Chapter II: Part 2

He had a point there. He couldn't know that I'd already made sure that my apartment was bug-proof. A self-contained broadcaster isn't much use inside Ceres; the metal walls stop almost any radiation before it can get very far. If my place was bugged, conductors of some kind would have to be used, and I'd gone over the place thoroughly to make sure there was no such thing.

In addition, I'd used one of my favorite gadgets: a non-random noise generator. Because a conversation is patterned, it is possible to pick it out of a "white," purely random background noise, even if the background is louder than the conversation. But my little sweetheart was a multiple recording of ten thousand different conversations, all meaningless, _plus_ a lot of "white" noise. After the gadget is connected up, the walls vibrate with jabber that can't be analyzed even by the best of differential analyzers. Only in the hush area away from the walls is it quiet.

But my caller couldn't be expected to know that, and I didn't feel like telling him.

I decided to see how far he'd go.

"Mr. Venuccio," I said in an apologetic tone, "I'm sorry, but my present work will require several more weeks, and--"

"I understand that," he said quickly. He seemed to be a great one for interruptions. "But I assure you that I can make it worth your while. What would you charge for an hour of your time?"

"It would depend on what I'd have to do."

"All you will have to do is listen to me explain my problem and my proposition to you. An hour, at the very most. I could meet you at the _Seven Sisters_ in half an hour. This is very urgent, Mr. Oak."

Not to me, it wasn't. But my intuition told me that there was something here I ought to know about. "All right, Mr. Venuccio; I'll be there. It'll cost you a hundred in cash for the consultation fee. Have it with you." In case he didn't know what I charged, that ought to give him some idea.

He didn't flinch. "Very good, Mr. Oak. I'll see you in half an hour, then. Good-by." And his image vanished.

_Interesting_, I thought. There was something definitely phony about Mr. André Venuccio. His manner of speaking didn't sound natural; it was as though he were attempting to pretend to be something he wasn't.

I made a few phone calls and came up with more information. The last ship directly from Earth had landed four days ago. Mr. Venuccio could have come in by flitterboat, but it didn't seem likely, if he had, as he claimed, come all the way from Earth to see me. Aside from the fact that my staff in my New York office wouldn't have told him where I was, there was also the fact that no André Venuccio had come in on the last ship.

I made two more calls--one to Marty and one to Colonel Brock--and then began to get ready for my appointment with the enigmatic Mr. Venuccio.

* * * * *

The _Seven Sisters_ is one of the most elaborate dining clubs on Ceres. It caters strictly to the moneyed class, and is positively drenched in snob appeal. The food is good, the liquor is good, and the entertainment is adequate. Since all three have to be imported from Earth, the first two are expensive and the last one is the best they can get, because most of the top-flight entertainers of Earth don't feel that it's worth their while to go asteroid-hopping.

It is one of the few public places in the Belt where you will be expected to "dress" for dinner. That means a jacket and Bermuda shorts over your union suit.

As far as decoration goes, the _Seven Sisters_ is the lushest place in the Belt. The walls of the main dining room, which is about sixty by sixty feet in floor area, are paneled with white oak up to a height of eight feet. Wood is expensive in the Belt; forests on the asteroids share the null class with snowflakes on the sunward side of Mercury.

Above the paneling, the ceiling is domed and black, and a pattern of bright pinlights representing the Pleiades--greatly enlarged--glitters against the blackness.

The floor is decorative traction tile, white and pale blue, with rust-red geometric designs on it. In the middle of the floor, there is a hollow, transparent column, brightly illuminated from below. Four feet in diameter, it rises a dozen feet above the floor to a flat, truncated top that is opaque to prevent the light from hitting the dome overhead and ruining the pseudo-sky effect, and mirrored on the underside to reflect the light back down the column. Inside, thousands of tiny, faceted, plastic gems are kept constantly in motion by forced air currents, swirling up and down the inside of the transparent column--easy enough to do under Cerean gravity. Each spinning gem, scarcely larger than a pinhead, catches the light and scatters it around the room. It's a sort of macroscopic Tyndall effect that is quite impressive.

I told the headwaiter that I wanted Mr. Venuccio's table, and was escorted straight to it. Venuccio was waiting for me.

He stood up as I approached and gave me his stiff smile. He was short--not more than five foot six--and rather lean. I got the impression that his jacket was padded to make his shoulders appear wider than they were.

