"No, I don't," admitted Harper. "I'm not that daft."
"Then, what do you expect of us?"
"First, I wanted official confirmation of my suspicion that a ship really has been sent somewhere beyond the Moon. That is why I came all the way here, and avoided being picked up by local police who know too little and bark too much. Somehow or other I had to learn about that ship."
"Secondly?"
"I now expect action, within reasonable limits. If it produces the proof you require, I expect further action on a national scale."
"It is far easier to talk about getting proof than to go out and dig it up. If it exists, why didn't you find it yourself and bring it with you? Surely your own common sense should tell you that the wilder a story, the more proof it requires to make convincing?"
"I know," said Harper. And I reckon I could have got enough to make you leap out of your shirt if only I'd possessed an item hidden in your top-secret files."
"To what are you referring?"
"The photographs of those three spacemen." He eyed King and his confreres with the sorrowful reproof of one surprised by their inability to perceive the obvious. "We have a witness who got a good, close look at two of those three, and made careful note of them. Show him your pictures. If he says they're the boys, that settles it. The balloon goes up next minute."
Jameson waggled his eyebrows and put in, "Yes, that is the logical move. It should decide the matter one way or the other. We can do better than that, too. We can remove any element of doubt."
"How?" inquired King.
"A dozen, twenty, or forty people may have noticed that Thunderbug and the three men with it. I can put agents on the job of tracing that back-track and finding the witnesses. If all of them say the same thing, namely, that those three men are your missing pilots—" He let it die out, thereby making it sound highly sinister.
"To enable you to do that," King pointed out, "we would have to get those photographs released from secret files and provide you with a large number of copies."
"Of course."
"But that means the general dissemination of reserved data."
Harper emitted a loud groan, rubbed his jaw, and recited the — names of the twelve apostles.
Staring at him distastefully, King said, "I'll see what the appropriate department decides."
"While you're at it," Harper suggested, "you can persuade some other appropriate department to seize the body of Jocelyn Whittingham, and subject it to an expert autopsy. I don't know whether that will tell us anything, but it might. The bet is worth taking, anyway."
"I'll see what they decide," repeated King. He went out with visible unwillingness. The remaining three fidgeted.
7. Confirmation
King was gone a long time. Eventually, he returned with a heavily built, military-looking man named Benfield. The latter grasped three large photographs which he exhibited to Harper as he spoke.
"Know these fellows?" -
"No."
"Sure of that?"
"I'm positive. They're complete strangers to me."
"Humph! Can you say that they answer to the descriptions of the trio you have in mind?"
"Fairly well. I could be more definite if those pics were in color. The uniforms convey nothing in black and white."
"They are dark green uniforms with silver buttons, gray shirts, green ties."
"Apart from the silver buttons, the details match up."
"All right. We'll make an immediate check. Who's this witness?"
Harper told him about the old man at the filling station, while Benfield made note of it on a scratch-pad.
Benfield said to Jameson, "We'll try this one first. If the check proves confirmatory, we'll run off enough clear copies to enable your men to follow the back trail. Meanwhile, we'll radio a set to your office out there. Won't take them long to determine whether or not this is a gag, will it?"
"A couple of hours," said Jameson.
"A couple of minutes would be better," observed Harper. "And how about taking the heat off me while you're at it?"
"We'll think about that when the report comes in. If it makes hay of your story, we'd better have you examined by a mental specialist."
"That would be fun," Harper assured. "He'd play all the kings and I'd play all the aces. In the end you'd have to put him away."
Benfield let it pass. He was taking this tale of telepathic power, and all the rest of the story, with a sizable dose of salt. The sole feature that impressed him was that, somehow or other, a wanted felon had succeeded in talking his way into the higher echelons of Washington. That suggested either a modicum of incredible truth or a superb gift of gab. But he was just; he was willing to pursue the matter for the sake of finding any factual grain that might be lying around.
"Put him somewhere safe," Benfield ordered Jameson, "and hold him until we get our reply."
Harper protested, "D'you think I'm going to run off, after coming all the way here?"
"No, I don't think so — because you're not going to be given the chance." He threw Jameson a look of warning and departed, with the photographs in his hand.
"We'll phone you at your H.Q. immediately we hear," promised King. He stared Harper out of face, in an effort to reassert authority, and continued to stare at the other's broad back as he went out. But his thoughts skittered wildly around and were not free from fear.
Sitting boredly in Jameson's office, Harper said, "Thanks for the lunch. Before long, you can buy me dinner as well." He glanced at his wristwatch. "It's three-forty. Why don't they report direct to you? They're your men, aren't they?"
"They have their orders."
"Yes, I know. Orders from somebody else. At this moment you're pondering the fact that this business isn't properly within your bailiwick. The F.B.I.' has been called upon to hunt most everything but prodigal space-pilots; that's how you look at it. And you can't decide whether anything is likely to come of it."
"We'll know in due course."
"They're taking long enough to find out." Harper brooded silently for a couple of minutes, then showed alarm. "What if that fellow is dead and no longer able to identify anything?"
"Any particular reason why he might be?" inquired Jameson, surveying him keenly.
"Yes. Those three may have figured things out for themselves and returned to shut his mouth."
"Why should they do that? Miss Whittingham's evidence cleared them of suspicion. To involve themselves afresh would be a singularly stupid move; it would redirect attention their way after they've succeeded in averting it."
"You're examining it from the wrong angle," declared Harper, "and you err on two counts."
"Name them."
"For one, you're assuming that, if guilty, they will behave like any other Earthborn thugs who've killed a cop. But why should they? The crime doesn't mean the same to them. For all I know to the contrary, they thought as little of it as does some thickheaded farmer who sees a strange bird in the woods, points his gun and shoots it. Maybe it was the rarest bird in the world, now made extinct. Does he give a damn?"
"That's pretty good reason why they should not come back to shut up the witness," Jameson pointed out. "They don't care enough to bother."
"It's nothing of the sort. It's an argument against your supposition that Alderson's death should be their primary concern. I reckon they've a worry far bigger."