It was a big, low-ceilinged, dim-lit room, lined with shelves which held not only microspools but some authentic folio volumes. The chairs were old and shabby and comfortable, the desk was big and littered with papers, there was a haze of strong tobacco in the rather stuffy air. Langley’s attention was drawn to a screen in which a stereoscopic figure was moving. Briefly, he failed to understand the words—
Then he realized. The actor had a queue; he wore a fur cap, a lacquered breastplate, and flowing black robes; he was reaching for a scimitar; the background was a kind of Grecian temple—but by all the gods, it was still Hamlet!
“An old folk play, I believe, captain,” said Valti, shuffling up behind him. “They’ve been putting on some revivals lately—interesting material. I believe this is Martian of the Interregnum period.”
“No,” said Langley. “A bit older than that.”
“Oh? From your own time, even? Very interesting!” Valti switched it off. “Well, pray sit down and be comfortable. Here comes refreshment.”
A creature the size of a monkey, with a beaked face and strangely luminous eyes beneath small antennae, entered bearing a tray in skinny arms. Langley found a chair and accepted a cup of hot spiced wine and a plate of cakes. Valti wheezed and drank deep. “Ah! That does these rheumatic old bones good. I fear medicine will never catch up with the human body, which finds the most ingenious new ways of getting deranged. But good wine, sir, good wine and a pretty girl and the dear bright hills of home, there is the best medicine that will ever be devised. Cigars, Thakt, if you please.”
The monkey-thing leaped grotesquely to the desk and extended a box. Both men took one, and Langley found his good. The alien sat on Valti’s shoulder, scratching its own green fur and giggling. Its eyes never left the spaceman.
“Well—” After the last couple of hours, Langley felt exhausted. There was no more fight in him, he relaxed and let the weariness run through nerve and muscle. But his head seemed abnormally clear. “Well, Mr. Valti, what was all this foofaraw about?”
The trader blew smoke and sat back, crossing his stumpy legs. “Events are beginning to move with uncomfortable rapidity,” he said in a quiet tone. “I’m glad this chance came to see you.”
“Those cops seemed anxious that I shouldn’t.”
“Of course.” The deep-sunken little eyes twinkled. “But it will take them some time to line up those collections of reflexes they call brains and decide to attack me; by then, you will be home, for I shall not detain you long. The good Chanthavar, now, would not stall, but he is fortunately-engaged elsewhere.”
“Yes... trying to find my friends.” Langley felt a dull grief in him. “Do you know they were taken?”
“I do.” There was sympathy in the tone. “I have my own agents in the Solar forces, and know more or less all which happened tonight.”
“Then—where are they? How are they?”
Bleakness twisted the half-hidden mouth. “I am very much afraid for them. They are probably in the power of Lord Brannoch. They may be released, I don’t know, but—” Valti sighed. “I’ve no spies in his organization, nor he in mine... I hope; both of them are too small, too uncorrupted, too well set up—unlike Sol’s. We must be very much in the dark with regard to each other.”
“Are you sure, then, that it was he who—”
“Who else? Chanthavar had no need that I can see to stage such an affair, he could order all of you arrested any time he chose. None of the other foreign states are in this at all, they are too weak. Brannoch is known to head Centaurian military intelligence at Sol, though so far he has been clever enough to leave no evidence which would be grounds for his expulsion. No, the only powers which count in this part of the galaxy are Sol, Centauri, and the Society.”
“And why,” asked Langley slowly, “would Brannoch take them?”
“Isn’t it obvious? The alien, Saris Hronna I think he’s called. They may know where to find him.
“You don’t realize what a fever he has thrown all of us into. You have been watched every minute by agents of all three powers. I toyed with the idea of having you snatched myself, but the Society is too peaceful to be very good at that sort of thing, and Brannoch beat us to it. The moment I learned what had happened, I sent a hundred men out to try to locate you. Fortunately, one group succeeded.”
“They almost didn’t,” said Langley. “They had to take me away from two others—Centaurians, I suppose.”
“Of course. Well... I don’t think Brannoch will try to assault this stronghold, especially since he will have hopes of getting the information from your friends. Do you think he will?”
“Depends.” Langley narrowed his eyes and took a long drag of smoke. “I doubt it, though. They never got very intimate with Saris. I did—we used to talk for hours -though I still can’t claim to know just what makes him tick.”
“Ah, so.” Valti took a noisy sip of wine. There was no expression in the heavy face. “Do you know why he is so important?”
“I think so. Military value of his ability to damp out or control electronic currents and so forth. But I’m surprised you haven’t got a machine to do the same thing.”
“Science died long ago,” said Valti. “I, who have seen worlds where they are still progressing, though behind us as yet, know the difference between a living science and a dead one. The spirit of open-minded inquiry became extinct in known human civilizations quite a while back: the rigidity of social forms, together with the fact that research no longer discovered anything not predicted by theory, caused that. It was, after all, reasonable to assume that the variety of natural laws was finite, that a limit had been reached. Nowadays, the very desire to inquire further is lacking. Sol is stagnant, the other systems barbaric under their façade of machine technology, the Society too loosely organized to support a scientific community. A dead end, yes, yes, so it goes.”
Langley tried to concentrate on abstractions, to escape the new fear which gnawed in his breast. “And so now something turns up which is not accounted for by standard theory. And everybody wants to study it and learn about it and duplicate it on a grand scale for military purposes. Yeah. I get the idea.”
Valti looked at him under drooping lids. “There are, of course, ways to make a man talk,” he said. “Not torture -nothing so crude—but drugs which unlock the tongue. Chanthavar has hesitated to use them on you, because if you do not, after all, have an idea where Saris is, the rather unpleasant process could easily set up a subconscious bloc which would forbid you to think further about the problem. However, he may now be desperate enough to do so. He will surely do it the moment he suspects you have deduced something. Have you?”
“Why should I tell you?”
Valti looked patient. “Because only the Society can be trusted with a decisive weapon.”
“Only one party can,” said Langley dryly, “but which party depends on who you’re talking to. I’ve heard that song before.”
“Consider,” said Valti. His voice remained dispassionate. “Sol is a petrified civilization, interested only in maintaining the status quo. The Centaurians brag a great deal about frontier vigor, but they are every bit as dead between the ears; if they won, there would be an orgy of destruction followed by a pattern much the same, nothing new except a change of masters. If either system suspects that the other has gotten Saris, it will attack at once, setting off the most destructive war in a history which has already seen destruction on a scale you cannot imagine. The other, smaller, states are no better, even if they were in a position to use the weapon effectively.”