"Sit down, Mr. Oak," he said in that oddly forced voice of his. "Would you care for something to eat? Or a drink, perhaps?" He already had a drink, still three-quarters full.

"Not just yet. Later, maybe."

I had watched him as he stood up, and I went right on watching him while we sat down. For a man who was just in from Earth, he handled himself remarkably well under low gee. "We may order later," he said to the waiter.

As soon as the waiter was out of earshot, Venuccio leaned toward me, and suddenly he was all business.

One hand slid a banknote across the table. "Here is the hundred we agreed upon, Mr. Oak. I can state my proposition very quickly; you have only to listen."

I palmed the hundred and slipped it out of sight. "You have rented yourself a pair of ears, Mr. Venuccio."

"Very good." He kept his voice low and even. "Do you know anything of the Cronos Water Corporation?"

"Sure. Cronos is one of the companies that mines the rings of Saturn. A lot of the water here in the Belt comes from the ice they ship in. Why?"

"Not exactly," he said, ignoring my question. "They now have full control of their only rival, Titan Enterprises. I am a stockholder in Titan, and I am convinced that there was chicanery involved in the transfer of managership. The Cronos Corporation intends to raise the price of water in the Belt and make a lot of fast money."

"Does the Government know about this?"

"No. Even I can't prove it on paper. That's why I want you to go out there and get the information. It will have to be done quickly, before Cronos can file notice of new prices."

"What do you mean, 'quickly'?"

"You'll have to take the _Warbow_, which is leaving for Luna this evening, in order to catch the _Plunger_, which is leaving Luna for Saturn. There won't be another chance for three weeks, and that will be too late."

It was all very pretty. Saturn was on the other side of the System at the time, and it would be a nice, long trip.

I shook my head. "Sorry, Mr. Venuccio, but, as I told you, I'm already engaged. You'll have to get someone else."

He looked suddenly desperate. "I will pay you well. I'll buy out your present contract, and I'll pay you double for the work."

* * * * *

We spent the rest of his bought-and-paid-for hour haggling. Or, rather, _he_ haggled. I asked a lot of questions, and he tried to answer them in order to convince me that I should go, and I just asked more questions.

Exactly one hour from the time I'd been handed the hundred, I stood up. Venuccio was in the middle of a sentence, but I said: "Your hour's up, Mr. Venuccio. The answer is still no. Thank you for your business."

"But--" He started to rise, started to grasp my sleeve.

"Sit down." I didn't say it harshly or angrily, just firmly. He sat. "I don't want to be bothered by any more of this kind of thing. Ever again. Is that understood, Mr. Venuccio?"

He nodded wordlessly, and I left him sitting there.

As I moved toward the door, the headwaiter came towards me. Before he could say anything, I said: "Mr. Venuccio is taking care of the check."

"I know that, Oak," he said in a low voice. "We'll have him tailed when he leaves here." I never would have recognized him; it was Colonel Harrington Brock, wearing a plexiskin mask. "Got any idea of what he wants or who he's working for?"

"He wants me to leave Ceres, which would hold up the testing of McGuire. Offered me plenty for it, too. I'm pretty sure he's wearing a plexiskin mask, too; and I'm almost certain I've heard that voice before, but I can't quite place it."

"We'll find out," Brock said grimly.

Then he gave me a headwaiter's smile and went on his way. I went on out through the ornate doors of the _Seven Sisters_.

* * * * *

When I got back to my apartment, I looked it over carefully. It didn't look as though anyone had made an unauthorized search. I called Marty, and he assured me that the men watching the place had seen no one go in. But I was already fairly certain that the purpose of Mr. Venuccio's appointment had not been to lure me away from my apartment. He wanted me to go a lot farther than that.

I drank a couple more beers and smoked four or five cigarettes while I thought things through, then I got ready for bed, cut the lights, and went to sleep.

* * * * *

The next morning, I showed up at Viking's Testing Area Four with a hot breakfast inside me and my vac suit outside, ready to go sky-climbing with McGuire. McGuire's tall blue spire shone brightly in the sunlight, and looked, as he always did, as though ready to take the leap at any time.

There would be only five of us aboard. Besides myself, there was the short, chubby Ellsworth Felder, head of the robotics staff; the boyish Irwin Brentwood; the tough, taciturn Theodore Videnski; and the lovely Vivian Devereaux.

We made the last-minute checks to make sure everything was ready for the hop to Phobos, and then I took command.

