Nor were the Guardians beyond suspicion. Wanting to bring this thing into the open, what better way than to louse the generator themselves and let the natural course of events take care of Hagen.
It was not a pretty tangle. Every angle remained closed to him; Steve could not open the first door, for he had not the authority to question anybody.
But until he got the answer, Steve was not going to do what he wanted to do.
The days wore on into a week, and then the week grew into a month. Steve, unattached, roved the galactic sector, nosing in generator rooms of spacecraft hoping to pick up some clue.
He had to give up the idea of substitution. The generator delivered to Morehouse's office was the generator that had been taken from the threatened ship; it was the same generator he had checked a few hours before the ship took off.
After two months Steve was ready to admit defeat. Only determination remained, and that was wearing very thin. No longer did he have the regard of his fellows; his unattached state was practically a condition of disgrace and everybody knew it. He saw little of Lois; alone he saw her not at all.
But as the months passed, the trail became colder and colder, and the incident dropped into the files—was covered up by the regular list of calls that sent the Guardians out from time to time to take care of trouble, occasionally to fight a blowup, often to go out and calm down some stormy condition that possibly would not have blown anyway. The muttering of the alarm came constantly from one or the other sector of the galaxy and the Guardians would be out, from one base or another.
But not for Steve; he was licked.
He sat in his quarters quietly unhappy for hours before he pulled the typewriter from its case and placed it deliberately on the top of his desk. With a shake of his head, Steve put a sheet of paper in the typewriter and began to tap out his resignation.