“Carter was quite a good friend of mine,” volunteered Hollyday.

  “Uh-huh,” grunted Gregg. “And he quit too, about the same time you fellows did, and went Earthside and hasn’t been seen since. HQ told me you and he were thick. What’d you talk about?”

  “The usual.” Hollyday shrugged. “Wine, women, and song. I haven’t heard from him since I left Earth.”

  “Who says Carter stole the box?” demanded Steinmann. “He just got tired of living in space and quit his job. He couldn’t have stolen the jewels—he was searched, remember?”

  “Could he have hidden it somewhere for a friend to get at this end?” inquired Syaloch.

  “Hidden it? Where? Those ships don’t have secret compartments.” Steinmann spoke wearily. “And he was only aboard the Jane a few minutes, just long enough to put the box where he was supposed to.” His eyes smoldered at Gregg. “Let’s face it: the only people anywhere along the line who ever had a chance to lift it were our own dear cops.”

  The Inspector reddened and half rose. “Look here, you—”

  “We’ve got your word that you’re innocent,” growled Steinmann. “Why should it be any better than mine?”

  Syaloch waved both men back. “If you please. Brawls are unphilosophic.” His beak opened and clattered, the Martian equivalent of a smile. “Has either of you, perhaps, a theory? I am open to all ideas.”

  There was a stillness. Then Hollyday mumbled: “Yes. I have one.”

  Syaloch hooded his eyes and puffed quietly, waiting.

  Hollyday’s grin was shaky. “Only if I’m right, you’ll never see those jewels again.”

  Gregg sputtered.

  “I’ve been around the Solar System a lot,” said Hollyday. “It gets lonesome out in space. You never know how big and lonesome it is till you’ve been there, all by yourself. And I’ve done just that—I’m an amateur uranium prospector, not a lucky one so far. I can’t believe we know everything about the universe, or that there’s only vacuum between the planets.”

  “Are you talking about the cobblies?” snorted Gregg.

  “Go ahead and call it superstition. But if you’re in space long enough…well, somehow, you know. There are beings out there—gas beings, radiation beings, whatever you want to imagine, there’s something living in space.”

  “And what use would a box of jewels be to a cobbly?”

  Hollyday spread his hands. “How can I tell? Maybe we bother them, scooting through their own dark kingdom with our little rockets. Stealing the crown jewels would be a good way to disrupt the Mars trade, wouldn’t it?”

  Only Syaloch’s pipe broke the inward-pressing silence. But its burbling seemed quite irreverent.

  “Well—” Gregg fumbled helplessly with a meteoric paperweight. “Well, Mr. Syaloch, do you want to ask any more questions?”

  “Only one.” The third lids rolled back, and coldness looked out at Steinmann. “If you please, my good man, what is your hobby?”

  “Huh? Chess. I play chess. What’s it to you?” Steinmann lowered his head and glared sullenly.

  “Nothing else?”

  “What else is there?”

  Syaloch glanced at the Inspector, who nodded confirmation, and then replied gently: “I see. Thank you. Perhaps we can have a game sometime. I have some small skill of my own. That is all for now, gentlemen.”

  They left, moving like things of dream through the low gravity.

  “Well?” Gregg’s eyes pleaded with Syaloch. “What next?”

  “Very little. I think…yesss, while I am here I should like to watch the technicians at work. In my profession, one needs a broad knowledge of all occupations.”

  Gregg sighed.

  * * *

  Ramanowitz showed the guest around. The Kim Brackney was in and being unloaded. They threaded through a hive of spacesuited men.

  “The cops are going to have to raise that embargo soon,” said Ramanowitz. “Either that or admit why they’ve clamped it on. Our warehouses are busting.”

  “It would be politic to do so,” nodded Syaloch. “Ah, tell me…is this equipment standard for all stations?”

  “Oh, you mean what the boys are wearing and carrying around? Sure. Same issue everywhere.”

  “May I inspect it more closely?”