"Plot a one-gee orbit to Phobos, McGuire. Take-off in five minutes."

"Yes, sir," said McGuire. He thought for a minute, then said: "Course plotted, sir."

"Good." I glanced at Brentwood, who had set up his instruments in a semipermanent installation for the trip. "Did you get that, Brentwood?" He nodded.

"All right, McGuire; we're going to be doing a few tests out in space, so, for right now, just follow the curve of the first half--up to five minutes before turnover. I'll let you know what to do then. Warn me at five minutes before turnover; otherwise, just keep going until I give you further orders."

"Yes, sir."

"How much longer until take-off time?"

"Three and a half minutes, sir."

"Begin a countdown at minus thirty seconds. One count every five seconds until minus five seconds, one count per second from there to zero. Lift at zero."

"Yes, sir."

We got everything settled, made sure there were no loose tools lying around, and sat down in the lounge chairs to wait for the lift. Pretty soon, McGuire said: "Minus thirty seconds." Finally, he said "Five ... four ... three ... two ... one ... zero."

And we all sank down in the chairs, under the pull of a full Standard Gee of acceleration--one thousand centimeters per second squared.

Ceres fell away from beneath us and slowly receded in the vast blackness of space.

I got up and stretched my muscles, and the others began doing the same. It takes time to get used to a full gee again after spending time in the Belt. Even in a flitterboat, you're in a bucket seat, lying on your back; you can't do any walking around in a flitterboat.

The change in Ellsworth Felder was remarkable. All that chubbiness that had ballooned out under the low gravity of Ceres and made him look like the Cheerful Cherub was pulled into sagging folds under the pull of the ship's acceleration. It made him look fifteen years older. None of the others seemed to be bothered much.

Felder kept his good humor, though. He didn't seem to know that there'd been any change in his appearance. He rubbed his hands together and said: "I, for one, always get hungry when the gravity goes up. May I suggest an early lunch?"

Nobody disagreed with him.

* * * * *

We settled into a routine pretty quickly. There wasn't much to do, since McGuire was taking care of the jobs that require a crew on an ordinary ship. To avoid boredom, we'd brought books and a few decks of cards and various other time-wasters. Several times, McGuire had to change course slightly because of rocks in his path, and Brentwood would always glance at his instruments when that happened, watching the squiggles that indicated McGuire's replotting.

Those occasional rocks were our reason for waiting before we tried any fancy tricks with McGuire. We wanted to get out into the relatively clear space between Mars and the Belt.

I beat Videnski out of a ten-spot at gin rummy, which, oddly enough, seemed to raise his respect for me. Vivian Deveraux talked with Brentwood for a while, then settled down to reading a book entitled "Some Applications of Discontinuity in Pattern Theory." Felder munched apples and read a magazine.

We ate another meal amid pleasant chatter, and I went into one of the two bedrooms for a nap. Miss Devereaux had one of the bedrooms all to herself. We men had drawn straws, and Felder and I had ended up with the bedroom while Videnski and Brentwood got the couches in the lounge.

I dozed off, but it was only a light doze. If there were an emergency, I would be the only one who could order McGuire around, and I wanted to be ready to wake up at a moment's notice.

I'd been snoozing for half an hour or so when I heard the noise that woke me up. I'd been lying with my face to the wall, and, for a moment, I couldn't figure out what had awakened me.

Then I heard it again. Just the faintest sound of a footstep near the bunk. I moved just in time. I sat up and turned to see Irwin Brentwood standing near me, holding a hypospray gun in one hand. I jumped him, knocking the gun aside, but his hand didn't lose his grip on it as we went down in a tangle.

He was a lot tougher than he looked. That boyish figure was all wiry muscle, and I was still dopey from sleep--not much, but just enough to impair my efficiency. I got a grip on his gun hand and began slowly twisting it while we rolled over and over on the floor. Then, somehow, he managed to get his other arm loose, and he drove an elbow into my throat.

There was an instant of blinding pain, and I heard the hypogun go _chuff!_ as my muscles tightened with the searing fire in my throat.

The next thing I knew, somebody was wiping my face with a cold, wet towel. I opened my eyes. It was Vivian Deveraux. I tried to say something, but nothing came out. There was only a terrible aching in my throat.

Videnski was standing near a chair where Brentwood was seated. Brentwood looked a little dazed; Videnski looked furious.

