Part 2

From his inside pocket, he took the flat little duplico-camera, adjusted the frame over the map. He flipped the shutter. Seconds later, the map was back exactly where he'd taken it from.

There was only one sound in this quiet room, the tremor of the gas-thrust shoving the ship through dark void into the spaces beyond Jupiter. Suddenly, there was the scuffle of moving feet beyond the door.

* * * * *

Unterzuyder found himself in the position of a traveler in an alien city where savage little children had switched all the street signs. Nonetheless, he lunged for the door, threw off the lights in the stateroom, opened the door, closed it, stood with his back pressed against it.

Hurrying footsteps. Unterzuyder was after the sound.

The big, hurrying frame of Captain Foshag. Unterzuyder grabbed his arm, whipped him around. Foshag's hairy, dignified face was wrenched with astonishment.

"Mr. Straley," he said uncertainly. His brow clouded. He looked at Unterzuyder's grip on his heavy arm and frowned with displeasure. He shook off the hand. "I'm not used to being manhandled, sir! You've perhaps imbibed too much at the party?" He was being sternly insulting.

Unterzuyder crumbled. He could be wrong.

"I--haven't been well. My heart--" He touched at his chest apologetically. It wasn't too far from the truth. Pains in his chest. His mother had always assured him the Unterzuyders were prone to heart trouble. Just as she'd got around to making him wear glasses. Terrible uncertainties were crowding him. He was surrounded by treachery. Had Foshag been shadowing him?

Foshag's great frame rocked judicially on its toes.

"If you truly have a bad heart," he said measuredly, "you'd have taken the long trail when the _Ares_ hit heaven. We humans often are plagued with strange influences. Words spoken to the unguarded mind of the child sometimes become fact to the grownup. I'd not worry about the heart. And now, the reason I am away from the turret. I've been looking for you."

He cleared his throat. "There's a king-sized ship of the Silver type on our tail, Mr. Straley. I'm not the worrying kind, however. Worry is indeed the prime cause of most kidney troubles, and, besides, beclouds the mind when there's work to be done. Therefore, not until I observed that the pursuing craft was indeed pursuing--"

"Come to the point!" Everything else was swept away. Unterzuyder was suddenly furious at this big, stupid, philosophizing blunderer. "You're trying to excuse yourself for not telling me right away. Let's get to the turret!"

Unterzuyder went at full stride, his brain in high gear. They were being pursued. That arrogant Bigger Bailes, no doubt! So what? Add one more menace to those he was collecting. In fact, mess up the mess a little more.

"Captain Foshag," he said, "you are a well-read man. Ever read Ouspensky?"

Foshag nodded his square bearded chin. "A man of vast creative mental power, Mr. Straley. A man who seemed able to step off our three dimensions and look at the universe from a new viewpoint." Tentatively: "You have an interest in the classical philosophers, perhaps?"

Unterzuyder muttered something garbled. He trotted ahead of Foshag up the ramp to the glassed-in control turret, went past several instrument men to the viewing disk assembly. Foshag hurriedly got the pursuing ship on the cross-hairs. It was a great globoid catching golden-green sun on one half, black interstellar shadow on the other.

"Raise it on the beam!" Unterzuyder ordered.

* * * * *

Moments later, Ralph Unterzuyder was looking into the detested face of Bigger Bailes.

"That's me," smiled Bigger, his rosy face creasing. "Bigger Bailes. And how are you, Mr. Ralph Unterzuyder?" His smile became even more rosy.

Unterzuyder gulped. He was completely dismayed. Captain Foshag showed no reaction at the unmasking. Captain Foshag kept his face turned studiously away.

Unterzuyder felt himself going into a spin.

But he drew himself up and said haughtily, "Kindly keep your inside information to yourself, Mr. Bigger Bailes. I travel under the name of Carruthers Straley merely because there is an unsavory flavor to the name of Unterzuyder!

"Now, why are you following us?"

"Following you?" Bigger Bailes appeared injured. "I'm trying to catch up with you. I intend to come aboard--"

"_You will not!_" Unterzuyder yelled the words so loud the crew members in back of him half-jumped from their charts.

Bigger's image wavered on the screen as he leaned forward and settled back.

"I didn't expect such a reaction, Mr.--Straley," he said. His little eyes, almost hidden by fat, were penetrating. "I'd almost think you were hiding something. Are you?"

