"And that's what made you a Risk?" She looked at him thoughtfully and frowned. "You don't look dangerous."
He could find no answer to that. He waited while she waved a hand absent-mindedly. One of the doves left her shoulder to fly, tinkling, to the crystal dolphin. It pecked precisely at a fin-shaped lever on the dolphin's back, and obediently the spray of perfumed water dwindled away. Ryeland watched, more than half lulled by the scent of lilac and the strangeness of his surroundings. The room was warm but not steamy; invisible ducts must be sucking the moisture out. "Are you dangerous?" the girl asked suddenly.
Ryeland said: "No, Miss Creery." He hesitated, wondering how to explain it to this child. "The collar isn't a punishment. It's a precaution."
"Precaution?"
He said steadily: "The Machine has reason to believe that under certain circumstances I might work against the Flan of Man. I have never done anything, you must understand that. But the Machine can't take chances, and so—the collar."
She said wonderingly: "But you sound as though you approve of it!"
"I'm loyal to the Plan!"
She thought that over. Then: "Well, aren't we all? But the rest of us don't wear iron collars."
He shook his head. "I never did anything that was against Security."
"But perhaps you did something that wasn't—quite?"
Ryeland grinned. She was amazingly easy to get along with, he thought; the grin became a smile—a real one, and the first one he had worn in some time. "Yes," he admitted, "I did something that wasn't. There was a girl."
"Steven, Steven!" Donna Creery shook her head mock-ruefully. "Always a girl. I thought that was only in stories."
"In real life too, Miss Creery." He was almost relaxed . . . Then, abruptly, her mood changed.
"Your folder contains another specification," she rapped out. "You are charged with concealing information about a device which is dangerous to the security of the Plan of Man."
"But I'm not!" he protested desperately. "Somebody has made a mistake—in spite of the Machine. For three years the therapists in the max-imum-security camp have been working me over, trying to extract information that I don't have."
Her eyes widened, with a calm concern.
"What kind of information?"
"I'm not sure." He winced, with remembered pain. "They were careful not to give me hints, and they punished me for guessing.
"They questioned me about a list of words," he said. "They strapped me down, with electrodes clamped all over me, recording every reaction. They repeated the words a million times. Spaceling. Reefs of space. Fusorian. Pyropod. Jetless drive. And two names—Ron Donderevo and Daniel Horrock.
"Putting all those words and names and other clues together, I guess that the therapists thought that Horrock had brought me a message from Donderevo. A message from space, about things called reefs and spacelings and fusorians. Particularly, about something called a jetless drive. That was what they were trying to dig out of me—how to build a jetless drive."
She frowned.
"What is a jetless drive?"
"There isn't any," he said. "Because a jetless drive would be a system of reactionless propulsion. Crackpots for three hundred years have been trying to invent such a system, but everybody knows it would be a violation of the Third Law of Motion. It's as impossible as pushing a rowboat forward without pushing the water back."
"I see." She was nodding gravely. "Impossible as creating new atoms and new space between the galaxies."
He looked at her sharply. "But I couldn't have had a message from Horrock—or anybody else," he insisted desperately. "Not when they seem to think I did. On the Friday it happened, Oddball Oporto and the teletype girl had been with me all day. We were working late, finishing the specifications for the new helical unit. I let Oddball go about eighteen hundred hours, because he was getting a headache. The teletype girl went out with him, to bring coffee and sandwiches for us. They hadn't been gone half an hour, when somebody knocked on the door. I thought it was the girl—but it was the Plan Police."
"That wasn't on Friday." Donna Creery's eyes were veiled, strange. "According to the records in your folder, you were taken into precautionary custody at eighteen hundred hours on a Monday afternoon. That leaves at least three days missing from your story."
Ryeland gulped.
"That couldn't be!" He shook his head. "Oddball and the teletype girl had just gone out—"
"I studied your folder with considerable care." She failed to say why. "I am certain that you were picked up on a Monday."
Ryeland felt a tingle of excitement. This was more than he had ever been able to learn about the case against him.
"I suppose it's possible," he muttered. "At first I was in a place miscalled a recreation center, somewhere underground. We weren't allowed to inquire where. The therapy sessions went on around the clock. I had no way of knowing the time or the date.
"But I still don't know how to build a reactionless propulsion system. And I still believe that the Machine has permitted itself to make a mistake."
Donna Creery shook her head reprovingly.
Ryeland stopped, the collar tight around his neck. This was crazy! Staying here like this with the Planner's daughter! He said abruptly, harshly: "Miss Creery, I'm interrupting your bath. I must go!"
She laughed, like a shimmer of pale music. "I don't want you to," she coaxed.
"But-your bath-"
"I always stay in the tub in these subtrain rides, Steven. It's comfortable, when the up-grav drag begins to work. And don't worry about my father. He rules the world—under the Plan, of course! But he doesn't rule me." She was smiling. She could hardly be twenty, Ryeland thought ruefully, but there was no more doubt in his mind that she knew she was a woman. She said comfortably: "Sit down, Steven. There. On the bench."
One slim arm, wearing wristlets of foam, gestured at an emerald bench next to the tub. The doves moved nervously as he approached. Donna Creery said: "Don't be afraid of my Peace Doves." He looked quizzically at the silver-steel beaks. "Oh, I'm sorry they hurt your friend," she apologized, "but they thought he was going to hurt me. You see, even without the guard I am protected."
She waved a hand, and faint music seeped into the room from concealed speakers. "What was the girl like?" she demanded.
"She was beautiful," he said shortly.
"And dangerous?"
He nodded, but under the heavy weight of the collar the stiff hairs at the back of his neck were trying to rise. Dangerous? This girl was far more dangerous to him. He had no right to be here. The Machine would not be blind to this. But Donna Creery said soothingly: "Tell me about her. Was she really lovely?"
"I believed she was. She had long yellow hair and green eyes. Eyes like yours. And she was in the secret police, but I didn't know that until the day of the raid."
Laughter pealed from the girl's lips, and the Peace Doves fluttered their wings fretfully for balance. "And she betrayed you. Are you afraid I might? But I won't, Steven, I promise."
He shrugged. "I've told you. I suppose I was lucky, at that. I was sent to a maximum-security camp. It could have been the Body Bank."
She tilted her head to ponder that, and he watched the red glints flow through the dark waves of her hair. At last she sighed and said, "And for that you became a Risk. But you should have been more careful, Steven. You should not have defied the Plan. And now you have to wear that collar. Can't you get it off?"
He laughed sharply.