While he was speaking, he pressed the button — and knew that all his fears had been groundless. Karellen’s senses were no subtler than Man’s. The Supervisor could have detected nothing, for there was no change in his voice as he said goodbye and spoke the familiar code-words that opened the door of the chamber. Yet Stormgren still felt like a shoplifter leaving a department store under the eyes of the house-detective, and breathed a sigh of relief when the smooth wall had sealed itself behind
“I admit,” said van Ryberg, “that some of my theories haven’t been very successful. But tell me what you think of this one.”
“Must I?” sighed Stormgren.
Pieter didn’t seem to notice.
“It isn’t really my idea,” he said modestly. “I got it from a story of Chesterton’s. Suppose the Overlords are hiding the fact that they’ve got nothing to hide?”
“That sounds just a little complicated to me,” said Stormgren, beginning to take slight interest.
’What I mean is this,” van Ryberg continued eagerly. “I think that physically they’re human beings like us. They realize that we’ll tolerate being ruled by creatures we imagine to be — well, alien and super-intelligent. But the human race being what it is, it just won’t be bossed around by creatures of the same species.”
“Very ingenious, like all your theories,” said Stormgren.
“I wish you’d give them opus numbers so that I could keep up with them. The objections to this one—” But at that moment Alexander Wainwright was ushered in.
Stormgren wondered what he was thinking. He wondered too, if Wainwright had made any contact with the men who had kidnapped him. He doubted it, for he believed Wainwright’s disapproval of violence to be perfectly genuine. The extremists in his movement had discredited themselves thoroughly, and it would be a long time before the world heard of them again.