“You mean—extraterrestrial?”
“There isn’t any other answer,” Johnny said. “Look at the thing, Major. Feel it. Does it feel like it was made for a human hand? It doesn’t fit, it doesn’t balance, you have to hold it with both hands to aim it.”
“But where did it come from?” the Major asked. “We’ve never had visitors from another star system, not in the course of recorded history. And we know that Earthmen are the only intelligent creatures in our solar system.”
“You mean that they’re the only ones now, Tom said.
“Or any other time.”
“We don’t know that, for sure,” Tom said.
“Look, we’ve explored Venus, Mars, all the major satellites. If there had ever been any signs of intelligent beings on any of them, we’d have known it.”
“Maybe there was a planet that Earthmen haven’t explored,” Tom said. “Dad tried to tell us that. The quotation from Kepler that he scribbled down in his log: ‘Between Jupiter and Mars I will put a planet.’ Why would Dad write that? Unless he suddenly discovered proof that there had been a planet there?”
“You mean this gun,” the major said.
“And whatever else he found.”
“But there’s never been any proof of that theory, not even a hint of proof.”
“Maybe Dad found proof. There are hundreds of thousands of asteroid fragments out there in the belt, and only a few hundred of them have ever been examined by men.”
On the desk the strange weapon stared up at them. Evidence, mute evidence, and yet its very existence said more than a thousand words. It was there. It could not be denied.
And someone—or something—had made it.
Slowly the major pulled himself to his feet. “It must have happened after his last message to me,” he said. “It wasn’t part of the scheme we had set up, but he made a strike just the same, an archeological strike, and this gun was part of it.” He picked up the weapon, turned it over in his hand. “But it was days after that last message before his signal went off, and the patrol ship moved in.”
“It makes sense,” Johnny Coombs said. “He found the gun, and somethin’ more.”
“Like what?”
“I wouldn’t even guess,” Johnny said. “A planet with a race of creatures intelligent enough and advanced enough to make a weapon like that—it could have been anything. But whatever it was, it must have scared him. He must have known that a company ship might turn up any minute, so he hid whatever he had found.”
“And now it’s vanished,” the major said. “The big flaw in the whole idea. My patrol ship found nothing when it searched the region. You looked, and drew a blank. The company men scoured the area.” He sighed. “You see, it just won’t hold up, not a bit of it. Even with this gun, it won’t hold up.”
“It’s out there somewhere,” Tom said doggedly. “It’s got to be.”
“But where? Don’t you see that everything hangs on that one thing? If we could prove that your father found something just before he was killed, we could tear Jupiter Equilateral’s case against you to shreds. We could charge them with piracy and murder, and make it stick. We could break their power once and for all, but until we know what Roger Hunter found, we’re helpless. They’ll take you three to court, and I won’t be able to stop them. And if you lose that case, it may mean the end of U.N. authority on Mars.”
“Then there’s just one thing to do,” Johnny Coombs said. “We’ve got to find Roger Hunter’s bonanza.”
It was almost midnight when they left the major’s office, a gloomy trio, walking silently up the ramp to the main concourse, heading toward the living quarters.
They had been talking with the major for hours, going over every facet of the story, wracking their brains for the answer—but the answer had not come.
Roger Hunter had found something and hidden it so well that three groups of searchers had failed to uncover it. After seeing the gun, the major was convinced that there had indeed been a discovery made. But whatever that discovery had been, it was gone as if it had never existed, as if by some sort of magic it had been turned invisible, or conjured away to another part of the solar system.
Finally, they gave up, at least for the moment. “It has to be there,” the major said wearily. “It hasn’t vanished, or miraculously ceased to exist. We know he was working on one claim, one asteroid. There were no other asteroids in the region, and even the ones within a wide radius have been searched.”
“It’s there, all right,” Tom said. “And somewhere there must be a clue.”
“But what? Asteroids have stable orbits. Nobody can just make one disappear.”
They called it a night, finally; the major had to complete a report for the forthcoming hearing, and the others were too weary to think any more. They felt talked out, physically and mentally drained.
On the main concourse they found a commissary store still open, and stopped for surro-steaks and coffee-mix. It was a gloomy meal. They hurried through it and rode a late jitney back to the Hunter apartment.
Once home they found more bad news waiting. There were two messages on the recordomat. The first was an official summons to appear before the United Nations Board of Investigations at nine the following morning to answer “certain charges placed against the above named persons by the Governing Board of Jupiter Equilateral Mining Industries, and by one Merrill Tawney, plaintiff, representing said Governing Board.” They listened to the plastic record twice. Then Greg tossed it down the waste chute.
The other message was addressed to Greg, from the Commanding Officer of Project Star-Jump. The message was very polite and regretful; it was also very firm. The pressure of the work there, in his absence, made it necessary for the project to suspend Greg on an indefinite leave of absence. Application for reinstatement could be made at a later date, but acceptance could not be guaranteed.
“Well, I might have expected it,” Greg said, “after what the major told us. The money for Star-Jump must have been coming from somewhere, and now we know where. The company probably figures to lay claim on any star drive that’s ever developed.” He dropped the notice down the chute, and laughed. “I guess I really asked for it.”
“You mean I pushed you into it,” Tom said bitterly. “If I’d kept my big mouth shut at the very start of this thing, you’d have gone back to the project and that would have been the end of it.”
Greg looked at him. “You big bum, do you think I really care?” He grinned. “Don’t feel too guilty, Twin. We’ve been back to back on this one.”
He pulled off his shirt and walked into the shower room. Johnny Coombs was already stretched out on the sofa, snoring softly. Tom sprawled in the big chair. He was tired; every muscle seemed to ache, but he was not sleepy. After a bit the shower went off and Greg stuck his head in the door. “You coming to bed?”
“Right away,” Tom said, but he didn’t move. The room light was dim, and his mind was back in the major’s office, thinking about the strange gun, the questions without any answers, and the unpleasant prospects of the day ahead.
A hearing, maybe the first of many. Charges and countercharges. Three men, two of them the sons of a miner who had been killed in a mining accident, all three possessed by the insane idea that an organization with the spotless reputation of Jupiter Equilateral Mining Industries, Inc., had caused that miner’s death. Three men determined to revenge that death. A foolish decision, of course, but not unbelievable. Grief-stricken men had done things far more foolish in the past.