“Certainly the producers would like to increase volume. They would like, of course, to get a first-rate production engineer. You know as well as I that they could never do it; no such person could be involved secretly in such a matter. Every competent engineer is well employed since Velio was discovered, and it would be too easy for us to trace one who was approached for such a purpose.
“You, however, are a comparatively inconspicuous person; you are on vacation, and will be for another year; no one will miss you — we expect these people to think. That’s why we took such extreme precautions in arranging this interview.”
“But you’ll have to publicize me some way, or they would never know I existed, either,” Ken pointed out.
“That can be done — in fact, has already started. I trust you’ll forgive us for that; but the job is important. The whisper has already started in criminal circles that you are the manufacturer of the bomb that wrecked the Storm plant. We can give you quite a reputation—”
“Which will prevent my ever getting an honest job again.”
“Which will never be heard of by your present employers, or by any respectable person not associated with the police.”
Ken was not yet sure why he had accepted. Maybe the occupation of policeman still carried a little subconscious glamour, though certainly it was now mostly laboratory work. This looked like an exception — or did it? He had as Rade expected been hired by an extremely short-spoken individual, who claimed to represent a trading concern. The understanding had been that his knowledge was to be placed at the disposal of his employers. Perhaps they would simply stick him in a lab with the outline or a production problem, and tell him to solve it. In that case, he would be out of a job very quickly, and if he were lucky might be able to offer his apologies to Rade.
For he certainly had learned nothing so far. Even the narcotics man had admitted that his people knew no one at all certainly connected with the ring, and it was very possible that he might be hired by comparatively respectable people — compared, of course, to drug-runners. For all Ken could tell at the moment, that might have happened. He had been shepherded aboard the Karella at the North Island spaceport, and for twenty-two days had seen nothing at all.
He knew, of course, that the drug came from off the planet. Rade had become sufficiently specific to admit that the original rush had been checked by examining incoming refrigeration apparatus. He did not know, however, that it came from outside the Sarrian planetary system. Twenty-two days was a long journey — if it had been made in a straight line.
Certainly the world that hung now beyond the port did not look as though it could produce anything. Only a thin crescent of it was visible, for it lay nearly between the ship and a remarkably feeble sun. The dark remainder of the sphere blotted out the Milky Way in a fashion that showed the planet to be airless. It was mountainous, inhospitable, and cold. Ken knew that last fact because of the appearance of the sun. It was dim enough to view directly without protection to the eyes; to Ken’s color sense, reddish in shade and shrunken in aspect. No world this far from such a star could be anything but cold.