had left Lydman a trifle strange, which was probably why they no longer used him as a field agent.

He came to the blank end of the corridor, the last door on the right being that of the communications room. He opened it and stuck his head inside.

The room was dimmer than the corridor. The operators, who sometimes had to contend with much-relayed faint images on their screens, liked it that way. They kept the window filters adjusted so that it might as well be night outside. Here and there, small lights glowed at various radio receivers or tape recording instruments, and there was a pervading background rustle of static blended with quiet whistles and mutterings.

At the moment, the operator on duty was Charlie Colborn, a quiet redhead who kept a locker full of electronic gadgets for tinkering during slow periods. Smith sat near him in a straight-backed chair, watching the screen before Colborn.

A message was coming in from the Pluto relay—Westervelt recognized the distant operator who spoke briefly to Colborn before putting the message through. The next face, blurry from repeated boosting of the image, was that of a stranger.

"This is Johnson, on Trident," the man said. "Capella IV tells me they gave you the facts about Harris. That right?"

Smith hitched himself closer, so the transmitter lens could pick him up. Westervelt tip-toed inside and found himself a stool.

"We just got the outlines," Smith said. "You say this spacer is being held by the natives, and they won't let you communicate with him. Have you reported to the D.I.R.?"

The distance and the relaying caused a few seconds of lag, even with the ultra-modern sub-space equipment.

"I am the D.I.R.," said the face on the screen, after a bitter pause. "Along with several other jobs, commercial and official. There are only a few of us Terrans at this post, you know. The natives won't even admit they have him."

"Then how can you be sure they do? And why can't you get to him somehow?"

"We know because he managed to get a message out—we think." Johnson frowned doubtfully. "That is, he did if we can believe the ... ah ... messenger. We made inquiries of the natives, but it is impossible to make much of an investigation because their civilization is an underwater one."

 Prev. P 6/151 next