“Uh, yes, there’s that.” Caxton frowned.

“Better just calm down, Ben,” advised Frisby. “You’re in deep enough now. Personally, I’m convinced it was the Man from Mars. Occam’s razor, least hypothesis, just plain horse sense.”

Caxton dropped them, then set the cab to cruise while he thought. Presently he punched the combination to take him back to Bethesda Medical Center.

He was less than half way back to the Center when he realized that his trip was useless. What would happen? He would get as far as Berquist, no farther. He had been allowed in once—with a lawyer, with a Fair Witness. To demand to be allowed to see the Man from Mars a second time, all in one morning, was unreasonable and would be refused. Nor, since it was unreasonable, could he make anything effective out of it in his column.

But he had not acquired a widely syndicated column through being balked. He intended to get in.

How? Well, at least he now knew where the putative “Man from Mars” was being kept. Get in as an electrician? Or as a janitor? Too obvious; he would never get past the guard, not even as far as “Dr. Tanner.”

Was “Tanner” actually a doctor? It seemed unlikely. Medical men, even the worst of them, tended to shy away from hanky-panky contrary to their professional code. Take that ship’s surgeon, Nelson—he had quit, washed his hands of the case simply because—

Wait a minute! Dr. Nelson was one man who could tell offhand whether that young fellow was the Man from Mars, without checking calluses, using trick questions, or anything. Caxton reached for buttons, ordered his cab to ascend to parking level and hover, and immediately tried to phone Dr. Nelson, relaying through his office for the purpose since he neither knew where Dr. Nelson was, nor had with him the means to find out. Nor did his assistant Osbert Kilgallen know where he was, either, but he did have at hand resources to find out; it was not even necessary to draw on Caxton’s large account of uncollected favors in the Enclave, as the Post syndicate’s file on Important Persons placed him at once in the New Mayflower. A few minutes later Caxton was talking with him.

To no purpose— Dr. Nelson had not seen the broadcast. Yes, he had heard about it; no, he had no reason to think the broadcast had been faked. Did Dr. Nelson know that an attempt had been made to coerce Valentine Smith into surrendering his rights to Mars under the Larkin Decision? No, he did not know it, had no reason to believe so . . . and would not be interested if it were true; it was preposterous to talk about anyone “owning” Mars; Mars belonged to the Martians. So? Let’s propose a hypothetical question, Doctor; if someone were trying to—

But Dr. Nelson had switched off. When Caxton tried to reconnect, a recorded voice stated sweetly: “The subscriber has voluntarily suspended service temporarily. If you care to record—” Caxton switched off.

Caxton made a foolish statement concerning Dr. Nelson’s parentage. But what he did next was much more foolish; he phoned the Executive Palace, demanded to speak to the Secretary General.

His action was more a reflex than a plan. In his years as a snooper, first as a reporter, then as a lippmann, he had learned that close-held secrets could often be cracked by going all the way to the top and there making himself unbearably unpleasant. He knew that such twisting of the tiger’s tail was dangerous, for he understood the psychopathology of great power as thoroughly as Jill Boardman lacked knowledge of it—but he had habitually relied on his relative safety as a dealer in still another sort of power almost universally feared and appeased by the powerful.

What he forgot was, that in phoning the Palace from a taxicab, he was not doing so publicly.

Caxton was not put through to the Secretary General, nor had he expected to be. Instead he spoke with half a dozen underlings and became more aggressive with each one. He was so busy that he did not notice it when his cab ceased to hover and left the parking level.

When he did notice it, it was too late; the cab refused to obey the orders he at once punched into it. Caxton realized bitterly that he had let himself be trapped by a means no professional hoodlum would fall for: his call had been traced, his cab identified, its idiot robot pilot placed under orders of an over-riding police frequency—and the cab itself was being used to arrest him and fetch him in, all most privately and with no fuss.

He wished keenly that he had kept Fair Witness Cavendish with him. But he wasted no time on this futility but cleared the useless call from the radio and tried at once to call his lawyer, Mark Frisby.

He was still trying when the taxicab landed inside a courtyard landing flat and his signal was cut off by its walls. He then tried to leave the cab, found that the door would not open—and was hardly surprised to discover that he was becoming very light-headed and was fast losing consciousness—