Foshag raised a commanding hand. "That'll be enough of that," he commanded. "We're a law-abiding ship. I myself am an honest man. Secrecy gives rise to certain nervous disorders which I avoid. If you wish to come aboard, perhaps you are taking advantage of some Space Article?"

"Taking advantage? If you want to put it that way. Two of my men are down sick. The usual spastic seizures. We've run out of ATG. We're coming aboard your ship to get some. Article 10b of the Space Constitution gives us that right."

Unterzuyder brushed Foshag aside.

"I warn you, Mr. Bailes," he said thickly, "if you have any ulterior motive, such as looting this ship, we will put up a fight! Our settlers were chosen for their intrepid qualities. We have guns. We have bombs. We have a flare-cannon. You will not find us easy prey!"

Bailes leaned back easily. "Relax, Unterzuyder. As far as guns go, we've got our share. And we have got a brace of flare-cannons embrasured into the bulkheads of the _Space-Queen_ ourselves, if you want to get tough."

He spread his fat hands. "But who wants to get tough? See you gentlemen, aboard your ship, twenty-four hours from now." With which remark he broke contact.

Unterzuyder was at Foshag instantly.

"Not a word about my identity," he breathed. "After all, I did pay you a thousand credits!"

"And for which I thanked you! Mr. Unterzuyder, I am not a secretive man. If asked a direct question, I seldom impair my health by lying. Now permit me to return to my duties."

Fuming, Unterzuyder left the control turret, went straight to the ballroom. Here, without any hesitation whatever, he cut in on Fayette, taking her away from the handsomest husband in the lot. No word of apology.

* * * * *

He held her very close, very tight. He danced with a mathematical precision. Even the soul of the dance, he reflected grimly, derives from a mathematical formula. The dummy four-piece band haggered out its hag-strut very effectively. He was rewarded as Fayette lost her surprised stiffness, and began to melt into him in perfect rhythm to the tune. Her blonde head gradually nestled into his shoulder, her eyes closed, a small, sweet smile on her lips.

At the first opportunity, he swung her without a break to a small observation lounge, and in the cold green glow of a million stars drew her to him, letting himself be stunned by the warmth of her and the drugging quality of her perfume. He kissed her. He was carried away into a land of intricate enchantment where Love is All, and the Girl in my Arms is You.

She opened her eyes, looking at him dreamily. "I love you," she murmured.

"I know," said Unterzuyder.

"I don't know what your intentions are. I don't care what kind of a sneaky, underhanded person you are, I still love you."

He kissed her again. She was crying. Unterzuyder took out his handkerchief and wiped away her tears. "Now don't worry, Fayette," he soothed. "Everything will turn out all right." He took her back to the dance floor. By luck he found the young husband she'd been dancing with. He gave her back.

"Sorry!" he said. He gave Fayette a fleeting smile and hurriedly took off.

He went to his cabin and feverishly got to work. Plug up the loopholes as you go along! A favorite axiom of the Unterzuyders. Now that Fayette was in love with him, he could draw on her for any emergency.

Apparently the time was coming when he would need an ally.

He ran the negative through the hypo, put it in the dryer and paced the floor. He rubbed at his lips with the back of his hand. He could still smell Fayette's perfume. He could still feel her bare warm back. Careful, careful. He went to a mirror and looked at his face. Weak. The glassless eyes red-rimmed. Thin nose and lips. His spirits dropped. How could Fayette be in love with him? Particularly when he was one of the outlawed Unterzuyders.

The finished photograph went into the automatic pantograph. He blew it up six times onto a square of Mirac paper. He smoothed the new map onto the desk. Instantly he saw why at first the map had appeared so impossibly distorted. The circles did not indicate the orbits of the planets. They were merely a logarithmic indication of the scale of the map.

Mercury, being some 43,000,000 miles from the Sun, was the basic unit. And that was necessary.

The Solar System could not be drawn to scale unless the inner planets were crowded in fractionally close to the Sun.

Here, the positions of the planets were indicated by dots whose map-distance from the Sun receded inward in logarithmic ratio to actual distance.

Pluto, for instance, being one hundred times farther from the Sun than Mercury in real distance, appeared by the map to be only, roughly, twenty times as far.

