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Turnbull relaxed. There was no immediate danger here.

“Know where you are?” Rawlings asked.

“Centaurus City,” Turnbull said calmly. “It’s a three-day trip, so obviously you couldn’t have made it in the five hours after I sent you the message. You had me kidnaped and brought here.”

The old man frowned slightly. “I suppose, technically, it was kidnaping, but we had to get you out of circulation before you said anything that might … ah … give the whole show away.”

Turnbull smiled slightly. “Aren’t you afraid that the police will trace this to you?”

“Oh, I’m sure they would eventually,” said Rawlings, “but you’ll be free to make any explanations long before that time.”

“I see,” Turnbull said flatly. “Mind operation. Is that what you did to Scholar Duckworth?”

The expression on Scholar Rawling’s face was so utterly different from what Turnbull had expected that he found himself suddenly correcting his thinking in a kaleidoscopic readjustment of his mind.

“What did you think you were on to, Dr. Turnbull?” the old man asked slowly.

Turnbull started to answer, but, at that moment the door opened.

The round, pleasant-faced gentleman who came in needed no introduction to Turnbull.

Scholar Duckworth said: “Hello, Dave. Sorry I wasn’t here when you woke up, but I got–” He stopped. “What’s the matter?”

“I’m just cursing myself for being a fool,” Turnbull said sheepishly. “I was using your disappearance as a datum in a problem that didn’t require it.”

Scholar Rawlings laughed abruptly. “Then you thought–“

Duckworth chuckled and raised a hand to interrupt Rawlings. “Just a moment, Jason; let him logic it out to us.”

“First take these straps off,” said Turnbull. “I’m stiff enough as it is, after being out cold for three days.”

Rawlings touched a button on the wall, and the restraining straps vanished. Turnbull sat up creakily, rubbing his arms.

“Well?” said Duckworth.

Turnbull looked up at the older man. “It was those first two letters of yours that started me off.”

“I was afraid of that,” Duckworth said wryly. “I … ah … tried to get them back before I left Earth, but, failing that, I sent you a letter to try to throw you off the track.”

“Did you think it would?” Turnbull asked.

“I wasn’t sure,” Duckworth admitted. “I decided that if you had what it takes to see through it, you’d deserve to know the truth.”

“I think I know it already.”

“I dare say you do,” Duckworth admitted. “But tell us first why you jumped to the wrong conclusion.”

Turnbull nodded. “As I said, your letters got me worrying. I knew you must be on to something or you wouldn’t have been so positive. So I started checking on all the data about the City–especially that which had come in just previous to the time you sent the letters.

“I found that several new artifacts had been discovered in Sector Nine of the City–in the part they call the Bank Buildings. That struck a chord in my memory, so I looked back over the previous records. That Sector was supposed to have been cleaned out nearly ninety years ago.

“The error I made was in thinking that you had been forcibly abducted somehow–that you had been forced to write that third letter. It certainly looked like it, since I couldn’t see any reason for you to hide anything from me.

“I didn’t think you’d be in on anything as underhanded as this looked, so I assumed that you were acting against your will.”

Scholar Rawlings smiled. “But you thought I was capable of underhanded tactics? That’s not very flattering, young man.”

Turnbull grinned. “I thought you were capable of kidnaping a man. Was I wrong?”

Rawlings laughed heartily. “Touche. Go on.”

* * * * *

“Since artifacts had been found in a part of the City from which they had previously been removed, I thought that Jim, here, had found a … well, a cover-up. It looked as though some of the alien machines were being moved around in order to conceal the fact that someone was keeping something hidden. Like, for instance, a new weapon, or a device that would give a man more power than he should rightfully have.”