"Upstairs, I suppose. He had some visitors before, Alan. Two men. I ... I didn't like them. I didn't think Bill would have such friends. And Alan, they came downstairs with a lady. A woman! She must have been in Bill's room. There was an awful rumpus up there, then they came down. I'm going to give Bill Graham a talking to, you can bet."
Alan rushed upstairs without answering. Mrs. Moriarity was still talking, her voice carrying up from below. "How did you like your trip to Mars, Alan? I meant to ask you." Her own small world went on. The bigger world hadn't mattered for years, still didn't matter, even now.
Bill Graham's room was a shambles. Furniture turned over, the desk on its side, the bed....
Bill Graham was on the floor. He lay with his hands in front of his face. His final gesture had been an instinctive one of protection. Half his face had been sheared away horribly by an atomic blast.
Laura was gone.
Final reckoning with Keifer, Alan thought. Bill Graham. Happy-go-lucky. A big kid who hadn't quite grown up yet. Give you the shirt off his back. Now he was dead.
How? Alan thought of it briefly and vaguely. It hardly mattered. It seemed impossible, too—but other things were more important. Except for Bill Graham and Alan, only the reporters, guards and Ministers at the Security Council meeting had known where Laura was. Alan had told them.
There was a traitor among them.
The traitor had come here and taken Laura, killing Graham when he tried to prevent it.
Laura was bound for the moon, Keifer's final trump card.