The Sentinel - Arthur C. Clarke [31]
For a while the two men talked business and exchanged political gossip; then, rather hesitantly, Stormgren came to the point. As his visitor talked, the old Frenchman leaned back in his chair and his eyebrows rose steadily millimeter by millimeter until they were almost entangled in his forelock. Once or twice he seemed about to speak but each time thought better of it.
When Stormgren had finished, the scientist looked nervously around the room.
“Do you think he was listening?” he said.
“I don’t believe he can. This place is supposed to be shielded from everything, isn’t it? Karellen’s not a 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. “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 yards square and four high. The vision screen is about a yard 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 remembered with a slight shiver the last time he had done this sort of thing.
The Frenchman studied the drawing with puckered brow.
“And that’s all you can tell me?”
“Yes.”
He snorted in disgust.
“What about lighting? Do you sit in total darkness? And how about heating, ventilation . . . ”
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 heaters, but the room is always at normal temperature.”
“By that I take it that the carbon dioxide has frozen out, but not the oxygen.”
Stormgren did his best to smile at the well-worn joke.
“I think I’ve told 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 the 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. No one could have guessed that behind that still almost unfurrowed brow the world’s finest technical brain was working with the icy precision that had made it famous.
Then Duval 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’s exactly like one. What else would it be, anyway?”
“The tendency of otherwise first-class minds to overlook the obvious always saddens me. You know that Karellen can watch your movements, but a television system must have some sort of camera. Where is it?”
“I’d thought of that,” said Stormgren with asperity. “Couldn’t the screen do both jobs? I know our televisors don’t, but still—”
Duval didn’t like the idea.
“It would be possible,” he admitted. “But why on earth go to all that trouble? 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