get on that radio and follow my instructions for the pilot the sooner we’ll get this over with. Then maybe I can go home and spend a hundred years trying to forget about it. Until then please try and keep your personal opinions to yourself. Please.”
Donnelly’s face flushed a still deeper red. His fists clenched and, as a muscle started to twitch warningly in his cheek, he started to get up. He stopped for a moment—frozen in silence. Then he relaxed and pushed back his chair. With a heavy sigh, he maneuvered his huge bear of a body to its feet.
He rumbled something disgustedly in his throat and then spat casually on the floor. “Williams,” he thundered. “Get the hell out of here and get us some coffee.”
He waited a moment until the only witness had left the room and then, with grim determination, he turned to the little psychiatrist seated at the table.
“You, Doc,” he said coldly and with deliberate malice, “are a dirty, unclean little—”
*
Williams, when he eased his slight body through the door a few minutes later, found a suspicious scene. The little doctor, his face flushed and rage-twisted, his effortless and almost contemptuous composure shaken for once, was on his feet. Speechless, he faced the grinning space-engineer who was waving a huge and warning finger in his face.
“Easy, Doc,” Donnelly roared in a friendly voice. “I might take advantage of it if you keep on giving me a good excuse. Then where would all your psychiatry and your fine overlording manners get you?”
“Joe,” yelled Williams in explosive sudden fright. “Leave him alone. You’re liable to have the Government Police down on us.”
“Sure, Williams. The police and the newspapers too. They’d just love to have the taxpayers find out what they’re doing to those kids out in deep space. What would they call it, Doc? Just an interesting psychological experiment? Is that what it’s meant to be, eh, Doc?”
He chuckled suddenly as the little doctor flinched under his virulent attack. “I really hit the spot that time, didn’t I, Doc? So that’s what the Government’s so scared and hush-hush about. They’re really scared to hell and back, aren’t they? I wonder what’s really going on behind all this?”
He leaned forward, suddenly roaring and ferocious. “Why are Williams and I followed everywhere we go when we leave here? To see who we talk to? Is that the way of it? Why do quite a few of the ships you and I and Williams have rescued in the past few years never show up again? Just where are they? I don’t see them reported missing in the newspapers, either.”
He leaned back in exhausted satisfaction at the look on the little doctor’s face. “Yeah, Doc, the only way to get anything out of you is to blast it out, isn’t it?”
Pale and frightened, Williams hurried across the room to the table and, with shaky hands, took out three containers of coffee from the paper bag and passed them out.
Nobody bothered to thank him.
The hidden tension in the room had begun to mount steadily, so Donnelly helped it out a little.
“Is this the first time you’ve ever been on the defensive, Doc?” he asked.
Williams jumped in before the explosion. “When will the rocket get to the kid’s ship, Doctor?” he asked.
“In about thirty days,” the little man answered, coldly and deliberately.
Williams blinked in surprise. “Good Lord,” he said. “I thought it was supposed to be in twelve hours or so?”
“That’s the whole point,” snapped Donnelly. “That’s what I’m so fighting mad about. Think of it yourself, Williams. Suppose you had a son or a brother up there, how would you feel about this whole infernal, lying business?
“I don’t get it,” he went on. “I just don’t get the big central idea behind it. Don’t all these tugs we send out ever get there? First they tell the kid he’ll have his life saved in twelve hours or so. Then they get him to take a shot so his mind won’t crack up while he’s waiting.
“Now they know very well the shot won’t last for thirty days. If it did he’d starve to death. So what have they accomplished? Nothing. As a matter of fact they’ve made things worse instead of better. What’s going to happen to that poor kid when he wakes up in twelve hours and finds out he still has to wait for thirty more days? What’s going to happen to him then, Doc? Don’t you think that kid will really go off his rocker for sure?”
Donnelly and Williams both looked at the little psychiatrist. He sat again at his former place at the table, white and shaken. His face was once again buried in one hand.
“Come on, Doc,” whispered Williams, quietly. “What’s going on here, anyway?”
“That’s enough,” cried the doctor, suddenly. He sprang up and strode toward the door. “Leave me alone,” he exclaimed, almost in tears. “By heaven, I’ve had enough of this. I’ve had all I can stand.”
Donnelly moved to block the door and the psychiatrist came abruptly to a halt. “That ain’t enough, Doc. You get out after you talk.”
“For God’s sake, Joe.”
“Shut up, Williams, I’m warning you for the last time.”
“Let me by. I warn you, Donnelly. Let me by.”
Williams moved in, regaining a sudden spurt of assurance. “What about that kid up there, Doc? Nobody’s letting him by, are they, Doc?”
A look of utter weariness swept across the doctor’s face.
“All right,” he said. “You may as well know the truth then. You won’t like or understand it, but here it is anyway. You see, there isn’t any tug up there, experimental or otherwise. There was only our need for a good excuse—in this present case—to get him to take the drug. You’re a space-engineer and a good one, Donnelly. That’s why you were chosen for this job. If anybody could help those kids, you could.”
Donnelly’s face tightened warningly and the doctor hurried on. “You would have known about it if there had been any experimental models developed even if they had been secret. As a matter of fact, with your standing, you would probably have been working on them.”
“Why all this, then, Doc? Why?”
“Because,” the little doctor hesitated—and then shrugged. “I may as well tell you. It’s not going to make any difference now, anyway. It was all done to put him out for several hours until—”
“Until what, Doc?” Donnelly’s tone was harsh and uncompromising.
“You must understand that I’m under orders. I’m doing what is done in all these cases. Though heaven help me, I wish I didn’t have to—”
“Doc,” Donnelly roared. “You have been contradicting yourself all along and I intend to find out why.”
“There isn’t much more to find out . . . . Wait.”
The doctor strode quickly over to the radio, and glanced at his wristwatch. His face haggard with strain, he turned