So did Felder, who was looking at the hypospray gun he was holding in his hand. "Who hired you, Brentwood?" he asked sharply. There was nothing Santa Clausy about him now.

"A man named Borodin," Brentwood said, in an uninterested voice.

I managed to force air past my bruised larynx. All that came out was a whisper. "What happened?"

"He tried to use pythantin on you," Felding said. "But he got the dose himself. That's why he's co-operative."

I nodded and stopped when a pain went through my throat. Pythantin would have made me receptive to any suggestions Brentwood wanted to make.

"What were you supposed to do after you dosed Daniel Oak?" Felder asked the electronicist.

"Tell him to order McGuire to change course, to go to Asteroid MJ3-1990."

I sat up. It was nice just to lie there and have Vivian bathe my brow, but I had more pressing things to do. I didn't feel in the pink of condition, and my throat hurt like hell, but I wasn't in too bad a shape.

"This Borodin," I whispered, "who was he working for?"

"I don't know," Brentwood said. "He didn't say."

* * * * *

We questioned him for another half hour, but it soon became apparent that he didn't know very much. He'd been offered a tremendous amount of money to do the job, and he didn't have the stamina to refuse it. It's guys like Brentwood who gave rise to the saying that every man has his price.

"What'll we do now?" Felding asked at last. "Go on to Phobos, or go back to Ceres?"

"Back to Ceres," I whispered. "Colonel Brock will know what to do with him."

I'd been uneasy ever since my calls to Brock and Marty that morning had disclosed that Venuccio had lost the men who were supposed to be tailing him. It's fairly easy to do on Ceres, if you know how.

"It won't mean much of a delay," I went on. "Ravenhurst can still have his big splash on Earth."

We herded Brentwood into the lounge and bound him to a chair. Then I said: "McGuire?"

"Yes, sir?"

"We're changing course. Return to Ceres."

And McGuire said: "I'm sorry, sir; I cannot obey any orders except those of Mr. Daniel Oak."

I just stood there for a long minute. "I am Daniel Oak," I whispered. But I was fairly certain that the declaration would do me no good whatever.

I was right. "No, sir. You are not Mr. Oak." McGuire is always polite to anyone who speaks to him, even if he doesn't regard that person as human.

"McGuire," I said patiently, "can you see Mr. Oak? Is he on board?"

"Yes, sir. I perceive him seated on the starboard couch in the main lounge."

"Fine. Then your directional audio pick-ups should be able to tell you where this voice is coming from."

"Yes, sir. It is coming from the approximate volume of space now occupied by Mr. Oak's head. But it is definitely not Mr. Oak's voice."

Felder put a hand over his eyes and moaned.

Videnski, who had carefully lighted a cigarette, blew out a cloud of smoke and looked at me. "I got to admit he's right. That is not Daniel Oak's voice."

"Which came first the chicken or the egg?" Vivian said abstractedly.

"What's that got to do with it?" Videnski asked with a scowl.

"A matter of definition," Vivian said. "Somewhere along the line of chicken evolution, it would have been possible to point at a specific bird and say, 'This is a chicken, but its parents were not chickens.' Now, do you define a chicken egg as an egg laid by a chicken or an egg that hatches out a chicken?"

"That's right," Felder said. "Do you define Oak's voice as any voice coming from Oak or as any voice that sounds like Oak's?"

"Well, you people ought to be able to answer that," I said. "Which is it?"

"Both," said Felder in a dull voice. "When you activated him by giving him his first order, he identified you and the voice as parts of the same unit. If you'd gone hoarse slowly, step-by-step, as it were, McGuire could have made logical adjustments to the change. But this sudden change is too big a jump for his logic to follow; he hasn't got the intermediate steps he needs to put it into syllogistic form."

There was another question I wanted to ask of McGuire. "McGuire, you are not supposed to allow Mr. Oak to come to any harm. Yet you did so. Why?" I was wondering how he'd managed to let Brentwood get away with his attack on me, without at least warning me.

"Mr. Oak was in no danger, sir. He has come to no harm."

"What about Brentwood's attack?"

"Mr. Brentwood did not attack Mr. Oak, sir; Mr. Oak attacked Mr. Brentwood."

The other three looked at me. "In a way, he's right," I said quickly. "When I saw Brentwood standing there with the hypospray, I jumped him."

