The color washed slowly out of Cimon’s face. It turned waxy-pale. His lips trembled. He whispered, “You used professional status as a cloak to make a fool of me.”
“That’s about it,” said Sheffield.
“I have never, never—” Cimon gasped and tried a new start. “I have never witnessed anything as cowardly and unethical.”
“I was trying to make a point.”
“Oh, you made it. You made it.” Cimon was slowly recovering; his voice approaching normality. “You want me to take that boy of yours with us.”
“That’s right.”
“No. No. Definitely no. It was no before you came in here and it’s no a million times over now.”
“What’s your reason? I mean, before I came in.”
“He’s psychotic. He can’t be trusted with normal people.”
Sheffield said, grimly, “I’ll thank you not to use the word, ‘psychotic.’ You are not competent to use it. If you’re so precise in your feeling for professional ethics, remember to stay out of my specialty in my presence. Mark Annuncio is perfectly normal.”
“After that scene with Rodriguez? Yes. Oh, yes.”
“Mark had the right to ask his question. It was his job to do so and his duly. Rodriguez had no right to be boorish about it.”
“I’ll have to consider Rodriguez first, if you don’t mind.”
“Why? Mark Annuncio knows more than Rodriguez. For that matter, he knows more than you or I. Are you trying to bring back an intelligent report or to satisfy a petty vanity?”
“Your statements about what your boy knows do not impress me. I am quite aware he is an efficient parrot. He understands nothing, however. It is my duty to see to it that data are made available to him, because the Bureau has ordered that. They did not consult me, but very well. I will co-operate that far. He will receive his data here in the ship.”
Sheffield said, “Not adequate, Cimon. He should be on the spot. He may see things our precious specialists will not.”
Cimon said, freezingly, “Very likely. The answer, Sheffield, is no. There is no argument that can possibly persuade me.” The astrophysicist’s nose was pinched and white.
“Because I made a fool of you?”
“Because you violated the most fundamental obligation of a professional man. No respectable professional would ever use his specialty to prey on the innocence of a non-associate professional.”
“So I made a fool of you.”
Cimon turned away. “Please leave. There will be no further communication between us, outside the most necessary business, for the duration of the trip.”
“If I go,” said Sheffield, “the rest of the boys may get to hear about this.”
Cimon started. “You’re going to repeat our little affair?” A cold smile rested on his lips, then went its transient and contemptuous way. “You’ll broadcast the dastard you were.”
“Oh. I doubt they’ll take it seriously. Everyone knows psychologists will have their little jokes. Besides they’ll be so busy laughing at you. You know—the very impressive Dr. Cimon scared into a sore throat and howling for mercy after a few mystic words of gibberish.”
“Who’d believe you?” cried Cimon.
Sheffield lifted his right hand. Between thumb and forefinger was a small rectangular object, studded with a line of control toggles.
“Pocket recorder,” he said. He touched one of the toggles and Ci-mon’s voice was suddenly saying, “Well, now, Dr. Sheffield, what is it?”
It sounded pompous, peremptory, and even a little smug.
“Give me that!” Cimon hurled himself at the lanky psychologist.
Sheffield held him off. “Don’t try force, Cimon. I was in amateur wrestling not too long ago. Look, I’ll make a deal with you.”
Cimon was still writhing toward him, dignity forgotten, panting his fury. Sheffield kept him at arm’s length, backing slowly.
Sheffield said, “Let Mark and myself come along and no one will ever see or hear this.”
Slowly, Cimon simmered down. He gasped, “Will you let me have it, then?”
“After Mark and I are out at the settlement site.”
“I’m to trust you.” He seemed to take pains to make that as offensive as possible.
“Why not? You can certainly trust me to broadcast this if you don’t agree. I’ll play it off for Vernadsky first. He’ll love it. You know his corny sense of humor.”
Cimon said in a voice so low it could hardly be heard, “You and the boy can come along.” Then, vigorously, “But remember this, Sheffield: When we get back to Earth, I’ll have you before the Central Committee of the G.A.A.S. That’s a promise. You’ll be de-professionalized.”
Sheffield said, “I’m not afraid of the Galactic Association for the Advancement of Science.” He let the syllables resound. “After all, what will you accuse me of? Are you going to play this recording before the Central Committee as evidence? Come, come, let’s be friendly about this. You don’t want to broadcast your own… uh… mistake before the primmest stuffed shirts in eighty-three thousand worlds.”
Smiling gently, he backed out the door.
But when he closed the door between himself and Cimon, his smile vanished. He hadn’t liked to do this. Now that he had done it, he wondered if it were worth the enemy he had made.
Seven tents had sprung up near the site of the original settlement on Junior. Nevile Fawkes could see them all from the low ridge on which he stood. They had been there seven days now.
He looked up at the sky. The clouds were thick overhead and pregnant with rain. That pleased him. With both suns behind those clouds, the diffused light was gray-white. It made things seem almost normal.
The wind was damp and a little raw, as though it were April in Vermont. Fawkes was a New Englander and he appreciated the resemblance. In four or five hours, Lagrange I would set and the clouds would turn ruddy while the landscape would become angrily dim. But Fawkes intended to be back in the tents by then.
So near the equator, yet so cool! Well, that would change with the millennia. As the glaciers retreated, the air would warm up and the soil would dry out. Jungles and deserts would make their appearance. The water level in the oceans would slowly creep higher wiping out numberless islands. The two large rivers would become an inland sea, changing the configuration of Junior’s one large continent: perhaps making several smaller ones out of it.
He wondered if the settlement site would be drowned. Probably, he decided. Maybe that would take the curse off it.
He could understand why the Confederation were so anxious to solve the mystery of that first settlement. Even if it were a simple matter of disease, there would have to be proof. Otherwise, who would settle the world? The “sucker bait” superstition held for more than merely spacemen.
He, himself—Well, his first visit to the settlement site hadn’t been so bad, though he had been glad to leave the rain and the gloom. Returning was worse. It was difficult to sleep with the thought that a thousand mysterious deaths lay all about, separated from him only by that insubstantial thing, time.
With medical coolness, Novee had dug up the moldering graves of a dozen of the ancient settlers. (Fawkes could not and did not look at the remains.) There had been only crumbling bones, Novee had said, out of which nothing could be made.
“There seem to be abnormalities of bone deposition,” he said.