  “Hm?” Lord, deliver me from visiting firemen! thought Ramanowitz. He waved a mechanic over to him. “Mr. Syaloch would like you to explain your outfit,” he said with ponderous sarcasm.

  “Sure. Regular spacesuit here, reinforced at the seams.” The gauntleted hands moved about, pointing. “Heating coils powered from this capacitance battery. Ten-hour air supply in the tanks. These buckles, you snap your tools into them, so they won’t drift around in free fall. This little can at my belt holds paint that I spray out through this nozzle.”

  “Why must spaceships be painted?” asked Syaloch. “There is nothing to corrode the metal.”

  “Well, sir, we just call it paint. It’s really gunk, to seal any leaks in the hull till we can install a new plate, or to mark any other kind of damage. Meteor punctures and so on.” The mechanic pressed a trigger and a thin, almost invisible stream jetted out, solidifying as it hit the ground.

  “But it cannot readily be seen, can it?” objected the Martian. “I, at least, find it difficult to see clearly in airlessness.”

  “That’s right, Light doesn’t diffuse, so…well, anyhow, the stuff is radioactive—not enough to be dangerous, just enough so that the repair crew can spot the place with a Geiger counter.”

  “I understand. What is the half-life?”

  “Oh, I’m not sure. Six months, maybe? It’s supposed to remain detectable for a year.”

  “Thank you.” Syaloch stalked off. Ramanowitz had to jump to keep up with those long legs.

  “Do you think Carter may have hid the box in his paint can?” suggested the human.

  “No, hardly. The can is too small, and I assume he was searched thoroughly.” Syaloch stopped and bowed. “You have been very kind and patient. Mr. Ramanowitz. I am finished now, and can find the Inspector myself.”

  “What for?”

  “To tell him he can lift the embargo, of course.” Syaloch made a harsh sibilance. “And then I must get the next boat to Mars. If I hurry, I can attend the concert in Sabaeus tonight.” His voice grew dreamy. “They will be premiering Hanyech’s Variations on a Theme by Mendelssohn, transcribed to the Royal Chlannach scale. It should be most unusual.”

  * * *

  It was three days afterward that the letter came. Syaloch excused himself and kept an illustrious client squatting while he read it. Then he nodded to the other Martian. “You will be interested to know, sir, that the Estimable Diadems have arrived at Phobos and are being returned at this moment.”

  The client, a Cabinet Minister from the House of Actives, blinked. “Pardon, Freehatched Syaloch, but what have you to do with that?”

  “Oh…I am a friend of the Featherless police chief. He thought I might like to know.”

  “Hraa. Were you not on Phobos recently?”

  “A minor case.” The detective folded the letter carefully, sprinkled it with salt, and ate it. Martians are fond of paper, especially official Earth stationery with high rag content. “Now, sir, you were saying—?”

  The parliamentarian responded absently. He would not dream of violating privacy—no, never—but if he had X-ray vision he would have read:

  Dear Syaloch,

  You were absolutely right. Your locked room problem is solved. We’ve got the jewels back, everything is in fine shape, and the same boat which brings you this letter will deliver them to the vaults. It’s too bad the public can never know the facts—two planets ought to be grateful to you—but I’ll supply that much thanks all by myself, and insist that any bill you care to send be paid in full. Even if the Assembly had to make a special appropriation, which I’m afraid it will.

  “I admit your idea of lifting the embargo at once looked pretty wild to me, but it worked. I had our boys out, of course, scouring Phobos with Geigers, but Hollyday found the box before we did. Which saved us a lot of trouble, to be sure. I arrested him as he came back into the settlement, and he had the box among his ore samples. He has confessed, and you were right all along the line.

  “What was that thing you quoted at me, the saying of that Earthman you admire so much? ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be true.’ Something like that. It certainly applies to this case.