"That's another one of our problems," said Felder. "How do you define 'harm'? If you broke your arm and a doctor tried to set it without an anesthetic, what would McGuire think when you yelled? Could you and I engage in a friendly boxing match? And since McGuire is supposed to _prevent_ harm, he has to be able to define it in advance. Oh, we've had a lot of fun with that one, I'll tell you." There was a thin edge of bitterness in his voice.

"You see what this means, don't you?" Videnski asked, eying me through a cloud of blue cigarette smoke.

"Sure," I whispered. "It means that McGuire will go right on accelerating until I tell him to stop, and I can't tell him that until my larynx heals--if it ever does."

"If it takes a week or two, which is likely," Vivian said, "we'll be saying good-by to the Solar System."

"By the time this heals," I said, "we'll be so far out we won't be able to come back. At that distance, the amount of sunlight McGuire will be able to pick up will be negligible, and the atomic fuel will be gone."

Nobody bothered to suggest that we call for help. McGuire had the communications system under control, too.

"One of us," I said, "had better think of something."

* * * * *

In the next several hours, every one of us thought of something, one way or another. Not that it did much good, because none of the ideas were worth much, directly. Indirectly, they told us plenty about what _not_ to try.

When Brentwood finally came out from under the effects of the pythantin, even he started thinking furiously about some way out of our predicament. We kept him locked in the bedroom for obvious reasons, but he had just as much stake in getting us back in control of McGuire as we did. After all, there's no law against industrial espionage, and we couldn't prove any charge of sabotage. Even a charge of attempted kidnapping or attempted larceny would be almost impossible to make stand up in court. With a good lawyer, he could get out from under an assault and battery charge. He'd lose his job with Viking, of course, but that was better than losing his life.

His failure to deliver McGuire to Baedecker Metals & Mining might lose him some of the money he'd been promised, but he was prepared for that, too. I knew he was a Baedecker agent, even if he didn't, because I knew who Borodin worked for.

Meanwhile, five brains were trying frantically to think of some way of convincing McGuire that he should obey my orders.

First, I tried reasoning with him.

"McGuire, do you understand what it is that generates the human voice?"

"Yes, sir. A flow of slightly compressed air from the lungs causes vibration of the vocal cords, and this sound is modified by the lips, tongue, and teeth."

"Very well. Now, you see Mr. Oak, do you not?"

"Yes, sir."

"And you see that this voice is being generated by Mr. Oak?"

"I cannot tell that, sir. I have no way of sensing the operation of Mr. Oak's vocal equipment."

"But you can tell that this voice is coming from Mr. Oak?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then it must be Mr. Oak's voice."

"That does not coincide with the facts, sir, therefore the logic is faulty. A comparison of the present voice with the voice of Mr. Oak shows too few points of similarity for identification."

"You won't get anywhere that way," Felder said wearily. "None of the data you give him verbally is used in his final computations, since it doesn't come from Daniel Oak, by his own reasoning."

"That is correct, sir," said McGuire.

"Idiot machine!" said Vivian Deveraux angrily.

I shut up and did some more thinking. Talking only made my throat hurt.

Nobody could argue impressively with McGuire except Daniel Oak, and as far as McGuire was concerned Mr. Oak was keeping an impressive silence.

"Maybe I could write out the orders," I said.

"Nope," said Videnski. "He can read, but information coming in that way isn't counted as orders, not even from you. We should have installed a teletyper, too, but this is a little late for thinking of that."

"McGuire," I whispered, "what sort of proof would be needed to show you that this is the voice of Daniel Oak?"

"I'm sorry, sir," McGuire said after a moment, "but that information is not in my banks."

"Maybe somebody could imitate Dan's voice," Vivian said hopefully. Videnski and Felder shook their heads in unison.

"No dice," Videnski said rumblingly. "It not only has to sound like Oak, it has to come from Oak."

"Ventriloquism?" Vivian said with a half-hearted grin.

"Wouldn't fool McGuire for an instant," Felder said. "That's an audio-visual trick of the human mind, not of a robot's."

The ship kept on moving. McGuire went serenely on, following his last orders.

We finally reached the point where we were too tired to think, and sleep became imperative. We were nearly two days out of Ceres.

When I announced my intention of taking a snooze, Felder looked at me through groggy, bloodshot eyes. "Hadn't we better sleep in two shifts? I mean, just in case there's another spy among us?"

