Asimov's Mysteries

'Maybe they don't know what it is.'

Then how do we go about-' Moore broke off and turned to Shea, 'What did you say?' Shea looked blank. 'Who, me?'

'Just now, about us being there.' Moore's eyes narrowed. He shook his head as though to clear it, then whispered, 'Great Galaxy!'

'What is it?' asked Brandon tensely. 'What's the matter. Warren?'

'I'm not sure. You're driving me mad with your theories; so mad, I'm beginning to take them seriously, I think. You know, we did take some things out of the wreck with us. I mean besides our clothes and what personal belongings we still had. Or at least I did.'

'What?'

'It was when I was making my way across the outside of the wreckage-space, I seem to be there now,

I see it so clearly-I picked up some items and put them in the pocket of my spacesuit. I don't know why; I wasn't myself, really. I did it without thinking. And then, well, I held on to them. Souvenirs, I suppose. I brought them back to Earth.'

'Where are they?'

'I don't know. We haven't stayed in one place, you know.'

'You didn't throw them out, did you?'

'No, but things do get lost when you move.'

'If you didn't throw them out, they must be somewhere in this house.'

'If they didn't get lost. I swear I don't recall seeing them in fifteen years.'

'What were they?'

Warren Moore said, 'One was a fountain pen, as I recall; a real antique, the kind that used an ink-spray cartridge. What gets me, though, is that the other was a small field glass, not more than about six inches long. You see what I mean? A field glass?'

'An optikon,' shouted Brandon. 'Sure!'

'It's just a coincidence,' said Moore, trying to remain levelheaded. 'Just a curious coincidence.' 

But Brandon wasn't having it. 'A coincidence, nuts I Trans-space couldn't find the optikon on the wreck and they couldn't find it in space because you had it all along.'

'Your crazy.'

'Come on, we've got to find the thing now.'

'Well, I'll look, if that's what Moore blew out his breath. 'Well, I'll look, if that's what you want, but I doubt I'll find it. Okay, let's start with the storage level. That's the logical place.'

Shea chuckled. The logical place is usually the worst place to look.' But they all headed for the power ramp once more and the additional flight upward.

The storage level had a musty, unused odor to it. Moore turned on the precipitron. 'I don't think we've precipitated the dust in two years. That shows you how often I'm up here. Now, let's see-if it's anywhere at all, it would be in with the bachelor collection. I mean the junk I've been hanging on to since bachelor days. We can start here.'

Moore started leafing through the contents of plastic collapsibles while Brandon kept peering anxiously over his shoulder.

Moore said, 'What do you know? My college yearbook. I was a sonist in those days; a real bug on it. In fact, I managed to get a voice recording with the picture of every senior in this book.' He tapped its

cover fondly. 'You could swear there was nothing there but the usual trimensional photos, but each one has an imprisoned-'

He grew aware of Brandon's frown and said, 'Okay, I'll keep looking.'

He gave up on the collapsibles and opened a trunk of heavy, old-fashioned woodite. He separated the contents of the various compartments.

Brandon said 'Hey, is that it?'

He pointed to a small cylinder that rolled out on the floor with a small clunk. Moore said, 'I don't-Yes! that's the pen. There it is.

And here's the field glass. Neither one works, of course. They're both broken. At least, I suppose the pen's broken. Something's loose and rattles in it. Hear? I wouldn't have the slightest idea about how to fill it so I can check whether it really works. They haven't even made ink-spray cartridges in years.' Brandon held it under the light. 'It has initials on it'

'Oh? I don't remember noticing any.'

'It's pretty worn down. It looks like J.K.Q.'

'Q?'

'Right, and that's an unusual letter with which to start a last name. This pen might have belonged to

Quentin. An heirloom he kept for luck or sentiment. It might have belonged to a great-grandfather in the days when they used pens like this; a great-grandfather called Jason Knight Quentin or Judah Kent

Quentin or something like that. We can check the names of Quentin's ancestors through Multivac.' Moore nodded. 'I think maybe we should. See, you've got me as crazy as you are.' 

'And if this is so, it proves you picked it up in Quentin's room. So you picked up the field glass there too.'

'Now hold it. I don't remember that I picked them up in the same place. I don't remember the scrounging over the outside of the wreck that well.'

Brandon turned the small field glass over and over under the light. 'No initials here.'

'Did you expect any?'

'I don't see anything, in fact, except this narrow joining mark here.' He ran his thumbnail into the fine groove that circled the glass near its thicker end. He tried to twist it unsuccessfully. 'One piece.' He put it to his eye. This thing doesn't work.'

'I told you it was broken. No lenses-'

Shea broke in. 'You've got to expect a little damage when a spaceship hits a good-sized meteor and goes to pieces.'

'So even if this were it,' said Moore, pessimistic again, 'if this were the optikon, it would not do us any good.'

He took the field glass from Brandon and felt along the empty rims. 'You can't even tell where the lenses belonged. There's no groove I can feel into which they might have been seated. It's as if there never- Hey!' He exploded the syllable violently.

'Hey what?' said Brandon.

The name! The name of the thing!'

'Optikon, you mean?'

'Optikon, I don't mean! Fitzsimmons, on the tube, called it an optikon and we thought he said "an optikon." '

'Well, he did,' said Brandon.

'Sure' said Shea. 'I heard him.'

'You just thought you heardhim. He said "anoptikon." Don't you get it? not an "optikon," two words, "anopti-kon" one word. Brandon blankly.'And what's the difference?'

'A hell of a difference. "An optikon" would mean instrument with lenses, but "anoptikon," one word, has the Greek prefix "an-" which means "no." Words of Greek derivation use it for "no." Anarchy means "no government," anemia means "no blood," anonymous means "no name," and anoptikon means-'

'No lenses,' cried Brandon.

'Right! Quentin must have been working on an optical device without lenses and this may be it and it may not be broken.'

Shea said, 'But you don't see anything when you look through it.'

'It must be set to neutral,' said Moore. There must be some way of adjusting it.' Like Brandon, he placed it in both hands and tried to twist it about that circumscribing groove. He placed pressure on it, grunting. 

'Don't break it,' said Brandon.

'It's giving. Either it's supposed to be stiff or else it's corroded shut.' He stopped, looked at the instrument impatiently, and put it to his eye again. He whirled, unpolarized a window and looked out at the lights of the city.

'I'll be dumped in space,' he breathed. Brandon said, 'What? What?'

Moore handed the instrument to Brandon wordlessly. Brandon put it to his eyes and cried out sharply, 'It's a telescope.'

Shea said at once, 'Let me see.'

They spent nearly an hour with it, converting it into a telescope with turns in one direction, a microscope with turns in the other.

'How does it work?' Brandon kept asking.

'I don't know,' Moore kept saying. In the end he said, 'I'm sure it involves concentrated force fields. We are turning against considerable field resistance. With larger instruments, power adjustment will be required.'