The position of the dot-planets on the map of course indicated the _exact_ date of the day when the map was drawn.

The finely drawn X showed the position of the hibernaculum asteroid _on that day_.

Since then, roughly eighty-two years ago, X had moved in its orbit. Where to?

That was the problem.

Unterzuyder sweated. It was said by the Unterzuyders, with possible justification, that only an Unterzuyder could think like an Unterzuyder. How often his father had told him that. But he was confused.

Naturally. The map was meant to confuse.

What were the figures at the bottom of the map?

s-1 .7452 c-1 -.202

and

(0, 3, 2) (1, 1, 8)

And why, at the top corner, was the name unterzuyder printed _with a small u_?

Nobody but an Unterzuyder would know.

Well, he didn't know.

* * * * *

Puzzled, he paced the room. Tomorrow Bigger Bailes would force his way aboard ship. Little could be done to stop him, partly because he insisted he needed ATG, a chemical staff of life necessary for muscular action, but mostly because he had superior fire-power. Actually, he wanted the map. If he didn't get it, he would inevitably loot the ship.

He paused before the mirror, again. Glassless, he didn't feel like an Unterzuyder. Looking upon himself naked of face, he cringed. If only the whole thing were over. If only he were in the observatory under the greenly burning stars with--

Frantically he stopped that line of thought.

He hauled out a sheaf of maps. He had come prepared. He had brought the duplico-camera, the film developing equipment, the pantograph, other odds and ends. He had a shelf-full of celestial mechanic manuals, as well as books on the more ordinary arithmetics.

But he had had only one year of math. Somewhere along the line, he had outguessed his patriarch of a father and his matriarch of a mother: law had been the result.

Well suited, he had felt at the time, to the trickery, the deceit, and the orneriness of the typical Unterzuyder mind!

Anyway, he needed a slide-rule before he could tackle the equations. For the present, he would work out the date the map was made. Then it would be possible to discover X's present position.

All that was necessary was, mathematically, to rotate the present-time position of the planets backward in time--clockwise, that is--until they coincided with map-position.

The star-maps, the Emphemeris, and the Planet Catalogue should make that fairly simple.

After an hour, his nerves began to quiver. He ran his hands distractedly through his awry blonde hair. He had the answer. And it was impossible. Except that it was correct.

Apparently, the map had been drawn up in prehistoric times.

50,000 years ago!

* * * * *

After a virtually sleepless sleep-period, he went to breakfast. The settlers were in a happy chattering mood. Titan was only ten days away. Unterzuyder ate with the pressure of the Beechers' eyes on him.

Nathaniel Beecher showed quiet menace on a face that ordinarily held grinning, shifty-eyed comraderie. Fayette had sullen, angry shadows under her eyes. Perhaps she was smarting under a humiliation that might make her do dangerous things. He had left her rather abruptly at the dance. Unterzuyder bit his lip. Perhaps he had not covered that situation as well as he might.

Remorse was an emotion new to Unterzuyder. But then he had suffered some kind of mental upset when his glasses shattered under Fayette's heel. He could see as well as the next man, and consequently was beginning to have some shattering doubts about the wisdom of his immediate ancestors. And he _was_ a man.

He gulped. All these were dangerous thoughts. He must continue to think like an Unterzuyder.

Something devious. Something tricky. Something that would competently accomplish the task of fooling the Beechers, Bigger Bailes, and possibly Foshag!

As he started out of the dining room, Beecher lunged after him, trailing a rocket-stream of cigar smoke.

"A minute, Straley!" Beecher held him from the door, his close-set eyes full of dislike. "Foshag told me Bigger Bailes is back there." He jerked a shoulder. "You're a man with many small tricks, Straley," he went on slowly. "Probably you're the most dangerous man I've ever encountered. I've been around."

"I'll bet you have!"

Beecher gestured with the cigar, turned on his grin, apparently to convince anybody watching that this was a friendly conversation.

"But I'm not letting you get away with anything. We have to do something about Bailes. I don't intend to be hi-jacked. Truthfully, mister, I don't see why the settlers shouldn't be forewarned. They're a decent bunch. We're not.

"In fact," his eyes were boring, "I've known from the first that you've been using these people."

"As you have--and as you've attempted to use me!"

