"Jimmy, I can't tell you everything yet. But I can tell you this. By joining forces with me, you will be working toward the recovery of your father's lost secret and the identification of the man who murdered him.
"Tonight at midnight you will enter the offices of Phobos Enterprises and take from their vault the paper-wrapped box on the third shelf. Good luck, Nebula."
Phil Hanley, reporter of the Globe, let himself into his apartment, strode straight to the liquor cabinet and took a stiff drink. Then he sat down before a table and spread an array of objects before him.
They were a curious collection: A polished falpa button of the type affected by members of the superiors class; two panelled cards, each with the design of the Constellation Orion, two rather blurred photographs of finger prints, and a notebook.
These findings were the results of Hanley's activities during the night. Still obsessed with his plan to get a signed interview with the Nebula, he had reasoned, logically enough, that the only way to do so was to learn first the cracksman's identity.
The button first. It was elliptical in shape and bore that curious triangular emblem so hated by the poorer classes. Hanley had found it on the office floor of the Crater City Trust Company. He realized, however, that any number of superiors might have business with that establishment and that the button's presence there meant nothing.
In rotation he examined the two panelled cards and the fingerprint photographs. He brought a powerful atolight down and studied them with the aid of a proberglass.
At the end of five minutes a low whistle of amazement came to his lips. He pushed glass and light away and brought forward the discovery he had deliberately reserved for the last. The notebook.
There was no reason to believe it the property of the Nebula. The Nebula didn't go around dropping private journals for inquisitive reporters to find. Hanley had discovered it half hidden in the gutter before the entrance of the Crater City Museum where the night watchman had been murdered.