Britten maintained a sullen silence.
"Just for the record," Wolf continued, "I want to fill in an important gap in the story. You told us that you sat up half the night figuring out what discovery your experiment was aiming at, but you glossed over what you actually decided at that time. Suppose we return to that night and go over the story once more in a little more detail."
Britten continued his silence, and beyond a single hostile glare from beneath half-lidded eyes, gave no expression of emotion. Wolf, as he checked the connections and slipped Britten the hypodermic, was thankful that his technique did not depend upon a friendly rapport between doctor and patient.
Presently Britten began to talk.
"You're being taken off the project because it has become classified secret," Glover had said, and at a blow an entire year of work had been struck out from beneath Jim Britten's feet. As he sat in his room, he picked raucous chords on his guitar and allowed the anger to wash deliciously through his consciousness.
Not for a minute did he believe the security classification story. He knew that the project was beginning to strike gold in an unexpected direction, and he knew what that direction was.
There was a discovery in the making. A discovery so precious that for every diamondlike star out there beyond the porthole there could be a bucket of diamonds accruing to the discoverer.
And Glover was after the profit himself, pushing Britten out of the way. This was the thought that clawed little furrows in his mind. Then, pushing their way into those little furrows came other thoughts such as: "Suppose Glover should have an accident. I'd have his notebooks, and...."
Then he began thinking of returning to Earth, and the vision of spending a life dedicated to research in a laboratory became clouded over; instead there arose a picture of himself riding in an expensive car, with beautiful, expensive women.