like an accident; no one would suspect that it was deliberate.”
“A good point. Since it makes no difference now, could you tell us what secret you were after? I'm sure we'd all like to know.”
Hansteen shot a quick glance at Irving Schuster. The lawyer had struck him as a rather solemn, humorless little man; irony seemed somewhat out of character.
“I'd be glad to tell you,” answered Radley. “It really starts back in nineteen fifty-three, when an American astronomer named O'Neill observed something very remarkable here on the Moon. He discovered a small bridge on the eastern border of the Mare Crisium. Other astronomers, of course, laughed at him—but less prejudiced ones confirmed the existence of the bridge. Within a few years, however, it had vanished. Obviously, our interest had alarmed the saucer people, and they had dismantled it.”
That “obvious,” Hansteen told himself, was a perfect example of saucerite logic—the daring non sequitur that left the normal mind helplessly floundering several jumps behind. He had never heard of O'Neill's Bridge, but there had been scores of examples of mistaken observations in the astronomical records. The Martian canals were the classic case; honest observers had reported them for years, but they simply did not exist—at least not as the fine spider web that Lowell and others had drawn. Did Radley think that someone had filled in the canals between the time of Lowell and the securing of the hrst clear photographs of Mars? He was quite capable of it, Hansteen was sure.
Presumably O'Neill's Bridge had been a trick of the lighting, or of the Moon's perpetually shifting shadows— but such a simple explanation was not, of course, good enough for kadley. And, in any event, what was the man doing here, a couple of thousand kilometers from the Mare Crisium?
Someone else had thought of that, and had put the same question. As usual, Radley had a convincing answer at the tip of his tongue.
“I'd hoped,” he said, “to divert their suspicions by behaving like an ordinary tourist. Because the evidence I was looking for lay on the western hemisphere, I went east. I planned to get to the Mare Crisium by going across Farside; there were several places there that I wanted to look at, too. But they were too clever for me. I should have guessed that I'd be spotted by one of their agents—they can take human form, you know. Probably they've been following me ever since I landed on the Moon.”
“I'd like to know,” said Mrs. Schuster, who seemed to be taking Radley with ever-increasing seriousness, “what they're going to do to us now.”
“I wish I could tell you, ma'am,” answered Radley. “We know that they have eaves deep down inside the Moon, and almost certainly that's where we're being taken. As soon as they saw that the rescuers were getting close, they stepped in again. I'm afraid we're too deep for anyone to reach us now.”
That's quite enough of this nonsense, said Pat to himself. We've had our comic relief, and now this madman is starting to depress people. But how can we shut him up?
Insanity was rare on the Moon, as in all frontier societies. Pat did not know how to deal with it, especially with this confident, curiously persuasive variety. There were moments when he almost wondered if there might be something in Radley's delusion. In other circumstances, his natural, healthy skepticism would have protected him, but now, after these days of strain and suspense, his critical faculties were dimmed. He wished there was some neat way of breaking the spell that this glib-tongued maniac was undoubtedly casting.
Half ashamed of the thought, he remembered the quick coup de grace that had put Hans Baldur so neatly to sleep. Without intending to do se-at least, to his conscious knowledge—he caught Harding's eye. To his alarm, there was an immediate response; Harding nodded slightly and rose slowly to his feet. No! said Pat—but only to himself. I don't mean that; leave the poor lunatic alone; what sort of man are you, anyway?
Then he relaxed, very slightly. Harding was not attempting to move from his seat, four places from Radley. He was merely standing there, looking at the New Zealander with an unfathomable expression. It might even have been pity, but in this dim lighting Pat could not be sure.
“I think it's time to make my contribution,” Harding said. “At least one of the things our friend was telling you is perfectly true. He has been followed—but not by saucemites. By me.
“For an amateur, Wilfred George Radley, I'd like to congratulate you. It's been a fine chase—from Christchurch to Astrograd to Clavius to Tycho to Ptolemy to Plato to Port Roris—and to here, which I guess is the end of the trail, in more ways than one.”
Radley did not seem in the least perturbed. He merely inclined his head in an almost regal gesture of acknowledgment, as if he recognized Harding's existence, but did not wish to pursue his acquaintance.
“As you may have guessed,” continued Harding, “I'm a detective. Most of the time I specialize in fraud. Quite interesting work, though I seldom have a chance of talking about it. I'm quite grateful for this opportunity.
“I've no interest—well, no professional interest—in Mister Radley's peculiar beliefs. Whether they're true or not doesn't affect the fact that he's a very smart accountant, earning a good salary back in N. Z. Though not one good enough to pay for a month on the Moon.
“But that was no problem—because, you see, Mister Radley was senior accountant at the Christchurch branch of Universal Travel Cards, Incorporated. The system is supposed to be foolproof and double checked, but somehow he managed to issue himself a card—Q Category—good for unlimited travel anywhere in the solar system, for hotel and restaurant billings, for cashing checks up to five hundred stoilars on demand. There aren't many Q cards around, and they're handled as if they're made of plutonium.
“Of course, people have tried to get away with this sort of thing before; clients are always losing their cards, and enterprising characters have a fine time with them for a few days before they're caught. But only a few days. The UTC central billing system is very efficient—it has to be. There are several safeguards against unauthorized use, and until now, the longest run anyone's had was a week.”
“Nine days,” Radley unexpectedly interjected.
“Sorry—you should know. Nine days, then. But Radley had been on the move for almost three weeks before we spotted him. He'd taken his annual leave, and told the office he'd be vacationing quietly on the North Island . Instead, he went to Astrograd and then on to the Moon, making history in the process. For he's the first man—and we hope the last one—to leave Earth entirely on credit.
“We still want to know exactly how he did it. How did he bypass the automatic checking circuits? Did lie have an accomplice in the computer programing section? And similar questions of absorbing interest to UTC, Inc. I hope, Radley, you'll let down your hair with me, just to satisfy my curiosity. I think it's the least you can do in the circumstances.
“Still, we know why you did it—why you threw up a good job to go on a spree that was bound to land you in jail. We guessed the reason, of course, as soon as we found you were on the Moon. UTC knew all about your hobby, but it didn't affect your efficiency. They took a gamble, and it's been an expensive one.”
“I'm very sorry,” Radley replied, not without dignity. “The firm's always treated me well, and it did seem a shame. But it was in a good cause, and if I could have found my evidence-”
But at that point everyone, except Detective Inspector Harding, lost interest in Radley and his saucers. The sound that they had all been anxiously waiting for had come at last.
Lawrence 's probe was scratching against the roof.
CHAPTER 28
I seem to have been here for half a lifetime, thought Maurice Spenser, yet the sun is still low in the west, where it rises on this weird world, and it's still three days to noon. How much longer am I going to be stuck on this mountaintop, listening to Captain Anson's tall stories of the spaceways, and watching that distant raft, with its twin igloos?
It was a question that no one could answer. When the caisson had started to descend, it had looked as if another twentyfour hours would see the job finished. But now they were back where they had started—and, to make matters worse, all the visual excitement of the story was over. Everything that would happen from now on would be hidden deep in the Sea, or would take place behind the walls of an igloo. Lawrence still stubbornly refused
