Chambers shook his head. “I had hoped so, but now I am afraid … afraid—”
“But you don’t realize what a Martian would mean to us!” Monk blurted.
“Yes, I do,” declared Chambers. “He could read the manuscripts. Much more easily, much more accurately than they can be translated. That was why I sent for you. That, in fact, was how I knew he was a Martian in the first place. He read some of the photostatic copies of the manuscripts you sent me.”
Monk straightened in his chair. “He read them! You mean you could talk with him!”
Chambers grinned. “Not exactly talk with him, Monk. That is, he didn’t make sounds like you and I do.”
The chairman of the Solar Control Board leaned across the desk.
“Look at me,” he commanded. “Look closely. Can you see anything wrong?”
Monk stammered. “Why, no. Nothing wrong. Those glasses, but a lot of people wear them.”
“I know,” said Chambers. “A lot of people wear them for effect. Because they think it’s smart. But I don’t. I wear mine to hide my eyes.”
“Your eyes!” whispered Monk. “You mean there’s something—”
“I’m blind,” said Chambers. “Very few people know it. I’ve kept it a careful secret. I haven’t wanted the world’s pity. I don’t want the knowledge I can’t see hampering my work. People wouldn’t trust me.”
Monk started to speak, but his words dribbled into silence.
“Don’t feel sorry for me,” snapped Chambers. “That’s the very thing I’ve been afraid of. That’s why no one knows. I wouldn’t have told you except I had to tell to explain about Hannibal.”
“Hannibal?”
“Hannibal,” said Chambers, “is the Martian. People thought he was my pet. Something I carried around with me because of vanity. Because I wanted something different. Something to catch the headlines. But he was more than a pet. He was a Seeing-eye dog. He was my eyes. With Hannibal around I could see. Better than I could see with my own eyes. Much better.”
Monk started forward, then settled back. “You mean Hannibal was telepathic?”
Chambers nodded. “Naturally telepathic. Perhaps it was the way the Martians talked. The only way they could talk. He telepathed perfect visual images of everything he saw and in my mind I could see as clearly, as perfectly as if I had seen with my own eyes. Better even, for Hannibal had powers of sight a human does not have.”
Monk tapped his fingers on the chair arm, staring out of the window at the pines that marched along the hill.
“Hannibal was found out in the Asteroids, wasn’t he?” Monk asked suddenly.
“He was,” said Chambers. “Until a few days ago I didn’t know what he was. No one knew what he was. He was just a thing that saw for me. I tried to talk with him and couldn’t. There seemed no way in which to establish a communication of ideas. Almost as if he didn’t know there were such things as ideas. He read the newspapers for me. That is, he looked at the page, and in my mind I saw the page and read it. But I was the one that had to do the reading. All Hannibal did was telepath the picture of the paper to me and my mind would do the work. But when I picked up the manuscript photostats it was Hannibal who read. To me they meant nothing—just funny marks. But Hannibal knew. He read them to me. He made me see the things they said. I knew then he was a Martian. No one else but a Martian, or Dr. Monk, could read that stuff.”
He matched his fingers carefully. “I’ve wondered how, since he was a Martian, he got into the Belt. How he could have managed to survive. When we first found him there was no reason to suspect he was a Martian. After all, we didn’t know what a Martian was. They left no description of themselves. No paintings, no sculptures.”
“The Martians,” said Monk, “didn’t run to art. They were practical, deadly serious, a race without emotion.”
He drummed his fingers along the chair arm again. “There’s just one thing. Hannibal was your eyes. You needed him. In such a case I can’t imagine why you would have parted with him.”
“I needed to see,” said Chambers, “in a place I couldn’t go.”
“You … you. What was that?”
“Exactly what I said. There was a place I had to see. A place I had to know about. For various reasons it was closed to me. I could not, dare not, go there. So I sent Hannibal. I sent my eyes there for me.”
“And you saw?”
“I did.”
“You mean you could send him far away—”
“I sent him to the Asteroids,” said Chambers. “To be precise, to Sanctuary. Millions of miles. And I saw what he saw. Still see what he sees, in fact. I can’t see you because I’m blind. But I see what’s happening on Sanctuary this very moment. Distance has no relation to telepathy. Even the first human experiments in it demonstrated that.”
The phone on Chambers’ desk buzzed softly. He groped for the receiver, finally found it, lifted it. “Hello,” he said.
“This is Moses Allen,” said the voice on the other end. “Reports are just starting to come in. My men are rounding up the Asteroid jewels. Got bushels of them so far. Putting them under locks you’d have to use atomics to get open.”
Worry edged Chambers’ voice. “You made sure there was no slip. No way anyone could get wind of what we’re doing and hide out some of them.”
Allen chuckled. “I got thousands of men on the job. All of them hit at the same minute. First we checked records of all sales. To be sure we knew just who had them and how many. We haven’t got a few of them yet, but we know who’s got them. Some of the owners are a little stubborn, but we’ll sweat it out of them. We know they’ve got them cached away somewhere.”
He laughed. “One funny thing, chief. Old Lady Templefinger—the society dame, you know—had a rope of them, some of the finest in the world. We can’t find them. She claims they disappeared. Into thin air, just like that. One night at a concert. But we—”
“Wait a second,” snapped Chambers. “A concert, you said?”
“Sure, a concert. Recital, I guess, is a better name for it. Some long-haired violinist.”
“Allen,” rapped Chambers, “check up on that recital. Find out who was there. Drag them in. Hold them on some technical charge. Anything at all, just so you hold them. Treat them just as if they were people who had been cured by Sanctuary. Grab on to them and don’t let them go.”
“Cripes, chief,” protested the Secret Service man, “we might run into a barrel of trouble. The old lady would’ve had some big shots—”
“Don’t argue,” shouted Chambers. “Get going. Pick them up. And anyone else who was around when any other jewels evaporated. Check up on all strange jewel disappearances. No matter how far back. Don’t quit until you’re sure in every case. And hang onto everybody. Everyone who’s ever had anything to do with Sanctuary.”
“O.K.,” agreed Allen. “I don’t know what you’re aiming at, but we’ll do—”
“Another thing,” said Chambers. “How about the whispering campaign?”
“We’ve got it started,” Allen said. “And it’s a lulu, chief. I got busy-bodies tearing around all over the Solar System. Spreading the word. Nothing definite. Just whispers. Something wrong with Sanctuary. Can’t trust them. Can’t tell what happens to you when you go there. Why, I heard about a guy just the other day—”
“That’s the idea,” approved Chambers. “We simply can’t tell the real story, but we have to do something to stop people from going there. Frighten them a bit, make them wonder.”
“Come morning,” said Allen, “and the whole System will be full of stories. Some of them probably even better than those we started with. Sanctuary will starve to death waiting for business after we get through with them.”