  “As you decided, the box must have been taken to the ship at Earth Station and left there—no other possibility existed. Carter figured it out in half a minute when he was ordered to take the thing out and put it aboard the Jane. He went inside, all right, but still had the box when he emerged. In that uncertain light nobody saw him put it ‘down’ between four girders right next to the hatch. Or as you remarked, if the jewels are not in the ship, and yet not away from the ship, they must be on the ship. Gravitation would hold them in place. When the Jane blasted off, acceleration pressure slid the box back, but of course the waffle-iron pattern kept it from being lost; it fetched up against the after rib and stayed there. All the way to Mars! But the ship’s gravity held it securely enough even in free fall, since both were on the same orbit.

  “Hollyday says that Carter told him all about it. Carter couldn’t go to Mars himself without being suspected and watched every minute once the jewels were discovered missing. He needed a confederate. Hollyday went to Phobos and took up prospecting as a cover for the search he’d later be making for the jewels.

  “As you showed me, when the ship was within a thousand miles of this dock, Phobos gravity would be stronger than her own. Every spacejack knows that the robot ships don’t start decelerating till they’re quite close; that they are then almost straight above the surface; and that the side with the radio mast and manhatch—the side on which Carter had placed the box—is rotated around to face the station. The centrifugal force of rotation threw the box away from the ship, and was in a direction toward Phobos rather than away from it. Carter knew that this rotation is slow and easy, so the force wasn’t enough to accelerate the box to escape velocity and lose it in space. It would have to fall down toward the satellite. Phobos Station being on the side opposite Mars, there was no danger that the loot would keep going till it hit the planet.

  “So the crown jewels tumbled onto Phobos, just as you deduced. Of course Carter had given the box a quick radioactive spray as he laid it in place, and Hollyday used that to track it down among all those rocks and crevices. In point of fact, its path curved clear around this moon, so it landed about five miles from the station.

  “Steinmann has been after me to know why you quizzed him about his hobby. You forgot to tell me that, but I figured it out for myself and told him. He or Hollyday had to be involved, since nobody else knew about the cargo, and the guilty person had to have some excuse to go out and look for the box. Chess playing doesn’t furnish that kind of alibi. Am I right? At least, my deduction proves I’ve been studying the same canon you go by. Incidentally, Steinmann asks if you’d care to take him on the next time he has planet leave.

  “Hollyday knows where Carter is hiding, and we’ve radioed the information back to Earth. Trouble is, we can’t prosecute either of them without admitting the facts. Oh, well, there are such things as blacklists.

  “Will have to close this now to make the boat. I’ll be seeing you soon—not professionally, I hope!”

  Admiring regards,

  Inspector Gregg

  But as it happened, the Cabinet minister did not possess X-ray eyes. He dismissed unprofitable speculation and outlined his problem. Somebody, somewhere in Sabaeus, was farniking the krats, and there was an alarming zaksnautry among the hyukus. It sounded to Syaloch like an interesting case.

  Then Death Will Come

  To tell you of the ending of the day.

  And you will see her tallness with surprise,

  And looking into gentled, shadowed eyes,

  Protest: it’s not that late, you have to stay

  Awake a minute more, just one, to play

  With yonder ball. But nonetheless you rise

  So they won’t hear her say, :”A baby cries

  But you are big. Put all your toys away.”

  She lets you a shabby bear in bed,

  Though fairly doubting that you two can go

  Through dream-shared living rooms or wingless flight.

  She tucks the blankets close beneath your head

  And smooths your hair, and kisses you, and so

  Goes out, turns off the light. “Good night. Sleep tight.”

  Prophecy

  Ambassadors are rarely, if ever, met by the head of the nation to which they come. They go to him. But this case was an exception to every established precedent, and the President of the United States, Philip Brackney, felt no loss in dignity as he came to the spaceship.

  It was, he thought, really a lovely machine, with all the beauty of perfect functionalism—and something more than that, a touch of the haunting indefinable splendor of a clipper ship or a Greek temple. The five-hundred-foot pylon towered over the green Iowan plain, a blinding metallic dazzle in the sunlight, a spearhead poised at infinity. Its gleaming height dwarfed the buildings on the farm on which it had descended.

