Childhood's End - Arthur C. Clarke [20]
When Stormgren had finished, the scientist looked nervously around the room.
"Do you think he's listening?" he said.
"I don't believe he can. He's got what he calls a tracer on me, for my protection. But it doesn't work underground, which is one reason why I came down to this dungeon of yours. It's supposed to be shielded from all forms of radiation, isn't it? Karellen's no magician. He knows where I am, but that's all."
"I hope you're right. Apart from that, won't there be trouble when he discovers what you're trying to do? Because he will, you know."
"I'll take that risk. Besides, we understand each other rather well."
The physicist toyed with his pencil and stared into space for a while.
"It's a very pretty problem. I like it," he said simply. Then he dived into a drawer and produced an enormous writing-pad, quite the biggest that Stormgren had ever seen.
"Right," he began, scribbling furiously in what seemed to be some private shorthand. "Let me make sure I have all the facts. Tell me everything you can about the room in which you have your interviews. Don't omit any detail, however trivial it seems."
"There isn't much to describe. It's made of metal, and is about eight metres square and four high. The vision screen is about a metre on a side and there's a desk immediately beneath it-here, it will be quicker if I draw it for you."
Rapidly Stormgren sketched the little room he knew so well, and pushed the drawing over to Duval. As he did so, he recalled, with a slight shiver, the last time he had done this sort of thing. He wondered what had happened to the blind Welsh-man and his confederates, and how they had reacted to his abrupt departure.
The Frenchman studied the drawing with a puckered brow.
"And that's all you can tell me?"
Duval snorted in disgust.
"What about lighting? Do you sit in total darkness? And how about ventilation, heating-"
Stormgren smiled at the characteristic outburst.
"The whole ceiling is luminous, and as far as I can tell the air comes through the speaker grille. I don't know how it leaves; perhaps the stream reverses at intervals, but I haven't noticed it. There's no sign of any heater, but the room is always at normal temperature."
"Meaning, I suppose, that the water vapour has frozen out, but not the carbon dioxide."
Stormgren did his best to smile at the well-worn joke.
"I think I've told you everything," he concluded. "As for the machine that takes me up to Karellen's ship, the room in which I travel is as featureless as an elevator cage. Apart from he couch and table, it might very well be one."
There was silence for several minutes while the physicist embroidered his writing-pad with meticulous and microscopic doodles. As he watched, Stormgren wondered why it was that a man like Duval-whose mind was incomparably more brilliant than his own-had never made a greater mark in the world of science. He remembered an unkind and probably inaccurate comment of a friend in the U.S. State Department. "The French produce the best second-raters in the world." Duval was the sort of man who supported that statement.
The physicist nodded to himself in satisfaction, leaned forward and pointed his pencil at Stormgren.
"What makes you think, Rikki," he asked, "that Karellen's vision-screen, as you call it, really is what it pretends to be?"
"I've always taken it for granted; it looks exactly like one. What else would it be, anyway?"
"When you say that it looks like a vision-screen, you mean, don't you, that it looks like one of ours?"
"Of course."
"I find that suspicious in itself. I'm sure the Overlord's own apparatus won't use anything so crude as an actual physical screen-they'll probably materialize images directly in space. But why should Karellen bother to use a TV system, anyway? The simplest solution is always best. Doesn't it seem far more probable that your 'vision-screen' is really nothing more complicated than a sheet of one-way glass?"
Stormgren was so annoyed with himself that for a moment he sat in silence, retracing the past. From the