"That, in a nutshell is our problem. We coded and fed to the Brain every shred of information at our disposal; the ages of the children, for instance, and all their physical attributes, and where they were last seen, and what they were wearing. Hell, everything! The machine took the factors, weighed them, popped them through its billions of relays and tubes, and out of the end of the answer slot popped a single sheet. The one you just saw. Your dossier."
"Then I'm to be sent to Mars?" I said, nervously.
"That's just it," Baxter sighed. "We don't even know that! We're like a savage who finds a pistol: used correctly, it's a mean little weapon; pointed the wrong way, it's a quick suicide. So, you are our weapon. Now, the question is: Which way do we point you?"
"You got me!" I shrugged hopelessly.
"However, since we have nothing else to go on but the locale from which the children vanished, my suggestion would be to send you there."
"Mars, you mean," I said.
"No, to the spaceship Phobos II. The one they were returning to Earth in when they disappeared."
"They disappeared from a spaceship? While in space?"
Baxter nodded.
"But that's impossible," I said, shaking my head against this disconcerting thought.