Locked alone in his office, Ryeland went to work. A surging elation had swept away all his fatigue, and even the fear that Horrocks had brought. That single substitution of momentum for the unknown quantity in his own cosmological equations had given him the theory. A simple transformation described the field conditions required for the creation of new mass and the equivalent momentum. The problems of material and design were more troublesome, but by Sunday noon he had set up the complete specifications for a reactionless propulsion system with an effective thrust of half a million tons.
Suddenly hungry and groggy, he stumbled across the hushed dimness of the tunnel to wash his face in the laboratory that had not been scrubbed since Horrocks had sprayed the basin with blood. He ate the last dry beef algae sandwich, and the last bitter drops of cold yeast coffee and went to sleep in his chair, wondering dully how to go about reaching Planner Creery without trusting anybody else.
He woke early Monday morning with a stiff neck and the fading recollection of a nightmare in which he had been running with Horrocks from the Plan Police. He hid the space bag behind a filing cabinet, stuffed the blood-sprayed teletapes into the incinerator, and packed his specifications and the stereos in his briefcase.
Two hours before the time for Angela and Oporto to come, he hurried away, into the maze of gray-walled tunnels that housed all the linked computers of the Planning Machine and the working quarters of the Planner's staff.
Trust nobody . . .
The tunnels were dim and empty. Cool air roared here and there from the ducts. The Monday morning white-collar rush hadn't begun, but now and then he met a maintenance man in gray overalls. It was strange to think of the solid miles of Earth above, when he had the key to the stars in his hands.
Though he had never been to the Planner's office, he knew the way. Outside the automatic elevator, a guard looked at him sharply and waved him on past the warning sign: RESTRICTED! RISKS REQUIRE ESCORT BEYOND THIS POINT.
He was not a Risk. He wore no security collar.
Outside the Planner's suite, another guard studied his badge and tapped the number into a teletype. Waiting for the Machine to answer, Ryeland held his breath. But the guard looked up from the clattering machine, with a reluctant respect easing his official frown.
"Go in, sir."
A teletype girl in the waiting room wanted to know his business. He informed her that he had a confidential report for Planner Creery. She wanted to know the nature of it. When he insisted that it was too confidential for any ears except the Planner's, she made an appointment for him to see an executive associate.
The executive associate was a huge, blue-faced frog of a man. A polished wood slab on his desk was impressively lettered: General Rudolph Fleemer. His bulging eyes were sharp, with a quick curiosity about Ryeland's confidential report.
Unfortunately, Planner Creery had not returned from a weekend cruise with his family. He would doubtless be in his office later in the week, but even then pressure of accumulated work would be extreme. Although Planner Creery was well aware that Ryeland's distinguished achievements in helical field engineering had been useful to the Plan, the extent of his duties forced him to delegate most responsibilities to subordinates. General Fleemer implied that people who refused to trust the Planner's associates were seldom able to see the Planner himself.
Reluctantly, when he saw that he could do no better, Ryeland left a message stating that his business involved Ron Donderevo and a new space propulsion system. General Fleemer promised sullenly to signal him later in the week, if Planner Creery chose to see him.
Noon had passed before Ryeland got back to the office. If Oporto and the teletype girl had come to work, he saw no sign of them. The blood-spattered space bag was still in place behind the filing cabinet, and a long yellow strip of teletape from the untended machine was piling up on the floor. He locked the office door and looked around for a place to hide his specifications for the jetless drive.
There was no space behind his reference books. The gap between the filing cabinet and the wall was already dangerously conspicuous. His desk had no drawers. In fact, he reflected, there was no room in the Plan for personal secrets or private documents. He found no hiding place—none better than his memory.
He was dropping the specifications into the incinerator slot, when he heard the loud impatient knocking on his door . . .
Again in the dream he was an unwilling guest in the deeply buried recreation center. The suites on both sides of him were occupied by disloyal surgeons who had been trapped in some plot against the Plan. The therapy room down the tunnel held the unplanned thing that they had assembled from scraps of waste tissue, which raved insanely in its straps and bandages while it was alive.
Then the surgeons were gone. There was only Horrocks, in the next suite, and Oporto in the one across the corridor. He was seldom aware even of them, because the stewards kept him most of the time in the therapy room where the junk man had died.
He was strapped to the couch, with the iron collar on his neck and electrodes clamped to his shivering flesh. Merciless light blazed down on his face. The white-smocked fat therapist stood over him, wheezing questions in a soft apologetic voice.
What was the message that Horrocks had brought him from Ron Donderevo? Where were fusorians and pyropods and spacelings? What was the way to build a jetless drive?
At first he could have answered, but a burning shock from the collar paralyzed his voice whenever he tried to speak. Even when he was utterly broken, abjectly willing to trust anybody with what he knew, they wouldn't let him say a word. They gave him no chance to understand, left him no will even to dream of escape.
Donderevo? Reefs of space? Jetless drive?
The soft insistent voice and the agony went on, until all his past was lost in a fog of pain and insane contradiction. Even when the collar didn't shock him, he didn't try to speak. He didn't even try to think of the answer. His mind had been erased.
20
Ryeland awoke, blinking against a glare of light and found a man in white bending over him.
It took him a long time to understand that it was not Dr. Thrale, but Donderevo; longer still to realize that the crystal glint and glowing color of the cave was right and natural, so sure he had been that he would find himself in the aseptic white of the therapy room. He was in the operating cradle. The straps on his body had been loosened. Things began to click into place. There was Donderevo, yes, and the girl with her back to him undoubtedly was Donna Creery, and the other figure-
He sat up involuntarily, eyes wide. For the third figure in the room was not Quiveras. It was a Technicorps officer, watching him with the calculation of a poised cobra.
With a sudden spasm of desperate hope and fear Ryeland's hands came up to his neck.
They touched the familiar hard curve of the collar. He still wore it. He was still a Risk, his life hanging on the whim of every guard with a radar pistol or on the fiipover of a relay in the distant synapses of the Machine.
"What—" For a moment his voice was paralyzed, still half in the dream, remembering the violence of the shocks that had conditioned him not to speak the truths he knew. But he fought to get words out: "What went wrong?"
Donderevo said compassionately, "We were too late. Before we had more than started the spacelings let us know the Plan cruiser was nearby. It breached the bubble around this reeflet. We sewed you up, and now we are all back in the Plan of Man." Unconsciously his hand touched the scar on his own throat. "I'm sorry about your collar, Ryeland," he said, "but if I'm not mistaken it will be no long time before I'm once more wearing one of my own."