The young newscaster latched on to that statement like a veteran. Wide-eyed and innocent, she slipped in a few leading questions and Mantelish launched into a detailed explanation.
It had taken some months before he gained the confidence of the Tang sufficiently to induce them to reveal their secret: they distilled the juice of a carefully tended and guarded plant through an involved procedure. The drug they obtained in this way brought about a reversal of the normal aging process so that they retained their youthful health and vigor for a length of time which, though it had not been precisely determined, the Tang regarded as “forever.”
* * *
Could this drug, the little reporter asked, perhaps be adapted for human use?
Mantelish said he could not be definite about that, but it seemed quite possible. While the Tang had not let the members of his expedition know what plant they cultivated for the purpose, they had obligingly presented him with several liters of the distilled drug for experimentation which he had brought back with him. Analysis of the drug while still on the Tang planet had revealed the presence of several heretofore unknown forms of protein with rather puzzling characteristics; the question was whether or not these could be reproduced in the laboratory. To settle the question might well take a number of years—it could not of course be stated at present what the long-term effect of the drug on human beings would be. It was, however, apparently harmless. He and several other members of his group had been injected with significant quantities of the drug while on the planet, and had suffered no ill effects.
Big-eyed again, the newscaster inquired whether this meant that he, Professor Mantelish, was now immortal?
No, no, Mantelish said hastily. In humans, as in the Tang, the effects of a single dose wore off in approximately four months. To retain youth, or to bring about the gradual rejuvenation of an older body, it was necessary to repeat the dosage regularly at about this interval. The practice of the Tang was to alternately permit themselves to age naturally for about ten years, then to use the drug for roughly the same length of time or until youthfulness was restored.
To protect both the Tang and their miracle plant from illegal exploitation, the Federation, following his initial report on the matter, was having the space about the planet patrolled. What the final benefits of the discovery to humanity would be was still open to question. It was, however, his personal opinion that the Tang drug eventually would take its place as a very valuable addition to the various rejuvenation processes currently being employed in the Hub . . .
“The old idiot!” Commissioner Holati Tate muttered to himself. He swung around, found a redheaded young woman standing behind him, large, gray eyes intently watching the screen. “Did you hear all that, Trigger?” he demanded.
“Enough to get the idea,” Trigger said. “I came in as soon as I recognized the prof’s voice . . . After those remarks, he’d be safer back among the Tang! He doesn’t even seem to have a bodyguard around.”
Commissioner Tate was dialing a ComWeb number. “I’ll call the spaceport police! They’ll give him an escort. Hop on the other ComWeb and see his home and lab are under guard by the time he gets there.”
“I just did that,” Trigger said.
“Then see if you can make an emergency contact with that newscaster female before Mantelish strays off . . .”
Trigger shook her head. “I tried it. No luck! It’s a floating program.”
She watched the final minute and a half of the newscast, biting her lip uneasily, while the Commissioner made hasty arrangements with the spaceport police. To hear Professor Mantelish blabbing out the fact that he might have the answer to man’s search for immortality in his possession was disconcerting. It was an open invitation to all the criminal elements currently on Maccadon to try to get it from him. The prof simply shouldn’t be allowed to wander around without tactful but efficient nursemaiding! Usually, she or Holati or somebody else made sure he got it, but they’d assumed that on a Federation expedition he’d be kept out of jams . . .
When the Commissioner had finished, she switched off the newscast, said glumly, “You missed something, Holati. Mantelish just showed everybody watching on umpteen worlds the container he’s got that drug in!”
“The Tang stuff?”
“Yes. It’s in that round sort of suitcase he had standing beside his chair.”
The Commissioner swore.
“Come along!” he said. “We’ll take my car and head for the spaceport. The police weren’t sure from exactly where that newscast was coming but if they catch up with Mantelish before he leaves they’ll wait for us and we’ll ride in to his lab with him.”
“And if they don’t?”
“They’ll call the car. Then we’ll go to the lab and wait for him to show up.”
* * *
Almost as soon as he’d bid the charming little newscaster goodbye, Professor Mantelish himself began to feel some qualms about the revelations he’d allowed to escape. He began to realize he might have been a trifle indiscreet. Walking on with the crowds moving towards the spaceport exit hall, he found himself growing acutely conscious of the Tang drug container in the suitcase he carried. Normally preoccupied with a variety of matters of compelling scientific interest, it was almost impossible for him to conceive of himself as being in personal danger. Nevertheless, now that his attention was turned on the situation he had created it became clear that many people who had watched the newscast might feel tempted to bring the drug into their possession, either for selfish reasons or out of perhaps excessive zeal for private research . . .
The average citizen at this point might have started looking around for the nearest police officer. Professor Mantelish, however, was of independent nature; such a solution simply did not occur to him. He had advertised the fact that he was headed for his laboratory. That had been a mistake. Therefore he would not go there—which should foil anyone who was presently entertaining illegal notions about the Tang drug. Instead, he would take himself and the drug immediately to a little seaside hideout he maintained which was known only to his closest associates. Once there he could take steps to have the drug safeguarded.
Satisfied with this decision Mantelish lengthened his stride. About a hundred yards ahead was the entry to an automatic aircar rental station. As he came up half a dozen people turned into it in a group, obviously harmless citizens. Mantelish followed them in, moved over to the wall just inside the entry, turned and stood waiting, prepared, if required, to swing the weighted suitcase he held under his flowing robe like an oversized club. But half a minute passed and no one else came in. Satisfied, he hurried after the little group, catching up with them just as they reached the line of waiting cars and climbed into a car together, laughing and joking. Mantelish got into the car behind them, deposited a five-credit piece. The cars began to move forwards, rose toward the exit. He glanced back to make sure again that no one was following, placed the Tang container on the floorboards beside him, snapped the car’s canopy shut and put his hands on the controls.
The aircars emerged from the fifteenth floor of the spaceport exit building, the lights of Ceyce glittering under its night-screen before them. Mantelish turned immediately to the left, directed the car up to one of the main traffic lines, moved along it for a minute, then shifted abruptly to one of the upper high-speed lanes.
* * *
He reached his hideaway a scant fifteen minutes later. It was in a residential shore area, featuring quiet and privacy. The house, overlooking a shallow, sheltered ocean bay, was built on sloping ground thirty feet above tide level. It was a pleasant place, fit for an elderly retired man of remarkable habits. None of Mantelish’s neighbors knew him by name or suspected he maintained a laboratory within his walls—an installation in absolute violation of the local zoning regulations.
He locked the entry door behind him, crossed a hall, opened the door to the laboratory. He stood motionless a moment, looking around. Everything was as he had left it months before, kept spotlessly clean by automatic maintenance machinery. He went over to a table on which lay a variety of items, the results of projects he had hastily completed or left incompleted before setting out on the expedition to the Tang world. He put the Tang container on the table between a chemical gun and a packaged device which, according to the instructions attached to it, was a mental accelerator with a ratio of two hundred and eighty to one, instantly lethal if used under conditions other than those specified in the instructions. He looked about once more, went out by another door to the kitchen of the house.