Part 2

"Naturally. It's a minor adjustment in the time-lag. Otherwise there would always have to be a second person present before you could get out of a crystal. We think that's what went wrong with poor Burns Gilbert. But we'll never know, I'm afraid. Let's get on."

We set the power cutter to work on the cellar ceiling.

It was only designed to cut rock specimens small enough to be brought back in the stellar-reporters that carried it, but after two hours we had a hole right up into the private labs.

I lifted John Thay and followed him up.

* * * * *

Dimples was right.

There was a long row of crystals in a nutrient tank against one wall, arranged so that it could not be seen into from the windows. About fifty crystals were racked there and each had a six-inch figure in it. I walked over to look at them with John.

"These aren't the ones I sent!" John said.

"They're not?"

"Not one."

We looked at the line in silence. I had gotten used to handling filled crystals, but the sight of all these human beings, miniature and watching us, making waving motions so for as they could within the lattice of their crystals--this was unnerving.

"No," John Thay repeated. "These are not ours. But that one there is the bubble dancer we were expelled for bringing here!"

I looked at the little figure, pink against the clear quartz.

"Who are the others?" I asked.

John Thay walked briskly down the line scooping them up.

"Never mind that for a moment, Morry. Just help me collect every one of these."

I grabbed handfuls of crystals from the rack, stuffing them in my pockets, until between us we had every one.

John took a last look to check. Then we dropped through the hole in the floor, down into the cellar.

"I had an elaborate plan in mind," he said to me, as we hurried away. "But this changes everything. Is the converter in your truck working?" We shot out into the courtyard.

"If you're in a hurry, John, why not use the one there in the cellar?"

"Hell, you're right. This has shaken me so much I can hardly think. Quickly, let's get these crystals reconverted."

We turned and rushed back to the cellar we had just left.

I grabbed the power controls, John fed the crystals onto the minima plate, I pressed the button and fielded the staggering human being off the maxima plate before the enlarged crystal came following through. The crystals I kicked into the corner of the cellar.

We did not talk, but concentrated on this rush conversion.

When we had released the last man, there were fifty-three people in the cellar, including John, myself and the bubble dancer, who for some reason clung to me and kissed me.

Most of the people were elderly men. Their clothes were tattered and stained by nutrient solution. Some were threadbare. Many had been wearing laboratory coats of ceramic fabric, which had chipped and fallen away in patches.

They must have been in the crystals for a long time.

I watched John bend anxiously over a group of elderly men.

"Doctor Firnivale. Professor Marrpole. Doctor Hutk. And Williams."

The men we had just released nodded in turn.

"You, Dr. Firnivale," John said. "Did you give the advanced geo-physics lectures?"

"Through that crook's hearing aid," said the tattered man on the cellar floor. "Yes, I did. I could hear the questions and I told him the answers. So did all these others here."

"Professor Marrpole, I recognized you from a stereo-record you made on magnetic differentiation on small planets. Is that how David Adam Smith became the world authority when you disappeared?"

"Yes," the man with the shaggy beard confirmed. "He caught me by asking me to stand on a plate for a live recording."

* * * * *

John turned to me.

"We have here, Morry, a careful collection of the leading specialists in the world. These people are the reason for David Adam Smith being able to outthink any fifty men. These are the fifty men he built his reputation with!"

"I don't understand why you all helped him," I said.

"Because he used to oscillate the crystals we were in, young man."

"But now it's our turn!"

"By heaven, wait until I meet that treacherous snake...."

"I'm going to sue him for every credit he has!"

"Who would care to join me in pulling him into small pieces surgically?"

The babble in the cellar rose in volume and intensity. Under it all, the bubble-dancer was whispering in my ear how grateful she was to great big me, and how that foul old goat had kept her for amusement just because she walked into his office to complain when he fired those nice boys....

"He had to, I suppose," I said. "If you saw all these people in crystals."

"Gentlemen, gentlemen," John roared. "Please!"

There was silence.

"Thank you. Which of you in fact thought of the stellar-reporters for accumulating data on other parts of the Galaxy?"

"I did," said a tall thin man by the door. "Higgins is my name."

Even I had heard of the astrophysicist inventor.

"Had it occurred to you that with these crystals and your stellar-reporters man could expand through the Galaxy?"

"No. But now that you raise the point, of course we could!"

"My friend, Morris here, and I and some colleagues have been doing so privately for some time...."

John waited until the excited murmuring died away.

"We thought David Adam Smith had discovered us. And that is really why we broke into his office ... and found you all there. But I now think he knows nothing about it. Subject to your agreement, I suggest we should keep him in ignorance, lock him in a quartz crystal here and continue the private migration without involving him."

"Why not bring him to justice?" asked Higgins.

"Because I doubt if the government would believe their eyes. You have built David Adam Smith into a legend that would be difficult to break. Also because they would certainly take the Institute from anyone else, hold up the experiments and delay everything. And I have a lot of friends out there in space trying to establish a planetary colony."

Marrpole laughed.

"Really," he said, "we have been providing all the brain power of this Institute for so long, we may as well continue. Speaking for myself, gentlemen, a few years free from any restraint whatever are exactly what I now need. I am in favor."

There was a general mutter of agreement.

"Thank you," John said. "And now, if you will follow me, there are excellent showers and a whole class of spare rooms."

"You stay with me," I said to the bubble-dancer.

I led her through the Institute to the classrooms where Director David Adam Smith was still plotting the courses of the missing stellar-reporters. They would be back soon, but he was never to know that.

I took him from behind and held him off the floor by his elbows, then twisted him round in the air so that he could see us both.

"Yes," I said. "She's out. And you're going in."

He started to scream so I clipped him.

Then I carried him out to his private labs. I made him unlock the door and unset the alarms, dumped him on the maxima plate of his own converter and shot him into a spare enlarged crystal he had on his desk, after taking off his hearing aid. He didn't need it. It was only an amplifier so that he could hear the advice of whoever was in there at the time. I put him in and clipped the mike onto my shirt.

"What are you doing?" asked the bubble-dancer.

"Look," I said. "This fella could do it. And someone's got to take the other lectures. And I'm never going to get to be a qualified professor any other way."

"But I thought they said he didn't know anything?" the bubble-dancer asked.

"He must remember some of it, or I'll oscillate him at a high frequency."

Meanwhile, I thought I'd practice laughing, "hig, hig, hig." But the former Director did not seem to find it funny.