I shook my head. "No spy would try anything now. There isn't anything to try. We're all safe, as far as that's concerned. I'll go in and sleep in my assigned room. Not even Brentwood could or would do anything to me now."

"For that matter," Felder said, "it's senseless to keep him locked up now. He's harmless until we reestablish control over McGuire. When that happens, we can lock him up again."

"My sentiments exactly," I said in my new hoarse, breathy, susurrant voice.

Brentwood didn't say much when I gave him the news; he just thanked me. I got into bed and worried for a while, but lack of sleep soon cut off my ability to worry. I only woke up once in the next nine hours, when McGuire changed course a trifle to avoid some unseen meteor. Not even the ache in my throat kept me from sleep.

* * * * *

It was Videnski's voice that woke me up. The door of my room was slid open a little, and I could hear him in the lounge. I got to my feet fast, shoved open the door, and went out.

Videnski had grabbed Brentwood by the front of his union suit, and had lifted him off his feet and slammed his back up against the wall. His free hand was swinging back and forth in open-handed slaps that looked as though any one of them should have torn the smaller man's head off. Felder was ineffectually trying to pull Videnski away from Brentwood, but the big man didn't even seem to notice it. Vivian Devereaux was nowhere in sight.

Videnski's harsh baritone was filled with invective that should have made the air as glowingly blue as the inside of an old-fashioned rectifier tube.

I ran across the room, grabbed Videnski by the shoulder and said: "Stop that!"

He stopped. When I throw out an emotional field like that, only a very exceptional man can disobey.

"Let him go," I said.

Videnski released him, and Brentwood slid down the wall, just this side of unconsciousness.

"What's the idea?" I asked.

"I ... I'm sorry," Videnski rumbled. "Lost my temper, I guess. That ... I mean, _he_--" He stopped, fumbling for words.

"I know. I heard what you were saying. Sure it's his fault my voice sounds the way it does. Sure he's a spy and probably a saboteur. And if we die, he'll be morally guilty of manslaughter. _And_ suicide--remember _that_.

"But slapping him around like that isn't going to do any of us any good, and we need all the thinking we can get if we intend to pull ourselves out of this mess.

"So leave him alone, Videnski. Hear?"

My whispery voice didn't sound very authoritative, but a crisp, firm, commanding baritone does not authority make, any more than iron bars a cage.

"Yeah," he said apologetically. "I'm sorry, Oak. I sort of lost my head. It won't happen again."

I knelt down and took a look at Brentwood. He wasn't actually damaged much, but his face was going to be swollen and bruised. Somehow, I couldn't feel very sorry for him.

I got him to his feet. "Come on, Brentwood; let's go lie down for a while. You'll feel better."

"Yeah," he mumbled through thickening lips. "Thanks."

I got him into his bunk, closed the door on him, and came back to the lounge.

"Anybody dream up any solutions in his sleep?" I asked.

It was apparent that they hadn't. "Maybe Vivian has," Felder said. "She's still asleep."

"Let's not bank on it," I said.

"Oh, I did have one idea," Felder said dispiritedly. "Ted, here, and I were working on it when Brentwood came out. When it didn't pan out, well, that's when the fight started."

"What was your idea?"

"I asked McGuire if he realized what would happen to Mr. Oak if he just kept going. He said he did; that if he ran out of fuel, you'd be marooned and would die. So he's figured out a nice, complicated orbit that will allow him to obey your last order until the very last possible moment. He'll land us on Titan at the very last moment. The trouble is, we forgot to tell him how much food we have aboard, and he's made the assumption that there's plenty for everybody, for an indefinite length of time. But we're going to be plenty hungry by the time we get there. Can you last twelve days without food?"

"I don't want to try it. And of course it wouldn't do any good for you to tell him that we haven't enough food. How about letting him take a look at the food supply?"

"He doesn't know how much is necessary, and he would only have our word for it that there was no more aboard. One thing I can tell you: if we ever get back to rebuild McGuire, one of the things he's going to have is a lot more sensory devices, so that he can judge more facts on his own hook."

"Agreed," said another voice; "right now, we're dealing with a half-blind idiot." Vivian Devereaux had stepped out of her room and had been listening to Felder explain what he'd tried. Sleep hadn't done her as much good as it might have under other circumstances; the strain was showing on her face.

* * * * *

Breakfast was a half-hearted affair. Brentwood stayed in his room, though he accepted the cup of coffee I brought him. The rest of us didn't eat much more than that. I was trying to think our way out of the fix, and so were the others.

