Admiral Hawarden nodded in agreement. "I've been forced to the same belief."
Something clicked in Hanlon's mind. "The emperor," he exclaimed. "Maybe we'd better have another go at him. I'll bet his mind's a lot freer from that compulsion now, and perhaps he can remember more of what Bohr sealed away from his conscious memory."
Hawarden nodded. "That's a good bet. I'll arrange it."
Two hours later the emperor was free to receive them, and the four were soon closeted in his study.
"It's a strange, weird feeling, gentlemen," he said when they had explained what they wanted. "It's almost like trying to read some other person's mind. I've felt that Bohr's influence was receding, and I've been trying to see what more I could find."
He sat silent for a moment, then said slowly, almost in a sing-song voice as though reading from a printed page, "I knew he was building some ships on Algon, but I did not know they were warships. He told me they were a new type with an entirely new propulsive principle that one of our scientists had worked out."
"There's always that possibility, of course," Newton said.
"Why did he say they were building them elsewhere than on this planet?" Hawarden asked.
The emperor frowned in concentration, then a peculiar look came over his features. "That's strange," he marvelled. "You would think I would have been sure to ask that, but I cannot find any memory of ever having done so."
"Algon had most of the natural resources for the building of ships," Hanlon ruminated aloud. "There were the mines, the forests, and slave labor to cut down expenses. It was mostly engineers, scientists and special technicians who were there, overseeing."