Half an hour later I was talking to him in person; an hour and a half later I was back at the hotel and had Whitlow on the phone to tell him about it.
«Governor Romero thinks it’s a wonderful idea,» I told him. «It’ll take an act of the legislature so he can’t make a definite promise, but he says he feels sure we can lease it for free, or for a purely nominal rental, for as long as we need it. Jupiter Project’ll bring quite a few millions into the state that gets it and I hinted that if we didn’t get the G-station site we’d probably take a site we were considering in Arizona, near Phoenix.»
«A good point, Mr. Andrews. A very good point. And you might also have reminded him of the fact that the property, when we turn it back to him after the project is finished, will be considerably more valuable than it is now because of the repairs, renovations and additional construction we’ll put on it.»
«I did,» I said. «Although the only new construction we’ll need is the launching platform, and maybe a crane or two. They didn’t get as far as cranes or launching platforms. But there’s at least as much building and office space as we’ll need.»
«It sounds very attractive, Mr. Andrews. I’ll look into it. Some time within the next month I’ll fly out there and make a personal inspection. If it even approximates what you say it is, I’ll get in touch with Governor Romero and make the formal application for a lease.»
«Why not strike while the iron is hot? Write him airmail tomorrow and make the request formal, so he can go to work on the legislature while he’s enthusiastic himself. Nominal rental means a dollar a year. If we get the lease before you make a personal inspection and then you decide I gave you a bum steer, I’ll pay the dollar. So what have you got to lose?»
«Perhaps you have a point there, since it may be at least a month before I can find time for a personal inspection. However, I prefer to wait to write to the governor until I have a full report and description of the property from you, in writing. Will you send me such a report after your return to Los Angeles?»
I told him I would, but I did better.
There were still several hours of daylight left. First, I had the manager of the hotel recommend a good private detective and had the switchboard operator get him for me. I told him I wanted a legal description of that property and wanted it right away—I knew Whitlow well enough by now to know that he wouldn’t make a move until he had a legal description of the property—and that I didn’t care how he got it. I told him this was his bailiwick and not mine and that if he didn’t know where such things were kept he could find out. And that if he didn’t know whose palm to grease to get access to such records on a Sunday afternoon he could find that out too. All I wanted was that legal description, right away.
Then I rented a big fancy job of an Instaprint camera and hellied out to the G-station site again and took pictures, lots of them. Half a dozen from the air, at different heights and angles. Close and distant shots of the various buildings, the fence, the road, from the ground.
It was just getting dark when I got back. The detective was waiting for me. He’d done better than copying off the bare legal description; he’d worked as fast as I had. He had photostats of the tax liens and the foreclosure papers. A plat map with the property marked off on it; it included, I was pleased to learn, quite a bit of extra surrounding land besides the fenced in area, including almost a mile of frontage on the highway. And best of all he had construction plans of the buildings, showing interior layout. My photographs hadn’t been really necessary, except insofar as they showed present condition.
A good man, that detective. I not only paid him off; I took him to dinner with me. I’d skipped lunch in the excitement and I was plenty hungry by then.
After dinner I got myself a public stenographer and dictated a full report, including details of my conversation with Governor Romero, to go with the documents and photographs.
I checked Washington-bound stratojets while she typed, and when she’d finished and we’d made the works into an impressive sized package, I got it to the jet port in time to make the stratojet that took off at nine-forty. I put special delivery stamps on it, sent it to Whitlow’s home address.
I grinned to myself, wondering what Whitlow would think when that completely documented report woke him up in the middle of the night, only hours after he suggested that I send it, presumably at my leisure, after my return to Los Angeles. Well, he’d have no excuse now for not writing to Romero the first thing in the morning.
I’d missed the last jet for Los Angeles, but that didn’t matter. The first one in the morning would get me there in time if I went right to my job instead of going home first.
Before I went back to the hotel and to bed, I had myself a drink; I thought I’d earned it.
Project Jupiter was looking up. Unless Whitlow muffed the ball, and I didn’t see how he could or why he would, Project Jupiter had a site, and to me, a site was a start.
M’bassi lived in the Hollywood slums, in one of those hideous dozen-story apartment buildings on Sunset. Dark, gloomy hallways and an old rattling elevator instead of a tube. The whole third floor, about sixteen rooms, had once been a single palatial apartment, now rented and sublet by a strange woman whose grandmother had been a movie star and who lived in the glory of the past, when Hollywood had been a fabulous place instead of a tenderloin. But once you were inside the four connected rooms at the back which M’bassi rented from her, you forgot about the district you were in.
The big main room was completely oriental, beautifully furnished and ornamented with things he’d brought back from his various trips to China. It was a room as exotic as his study was utilitarian—a medium sized room lined on all sides from floor to ceiling with shelves of books and, besides them, containing only a chair and a desk. Another room combined the functions of bedroom and kitchen. The fourth room was tiny and contained absolutely no furniture at all, not even carpeting. It was the monastic cell in which M’bassi did his meditating and thinking.
Over the soft background music—Scriabin this evening—that M’bassi loved to have going while we talked, M’bassi was answering my questions, or trying to.
«How does one teleport himself? Max, Max, if I knew that, do you think I would be here?»
«But damn it, M’bassi, you’re trying to learn how to do it; you must know how you go about trying.»
«A thousand ways. All difficult to explain to someone who has not studied the field. Could you explain, to someone who knew absolutely nothing of physical science, how a rocket works?»
«Certainly I could, in a general way. Atomic energy turns liquid into a gas under high pressure which shoots out of the back of the rocket and pushes it.»
«Now explain to me how a space warp drive works.»
«You know, damn it, we haven’t got a space warp drive yet. But we’ll get one.»
«And you know equally well that I cannot yet teleport myself. So how can I tell you how it is done?»
«What makes you think it can be done?»
«There are two reasons why I think it can be done, Max. One is that it is only a logical extension of the already proved and accepted telekinetic powers of the mind. The other reason is that I believe teleportation has happened. Three people whom I know and trust, under whom I have studied, have experienced it in one form or another. They have succeeded in teleporting themselves, but only—how shall I say it?—without fully knowing how they did it, without being able to repeat the act at will, without finding the key. No matter how closely they tried to reproduce the exact mental and physical conditions that existed at the time of their successful teleports, they were unable to repeat.»