Something, some sort of an idea, had been sitting quietly at the bottom of my mind, just barely discernible through the semipermeable barrier that separates the conscious from the subconscious, but I couldn't fish it out.

When I managed to grasp part of it, I said: "Look. The trouble is that McGuire is incapable of connecting my present voice with the voice he's used to. Then it seems to me that our job is to supply him with the missing steps."

"How?" asked Felder.

"One of you--or all of you, if it took that to convince him--could fake a hoarse, whispery voice. You could slowly make your voice worse and worse, so that he could see the steps involved."

Vivian brightened, but Felder and Videnski shook their heads together like the Bobbsey Twins sorrowing over a lost pet.

"What we may do voluntarily," said Felder, "over a relatively long period of time, has nothing to do with what happened to you suddenly and involuntarily. You see, in the long run, he really doesn't _care_ about our voices. He doesn't pay any attention to us, really, except as incidental cargo. He has no concept of intelligence, actually; he can't accept any statements of ours unless they're verifiable by McGuire himself."

"Well, we could at least try it," said Vivian.

We did, and Felder was right. McGuire seemed almost condescending in his sorrow for our inability to see that there was no _logical_ connection between their whispers and the voice of his Lord and Master, Daniel Oak.

Vivian, who had been standing near Videnski while we were talking to McGuire, suddenly blew up when McGuire assured us that our whispering was a waste of time. She grasped her book--"Some Applications of Discontinuity in Pattern Theory"--and threw it at the wall speaker from which McGuire's voice came. It bounced harmless off the protective grill and fell to the floor. Vivian Devereaux burst into tears.

I put my arm around her, gave Videnski and Felder the high sign to keep thinking, and led her to her room. As soon as I got her settled, I said: "Relax. No matter what happens, we'll get out of it alive. If we stretch our rations, we'll be able to make it to Titan without being more than underweight and hungry."

"It's not that," she said tearfully, "it's the delay. All that time off the schedule."

"But I thought that was what you wanted," I said gently.

"Not any more. I--" She stopped suddenly and looked up at me, her eyes widening. "What are you talking about?" Her voice was as whispery as mine.

"It was the insistence on meeting me at the _Seven Sisters_ that gave you away," I said. "Dyeing your hair and combing it straight back, and putting on that plexiskin mask and the contact lenses--none of that helped conceal that lush figure of yours. It can't be done under a union suit. So you had to put on jacket and shorts, and that meant you had to meet me in some plush restaurant like the _Seven Sisters_ or you'd look out of place.

"I knew all that talk about being afraid of being overheard was just that--talk. A directional beam microphone could have picked up every word at our table.

"What made you change your mind about delaying the work on McGuire?"

"Buh-Buh-Brentwood. I duh-didn't know they'd go that far in trying to stop the work. Nuh-nuh-not kih-kidnapping and piracy." She took a deep breath and forced herself to stop sobbing. "I guess they didn't trust me, anyway. Otherwise they wouldn't have put Brentwood on the same job without telling me."

* * * * *

She didn't know that Brentwood was working for Baedecker rather than for the Thurston group. How could she? The difference lay in their tactics. Thurston wanted to take over Viking as a going concern--a little under the weather, perhaps, but still functioning. That meant that they wanted the work on McGuire delayed and complicated, but they didn't want to put him out of the picture completely, since they expected to take over the work as soon as they got control of Viking.

Baedecker, on the other hand, didn't give a care about Viking Spacecraft. They wanted to take over Ceres for their own firm. If that meant that getting rid of McGuire completely would give them what they wanted, then they'd get rid of McGuire.

"Why'd you take the job?" I asked.

"Money. I'm sick of the Belt. I want to go back home, to Earth." Her eyes were quite dry by now, and there was a choked sort of fear in them. "I hate it out here. There's death all around you all the time; sometimes it's just outside your skin, on the other side of the fabric of your vac suit. I wanted to get back home. But all the money is out here in the Belt. Back there, it's all eaten up in taxes and welfare, and nobody has a chance to get a job that really pays. So when they offered me the money--" She stopped and closed her eyes. "I'm scared, that's all. I've been scared ever since I came out here. And now--" She shuddered. "And now we're at the mercy of this idiot machine. I get so scared that I get mad, every time I hear his voice."

If somebody had set a thermonuclear bomb off inside my skull, there couldn't have been more sudden illumination.

