And the story the three men had to tell? A fantastic tale of a bonanza that disappeared, of a man who was murdered for something—nobody knew what, that he was supposed to have discovered—nobody knew where, and then concealed so well that nobody could find it again, not even his own sons and heirs.
Sitting there, Tom realized how perfectly incredible the story sounded. Unsubstantiated ideas, claims with no evidence to back them up—it would be bad. And with the power and funds that the company had to press the thing through—
It could be very bad.
But there must be an answer, if they could only see it.
Suddenly the room seemed hot and stuffy, oppressive. He couldn’t think straight. Perhaps there had been too much thinking, too much speculation. Tom stood up and slipped on his jacket. He had to walk, to move about, to try to think clearly. He slipped open the door, and started for the ramp leading to the main concourse.
There had to be an answer, somewhere.
It was almost two o’clock, and the dim night lights had gone on in the concourse, replacing the bright daytime lights. He met occasional groups of miners heading home after a late night; otherwise the concourse was deserted.
He took the up ramp, emerged at ground level, and walked along the streets under the plastic bubble. These were the oldest streets in Sun Lake City. Some of the original buildings were still here. In the dark sky he could see a vast powdering of stars, far more than anyone could ever see on Earth. He paused tq watch the two brighter dots of light, Mars’ tiny moons, making their way across the sky.
He went on along the steel walkways, trying to clear his mind of the doubts and questions that were plaguing him. At first he just wandered, but presently he realized that he had a destination in mind.
He went up a ramp and across the lobby of the United Nations Administration Building. He took a spur off the main corridor and came to a doorway with a small circular staircase beyond it. At the bottom of the stairs he opened a steel door and stepped into the map room.
It was a small darkened amphitheater, with a curving row of seats along one wall. On either side were film viewers and micro-readers. Curving around on the far wall, like a huge parabolic mirror, was the map.
Tom had been- here many times before, and always he gasped in wonder when he saw the awesome beauty of the thing. Stepping into the map room was like stepping into the center of a huge cathedral. Here was the glowing, moving panorama of the solar system spread out before him in a breathtaking three-dimensional image. Standing here before the map it seemed as if he had suddenly become enormous and omnipotent, hanging suspended in the blackness of space and staring down at the solar system from a vantage point a million miles away.
Once, Dad had told him, there had been a great statue in the harbor of Old New York which had been a symbol of freedom for strangers coming to that city from across the sea, and a welcome for countrymen returning home. And someday, he knew, this view of the solar system would be waiting to greet Earthmen making their way home from distant stars. The map was only an image, a gift from the United Nations to the colonists on Mars, but it reproduced the solar system in the minutest detail that astronomers could make possible.
In the center, glowing like a thing alive, was the sun, the hub of the magnificent wheel. Around it, moving constantly in their orbits, were the planets, bright points of light on the velvet blackness of the screen. Each orbit was computed and held on the screen by the great computer in the vault below.
But there was more on the map than the sun and the planets, with their satellites. Tiny green lights marked the Earth-Mars and the Earth-Venus orbit ships, moving slowly across the screen. Beyond Mars, a myriad of tiny lights projected on the screen the asteroids. Without the magnifier Tom could identify the larger ones: Ceres, on the opposite side of the sun from Mars now as it moved in its orbit; smaller Juno; and Pallas; and Vesta.
For each asteroid which had been identified, and its orbit plotted, there was a pinpoint of light on the screen. For all its beauty, the map had a very useful purpose—the registry and identification of asteroid claims among the miners of Mars. Each asteroid registered as a claim showed up as a red pinpoint; unclaimed asteroids were white. But even with the advances of modem astronomy only a small percentage of the existing asteroids were on the map, for the vast majority had never been plotted.
Tom sank down in a seat and watched the map, just as he had when he was a little boy, spending hours gazing at the panorama. He knew now why he had come. To him the map had always seemed a place of refuge; he was alone here, his mind worked clearly. He could put aside unimportant things and probe to the depths of any problem. He remembered how he had loved to sit and watch, to use the magnifier to pick out obscure asteroids, to peer at Earth’s moon in its endless revolutions, to imagine that he was riding the orbit ships back to Earth, or out to the moons of Jupiter.
Now he moved up to the map and activated the magnifier. Carefully he focused down on the section of the Asteroid Belt they had visited so recently. Dozens of pinpoints sprang to view, both red and white, and beneath each red light the claim number neatly registered. Tom peered at the section, searching until he found the number of Roger Hunter’s last claim.
It was by itself, not a part of an asteroid cluster. He stepped up the magnification, peered at it closely. There were a dozen other pinpoints, all unclaimed, within a ten- thousand-mile radius.
But near it, nothing.
No hiding place.
And then, suddenly, he knew the answer. He stared at the map, his heart pounding in his throat. He cut the magnification, scanning a wide area. Then he widened the lens still further, and checked the co-ordinates at the bottom of the viewer.
He knew that he was right. He had to be right. But this was no wild dream, this was something that could be proved beyond any question of error.
Across the room he picked up the phone to Map Control. It buzzed interminably; then a sleepy voice answered.
“The map,” Tom managed to say. “It’s recorded on time- lapse film, isn’t it?”
“ ’Course it is,” the sleepy voice said. “Observatory has to have the record. One frame every hour.”
“I’ve got to see some of the old film,” Tom said.
“Now? It’s three in the morning.”
“I don’t need the film itself, just project it for me. There’s a reader here.”
He gave the man the dates he wanted, Mars time. The man broke the contact, grumbling, but moments later one of the film viewers sprang to life. The map co-ordinates showed at the bottom of the screen.
Tom stared at the filmed image, the image of a segment of the Asteroid Belt the day before Roger Hunter died.
It was there. When he had looked at the map, he had seen a single red pinpoint of light, Roger Hunter’s asteroid, with nothing in the heavens anywhere near it.
But on the film image taken weeks before there were two points of light. One was red, with Roger Hunter’s claim number beneath it. The other was white, so close to the first that even at full magnification it was barely distinguishable.
But it was there.
Tom’s hands were trembling with excitement; he nearly dropped the phone receiver as he punched the buttons to ring the apartment. Greg’s face appeared on the screen, puffy with sleep. “What’s up? Thought you were in bed.”
“You’ve got to get down here,” Tom said.
Greg blinked, wide-awake now. “What’s the matter? Where are you?”
“In the map room. Wake Johnny up too and get down here. And try to get hold of the major.”
“You’ve found something?” Greg said, excited now.