rosa testing and for conversion of theory into present-day engineering. At first there was a steady traffic of information back and forth between planets, but, as the secret grew, the members of the Organization were less and less inclined to travel for fear of compromising what they knew. By the time of the Venus crisis it had been standard practice for some years to send critical information by couriers who knew nothing and therefore could not talk—such as Don—or by nonterrestrials who were physically immune to the interrogation methods of the security police—giving a Venerian dragon the “third degree” was not only impractical, but ridiculous. For different but equally obvious reasons Martians too were safe from the thought police.