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.