“There’s no design,” Ross said. “Or if there is, luckily this planet is a trifling part of it. I have never heard of such arrogant pip-squeakery in my life. You flyspecks in your shabby corner of the Galaxy think your own fouled-up mess is the pattern of universal life. You’re wrong! I’ve seen life elsewhere and I know it isn’t.”
The doctor passed his trembling hand over his eyes. “Jones is not mocked,” he croaked. “L-sub-T equals L-sub-zero e to the minus T-over-two-N. You can’t fight that, stranger. You can’t fight that.”
Ross realized he was silently crying behind his covering hand.
He said, much more gently, “It’s nothing you have to fight. It’s something you have to understand.” He told Sam Jones of his two previous encounters with the formula. The doctor looked up, his eyes full of wonder. Ross said, “How would you like to be free, doctor? Free of your shaking hands, free of your guilt, free of these killers? How would you like to know the truth?”
The doctor said faintly, “If I dared——”
Ross pressed, “The museum in Earth city. Get me records, facts, anything about the War of the Joneses. If there’s any meaning to the formula it’ll have to lie in that. It seems there was a battle about its interpretation and we know who won. Let’s find out what the other side said. Get me in there.” He was thinking of the disgraceful war of fanaticism that had marred his own planet’s history. The doctor’s weak Jones jaw was firming up, though his eyes were still haunted. “Stall your killer friends, doctor,” Ross urged. “Tell them you can use us for experiments that’ll cut the cost of the operations. That ought to bring them around. And get me the facts!”
“To be free,” the doctor said wistfully. He said after a pause, “I’ll try. But——” And rapped a code series on the steel door.
..... 11
THE doctor said with weak belligerence, “Who do you think I am? Jones? I had to leave your friends behind. I had enough trouble getting those hoods to let me take you along. After all, I’m not a miracle-worker.”
Ross said sullenly, “Okay, okay.” He glowered out of the car window and spat out a tendril of red hair that had come loose from the fringe surrounding his mouth. The trouble with a false beard was that it itched, worse than the real article, worse than any torment Ross had ever known. But at least Ross, externally and at extreme range, was enough of a Jones to pass a casual glance.