"Yes," said Eugene Talbrick. "A letter from your father to you. It's in my own quarters now. I wouldn't mail it for fear it would be intercepted on its way to Earth."
"A letter?"
"He knew it was the end. He knew he was dying. He wrote the letter and gave it to me because he had seen through Keifer too late. Will you come with me now?"
"Of course," Alan said, and followed the old man from his father's apartment.
"Here we are," Eugene Talbrick told him a few minutes later. He opened the door to his own quarters and stepped inside. Alan followed him into darkness, heard the old man groping ahead of him for the switch which would fill the windowless, rock-hewn apartment with light.
The door clicked shut behind them.
"That's funny," Talbrick's reedy voice was close at hand. "The light doesn't work."
There was a soft series of repeated thuds, someone moving across the carpet quickly.
"Who's there?" Eugene Talbrick called.