"I understand Terra has the best technicians in the universe," one of the hoistmen said.
"That used to be the case," Hanlon answered honestly, "but now I understand Simonides has, just as she is the wealthiest planet. Of course, Terra being the original world, was bound to have the best the race could breed in all lines of endeavor. But when so many people migrated to other planets, she gradually lost many of her finest brains. Later, those other planets offered such fabulous wages to men and women with skills and trainings her first inhabitants lacked, that Terra was further drained."
"That's the pity of colonization," the elder engineer sighed. "It builds new lands at the expense of the old, taking all their strongest, most adventurous and most imaginative. Soon the original country or continent or planet is peopled only by the dregs."
"I don't like to think Terra has only dregs left. After all, I came from there, you know," Hanlon grinned and they smiled back companionably. "But I know you're right in part—at least, that will probably be the case in time. Just as it will with the other planets as their best and younger top-notchers go out to open up still more worlds."
In the middle of that first night on Algon something, perhaps his sub-conscious, brought George Hanlon wide awake, his every mental faculty clear and alert.
Click! Click! Click! ... like pieces of a jig-saw puzzle falling into place, many of the odds and ends of apparently unrelated information and experience fell into place in this enigma.
He remembered clearly now, an incident that had merely brought a momentary wonder at the time. Those last minutes before the ship took off. The leader had stared long and piercingly into his eyes and Hanlon, wondering and puzzled as to what the man was seeking, merely stared back dumbly. Now he remembered the flashing thought—quickly dismissed as ridiculous—that even if he did find out where he was going, he must never tell anyone; must forget it entirely and instantly on pain of severe torture.
Why, that leader must have been trying to implant a hypnotic compulsion in his mind ... and must have thought he succeeded, else Hanlon would never have reached here alive. That was why he could never read that knowledge from the mind of any of the people he had contacted who were in on this game—not even that ship's officer, who certainly should have known.
But wait a minute. What about Philander? He knew. Hadn't the hypnosis worked on him? Or was that name "Algon" merely one the super used in place of the real one he didn't know he knew? Or, again, could it be that he was so well trusted that the knowledge had not been sealed off from him?
Of the three, Hanlon argued the latter was probably the truth.