The library was unoccupied and unlighted, dim with only the reflected lights from the nearby passages. I crouched behind a cylinder-case. The door of Miko’s room was in sight, being some thirty feet away from me.
I waited perhaps five minutes. No one entered. Then I realized that doubtless the conspirators were already there. I set my tiny eavesdropper on the library floor beside me; connected its little battery; focused its projector. Was Miko’s room insulated? I could not tell. There was a small ventilating grid above the door. Across its opening, if the room were insulated, a blue sheen of radiance would be showing. And there would be a faint hum. But from this distance I could not see or hear such details, and I was afraid to approach closer. Once in the transverse corridor, I would have no place to hide, no way of escape; if anyone approached Miko’s door, I would be discovered.
I threw the current into my little apparatus. I prayed, if it met interference, that the slight sound would pass unnoticed. George Prince had said he would make opportunity to disconnect the room’s insulation. He had evidently done so. I picked up the interior sounds at once; my headphone vibrated with them. And with trembling fingers on the little dial between my knees as I crouched in the darkness behind the cylinder-case, I synchronized.
“Johnson is a fool.” It was Miko’s voice. “We must have the pass-words.”
“He got them from the helio-room.” A man’s voice; I puzzled over it at first, then recognized it. Rance Rankin.
Miko said, “He is a fool. Walking around this ship as though with letters blazoned on his forehead––‘Watch me––I need watching––’ Hah! No wonder they apprehended him!”
Was George Prince in there? Rankin’s voice said: “He would have turned the papers over to us. I would not blame him too much. What harm––”
“Oh, I’ll release him,” Miko declared. 340 “What harm? That braying ass did us plenty of harm. He has lost the pass-words. Better he had left them in the helio-room.”
Moa was in the room. Her voice said: “We’ve got to have them. The Planetara, upon such an important voyage as this, may be watched. How do we know––”