Barnes nodded. "One of our ships brought it back— oh, say, twenty years ago. Found it on a planet that at one time had been occupied by an intelligent race. Probably a planet that we could use, but it would have to be terraformed and the terraforming on this particular planet would be a nasty job that might take a thousand years or more on an all-out effort."
"This math?" asked Lewis. "Anything we could use?"
"Mathematicians tried to figure it out," said Barnes.
"Nothing came of it. It was recognizable as math, all
right, but it was so far from our concept of math that no
one could manage to get his teeth into it. The team that
visited the planet found a lot of other artifacts, but the rest of them didn't seem to mean too much. Interesting, of course, to an anthropologist or to a culturist, but with no immediate practical value. The math, however, was something else again. It was in a—well, I suppose you could call it a book and the book seemed to be intact. It's not often you find any intact, spelled out body of knowledge on an abandoned planet. There was quite a bit of excitement when it was brought home."
"And no one had cracked it," said Lane, "except possibly this Mona Campbell."
"I'm almost sure she did," said Hilton. "She is a rather exceptional person and.."
"You don't require periodic reports of work in progress?" asked Lane.
"Oh, yes, certainly. But we don't look over people's shoulders. You know what that can do."
"Yes," said Barnes. "They have to have some freedom. They have to be allowed to feel that a certain line of research belongs, personally, to them during its development."
B.J. said, "All of you, of course, realize how important this could be. With all respect to Howard, the Space-search program is a long-range project. It's something to look forward to three or four hundred years from now. But the time program we need as soon as we can get it. A breakthrough in the time program would assure us of the living space we will need, perhaps, in another century. Maybe before that. Once we begin revivals, well face a not too distant day when we'll need more space than this present earth affords. And the day we begin revivals may not be too distant. The Immortality boys are coming along quite nicely if I understand what Anson tells me rightly."
"That is right, B.J.," said Anson Graves. "We feel we are getting close. I'd say ten years at most."
"In ten years," said B.J., "we'll have immortality…"
"A lot could go wrong," warned Graves.
"We'll trust there won't," B.J. said. "In ten years we'll
have immortality. The matter converters have solved the problem of materials and food. The housing program is up to schedule. All that we can look forward to as any massive problem is the matter of space. To get that space and get it quickly, we need time travel. Time is critical."
"Perhaps," suggested Lane, "we're looking for the impossible. Time may be something that can't be cracked. There may be nothing there."
"I can't agree with you," said Hilton. "I think Miss Campbell cracked it."
"And ran away," said Lane.
"It all boils down to one thing," said B.J. "Mona Campbell must be found."
He looked hard at Marcus Appleton. "You understand," he said. "Mona Campbell must be found!"
"I agree," said Appleton. "I would like to request, however, all the assistance that anyone can give me. In time, of course, we'll find her, but we might find her sooner if…"
"I don't quite understand," said Lane. "The matter of security is something that rests entirely in your hands." "As a working proposition," said Appleton, "as an everyday affair, that is entirely true. But the treasury department also has its agents…"
"But for a different sort of work," exploded Lane. "Not for routine…"
"I agree with you," said Appleton, "although it is conceivable that they could be of help. There is one other department that I am thinking of."
He switched about in his chair and looked straight at Frost.
"Dan," he said, "you've developed a rather fine extracurricular intelligence that might be a lot of help. You have all sorts of tipsters and undercover boys and…" "What is this?" B.J. demanded.
"Oh, I forgot," said Appleton. "You may not know about it. It's entirely a departmental affair. Dan has done a fine job in organizing this group of people
and it's most effective. He finances it, I understand, out of something called publication research that doesn't necessarily come up for review. Which is true, of course, of a number of other activities and projects."
Why, you bastard, Frost said to himself. You dirty, lousy bastard!
"Dan," B.J. yelped, "is this the truth?"
"Yes," said Frost. "Yes, of course it is."
"But why?" demanded B.J. "Why should you have…"
"B.J.," said Frost, "if you are really interested I can cite you chapter and verse on why it's done and why it's necessary. Do you have any idea how many books, how many magazine articles, would have been published in the past year, or the past ten years-all of them purporting to expose Forever Center—if something hadn't been done to head them off?"
"No," yelled B.J. "And I'm not interested. We can survive those kind of attacks. We've survived them all before."
"We've survived them," said Frost, "because only a few slipped through. The worst of them were stopped. Not only by myself, but by the men who preceded me. There are some I've stopped that would have hurt us badly."
"B.J.," said Lane, "I think Dan has something on his side. I think that…"
"Well, I don't," B.J. stormed. "We shouldn't try to stop anything, manage anything, censor anything. We are being accused of trying to run the world. It is being said…"
"B.J.," Frost said, angrily, "there is no use in our pretending that Forever Center doesn't run the earth. There are nations still, and governments, but we own the earth. We have soaked up all the investment capital and we own all the big enterprises and utilities and…"
"I could give you argument on that," roared B.J.
"Of course you could. It's not our capital. It's only money that we hold in trust. But we manage all that
money and we decide how to invest it and no one can question us."
"I submit," said Lane, uneasily, "that we've wandered off the track."
"I hadn't meant," said Appleton, "to stir up a hornet's nest."
"I think you did," Frost told him levelly. "I don't know what the pitch is, Marcus, but you never did a thing in all your life that you didn't plan to do."
"Marcus, I believe, asked cooperation," said Lane, trying to calm the situation. "For my part, I'm willing to cooperate."
"For my part, I am not," said Frost. "I won't cooperate with a man who walked in here deliberately and tried to put me on the spot for doing a job that was being done long before I took over, and was conducted, as I've conducted it, in a decent secrecy…" "I don't like it, Dan," B.J. told him. "I knew you wouldn't like it," said Frost. "You are — you'll pardon the expression—our front man and I had no wish to embarrass you…" "You knew?" B.J. asked of Lane.
Lane nodded. "Yes. The treasury had to supply the funds. And Marcus knew because he makes it his business to know everything. But there were just the three of us. I'm sorry, sir."
"I'll talk to the three of you about this later," said BJ. "I still am of the opinion that we should always operate openly and aboveboard. We hold a sacred trust. This organization has held that trust for a long, long time and we've held it in close honor. There will come a day when we will be called upon to make an accounting to all those people who are waiting for the day that we work toward. And when that day comes, I would hope we might be able to open, not only our books, but our hearts, for all the world to see…»