Duncan looked at the picture for long minutes before turning the page. It was really excellent-quite unlike all the other sketches. But then, how many times had Karl drawn it, over and over again, during the intervening years?
No one spoke from the air around him or interrupted his thoughts. And presently he moved on. . more calculations… patterns of hexagons, dwindling away into the distance-why, of course!
“ThaVs the titanite lattice-but the number written against it means nothing to me. It looks Eke a Terran viddy coding.”
“You are correct. It happens to be the number of a gem expert here in
Washington. Not Ivor Mandel’stahm, in case you’re wondering. The person concerned assures us that Mr. Helmer never contacted him, and we believe him. It’s probably a number he acquired somehow, jotted down, but never used.” more calculatiogs, now with lots of frequencies and phase angles.
Doubtless communications stuff part of Karl’s regular work … . geometrical doodles, many of them based on the hexagon motif … Calindy again-only an outline sketch this time, showing none of the loving care of the earlier draw in ! … : a honeycomb pattern of little circles, seen in plan and elevation. Only a few were drawn in detail but it was obvious that there must be hundreds. The interpretation was equally obvious.
“The CYCLops array-yes, he’s written in the number of elements and the overall dimensions.”
“Why do you think he was so interested?”
“That’s quite natural-it’s the biggest and most famous radio telescope on
Earth. He often discussed it with me.”
“Did he ever speak of visiting it?”
“Very likely-but I don’t remember. After all, this was some years ago.”
The drawings on the next few pages, though very rough and diagrammatic, were clearly details of cyCLOPs-antenna feeds, tracking mechanisms, obscure bits of circuitry, interspersed with yet more calculations. One sketch had been started and never finished. Duncan looked at it sadly, then turned the page. As he had expected, the next sheet was blank.
“I’m sorry to disappoint you,” he said, closing the book, “but I get nothing at all from this. Kar-Mr. Helmer’s field was communications science; he helped design the Titan-Inner Planets Link. This is all part of his work. His interest is completely understandable, and I see nothing unusual about it.”
“Perhaps so, Mr. Makenzie. But you haven’t finished.”
Duncan looked in surprise at the empty air. Then Under Secretary Smith gestured toward the sketchbook.
“Never take anything for granted,” he said mildly. “Start at the other end.”
Feeling slightly foolish, Duncan reopened the sketchbook, then flipped it over as he realized that Karl had used it from both directions. (But he had been badly shaken by those last drawings, and was not thinking too clearly )
The inside back cover was blank, but the facing page bore the single enigmatic word ARGUS. It meant nothing to Duncan, though it did arouse some faint and unidentifiable association from history. He turned the page-and had one of the biggest shocks of his life.
As he stared incredulously at the drawing that occupied the entire area of the paper, he was suddenly transported back to Golden Reef. There could be no misinterpretation; yet as far as he knew, Karl had never shown the slightest interest in the minutiae of terrestial zoology. The very idea that any Titanian might be fascinated by marine biology was faintly incongruous.
Yet here was a detailed study, with the perspective meticulously worked out around the faintly limned x, y-, and z-axes of the spiny sea urchin,
Diadema. Only a dozen of its thin, radiating needles were shown, but it was clear that there were hundreds, occupying the entire sphere of space around it.
That was astonishing enough, but there was something even more remarkable.
This drawing must have required hours of devoted labor. Karl had dedicated to an unprepossessing little invertebrate-which surely he could never have seen in his life!-all the love and skill he had applied to the portrait of
Calindy.
In the bright sunshine outside the old State Department, Duncan and the
Ambassador had to wait for five minutes before the next shuttle came gliding silently down Virginia Avenue. No one was within earshot, so Duncan said with quiet urgency: “Does “Argus’ mean anything to you?”
“As a matter of fact, yes-though I’m damned if I see how it can help. I still have the remnants of a classical education, and unless I’m very much mistaken, Argus was the name of Odysseus’ old dog. It recognized him when he came home to Ithaca after his twenty years of wandering, then died.”
Duncan brooded over this information for a few seconds, then shrugged his shoulders.
“You’re right-that’s no help at all. And I still want to know why these people I met-or didn’t meet-are so interested in Karl. As they admitted at the start, there’s no suggestion that he’s done anything illegal, as far as
Earth is concerned. And I suspect that he may have only bent some Titanian regulations, not broken them.”
“Just a moment-just a moment!” said the Ambassador. “You’ve reminded me of something.” His face went through some rather melodramatic contortions, then smoothed itself out. He glanced around conspiratorially, saw that there was no one within hearing and that the shuttle was still three minutes away by the countdown indicator.
“I think I may have it, and I’ll be obliged if you don’t attribute this to me. But just consider the following wild speculation… “Every organism has defense mechanisms to protect itself. You’ve just encountered one-part of the security system of Earth. This particular
group, what259 ever its responsibilities may be, probably consists of a fairly small number of important people. I expect I know most of them-in fact, one voice… never mind…
“You could call it a watchdog committee. Such a committee has to have a name for itself-a secret name, naturally. In the course of my duties, I occasionally hear of such things, and carefully forget them…. “Now, Argus was a watchdog. So what better name for-such a group? Mind you,
I’m still not asserting anything. But imagine the acute embarrassment of a secret organization that happens to find its name carefully spelled out in highly mysterious circumstances.”
It was a very plausible theory, and Duncan was sure that the Ambassador would not have advanced it without excellent reasons. But it did not go even halfway.
“That’s all very well, and I’m prepared to accept it. But what the devil has all this to do with a drawing of a sea urchin? I feel I’m going slowly mad.”
The shuttle was now gliding to a halt in front of them, and the Ambassador waved him into it.
“If it’s any consolation, Duncan, be assured that you’re in very good company. I’d sacrifice a fair share of my modest retirement benefits if I could eavesdrop now on Under Secretary Smith and his invisible friends.”
BUSINESS AND DESIRE
There was no way of telling, as Duncan stood at the window of Calindy’s apartment, that he was not looking down at the busy traffic of 57th
Street on a crisp winter night, when the first flakes of snow were drifting down, to melt at once as they struck the heated sidewalks.
But this was summer, not winter; and even President Bernstein’s limousine was not as old as the cars moving silently a hundred meters below. He was watching the past, perhaps a hologram from the late twentieth century. Yet though Duncan knew that he was actually far underground, there was nothing that he could do to convince his senses of this fact.