“What do you mean by entering my private quarters and burglaring—”
“You’re in very bad trouble,” I said in as gloomy a voice as I could muster.
Ferraro’s tanned face went a dirty gray at my words. I pressed the advantage.
“I am arresting you for conspiracy, extortion, theft, and whatever other charges develop after a careful review of these documents. Seize him.” This last order was directed at the robot who was well briefed in its role. It rumbled forward and locked its hand around Ferraro’s wrist, handcuff style. He barely noticed.
“I can explain,” he said desperately. “Everything can be explained. There is no need to make such charges. I don’t know what papers you have there, so I wouldn’t attempt to say they are all forgeries. I have many enemies you know. If the League knew the difficulties faced on a backward planet like this…”
“That will be entirely enough,” I snapped, cutting him off with a wave of my hand. “All those questions will be answered by a court at the proper time. There is only one question I want an answer to now. Why are you building that battleship?”
The man was a great actor. His eyes opened wide, his jawdropped,he sank back into the chair as if he had been tapped lightly with a hammer. When he managed to speak the words were completely unnecessary; he had already registeredevery evidenceof injured innocence.
“What battleship?” he gasped.
“The Warlord class battleship that is being built at the Cenerentola Spaceyards.Disguised behind these blueprints.”I threw them across the desk to him, and pointed to the one corner. “Those are your initials there, authorizing construction.”
Ferraro still had the baffled act going as he fumbled with the papers, examined the initials and such. I gave him plenty of time. He finally put them down, shaking his head.
“I know nothing about any battleship. These are the plans for a new cargo liner. Those are my initials, I recall putting them there.”
I phrased my question carefully, as I had him right where I wanted him now. “You deny any knowledge of the Warlord battleship that is being built from these modified plans.”
“These are the plans for an ordinary passenger-freighter, thatis all I know.”
His words had the simple innocence of a young child’s. Was he evercaught.I sat back with a relaxed sigh and lit a cigar.
“Wouldn’t you be interested in knowing something about that robotwhois holding you,” I said. He looked down, as if aware for the first time that the robot had been holding him by the wrist during the interview. “That is no ordinary robot. It has a number of interesting devices built into its fingertips.Thermocouples, galvanometers, things like that.While you talked it registered your skin temperature, blood pressure, amount of perspiration and such. In other words it is an efficient and fast working lie detector. We will now hear all about your lies.”
Ferraro pulled away from the robot’s hand as if it had been a poisonous snake. I blew a relaxed smoke ring. “Report,” I said to the robot. “Has this man told any lies?”
“Many.“ therobot said. “Exactly seventy-four per cent of all statements he made were false.”
“Very good,” I nodded, throwing the last lock on my trap. “That means he knows all about this battleship.”
“The subject has no knowledge of the battleship,” the robot said coldly. “All of his statements concerning the construction of this ship were true.”
Now it was my turn for the gaping and eye-popping act while Ferraro pulled himself together. He had no idea I wasn’t interested in his other hanky-panky, but could tell I had had a low blow. It took an effort, but I managed to get my mind back into gear and consider the evidence.
If President Ferraro didn’t know about the battleship, he must have been taken in by the cover-up job. But if he wasn’t responsible—who was?Some militaristic clique that meant to overthrow him and take power?I didn’t know enough about the planet, so I enlisted Ferraro on my side.
This was easy—even without the threat of exposure of the documents I had found in his files. Using their disclosure as a prod I could have made him jump through hoops. It wasn’t necessary. As soon as I showed him the different blueprints and explained the possibilities he understood. If anything, he was more eager than I was to find out who was using his administration as a cat’s-paw. By silent agreement the documents were forgotten.
We agreed that the next logical step would be the Cenerentola Spaceyards. He had some idea of sniffing around quietly first, trying to get a line to his political opponents. I gave him to understand that theLeague,and the League Navy in particular, wanted to stop the construction of the battleship. After that he could play his politics. With this point understood he called his car and squadron of guards and we made a parade to the shipyards. It was a four-hour drive and we made plans on the way down.
The spaceyard manager was named Rocca, and he was happily asleep when we arrived.But not for long.The parade of uniforms and guns in the middle of the night had him frightened into a state where he could hardly walk. I imagine he was as full of petty larceny as Ferraro. No innocent man could have looked so terror stricken. Taking advantage of the situation, I latched my motorized lie detector onto him and began snapping the questions.
Even before I had all the answers I began to get the drift of things. They were a little frightening, too. The manager of the spaceyard that was building the ship had no idea of its true nature.
Anyone with less self-esteem thanmyself—or who had led a more honest early life—might have doubted his own reasoning at that moment. I didn’t. The ship on the ways still resembled a warship to six places. And knowing human nature the way I do, that was too much of a coincidence to expect. Occam’s razor always points the way. If there are two choices to take, take the simpler. In this case I chose the natural acquisitive instinct of man as opposed to blind chance and accident. Nevertheless I put the theory to the test.
Looking over the original blueprints again, the big superstructure hit my eye. In order to turn the ship into a warship that would have to be one of the first things to go.
“Rocca!”I barked, in what I hoped was authentic old space-dog manner. “Look at these plans, at this space-going front porch here. Is it still being built onto the ship?”
He shook his head at once and said, “No, the plans were changed. We had to fit in some kind of new meteor-repelling gear for operating in the planetary debris belt.”
I flipped through my case and drew out a plan. “Does your new gear look anything like this?” I asked, throwing it across the table to him.
He rubbed his jaw while he looked at it. “Well,” he said hesitatingly, “I don’t want to say for certain. After all, these details aren’t in my department. I’m just responsible for final assembly, not unit work. But this surely looks like the thing they installed.Big thing.Lots of power leads—”
It was a battleship all right, no doubt of that now, I was mentally reaching around to pat myself on the back when the meaning of his words sank in.
“Installed!”I shouted. “Did you say installed?”
Rocca collapsed away from my roar and gnawed his nails. “Yes—“ hesaid, “not too long ago. I remember there was some trouble ...”
“And what else?” I interrupted him. Cold moisture was beginning to collect along my spine now. “The drives, controls—are they in, too?”
“Why, yes,” he said. “How did you know? The normal scheduling was changed around, causing a great deal of unnecessary trouble.”
The cold sweat was now a running river of fear. I was beginning to have the feeling that I had been missing the boat all along the line. The original estimated date of completion was nearly a year away. But there was no real reason why that couldn’t be changed, too.