5

Barren Neville’s quarters were somehow harsher than Selene’s. His books were on bold display, his computer-outlet was unmasked in one comer, and his large desk was in disarray. His windows were blank.

Selene entered, folded her arms, and said, “If you live like a slob, Barren, how do you expect to have your thoughts neat?”

“I’ll manage,” said Barron, grumpily. “How is it you haven’t brought the Earthman with you?”

“The Commissioner got to him first. The new Commissioner.”

“Gottstera?”

“That’s right. Why weren’t you ready sooner?”

“Because it took time to find out. I won’t work blind.”

Selene said, “Well, then, we’ll just have to wait.”

Neville bit at a thumbnail and then inspected the result severely. “I don’t know whether I ought to like the situation or not.... What did you think of him?”

“I liked him,” said Selene, definitely. “He was rather pleasant, considering he was an Earthie. He let me guide him. He was interested. He made no judgments. He didn’t patronize.... And I didn’t go out of my way to avoid insulting him, either.”

“Did he ask any further about the synchrotron?”

“No, but then he didn’t have to.”

“Why not?”

“I told him you wanted to see him, and I said you were a physicist. So I imagine he’ll ask you whatever he wants to ask you when he sees you.”

“Didn’t he think it strange that he should be talking to a female tourist guide who just happens to know a physicist?”

“Why strange? I said you were my sex-partner. There’s no accounting for sex attraction and a physicist may well condescend to a lowly tourist guide.”

“Shut up, Selene.”

“Oh— Look, Barren, it seems to me that if he were spinning some sort of fancy web, if he approached me because he planned to get to you through me, he would have shown some trace of anxiety. The more complicated and silly any plot, the more rickety it is and the more anxious the plotter. I deliberately acted casual. I talked about everything but the synchrotron. I took him to a gymnastics show.”

“And?”

“And he was interested. Relaxed and interested. Whatever he has on his mind, it isn’t involuted.”

“You’re sure of that? Yet the Commissioner got to him before I did. You consider that good?”

“Why should I consider it bad? An open invitation to a meeting of some sort delivered in front of a couple of dozen Lunarites isn’t particularly involuted, either.”

Neville leaned back with his hands clasped at the nape of his neck. “Selene, please don’t insist on making judgments, when I don’t ask you to. It’s irritating. The man is not a physicist in the first place. Did he tell you he was?”

Selene paused to think. “I called him a physicist. He didn’t deny it but I don’t recall that he actually said he was. And yet—and yet, I’m sure he is.”

“It’s a lie of omission, Selene. He may be a physicist in his own mind, but the fact is that he isn’t trained as a physicist and he doesn’t work as one. He has had scientific training; I’ll grant him that; but he has no scientific job of any kind. He couldn’t get one. There isn’t a lab on Earth that would give him working room. He happens to be on Fred Hallam’s crud-list and he’s been top man there for a long time.”

“Are you sure?”

“Believe me, I checked. Didn’t you just criticize me for taking so long.... And it sounds so good that it’s too good.”

“Why too good? I don’t see what you’re getting at.”

“Doesn’t it seem to you we ought to trust him? After all, he’s got a grievance against Earth.”

“You can certainly argue that way, if your facts are right.”

“Oh, my facts are right, at least in the sense that they’re what turns up, if you dig for them. But maybe we’re supposed to argue that way.”

“Barren, that’s disgusting. How can you weave these conspiracy theories into everything? Ben didn’t sound—”

“Ben?” said Neville, sardonically.

“Ben!” repeated Selene, firmly. “Ben didn’t sound like a man with a grievance or like a man trying to make me think he sounded like a man with a grievance.”

“No, but he managed to make you think he was someone to be liked. You did say you liked him, didn’t you? With emphasis? Maybe that’s exactly what he was trying to do.”

“I’m not that easy to fool and you know it.”

“Well, I’ll just have to wait till I see him.”

“The hell with you, Barron. I’ve associated with thousands of Earthies of all kinds. It’s my job. And you have no reason whatsoever to speak sarcastically about my judgment. You know you have every reason to trust it.”

“All right. Well see. Don’t get angry. It’s just that we’ll have to wait now.... And as long as we do,” he rose lithely to his feet, “guess what I’m thinking?”

“I don’t have to.” Selene rose as smoothly, and with an almost invisible motion of her feet slid sideways, well away from him. “But think it by yourself. I’m not in the mood.”

“Are you annoyed because I’ve impugned your judgment?”

“I’m annoyed because— Oh, hell, why don’t you keep your room in better condition?” And she left.

6

“I would like,” said Gottstein, “to offer you some Earth-side luxury, Doctor, but, as a matter of principle, I have been allowed to bring none. The good people of the Moon resent the artificial barriers imposed by special treatment for men from Earth. It seems better to soothe their sensibilities by assuming the Lunarite pose as far as possible though I’m afraid my gait will give me away. Their confounded gravity is impossible.”

The Earthman said “I find this so also. I congratulate you on your new post—”

“Not yet quite mine, sir.”

“Still, my congratulations. Yet I can’t help wondering why you have asked to see me.”

“We were shipmates. We arrived not so long ago on the same vessel.”

The Earthman waited politely.

Gottstein said, “And my acquaintance with you is a longer one than that. We met—briefly—some years ago.”

The Earthman said quietly, “I’m afraid I don’t recall—”

“I’m not surprised at that. There is no reason for you to remember. I was, for a time, on the staff of Senator Burt, who headed—still heads, in fact—the Committee on Technology and the Environment. It was at a time when he was rattier anxious to get the goods on Hallam—Frederick Hallam.”

The Earthman seemed, quite suddenly, to sit a little straighter. “Did you know Hallam?”

“You’re the second person to ask me that since my coming to the Moon. Yes, I did. Not intimately. I’ve known others who’ve met him. Oddly enough, their opinion usually coincided with mine. For a person who is apparently idolized by the planet, Hallam inspired little personal liking on the part of those who knew him.”

“Little? None at all, I think,” said the Earthman.

Gottstein ignored the interruption. “It was my job, at the time—or at least, my assignment from the senator—to investigate the Electron Pump and see if its establishment and growth were accompanied by undue waste and personal profit-taking. It was a legitimate concern for what was essentially a watch-dog committee, but the senator was, between us, hoping to find something of damage to Hallam. He was anxious to decrease the strangle-hold that man was gaining on the scientific establishment. There, he failed.”

“That much would be obvious. Hallam is stronger than ever right now.”

“There was no graft to speak of; certainly none that could be traced to Hallam. The man is rigidly honest.”

“In that sense, I am sure. Power has its own market value not necessarily measured in credit-bills.”

“But what interested me at the time, though it was something I could not then follow up, was that I did come across someone whose complaint was not against Hallam’s power, but against the Electron Pump itself. I was present at the interview, but I did not conduct it. You were the complainant, were you not?”