Harwich and Arnold looked at each other, as Bayley paused, as if to get his breath. They looked up at the pyramid, throbbing above them, like some great, cryptic, servant personality. The feeling that Bayley was telling the truth, was growing on them.
"Naturally you tried other things, after the carafe was brought to you, Bayley," Paul Arnold prompted. "You wanted to see how much further this expression of desires by telepathy might be carried. You wanted to see how much more you could use the ancient Ionian science."
Bayley, still standing in that little metal-pillared structure, nodded slowly. "You catch on quick, Arnold," he said. "First I wished for gold, since it was the first thing I thought of. The sounds inside the pyramid changed a little, as though an order was going out somehow, maybe by radio. Five minutes later a whole bunch of those flying machines came into the Tower here, carrying bars of gold in their tentacles. There it is."
The printer was pointing toward a dully gleaming heap of yellow ingots near the farther wall of the chamber.
"But this, I soon found out, was just kid stuff!" Bayley continued. "I suppose if I'd thought of radium here in this wishing coop, I would have got a couple of tons of that, too! But I wished for a space ship—something special, beyond anything an Earthman ever saw before! Well, the pyramid buzzed a little longer and stranger this time, as though it was sort of thinking and planning, and as though the wheels inside it were maybe inventing, too. Then, somewhere far off, there was a lot of pounding for about an hour. I guess you know the answer, boys. There she is—the sweetest little super-futuristic space flier you ever saw!"
Harwich and Arnold stared at the torpedo-like ship that rested in a cradle-like support nearby. It was completely without rocket-tubes, or other visible means of propulsion. But its rakish lines and wicked lavender glitter made it look as though it might well reach the distant stars themselves.
Evan Harwich bit his lip tensely. Suddenly a thought struck him. "Did you see any Ionians since you've been here, Bayley?" he asked. "Any living, intelligent beings who might question your right to be prowling around?"
Bayley laughed. "Not one!" he returned. "They're extinct, I'm sure of it! And that's lucky for me."
The patrol pilot was beginning to put the pieces of the Forbidden Moon's riddle together at last. And Paul Harwich must have been doing the same. The evidence, as far as it went, was clear.