"Plenty. With that he could turn all radiations in space to work. The cosmics, heat, light, everything. Space is full of radiation."
"If it hadn't been for Wilson,” Greg said, his voice a snarl, “we wouldn't have to be worrying about Chambers. Chambers wouldn't know until we were ready to let him know."
"Wilson!” ejaculated Russ, suddenly leaning forward. “I had forgotten about Wilson. What do you say we try to find him?"
* * *
Harry Wilson sat at his table in the Martian Club and watched the exotic Martian dance, performed by near-nude girls. Smoke trailed up lazily from his drooping cigarette as he watched through squinted eyes. There was something about the dance that got under Wilson's skin.
The music rose, then fell to whispering undertones and suddenly, unexpectedly, crashed and stopped. The girls were running from the floor. A wave of smooth, polite applause rippled around the tables.
Wilson sighed and reached for his wine glass. He crushed the cigarette into a tray and sipped his wine. He glanced around the room, scanning the bobbing, painted faces of the night-the great, the near-great, the near-enough-to-touch-the-great. Brokers and businessmen, artists and writers and actors. There were others, too, queer night-life shadows that no one knew much about, or that one heard too much about… the playboys and the ladies of family and fortune, correctly attired men, gorgeously, sleekly attired women.
And-Harry Wilson. The waiters called him Mr. Wilson. He heard people whispering about him asking who he was. His soul soaked it in and cried for more. Good food, good drinks, the pastels of the walls, the soft lights and weird, exotic music. The cold but colorful correctness of it all.
Just two months ago he had stood outside the club, a stranger in the city, a mechanic from a little out-of-the-way laboratory, a man who was paid a pittance for his skill. He had stood outside and watched his employers walk up the steps and through the magic doors. He had watched in bitterness…
But now!