"May I have the Key?" asked Lange eagerly.
Cal stopped. This was getting him down. First that pair of ignorant crooks. Then his brother, trying to steal from him something that both knew worthless—just for the plain fun of stealing he'd believed. But now this man. Dr. Lange was advanced in years, a brilliant and stable surgeon. Was he wrong? Did the Key really represent something worth-while? If so, what on earth could it be? A hoard of treasure in a worthless medium of exchange and with duplicates all over the System? What could Murdoch's Hoard be that it made men fight for it even in this day?
"Sorry," said Cal. "This is my baby."
He said no more about it.
Whatever the Hoard might be, it was getting Cal curious. That and the desire to get the best of Benj worked on him night and day during the next week. He was forced to hide out all of that time, for Benj was looking for him. The equipment still required a knowing hand to run it—any number of technicians had concocted the same circuit to drive the Key—it was the technique, not the equipment that made it function properly.
He toyed with the idea for some time. The desire to go and see for himself, however, was not greater than his aversion to space travel. Cal had an honest dislike, he had tried space travel three times when business demanded it. He'd hated it all three times.
But there it was—and there it stayed. The whole affair peaked and then died into a stasis. Murdoch's Hoard was something that Cal Blair would eventually look into—some day.
The one thing that bothered him was his hiding-out. He hated that. But he remained under cover until Tinker Elliott returned and then he sought her advice. She made a date to meet him at a nearby refreshment place later that afternoon.