'Sure you are. We all feel guilty about him, and without real reason. Nothing that happened was our fault.' But he was speaking defensively and he knew it.
And when, at that point, the door signal sounded, all three jumped and turned to stare uneasily at the barrier that stood between themselves and Villiers.
The door opened and Romano Villiers walked in. The others rose stiffly to greet him, then remained standing in embarrassment, without one hand being raised.
He stared them down sardonically.
He's changed, thought Talliaferro.
He had. He had shrunk in almost every dimension. A gathering stoop even made him seem shorter. The skin of his scalp glistened through thinning hair, the skin on the back of his hands was ridged crookedly with bluish veins. He looked ill. There seemed nothing to link him to the memory of the past except for his trick of shading his eyes with one hand when he stared intently and, when he spoke, the even, controlled baritone of his voice.
He said. 'My friends! My space-trotting friends! We've lost touch.'
Talliaferro said, 'Hello Villiers.' Villiers eyed him. 'Are you well?'
'Well enough.'
'And you two?'
Kaunas managed a weak smile and a murmur. Ryger snapped, 'All right, Villiers. What's up?'
'Ryger, the angry man,' said Villiers. 'How's Ceres?'
'It was doing well when I left. How's Earth?'
'You can see for yourself,' but Villiers tightened as he said that.
He went on, 'I am hoping that the reason all three of you have come to the Convention is to hear my paper day after tomorrow.'
'Your paper? What paper?' asked Talliaferro.
'I wrote you all about it. My method of mass transference.'
Ryger smiled with one corner of his mouth. 'Yes, you did. You didn't say anything about a paper, though, and I don't recall that you're listed as one of the speakers. I would have noticed it if you had been.'
'You're right. I'm not listed. Nor have I prepared an abstract for publication.'
Villiers had flushed and Talliaferro said soothingly, 'Take it easy, Villiers. You don't look well.' Villiers whirled on him, lips contorted. 'My heart's holding out, thank you.'
Kaunas said, 'Listen, Villiers, if you're not listed or abstracted-'
'You listen. I've waited ten years. You have the jobs in space and I have to teach school on Earth, but
I'm a better man than any of you or all of you.'
'Granted-' began Talliaferro.
'And I don't want your condescension, either. Mandel witnessed it. I suppose you've heard of Mandel. Well, he's chairman of the astronautics division at the Convention and I demonstrated mass transference for him. It was a crude device and it burned out after one use but- Are you listening?'
'We're listening,' said Ryger coldly. 'For what that counts.'
'He'll let me talk about it my way. You bet he will. No warning. No advertisement. I'm going to spring it at them like a bombshell. When I give them the fundamental relationships involved it will break up the
Convention. They'll scatter to their home labs to check on me and builddevices. And they'll find it works.
I made a five mousedisappear at one spot in my lab and appear in another. Mandelwitnessed it.'
He stared at them, glaring first at one face, then at another. He said, 'You don't believe me, do you?' Ryger said, 'If you don't want advertisement, why do yon tell us?'
'You're different. You're my friends, my classmates. Youwent out into space and left me behind.'
'That wasn't a matter of choice,' objected Kaunas in a thin, high voice.
Villiers ignored that. He said, 'So I want you to know now. What will work for a mouse will work for a human. What will move something ten feet across a lab will move it a million miles across space. I'll be on the Moon, and on Mercury, and on Ceres and anywhere I want to go. I'll match every one of you and more. And I'll have done more for astronomy just teaching school and thinking than all of you with your observatories and telescopes and cameras and spaceships.'
'Well,' said Talliaferro, 'I'm pleased. More power to you. May I see a copy of the paper?'
'Oh, no.' Villiers' hands clenched close to his chest as though he were holding phantom sheets and shielding them from observation. 'You wait like everyone else. There's only one copy and no one will see it till I'm ready. Not even Mandel.'
'One copy!' cried Talliaferro. 'If you misplace it-'
'I won't. And if I do, it's all in my head.'
'If you-' Talliaferro almost finished that sentence with