"I can't stay away when a friend's in trouble, Lou."
"Wait till your help is asked for."
Morriss said, "I think you're wasting your time, Lucky. You're thinking of him as a councilman. I suggest that he's a renegade."
The plump Venusian said the word through clenched teeth, bringing it down like a lash. Evans reddened slowly but said nothing.
Lucky said, "I'll need proof to the last atom before I admit any such word in connection with Councilman Evans." His voice came down hard on the word "councilman."
Lucky sat down. For a long moment he regarded his friend soberly, and Evans looked away.
Lucky said, "Dr. Morriss, ask the guards to leave. I will be responsible for Evans's security."
Morriss lifted an eyebrow at Lucky, then after an instant's thought, gestured to the guards.
Lucky said, "If you don't mind, Bigman, just step into the next room, will you?"
Bigman nodded and left.
Lucky said gently, "Lou, there are only three of us here now. You, I, Dr. Morriss; that's all. Three men of the Council of Science. Suppose we start fresh. Did you remove classified data concerning yeast manufacture from their place in the files?"
Lou Evans said, "I did."
"Then you must have had a reason. What was it?"
"Now look. I stole the papers. I say stole. I admit that much. What more do you want? I had no reason for doing it. I just did it. Now drop it. Get away from me. Leave me alone." His lips were trembling.
Morriss said, "You wanted to hear his defense, Lucky. That's it. He has none."
Lucky said, "I suppose you know that there was an accident inside the yeast plants, shortly after you took those papers, involving just the strain of yeast the papers dealt with."
"I know all that," said Evans.
"How do you explain it?"
"I have no explanation."
Lucky was watching Evans closely, searching for some sign of the good-natured, fun-loving, steel-nerved youth he remembered so well at the academy. Except for a new mustache, grown according to Venusian fashion, the man Lucky saw now resembled the memory as far as mere physical appearance was concerned. The same long-boned limbs, the blond hair cut short, the angular, pointed chin, the flat-bellied, athletic body. But otherwise? Evans's eyes moved restlessly from spot to spot; his lips quivered dryly; his fingernails were bitten and ragged.
Lucky struggled with himself before he could put the next blunt question. It was a friend he was talking to, a man he had known well, a. man whose loyalty he never had questioned, and on whose loyalty he would have staked his own life without thought.
He said, "Lou, have you sold out?"
Evans said in a dull, toneless voice, "No comment."
"Lou, I'm asking you again. First, I want you to know that I'm on your side no matter what you've done. If you've failed the Council, there must be a reason. Tell us that reason. If you've been drugged or forced, either physically or mentally, if you've been blackmailed or if someone close to you has been threatened, tell us. For Earth's sake, Lou, even if you've been tempted with offers of money or power, even if it's as crude as that, tell us. There's no error you can have made that can't be at least partially retrieved by frankness now. What about it?"
For a moment, Lou Evans seemed moved. His blue eyes lifted in pain to bis friend's face. "Lucky," he began, "I…"
Then the softness in him seemed to die, and he cried, "No comment, Starr, no comment."
Morriss, arms folded, said, "That's it, Lucky. That's his attitude. Only he has information and we want it, and, by Venus, we'll get it one way or another."
Lucky said, "Wait…"
Morriss said, "We can't wait. Get that through your head. There is no tune. No time at all. These so-called accidents have been getting more serious as they get closer to their objective. We need to break this thing now." And his pudgy fist slammed down on the arm of his chair, just as the communo shrilled its signal.
Morriss frowned. "Emergency signal! What in space…"
He flicked the circuit open, put the receiver to his ear.
"Morriss speaking. What is it?… What?… WHAT?"
He let the receiver fall, and his face, as it turned toward Lucky, was a doughy, unhealthy white.
"There's a hypnotized man at lock number twenty-three," he choked out.
Lucky's lithe body tightened like a steel spring. "What do you mean by 'lock'? Are you referring to the dome?"
Morriss nodded and managed to say, "I said the accidents are getting more serious. This time, the sea dome. That man may-at any moment-let the ocean into-Aphrodite!"
5. "Beware Water!"
From the speeding Gyrocar, Lucky caught glimpses of the mighty dome overhead. A city built under water, he reflected, requires engineering miracles to be practical.
There were domed cities in many places in the solar system. The oldest and most famous were on Mars. But on Mars, gravity was only two fifths of Earth normal, and pressing down on the Martian domes was only a rarefied, wispy atmosphere.
Here on Venus, gravity was five sixths Earth normal, and the Venusian domes were topped with water. Even though the domes were built in shallow sea so that their tops nearly broke surface at low tide, it was still a matter of supporting millions of tons of water.
Lucky, like most Earthmen (and Venusians, too, for that matter), tended to take such achievements of mankind for granted. But now, with Lou Evans returned to confinement and the problem involving him momentarily dismissed, Lucky's agile mind was putting thoughts together and craving knowledge on this new matter.
He said, "How is the dome supported, Dr. Morriss?"
The fat Venusian had recovered some of his composure. The gyrocar he was driving hurtled toward the threatened sector. His words were still tight and grim.
He said, "Diamagnetic force fields in steel housings. It looks as though steel beams are supporting the dome, but that's not so. Steel just isn't strong enough. It's the force fields that do it."
Lucky looked down at the city streets below, filled with people and life. He said, "Have there ever been any accidents of this type before?"
Morriss groaned, "Great space, not like this… We'll be there in five minutes."
"Are any precautions taken against accidents?" Lucky went on stolidly.
"Of course there are. We have a system of alarms and automatic field adjusters that are as foolproof as we can manage. And the whole city is built in segments. Any local failure in the dome brings down sections of transite, backed by subsidiary fields."
"Then the city won't be destroyed, even if the ocean is let in. Is that right? And this is well known to the populations?"
"Certainly. The people know they're protected, but still, man, a good part of the city will be rained. There's bound to be some loss of life, and property damage will be terrific. Worse still, if men can be controlled into doing this once, they can be controlled into doing it again."
Bigman, the third man in the gyrocar, stared anxiously at Lucky. The tall Earthman was abstracted, and his brows were knit into a hard frown.
Then Morriss grunted, "Here we are!" The car decelerated rapidly to a jarring halt.
Bigman's watch said two-fifteen, but that meant nothing. Venus's night was eighteen hours long, and here under the dome there was neither day nor night.
Artificial lights blossomed now as they always did. Buildings loomed clearly as always. If the city seemed different in any way, it was in the actions of its inhabitants. They were swirling out of the various sections of the city. News of the crisis had spread by the mysterious magic of word of mouth, and they were flocking to see the sight, morbidly curious, as though going to a show or a circus parade, or as men on Earth would flock for seats at a magnetonic concert.
Police held back the rumbling crowds and beat out a path for Morriss and the two with him. Already a thick partition of cloudy transite had moved down, blocking off the section of the city that was threatened by deluge.