Asimov's Mysteries

Tycho Brahe!' said Davenport.

'Right. And the crater Tycho is the most conspicuous feature on the Moon's surface.'

'AH right. Let's take the rest. The C-C is a common way of writing a common type of chemical bond, and I think there is a crater named Bond.'

'Yes, named for an American astronomer, W. C. Bond.'

The item on top, XY2. Hmm. XYY. An X and two Y's. Wait! Alfonso X. He was the royal astronomer in medieval Spain who was called Alfonso the Wise. X the Wise. XYY. The crater Alphonsus.'

'Very good. What's SU?' That stumps me, chief.'

'I'll tell you one theory. It stands for Soviet Union, the old name for the Russian Region. It was the Soviet Union that first mapped the other side of the Moon, and maybe it's a crater there. Tsiolkovsky, for instance. You see, then, the symbols on the left can each be interpreted as standing for a crater: Alphonsus, Tycho, Euclides, Newton, Tsiolkovsky, Bond, Herschel.'

What about the symbols on the right-hand side?'

That's perfectly transparent. The quartered circle is the astronomic symbol for the Earth. An arrow pointing to it indicates that Earth must be directly overhead.'

'Ah,' said Davenport, 'the Sinus Medii-the Middle Bay- over which the Earth is perpetuity at zenith. That's not a crater, so it's on the right-hand side, away from the other symbols.'

'All right,' said Ashley. Thenotations all make sense, or they can be made to make sense,so there's at least a good chance that this isn't gibberish and that it is trying to tell us something. But what?So far we'vegot seven craters and a non-crater mentioned, and what doesthat mean? Presum ably, the Device can only be in one place.'

'Well,' said Davenport heavily, 'a crater can be a huge place to search. Even if we assume he hugged the shadow to avoid Solar radiation, there can be dozens of miles to examine in each case. Suppose the arrow pointing to the symbol for the Earth defines the crater where he hid the Device, the place from which the Earth can be seen nearest the zenith.'

That's been thought of, old man. It cuts out one place and leaves us with seven pinpointed craters, the southernmost extremity of those north of the Lunar equator and the northernmost extremity of those south. But which of the seven?'

Davenport was frowning. So far, he hadn't thought of anything that hadn't already been thought of.

'Search them all,' he said brusquely.

Ashley crackled into brief laughter. 'In the weeks since this has all come up, we've done exactly that.'

'And what have you found?'

'Nothing. We haven't found a thing. We're still looking, though.'

'Obviously one of the symbols isn't interpreted correctly.'

'Obviously!'

'You said yourself there were three craters named Herschel. The symbol SU, if it means the Soviet Union and therefore the other side of the Moon, can stand for any crater on the other side: Lomonosov, Jules Verne, Joliot-Curie, any of them. For that matter, the symbol of the Earth might stand for the crater Atlas, since he is pictured as supporting the Earth in some versions of the myth. The arrow might stand for the Straight Wall.'

There's no argument there, Davenport. But even if we get the right interpretation for the right symbol, how do we recognize it from among all the wrong interpretations, or from among the right interpretations of the wrong symbols? Somehow there's got to be something that leaps up at us from this card and gives us so clear a piece of information that we can tell it at once as the real thing from among all the red herrings. We've all failed and we need a fresh mind, Davenport. What do you see here?'

'I'll tell you one thing we could do,' said Davenport reluctantly. 'We can consult someone I--Oh, my God!' He half-rose.

Ashley was all controlled excitement at once. 'What do you see?'

Davenport could feel his hand trembling. He hoped his lips weren't. He said. Tell me, have you checked on Jennings' past life?'

'Of course.'

'Where did he go to college?'

'Eastern University.'

A pang of joy shot through Davenport, but he held on. That was not enough. 'Did he take a course in extraterro-logy?'

'Of course, he did. That's routine for a geology major.'

'All right, then, don't you know who teaches extraterrology at Eastern University?' Ashley snapped his fingers. 'That oddball. What's-his-name -Wendell Urth.'

'Exactly, an oddball who is a brilliant man in his way. An oddball who's acted as a consultant for the

Bureau on several occasions and given perfect satisfaction every time. An oddball I was going to suggest we consult this time and then noticed that this card was telling us to do so. An arrow pointing to the symbol for the Earth. A rebus that couldn't mean more clearly "Go to Urth," written by a man who was once a student of Urth and would know him.'

Ashley stared at the card, 'By God, it's possible. But what could Urth tell us about the card that we can't see for ourselves?'

Davenport said, with polite patience, 'I suggest we ask him, sir.'

* * *

Ashley looked about curiously, half-wincing as he turned from one direction to another. He felt as though he had found himself in some arcane curiosity shop, darkened and dangerous, from which at any moment some demon might hurtle forth squealing.

The lighting was poor and the shadows many. The walls seemed distant, and dismally alive with book-films from floor to ceiling. There was a Galactic Lens in soft three-dimentionality in one corner andbehind it were star charts that could be made out A map of the Moon in another corner might, however, possibly be a map of Mars.

Only the desk in the center of the room was brilliantly lit by a tight-beamed lamp. It was littered with papers and opened printed books. A small viewer was threaded with film, and a clock with an old-fashioned round-faced dial hummed with subdued merriment.

Ashley found himself unable to recall that it was late afternoon outside and that the sun was quite definitely in the sky. Here, within, was a place of eternal night. There was no sign of any window, and the clear presence of circulating air did not spare him a claustrophobic sensation.

He found himself moving closer to Davenport, who seemed insensible to the unpleasantness of the situation.

Davenport said in a low voice, 'He'll be here in a moment, sir.'

'Is it always like this?' asked Ashley.

'Always. He never leaves this place, as far as I know, except to trot across the campus and attend his classes.'

'Gentlemen! Gentlemen!' came a reedy, tenor voice. 'I am so glad to see you. It is good of you to come.'

A round figure of a man bustled in from another room, shedding shadow and emerging into the light.

He beamed at them, adjusting round, thick-lensed glasses upward so that he might look through them. As his fingers moved away, the glasses slipped downward at once to a precarious perch upon the round nubbin of his snub nose. 'I am Wendell Urth,' he said.

The scraggly gray Van Dyke on his pudgy, round chin did not in the least add to the dignity which the smiling face and the stubby ellipsoidal torso so noticeably lacked.

'Gentlemen! It is good of you to come,' Urth repeated, as he jerked himself backward into a chair from which his legs dangled with the toes of his shoes a full inch above the floor. 'Mr. Davenport remembers, perhaps, that it is a matter of-uh-some importance to me to remain here. I do not like to travel, except to walk, of course, and a walk across the campus is quite enough for me.'

Ashley looked baffled as he remained standing, and Urth stared at him with a growing bafflement of his own. He pulled a handkerchief out and wiped his glasses, then replaced them, and said, 'Oh, I see the difficulty. You want chairs. Yes. Well, just take some. If there are things on them, just push them off.