I went quickly to the door and cracked it open, blocking the gap with my body. Snaut’s face appeared, glistening with perspiration. The corridor behind him was empty.
“Oh, it’s you,” I said, opening the door further. “Come in.”
“Yes, it’s me,” he responded. His voice was hoarse, there were bags under his red eyes, and he was wearing a shiny rubber anti-radiation apron on elastic suspenders. Underneath it I could see the grubby legs of the same pants he always wore. His eyes ran around the circular, evenly lit space and came to a stop when he spotted Harey standing by an armchair at the far end of the library. We exchanged the briefest of glances, I lowered my eyelids, at which he gave a slight bow, and I said in a casual tone:
“Harey, this is Dr. Snaut. Snaut, this is… my wife.”
“I’m… a very rarely seen member of the crew and that’s why…”—the pause extended dangerously—“I’ve not had the opportunity to make your acquaintance…” Harey smiled and put out her hand which he shook, it seemed to me, with a certain astonishment. He blinked several times and stood staring at her till I took him by the arm.
“Excuse me,” he said then to Harey. “I need a word with you, Kelvin…”
“Of course,” I replied with the ease of a man about town; it all sounded to me like cheap comedy, but there was nothing to be done. “Harey, darling, don’t mind us. Dr. Snaut and I have to talk about our boring scientific business.”
And I led him at once to some small armchairs on the other side of the room. Harey dropped into the chair she’d been sitting in before, but she pushed it around in such a way that she could see us when she raised her eyes from her book.
“What is it?” I asked softly.
“I got divorced,” he answered just as quietly, though his whisper had a sibillance about it. At one time I might have laughed at a story like that and such a conversation opener, but on the Station my sense of humor had been amputated. “I’ve lived through years since yesterday, Kelvin,” he added. “A good few years. What’s with you?”
“Not much,” I answered after a moment, because I didn’t know what to say. I liked him, but I sensed that at the present moment I needed to be on my guard with him, or rather with what he had come to me about.
“Not much?” he replied in the same tone as me. “I see, so that’s how things are…?”
“What do you mean?” I said, pretending I didn’t understand. He narrowed his bloodshot eyes and, leaning in so close I could feel the warmth of his breath on my face, he whispered:
“We’re bogged down, Kelvin. I can’t get a hold of Sartorius anymore, all I know is what I wrote you about what he said after that lovely little conference of ours…”
“He’s turned off his visuphone?” I asked.
“No. There’s a short circuit at his end. It looks like he did it deliberately, or maybe…” He made a movement with his fist as if he were smashing something. I looked at him without saying a word. The left corner of his mouth rose in a disagreeable smile.
“Kelvin, I came here because…”
He didn’t finish.
“What do you intend to do?”
“You mean the letter…?” I replied slowly. “I can do it. I see no reason to refuse. Actually that’s why I’m sitting here; I wanted to figure out—”
“No,” he interrupted, “I didn’t mean that…”
“No?” I said, feigning surprise. “Do tell.”
“It’s Sartorius,” he murmured after a short pause. “He thinks he’s found a way… you know.”
He kept his gaze fixed on me. I sat there calmly, striving to make my expression look indifferent.
“First there’s that business with the X-rays. What Gibarian was doing with them, remember. It’s possible to modify it somewhat…”
“How?”
“All they were doing was sending a bundle of rays into the ocean and modulating their intensity according to different formulas.”
“Yes, I know about that. Nilin did it too. And a whole bunch of others.”
“Right, but they used soft radiation. This was the hard stuff; they packed everything they had into the ocean, the whole nine yards.”
“That could have unpleasant consequences,” I remarked. “It’s a violation of the Convention of the Four, and of UN restrictions.”
“Kelvin… Don’t act dumb. That’s neither here nor there at this point. Gibarian’s dead.”
“Oh, so Sartorius is thinking of blaming the whole thing on him?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t talked to him about it. That’s not important. Sartorius reckons that since guests only appear when we wake up, it must be extracting the prescription to produce them while we’re asleep. It thinks our most important state is sleep, precisely. That’s why it does what it does. So Sartorius wants to send it our waking state — our conscious thoughts. You follow?”
“How? By mail?”
“Save the jokes for later. The bundle of rays will be modified with the brain waves of one of us.”
It all suddenly became clear to me.
“Oh,” I said. “And that one of us would be me. Right?”
“Yes. He was thinking of you.”
“I’m deeply grateful.”
“What do you say?”
I was silent. Without a word he took an unhurried look at Harey where she sat immersed in her reading, then turned his gaze back to me. I felt I was turning pale; I couldn’t stop myself.
“Well?” he said.
I shrugged.
“All those X-ray sermons about the wonderfulness of humankind — that’s all nonsense in my view. Yours, too. Or am I wrong?”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Very well then,” he said and smiled, as if I’d granted his wish. “So you’re opposed to this business of Sartorius’s?”
I didn’t yet understand what had happened, but from his expression I realized that he’d led me exactly where he wanted to. I didn’t speak — what could I have said at that juncture?
“Excellent,” he said. “Because there’s also another project. To adapt a Roche machine.”
“An annihilator…?”
“Yes. Sartorius has already carried out the preliminary calculations. It’s doable. It won’t even require a lot of power. The machine will run twenty-four hours a day or for an unlimited time, to create an antifield.”
“W…wait! How do you envisage that?!”
“It’s very simple. It’ll be a neutrino antifield. Ordinary matter will remain untouched. The only thing to be destroyed will be… neutrino systems. You understand?”
He gave a satisfied smile. I sat there with my mouth agape. The smile gradually disappeared from his face. He frowned at me searchingly and waited.
“So Project Thought, the first one, we’re rejecting that. Right? And the second one? Sartorius is working on it already. We’re going to call it Project Freedom.”
I closed my eyes for a moment. I’d suddenly made up my mind. Snaut was not a physicist. Sartorius had turned his visuphone off or broken it. Very well.