I patted her on the shoulder. "You may get your money and more besides," I said.

She shook her head. "I wouldn't take their money now."

I stood up. "I think I can talk you into changing your mind, but right now, I think I have a way of getting McGuire to listen to me, thanks to you."

She looked up at me. "What did I do?"

"You threw a book," I said. "That's enough to win you a pardon as far as I'm concerned. You sit tight and don't let on that I know anything. Nobody else knows anything at all. Not even Brentwood. So keep quiet."

She dried her face quickly and stood up, too. "All right. Whatever you say."

As we went back out into the lounge, I felt a little pleased with myself. If things worked out right--and they would--we now had a double agent inside Thurston's organization. It wouldn't take too long to clear things up, and Miss Devereaux could go back to Earth with a nice piece of change in her pocket.

"What are you looking so happy about?" Videnski asked suspiciously when he saw us.

"I'll show you," I said. "Where's the tool kit?"

* * * * *

Ten minutes later, I had the wall speaker in the lounge out of its housing, but still connected. McGuire hadn't interfered with the work, as he might have if someone else had tried to do it, because he could see perfectly well that it was Daniel Oak who was doing the job, even though Oak hadn't been speaking to him much lately.

Then I said: "McGuire, can you hear me?"

"Yes, sir; I can hear you," came his voice from the speaker.

"Can you hear your own voice?"

"Yes, sir."

"Very well. Now, are you watching what Mr. Oak is doing?"

"Yes, sir."

I picked up a small ball-peen hammer and hit the speaker--not too gently--at just the right place.

"Did you see that, McGuire?" I asked.

"Yes, sir. I saw it." His voice sounded hoarse, muffled, and whispery coming through the damaged speaker.

"Do you see what sudden damage can do to speaking apparatus?"

"I must test," McGuire said, an almost hesitant note in his new voice. He spent fifteen seconds or so saying a series of nonsense syllables that are used as a test for a robot's speaking apparatus. They contain every sound used in English.

When that was over, he said: "The damage inflicted has radically changed the basic patterns of the voice. If an equivalent amount of damage was done to Mr. Oak's vocal apparatus, then the voice which has been speaking must belong to Mr. Oak."

"You saw the damage being done in each case," I said quickly. "You also see that it is the source of the voice that becomes important when the pattern has changed."

"Yes, Mr. Oak. I see that."

I breathed a deep, heartfelt sigh of relief.

Felder looked at me in a sort of numb awe. "How did you figure that out?"

"It came to me in a flash, but the clues were all over the place. McGuire didn't stay on the course I gave him; he couldn't, if he wanted to avoid meteors. And then, too you said that he ought to have more sensory apparatus, so that he could judge facts. The facts that come into his brain from his own sensory apparatus _have_ to be utilized in his memory banks. He didn't have to know all the steps in reasoning that would lead from one voice pattern to another if it could be demonstrated as a _fact_--as an axiom, if you like.

"If _you_ tell him that he must change course, he isn't obliged to pay any attention; but if he spots a meteor, he has to accept that as a fact, and he changes course to allow for it. In a sense, then, the meteor is capable of giving McGuire orders, and you aren't."

Felder didn't look any too happy; no one likes to have a point in his own field explained to him by a layman. But he couldn't argue with me.

"There's a great deal more to be done before McGuire can be put into practical service," he said heavily. "We may as well head back to Ceres."

"I don't think so," I said. "McGuire's in good enough shape to let us make the big splash on Earth that Ravenhurst wants to make. He'll need it if Viking is to have enough financial leeway to go on with this project."

"What about ... what about Brentwood?" Vivian Devereaux asked.

"We can get rid of him at Phobos just as easily as we can at Ceres. If there's any explaining of any kind to do, we can lay the blame on him. He won't be in any position to deny it."

She nodded, understanding exactly what I meant.

There were still plenty of bugs to be worked out of McGuire, but now I could see our way clear to getting both Thurston and Baedecker off our backs for a while.

At that point, Brentwood stuck his head in the door. "What's going on?" he asked in his soft voice.

"We're going on to Phobos, Brentwood," I said. "Go on back to your room and stay there." He withdrew his head. I looked at Videnski. "Go lock him in, Ted. He gives me a pain in the neck."

I got the first laugh I'd heard in forty-eight hours.

End of Project Gutenberg's His Master's Voice, by Gordon Randall Garrett