Perfected science! The fat printer had told them that all you had to do was think your wishes in that queer little pillared structure. And the machines translated your wishes into fact. Unless Bayley had lied, and there was small reason to suppose that he had, the rest was maybe not so difficult to understand.
First, the great envelope of force around Io. That was to keep possibly dangerous intruders away, of course. Thus, the ancient Ionians had lived in carefree idleness and luxury, tended by their perfected machines. The thing in the pyramid must be the master servant mechanism, reachable in that pillared kiosk, by telepathy. It must be the coordinator, in contact with the other mechanisms by radio, or something. Adding and calculating machines, way back in the Twentieth Century, had thought and reasoned, after a fashion. More recently, on Earth, apparati of a similar nature had done far more, working out intricate mathematical problems, far more swiftly and accurately than any human being could.
And the apparatus within the pyramid must be much the same thing, but developed to the nth degree! A vast planning, calculating device that could reason and invent with a swiftness and perfection far beyond any living mind. But it was still just mechanical; a servant apparatus that thought by the turning of the wheels and the movement of levers inside it with no more consciousness than an adding machine of the Twentieth Century!
This was the way Harwich figured it all out. And he saw something else, too.
"Uh-uh, Bayley," he remarked suddenly. "Soon after that new space flier was brought here at your command, you decided that you were complete boss around here, didn't you? There were no ancient Ionians in your way. All you had to do was wish, inside that telepathy kiosk, and it was just like Aladdin wishing with his lamp, eh?"
For the first time, cold, comprehending anger had come into the patrol pilot's tone.
"Why sure—sure!" Bayley growled back at him. "And why not? Just about anything I can think of is possible! And, let me tell you something else, you poor dope! You and Arnold wouldn't be alive now, if I hadn't wished it! I thought you might have gotten through the Ionian force shield somehow, when the RQ257 cracked up. I thought you might be somewhere out there on the desert still living. So I just wished that the machines go and get you, and revive you if you needed it. I thought maybe it might be fun."
It was enough. Cold anger reborn in Evan Harwich's breast was suddenly rekindled into blazing fury by the memory of the RQ257, and a wire filed almost through in a Gyon condenser. Evan Harwich's muscles tightened. Wordlessly he was about to leap at George Bayley.
But a warm metal tentacle whipped suddenly about his waist. The flat mechanism that had brought him and Arnold to the Tower, had seized him. Again, he was helpless.
"You see?" Bayley drawled. "I really am boss, here, just as you said. I just wished that you be restrained, and you are! But I've been doing too much talking and explaining. How about a little showing for a change, huh?"