“But why me,” I asked. “Surely there are other men.”
She shook her head. “On Earth? How many qualified spacemen do you think there are on Earth?”
“I suppose not many.”
“There are none,” ‘she said. “Or almost none. None I’d trust that ship to.”
I sat down again. “Let’s get this straight,” I said. “How do you know you can trust the ship to me? What do you know about me? How did you know I had arrived on Earth?”
She looked straight at me, squinting just a little, perhaps the way she’d squint down a rifle barrel at a charging beast.
“I can trust you,” she said, “because there’s nowhere you can go. You’re fair game out in space. Your only safety would lie in sticking with the ship.”
“Fair enough,” I admitted. “And how about going out in space? The Patrol...”
“Captain, believe me, there’s nothing that can overtake that ship, And if someone should set out to ‘do it, we can wear them down. We have a long, hard way to go. It would not be worth their while. And, furthermore, I think it can be arranged so that no one ever knows you’ve gone into space.”
“That’s all very interesting,” I said. “Could you bring yourself to tell me where we might be going?”
She said, “We don’t know where we’re going.”
And that was damn foolishness, of course. You don’t set out on a flight until you know where you are going. If she didn’t want to tell, why couldn’t she just say so?
“Mr. Smith,” said Sara, “knows where we are going.”
I switched my head to look at him, that great lump huddled in his chair, the sightless, milk-white eyes in his flabby face.
“I have a voice in my head,” he said. “I have contact with someone. I have a friend out there.”
Oh, wonderful! I thought. It all comes down to this. He has a voice in his head.
“Let me guess,” I said to Sara Foster. “This religious gentleman brought Mr. Smith to you.”
She suddenly was angry. Her face turned white and her blue eyes seemed to narrow to gleaming jets of ice.
“You are right,” she said, biting off the words, “but that’s not all of it. You know, of course, that Knight was accompanied by a robot.”
I nodded. “A robot by the name of Roscoe.”
“And that Roscoe was a telepathic robot?”
“There’s no such thing,” I said.
“But there is. Or was. I’ve done my homework, captain. I have the specifications for this particular robot. And I had them long before Mr. Smith showed up. Also letters that Knight had written to certain friends of his. I have, perhaps, the only authentic documentation concerning Knight and what be was looking for. All of it acquired before these two gentlemen showed up and obtained from sources of which they could have had no knowledge.”
“But they could have heard...”
“I didn’t tell a soul,” she said. “It was-what would you call it? Perhaps no more than a hobby. Maybe an obsession. Bits and pieces picked up here and there, with never any hope of fitting them together. It was such a fascinating legend...”
“And that is all it is,” I said. “A legend. Built up through the years by accomplished, but nonmalicious, liars. One tiny fact is taken and twisted and interwoven with other tiny facts until all these interwoven tiny facts, forced into fictitious relationships with one another, become so complicated that there is not a shred of hope of knowing which is solid fact and which is inspired fiction.”
“But letters? And specifications for a special kind of robot?”
“That would be something else again. If they were authentic.”
“There is no question about their authenticity. I’ve made sure of that.”
“And what do these letters say?”
“That he was looking for something.”
“I’ve told you they all were looking for something. Every one of them. Some of them believed the things they were looking for are there. Some of them simply hypnotized themselves into believing it. That’s the way it was in the old days, that’s the way it is right now. These kind of people need some excuse for their eternal wandering. They need to graft some purpose to a purposeless existence. They’re in love with space and all those new unknown worlds which lie out beyond the next horizon. There is no reason in the world why they should be batting around out there and they know this, so they concoct their reasons and...”
“Captain, you don’t believe a word of it?”
“Not a word,” I said.
It was all right with me if she let these two adventurers lead her on a wild-goose chase, but I was not about to be a party to it. Although, remembering that ship standing out there on the landing field, I admit that I was tempted. But it was impossible, I knew. Earth was sanctuary and needed sanctuary.
“You do not like me,” Friar Tuck paid to me. “And I don’t like you, either. But let me tell you, honestly, that I brought my blind companion to Miss Foster with no thought of monetary gain. I am past all need of monetary gain. All I seek is truth.”
I didn’t answer him. Of what use would be an answer? I’d ‘known his breed before.