  As the presidential car and its attendants swept up the dirt road—it was in extremely poor condition after the thousands of sightseers who had used it in the past month—the chief of Brackney’s secret service guards said nervously: “For the last time, sir, are you sure this is wise?”

  “Of course,” he answered, a little irritable with excitement. “Any other procedure would be madness!”

  “But…if they have bad intentions—”

  “Listen, Mr. Dickson, if they meant to do anything hostile, they’d do it. That one ship has more power than all this planet’s combined military forces.” The awe of it swept over Brackney, he breathed almost religiously: “A spaceship from the stars—and men aboard—”

  The Secretary of Defense spoke slowly: “You know, every night for the past month I’ve gone down on my knees—and am not ashamed to admit it—to thank God that ship landed here. Not in some potential enemy’s camp, but here—with us.”

  “It wouldn’t have made any difference,” said the President. “The visitors have been all over Earth in their lifeboats, seeing for themselves, taking almost all the printed matter they could get back. They probably have a better overall picture of Earth than we do.”

  He said, as the car swung up the driveway: “This is by rights not a matter for us at all. The United Nations alone should handle it, and they must take over soon. But—it was never set up to deal with ambassadors. I have to make the first official approach, for lack of anyone else.”

  The farmer stood nervously waiting. Since that rainy night a month gone when the ship landed in his pasture, he had lived in such a glare of publicity as to become a bit blasé about it. But after all—the President—

  “I think they’re waiting, sir,” he mumbled.

  “Very well. Come along, gentlemen.” Brackney led the way.

  A ramp had been lowered from the entrance lock, a hundred feet above ground. The party stepped on it and it rose smoothly up, with an uncanny, almost living flexibility.

  For a moment, Brackney’s throat was dry. A spaceship from the stars—Don’t be a fool! he reproached himself sharply. The Taithans have emphasized their friendliness a hundred times. They aren’t conquistadores, they are representatives of a culture a thousand years ahead of ours—a culture that must have outgrown war, or the race would destroy itself with the weapons it has.

  The crew of the ship stood waiting at the lock. There were not many of them, a score or so, and nearly all of these were scientists. The ship, they had said, practically ran itself. Nor were they at all spectacular. They looked like very ordinary human beings of a curiously mixed race—dark skin, Mongoloid eyes of a light shade, thin Caucasoid noses, woolly hair. They wore robes of a shimmering blue material, and had no outward insignia of rank.

  “Greetings, gentlemen,” said one, in accented but ready-flowing English, “Permit me to introduce myself—Gor Haml, the one of us who learned your language. The others, of course, have learned other tongues of your planet.”

  “I am Philip Brackney—” Introductions went around, acknowledged by the Taithans with grave bows. Thereafter Gor Haml led the way along a bare metal corridor and into a small—well, living room, thought Brackney, who was no sailor. It was furnished with chairs and tables of a comfortable, massive style, and there were some uncannily three-dimensional pictures on the walls. As the party sat down, they felt the chairs mold themselves to the body contours.

  “I take it that the visit of such high dignitaries may be considered official?” asked Gor Haml.

  “Certainly,” replied Brackney. “But—may I ask if your own visit is in the nature of a formal embassy? Your refusal to admit anyone to your ship, or to hold other than the most academic discourse with those you met, until your invitation to me yesterday—that suggests you are on an official mission yourselves.”

  “Yes and no,” answered the Taithan. “We are travelers, exploring this section of the Galaxy, but we are representatives of the Taithan people too, empowered to decide policy with regard to any world we visit.”

  “But why did you hold yourselves so aloof?” The Secretary of State looked worried. “All Earth was ready to welcome you. Nearly all churches held thanksgiving services that you had come. Every government has besieged you with official congratulations and invitations.”

  Gor Haml seemed a little unhappy. “We have met great courtesy everywhere,” he said, “but it is a rule of the exploration service not to perform any policy-making act until the new planet is—classified.”

  “I should hardly think a month would suffice for that,” ventured Brackney.