"Yes." Beecher's lips moved hesitantly. "You and I and Fayette are all three getting a free ride to Titan, aren't we? No expenses. So now that we've _almost_ laid our cards on the table, why shouldn't we join forces?"

Unterzuyder drew himself up disdainfully. "I work alone, Beecher."

"Yeah." Beecher showed disgust. "You mean you're working for something no decent person would help you with."

"And you mean by that?"

Beecher's eyes simmered. He said nothing.

Unterzuyder snapped. "I still work alone--unless forced to recruit help. That condition may occur. In the meantime, use some of those qualities of leadership an _explorer_ should have. Inform these people what's up. Tell them Bailes will probably attempt to loot the ship. Line the men up at the arsenal and load them down with weapons. Make arrangements so the women and children will keep to the cabins. Can you handle that?"

Beecher flushed until his face was bright red.

* * * * *

Leaving him properly insulted, Unterzuyder went to the control turret where he cornered Foshag, drew him to the Solar Chart.

Unterzuyder picked up a pencil, made an indentation at random. It was considerably to the east of the _Ares'_ present position.

"Change course immediately. To that point."

Foshag huffed rebelliously. "That won't help us outrun Bailes. The new course will but give him a hypotenuse to travel. He'll run us down quicker."

Unterzuyder's lips turned thinner. Muttering, Foshag sat down to the computations. On the way out of the turret, Unterzuyder slipped a slide-rule out of an instrument case so deftly that nobody noticed.

Another hour's work showed him that the two sets of figures, respectively, indicated X's _point of origin_ and _direction of travel_. _c_ stood for cosine, of course, _s_ for sine.

X had been, when the map was made, some degrees below the plane of the ecliptic. Its orbit was at a steep slant to that plane.

So what? So the point of origin was located in time 50,000 years ago?

The map was a fake!

He sat at the desk a long time, thinking, and thinking fast. Foshag must have known who he was from the first. He was an observing man, but he was also a close-mouthed man, who answered only to direct questions. And the Beechers knew his identity too. Fayette had accidentally called him by his real name. Treachery!

Undoubtedly, Bigger Bailes had tipped off the Beechers, just before Unterzuyder arrived at the Beechers' apartment in Marsport. Bigger Bailes thought Unterzuyder knew where the map was, but didn't know the Beechers had it. Bigger intended to let the situation stir itself up so the asteroid's location would more easily come out of hiding.

Yes, everything was wrong. Bigger would loot the ship when he learned the map was a practical joke. Taking a ship this far beyond Jupiter would have to pay off. And there was nobody to stop him.

What was it his father told him about Unterzuyder techniques? Sell short at the top, buy long at the bottom. All events, good or bad, could be used to build a firmer superstructure!

Well, face it! Ship's course had been changed. The settlers by this time had demanded to know why. Beecher would tell them Carruthers Straley was Ralph Unterzuyder, hunting for a hibernaculum!

The settlers by this time were up in arms against him.

He paled. He leaped to the door, listened. Footsteps. Patrolling his room.

* * * * *

He returned to the table. Make use of the situation. Dredge it for what it's worth! He crossed shakily to the audio and called Fayette's number. Luckily, Fayette and not her father answered.

"Fayette--darling." The word came out huskily. It was hard to say. It sounded real.

"_Who?_" Then her voice was uneven. "You called me darling. Are you sure you're in your right mind?"

"I mean it, dear." _Did he?_ "I couldn't forget last night."

He was falling into the self-made trap of the dishonest, unable to tell his own truth from his own falsehood.

"All right," she said unevenly. "So you couldn't forget it? So what?"

He spoke softly. Please, he had to see her in his room right away. It was urgent. Would she come now? A long silence. Yes, she would come. No, she wouldn't tell her father. Positively. Five minutes later she slipped into the room. She barely opened the door. He took her instantly into his arms. When he figured he had kissed her enough, he let her drop limply into a chair.

The circles under her eyes were worse. She looked miserable. He drew up a chair, tenderly took her hands in his.

"Look at me, Fayette. I'm going to make a confession that will shock you. I'm not Carruthers Straley. I'm Ralph Unterzuyder."

She didn't look shocked. He pretended not to notice.

He told her selected portions of the story. "I suspected you had the map. I examined _Tertium Organum_ in your apartment yesterday when you and your father were in the kitchen."

