film, I'm afraid. For that I'm sorry. And now there is still the question of the missing film.'
'If any,' said Ryger, and yawned prodigiously.
Mandel said, 'I would suggest we come down to Villiers' room, gentlemen.' Kaunas looked startled. 'Why?'
Talliaferro said. 'Is this psychology? Bring the criminal to the scene of the crime and remorse will wring a confession from him?'
Mandel said, 'A less melodramatic reason is that I would like to have the two of you who are innocent help me find the missing film of Villiers' paper.'
'Do you think it's there?' asked Ryger challengingly.
'Possibly. It's a beginning. We can then search each of your rooms. The symposium on Astronautics doesn't start till tomorrow at 10 a.m. We have till then.'
'And after that?'
'It may have to be the police.'
They stepped gingerly into Villiers' room. Ryger was red, Kaunas pale. Talliaferro tried to remain calm.
Last night they had seen it under artificial lighting with a scowling, disheveled Villiers clutching his pillow, staring them down, ordering them away. Now there was the scentless odor of death about it.
Mandel fiddled with the window polarizer to let more light in and adjusted it too far, so that the eastern
Sun slipped in.
Kaunas threw his arm up to shade his eyes and screamed, The Sun!' so that all the others froze.
Kaunas' face had gone into a kind of terror, as though it were his Mercurian Sun that he had caught a blinding glimpse of.
Talliaferro thought of his own reaction to the possibility of open air and his teeth gritted. They were all bent crooked by their ten years away from Earth.
Kaunas ran to the window, fumbling for the polarizer, and then the breath came out of him in a huge gasp.
Mandel stepped to his side. 'What's wrong?' and the other two joined them.
The city lay stretched below them and outward to the horizon in broken stone and brick, bathed in the rising Sun, with the shadowed portions toward them. Talliaferro cast it all a furtive and uneasy glance.
Kaunas, his chest seemingly contracted past the point where he could cry out, stared at something much closer. There, on the outer window sill, one corner secured hi a trifling imperfection, a crack in the cement, was an inch-long strip of milky-gray film, and on it were the early rays of the rising Sun.
Mandel, with an angry, incoherent cry, threw up the window and snatchedit away. He shielded it in one cupped hand, staring out of hot and reddened eyes.
He said, 'Wait here!'
There was nothing to say. When Mandel left, they sat down and stared stupidly at one another.
Mandel was back in twenty minutes. He said quietly-in a voice that gave the impression, somehow, that it was quiet only because its owner had passed far beyond the raving stage-The corner in the crack wasn't overexposed. I could make out a few words. It is Villiers' paper. The rest is ruined; nothing can be salvaged. It's gone.'
'What next?' said Talliaferro.
Mandel shrugged wearily. 'Right now, I don't care. Mass transference is gone until someone as brilliant as Villiers works it out again. I shall work on it, but I have no illusions as to my own capacity. With it gone, I suppose you three don't matter, guilty or not. What's the difference?' His whole body seemed to have loosened and sunk into despair.
But Talliaferro's voice grew hard. 'Now, hold on. In your eyes, any of the three of us might be guilty. I, for instance. You are a big man in the field and you will never have a good word to say for me. The general idea may arise that I am incompetent or worse. I will not be ruined by the shadow of guilt. Now let's solve this thing.'
'I am no detective,' said Mandel wearily.
Then why don't you call in the police, damn it?'
Ryger said, 'Wait awhile, Tal. Are you implying that I'm guilty?'
'I'm only saying that I'm innocent.'
Kaunas raised his voice in fright. 'It will mean the psychoprobe for each of us. There may be mental damage-'
Mandel raised both arms high in the air. 'Gentlemen! Gentlemen! Please! There is one thing we might do short of the police; and you are right, Dr. Talliaferro, it would be unfair to the innocent to leave this matter here.'
They turned to him in various stages of hostility. Ryger said, 'What do you suggest?'
'I have a friend named Wendell Urth. You may have heard of him, or you may not, but perhaps I can arrange to see him tonight.'