Welstead turned slowly back to Clay. "Discovered it? But-that's impossible."
Clay said, "Nothing's impossible. You yourself gave me the hint when you told me human reason was useless because the space-drive worked out of a different environment So we concentrated not on the drive itself but on the environment. The first results came at us in terms of twelve directions- hence the dodecahedron. just a hunch, an experiment and it worked."
Welstead sighed. "I'm licked. I give in. Clay, the headache is yours. You've made it yours. What do you want to do? Go back to Haven?"
Clay smiled, almost with affection. "We're this far. I'd like to see Earth. For a month, incognito. Then we'll come back to Haven and make a report to the world. And then there's three hundred million of us, waiting for the bell in round one."
Roll of the Dice
The advertisement appeared on a telescreen commercial, and a few days later at the side of the news-fax. The copy was green on a black background, a modest rectangle among the oranges, reds, yellows. The punch was carried in the message:
Jaded? Bored?
Want ADVENTURE?
Try the Chateau d'lf.
The Oxonian Terrace was a pleasant area of quiet in the heart of the city-a red-flagged rectangle dotted with beach umbrellas, tables, lazy people. A bank of magnolia trees screened off the street and filtered out most of the street noise; the leakage, a soft sound like surf, underlay the conversation and the irregular thud-thud-thud from the Oxonian handball courts.
Roland Mario sat in complete relaxation, half-slumped, head back, feet propped on the spun-air and glass table-in the same posture as his four companions. Watching them under half-closed lids, Mario pondered the ancient mystery of human personality. How could men be identical and yet each completely unique?
To his left sat Breaugh, a calculator repairman. He had a long bony nose, round eyes, heavy black eyebrows, a man deft with his fingers, methodical and patient. He had a Welsh name, and he looked the pure ancient Welsh type, the small dark men that had preceded Caesar, preceded the Celts.
Next to him sat Janniver. North Europe, Africa, the Orient, had combined to shape his brain and body. An accountant by trade, he was a tall spare man with short yellow hair. He had a long face with features that first had been carved, then kneaded back, blunted. He was cautious, thoughtful, a tough opponent on the handball court.
Zaer was the quick one, the youngest of the group. Fair-skinned with red cheeks, dark curly hair, eyes gay as valentines, he talked the most, laughed the most, occasionally lost his temper.
Beside him sat Ditmar, a sardonic man with keen narrow eyes, a high forehead, and a dark bronze skin from Polynesia, the Sudan, or India, or South America. He played no handball, consumed fewer highballs than the others, because of a liver disorder. He occupied a well-paying executive position with one of the television networks.
And Mario himself, how did they see him? He considered. Probably a different picture in each of their minds, although there were few pretensions or striking features to his exterior. He had nondescript pleasant features, hair and eyes without distinction, skin the average golden-brown. Medium height, medium weight, quiet-spoken, quietly dressed. He knew he was well-liked, so far as the word had meaning among the five; they had been thrown together not so much by congeniality as by the handball court and a common bachelorhood.
Mario became aware of the silence. He finished his highball. "Anyone go another round?" Breaugh made a gesture of assent. "I've got enough," said Janniver.
Zaer tilted the glass down his throat, set it down with a thud. "At the age of four I promised my father never to turn down a drink."
Ditmar hesitated, then said, "Might as well spend my money on liquor as anything else."
"That's all money is good for," said Breaugh. 'To buy a little fun into your life."
"A lot of money buys a lot of fun," said Ditmar morosely. 'Try and get the money."
Zaer gestured, a wide, fanciful sweep of the arm. "Be an artist, an inventor, create something, build something. There's no future working for wages."
"Look at this new crop of schoolboy wonders," said Breaugh sourly. "Where in the name of get-out do they come from? Spontaneous generation by the action of sunlight on slime? ... All of a sudden, nothing but unsung geniuses, everywhere you look. De Satz, Coley-atomicians. Honn, Versovitch, Lekky, Brule, Richards-administrators. Gandelip, New, Cardosa-financiers. Dozens of them, none over twenty-three, twenty-four. All of 'Ern come up like meteors."
"Don't forget Pete Zaer," said Zaer. "He's another one, but he hasn't meteored yet. Give him another year."
"Well," muttered Ditmar, "maybe it's a good thing. Somebody's got to do our thinking for us. We're fed, we're clothed, we're educated, we work at soft jobs, and good liquor's cheap. That's all life means for ninety-nine out of a hundred."
"If they'd only take the hangover out of the liquor," sighed Zaer.
"Liquor's a release from living," said Janniver somberly. "Drunkenness is about the only adventure left Drunkenness and death."
"Yes," said Breaugh. "You can always show contempt for life by dying."
Zaer laughed. "Whiskey or cyanide. Make mine whisky."
Fresh highballs appeared. They shook dice for the tag. Mario lost, signed the check.
After a moment Breaugh said, "It's true though. Drunkenness and death. The unpredictables. The only two places left to go-unless you can afford twenty million dollars for a planetary rocket And even then there's only dead rock after you get there."
Ditmar said, "You overlooked a third possibility."
"What's that?"
"The Chateau d'lf."
All sat quiet; then all five shifted in their chairs, settling back or straightening themselves.
"Just what is the Chateau d'lf?" asked Mario.
"Where is it?" asked Zaer. "The advertisement said Try the Chateau d'lf,' but it said nothing about how or where."
Janniver grunted. "Probably a new nightclub."
Mario shook his head doubtfully. "The advertisement gave a different impression."
"It's not a night club," said Ditmar. All eyes swung to him. "No, I don't know what it is. I know where it is, but only because there's been rumors a couple months now."
"What kind of rumors?"
"Oh-nothing definite. Just hints. To the effect that if you want adventure, if you've got money to pay for it, if you're willing to take a chance, if you have no responsibilities you can't abandon-"
"If-if-if," said Breaugh with a grin. "The Chateau d'lf."
Ditmar nodded. "That's it exactly."
"Is it dangerous?" asked Zaer. "If all they do is string a tight-wire across a snake-pit, turn a tiger loose at you, and you can either walk tight-rope or fight tiger, I'd rather sit here and drink high-balls and figure how to beat Janniver in the tournament"
Ditmar shrugged. "I don't know."
Breaugh frowned. "It could be a dope-den, a new kind of bordello."
"There no such thing," said Zaer. "It's a haunted house with real ghosts."
"If we're going to include fantasy," said Ditmar, "a time machine."
"If," said Breaugh.
There was a short ruminative silence.
"It's rather peculiar," said Mario, "Ditmar says there've been rumors a couple months now. And last week an advertisement."
"What's peculiar about it?" asked Janniver. "That's the sequence in almost any new enterprise."