Pecking doubtfully at the nail of her little finger, the girl disappeared into the inner office. She emerged a minute later, standing aside without speaking to admit Ainson into Mihaly's room. Ainson swept by her with irritation; that was a girl he had always been careful to smile and nod at; her answering show of friendliness had been nothing but pretence.
"I'm sorry to interrupt you when it's obvious you are very busy," he said to the Director. Mihaly did not immediately assure his old friend that it was perfectly all right. He maintained a steady pacing by the window and asked. "What brings you here, Bruce? How's Enid?”
Ignoring the irrelevance of this last question, Ainson said, "I should think you might guess what has brought me here.”
"It would be better if you told me.”
Pulling a newspaper from his pocket, Ainson dropped it on Pasztor's desk.
"You must have seen the paper. This confounded American ship, the Gansas, or whatever it's called, leaves next week to look for the home planet of our ETA's.”
"I hope they will have luck.”
"Don't you realize the absolute disgrace of it? I have not been invited to join the expedition. Every day I expected a word from them. It hasn't come. Surely there must be a mistake?”
"I think it is impossible there should be a mistake in such a matter, Bruce.”
"I see. Then it's a public disgrace." Ainson stood there looking at his friend. Or was he really a friend?
Was it not a gross misuse of the term, just because they had been acquainted for a number of years? He had admired the many sides of Pasztor's character, had admired him for the success of his technidramas, had admired his leader-ship on the First Charon Expedition, had admired him for being a man of action.
Now he saw more deeply; he saw that this was merely a playboy of action, a dramatist's idea of a man of action, an imitation that revealed its spuriousness at last by the calmness with which, from his safe seat at the Exozoo, he watched Ms friend's discomfiture.
"Mihaly, although I am a year older than you, I am not yet ready to accept a safe seat back on Earth; I'm a man of action, and I'm still capable of action. I think I can say without false modesty that they still have need of men like me at the frontiers of the known universe. I was the man who discovered the ETA's, and I haven't for-gotten that, if others have. I should be on the Gansas when she goes into TP next week. You could still pull strings and get me on to her, if you wanted. I ask you - I beg you to do this for me, and swear I will never ask you another favor. I just cannot bear the disgrace of being passed over in a vital moment like this.”
Mihaly pulled a wry face, cupped an elbow and rubbed his chin.
"Would you care for a drink, Bruce?”
"Certainly not. Why do you always insist on offering me one when you know I don't drink?”
"You must excuse me if I have a little one. It is not normally my habit at this early time of morning." As he went over to a pair of small doors set in the wall, he said, "Perhaps you will feel better, or perhaps worse, if I tell you that you are not alone in your disgrace. Here at the Exozoo we have our disappointments. We have not made the progress in communication with these poor ETA's that we had hoped to do.”
"I thought that one of them had suddenly started spouting English?”
"Spouting is right. A series of jumbled phrases with amazingly accurate imitations of the various voices that originally spoke them. I recognized my own voice quite clearly. Of course we have it all on tape. But, unfortunately, this development did not come soon enough to save the axe from falling. I have received word from the Minister for Extra-Terrestrial Affairs that all research with the ETA's is to close down forthwith.”
Unwilling though he was to be diverted from his own concerns, Ainson was startled.
"By the Buzzardian universe! They can't just close it down! This - we've got here the most important thing that has ever happened in the history of man. They - I don't understand. They can't close it down.”
Pasztor poured himself a small whisky and sipped it.
"Unfortunately, the Minister's attitude is understand-able enough. I'm as shocked at this development as you are, Bruce, but I see how it comes about. It is not easy to make the general public or even a minister see that the business of understanding another race - or even deciding how its intelligence is to be measured beside ours - is not something that can be done in a couple of months. Let me put it bluntly, Bruce; you are thought to have been lax, and the suspicion has spread - just a feeling in the winds, no more - that we are similarly at fault. That feeling has made the minister's job a little more easy, that is all.”
"But he cannot stop the work Bodley Temple and the others are doing.”
"I went to see him last evening. He has stopped it. This afternoon the ETA's are being handed over to the Exobiology Department.”
"Exobiology! Why, Mihaly, why? There is a conspiracy!”
"With an optimism I personally regard as unfounded, the Minister reasons like this. Within a couple of months, the Gansas will have located more ETA's - a whole planet full of them, in fact. Many of the basic questions, such as how far advanced the creatures are, will then be answered, and on the basis of those answers a new and much more effective attempt to communicate with them can be launched.”
A sort of shaking took Ainson's body. This confirmed all he had ever suspected about the powers ranged against him. Blindly, he took a lighted mescahale from Pasztor and sucked its fragrance into his lungs. Slowly his vision cleared; he said, "Supposing all this were so; something more must lie behind the minister's move.”
The Director helped himself to another drink.
"I inferred as much myself last evening. The minister gave me a reason which, like it or not, we must accept.”
"What was the reason?”
"The war. We are comfortable here, we are apt to forget this crippling war with Brazil that has dragged on for so long. Brazil have captured Square 503, and it looks as if our casualties have been higher than announced. What interests the government at present more than the possibility of talking with the ETA's is the possibility that they do not experience pain. If there is some substance circulating in their arteries that confers complete analgesia, then the government want to know about it. It is obviously a potential war weapon.
"So, the official reasoning goes, we must find out how these beings tick. We must make the best use of them.”
Ainson rubbed his head. The war! More insanity! It had never entered his mind.
"I knew it would happen! I knew it would! So they are going to cut our two ETA's up," he said. His voice sounded like a creaking door.
"They are going to cut them up in the most refined way.
They are going to sink electrodes into their brains, to see if pain can be induced. They will try a little over-heating here, a little freezing there. In short, they will try to discover if the ETA's freedom from pain really exists: and if it exists, whether it is engendered by a natural in-sensitivity or brought about by an anti-body. I have pro-tested against the whole business, but I might as well have kept quiet. I'm as upset as you are.”
Ainson clenched a fist and shook it vigorously close to his stomach.
"Lattimore is behind all this. I knew he was my enemy directly I saw him! You should never have let -”
"Oh don't be foolish, Bruce! Lattimore has nothing whatever to do with it. Can't you see this is the sort of bloody stupid thing that happens whenever something important is involved. It's the people who have the power rather than the people who have the knowledge who get the ultimate say. Sometimes I really think mankind is a bit mad.”