_And you wanted me to examine it! So I'd be sure to hire you and Beecher and take you with me to Saturn. That was the reason you posed as explorers, so Titan Settlers would give you a free ride to the vicinity of X!_

"I broke into your room last night, Fayette, and made a copy of the map."

_And you left it wide open for me, so I could put my Unterzuyder brains to work deciphering it!_

"And now that I've deciphered the map--"

That shocked her. "You _did_? But Daddy figured out it was made roughly 50,000 years ago!"

His heart fell to the bottom of his stomach. The Beechers hadn't got over that stumbling block either. He'd made a mistake in trying to pump her. He smiled feebly. But salvage _something_ out of it!

"50,000 years," he said druggedly, "seems to be correct--"

She was on her feet, laughing half hysterically. "You're trying to say the Unterzuyders invented a time-machine? That they aren't hibernating at all? After all the trouble we've gone to--" She giggled. "That's rich, Ralph--"

Female instability. He held her tightly. A lie, a good solid lie. His heart raced. Bigger Bailes. "Of course not, dear. The whole idea of a time-machine is fantasy--"

_Is it?_

"--and it'll make you feel better to know the map is purely contemporary. You noticed the ship changed course? Well, dear, we are headed toward X!"

She pushed away, her eyes amazed.

"And," he added happily, "you will also be glad to know that you and I and your father are going to collect the reward for finding the hibernaculum!"

"_Really_, Ralph? That was your intention all along? You weren't going to _free_ them? Oh, I was hoping so hard you were going only after the reward--"

She switched her glance over his shoulder. Pity wrenched her face.

Something hit Ralph Unterzuyder hard on the back of the head. He fell straight down ten thousand miles, and lay there for quite a while studying patterns of light that squirmed in his head.

* * * * *

Captain Foshag was dragging him to a chair. His tufted eyebrows came close. He put a slopping cloth on Unterzuyder's forehead.

He said, "For the time, you're a prisoner in this cabin. I trust the experience will teach you some truths. Wickedness secretes various poisons in the body, particularly the heart and the liver. Change your ways, and you may indeed live a long life!"

The door burst open and Beecher lunged in. His shrewd eyes rested on Unterzuyder.

"Sorry I had to bop you, Unterzuyder," he said in clipped accents. "But it was the best way to get you out of the picture and keep you from talking to Bigger Bailes. You might have messed up the works. As it was, we told him the truth."

"The truth?"

"Certainly. You admitted it to Fayette. That you'd figured out the orbit and present position of X. He got the course from Foshag and made us turn around toward Titan again. Then he took off for X. So we're whipped. But at least it kept us from being looted."

Unterzuyder ripped the wet cloth from his head and threw it somewhere. He laughed. He weaved about the room, holding his head and hooting, while Foshag and Beecher looked on with open mouths. Then Foshag forced him into a chair.

"Out of his head! Mr. Unterzuyder, please be quiet. That's better. There, there! Now we're going to leave you here for your own protection, Mr. Unterzuyder. The settlers are somewhat provoked. Do you agree?"

Unterzuyder grinned widely up at him.

"I'm sick," he groaned. "Tell Fayette I need her."

_There's still X to find._

An idea had come to him.

* * * * *

He was in bed, the white cloth on his forehead, when Fayette walked in. She looked at him without sympathy. Tentatively, she sat on the edge of the bed, curling one knee under another.

"I'm sorry if you think I played Delilah, Ralph--" she began.

He patted her knee delicately. "There, there," he soothed. "None of that matters. Actually, we're two of a kind. Not that we're naturally treacherous, but that we are indirect, the most dangerous weapon in the world. I wanted to discuss our plans. You see, marriage is a--"

She gripped his wrist, hard, to make him stop talking.

She said through her teeth, "After this, nothing but the truth!"

Inwardly he groaned.

She went on with determination. "I _do_ love you. I _do_ want to marry you. And settle on Titan. The important thing is, do _you_ love me and really want to marry me? Are you going to be honest with me about things that concern only us? Of course, I don't mind if you're tricky with other people. That's life."

_Well, why not?_

Unfortunately, he would be unable to use her anymore for purposes of finding X. But apparently, he _was_ in love with her.

He held her warm hands. "We'll get married and live on Titan," he said.