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 beginning, he had never challenged Karellen’s story — yet now he came to look back, when had the Supervisor ever told him that he was using a TV system? He had simply taken it for granted; the whole thing had been a piece of psychological trickery, and he had been completely deceived. Always assuming, of course, that Duval’s theory was correct. But he was jumping to conclusions again; no one had proved anything yet.
“If you’re right,” he said, “all I have to do is to smash the glass—” Duval sighed.
“These unscientific laymen! Do you think it’ll be made of anything you could smash without explosives? And if you succeeded, do you imagine that Karellen is likely to breathe the same air that we do? Won’t it be nice for both of you if he flourishes in an atmosphere of chlorine?”