"Havanol may give us an inkling of what the game is!" Mark observed. "The whole secret lies within the reason for evacuating the irreconcilables. The Civicans, Guildians, Technicians and Ruralians are merely the base of the pyramid; between them and the Scientists there's a gap that must be filled by the Internationals and the Philosophers—without pioneers and thinkers in the abstract, their rule's static. Their scheme, whatever it is, fails without us." Mark was telepathically communicating with Palanth his conclusions as they neared International House.
Palanth's violet eyes narrowed in amusement. "They no doubt have a surprise for us in store—how poetic that we should be the ones to surprise them!" The Martian waved his perfumed kerchief and the sparkling iciness of the breeze was scented with fresh jasmines.
III
Mark's hand tightened on the hard object he carried in a lower pocket of his tunic. It seemed to him as if an immeasurably distant vibration reached the very top of his brain where the most difficult thinking is done. It was a fleeting thought, the barest sidereal whisper, that was gone almost the instant it impinged upon his mind. Could the final answer lie there for them?
With Terra gone, or made uninhabitable, they would be homeless children of space, unless they subjected themselves to the prosaic, uninspiring existence of the planetarian settlements, limited by space, rigidly under Council control—their lives but pawns in a gigantic game that was planned for centuries to come with a cold, mathematical impersonality that reduced life to a mechanical phenomenon. Mark shuddered slightly.
"Yes, Palanth, poetic justice indeed! Come to my apartment at International House, I want to tell you a story ... the story of what happened on Europa when I was Mark the daredevil, recorded as Hugh Betancourt—the surname of my Mentor before I earned my rank and the right to use my own name. Jim Brannigan was my second in command, when he crashed our ship on Europa...." He was smiling with a distant look in his eyes.
Later, they met Doctor Fortun.
She was still sheathed in the filmy tunic of silver-violet she had worn at Havanol. The fragrance of Venusian butterfly-orchids was a faint invitation to desire. But her firm, capable hands at the controls, sent the luxurious helio-plane hurtling through the stratosphere at a dizzy speed above a continental cloud bank.
Dawn was beginning in a young flood of opalescent fire; the ship was dipping and the clouds were swirling. Doctor Fortun sat silent with an enigmatic smile on her lips. Mark Lynn didn't speak lest he break the spell, while Palanth leaned back in his mullioned seat, eyes closed, recapturing the past memorable hours.