"You'll have to spend the night here, Dukas," Loman rumbled.
Ed put out the light in his cell, but as he crept into his cot, he held a bit of paper from his coat pocket in one hand. He left his fountain pen open, on top of his clothes. For maybe an hour he lay quietly in the dark, listening to the scattered noises of the troubled night. Then he slept.
He awoke as dawn grayed the east and glanced at once at the paper in his hand, which he had kept outside the blanket. Ed's heart leaped. A message had been written. Perhaps it had taken all night to toil it out at a creeping pace: "Nipper—argue police—you go Port Smitty—Mars—at once."
The final e of once was already written, except that a line of it was still being extended. A little dot of wet ink was still laboring across the paper.
Ed had no microscope or pocket lens, but he risked turning on the light. He peered hard. He was not at all sure that he saw anything special. But imbedded in the dark liquid he thought for an instant that he beheld a suggestion of form—impossible or entirely fantastic. Then the tiny minuscule of ink quivered, and the hint was gone.
Ed whispered, so low that he himself could not hear, "Uncle Mitch. I know that you're around—in some form. I wish I understood what you're up to."
Ed tore the message from the sheet of paper, chewed it to a pulp, and spat it on the floor. At least he was destroying concrete evidence that might provoke greater attention than his psyched memories. Of course they would psych him again—that was why they had held him, hoping that he would learn more. But he had learned very little.
The psyching was done. Chief Bronson and Carter Loman knew all that he knew. Now Ed offered his proposition: "Suppose I got to Mars, as Mitchell Prell suggests? I seem to be the only man to contact him. You are aware that I myself haven't more than a wild glimmer of where the trail leads. But you know that I'm badly worried about what a human-and-android conflict can mean, and that I want to break the danger somehow. If you want to find Prell, track me by the best means that you know."
Chief Bronson nodded, musingly.