Farradyne smiled. "I've got to make a freight pickup on Pluto for Terra," he said quietly. "I'll take Mr. Hughes back home."
"That would be very considerate of you, Mr. Farradyne."
Farradyne shook his head in disclaimer. "It's only what any man would do," he said. "What do we know about Mr. Hughes?"
Miss Tilden said, "Not very much, I'm afraid. Mr. Hughes teaches Ancient History in Des Moines, Iowa. He joined us on Mercury, you know."
"No," said Farradyne, "I didn't know. I thought you were all together."
"Apparently Mr. Hughes was traveling alone until he heard of our group," offered Professor Martin. "He was, he said, seeking a reduced-rate trip to Pluto—as we were—when he noticed our flight-plan filed on the bulletin board. He got in touch with me and offered to join."
Farradyne nodded. "There's really plenty of time," he said. "No use getting excited. I'll contact the Des Moines Board of Education later—after we've made our landing and take-off, and are close enough to Terra to make the radio effective. It'll save us some money that way." The latter, he thought, would appeal to these people.
It was left that way. Farradyne did not assume for one moment that Hughes was a complete fake. One of two ideas was certainly true: either there was a real schoolteacher named Hughes who looked like the made-up Brenner, or Brenner had been masquerading as Hughes and really taught school in Des Moines when he was not peddling hellflowers.
There were more important things to be considered, too. Was there another hellflower operator in the ship? Farradyne watched them all like the proverbial hawk but he could see no evidence of another hellflower man. He decided to take no chances; it would be very much like the higher-ups in this racket to have put a second operator aboard the Lancaster to take over in the case of Brenner's failure; the second undercover man could escape as easily as could Brenner and in the same way as soon it became evident that the Lancaster had been properly sabotaged. To forestall this possibility, Farradyne built a small photoelectric alarm and put it across the stairway that led from the passengers' cabin to the below-deck section of the ship.
Some of Hughes' friends went with Farradyne to watch him tend the stricken one. They stood in the doorway while Farradyne gave Hughes his shot of marcoleptine out of an ampoule carefully labeled "MacDonaldson Formula 2, Ph-D3; Ra7." There was no doubt in their faces; Farradyne was a fine man, doing all he could to relieve the illness of another man.