would have been to let him finish kissing
Ciel.

As calmly as he could he said to the four blank walls, "I'm awake."

Soft glowlights came on gradually and he saw that the room about him was
fairly small--twenty by fifteen, roughly--and very plain. It contained a
bed and a few odd pieces of furniture, all apparently of good quality.
There was a door in one wall. He tried the door. Locked. He went back to
the middle of the room.

"Chief," he said to the blank walls, "what's this all about? Is it some
kind of a joke?"

The metallic voice chuckled. It belonged to Eustace J. Larkin, Chief,
Central Investigation Bureau, and even filtered like this it was
somewhat prim and precise. "No, Dick, it's not a joke, I'm afraid. I'm
surprised you haven't guessed what it's all about. Or at least had one
of your brilliant hunches." There was sarcasm in this last.

"Where's Ciel?" Pell asked.

"Right here with me. In the next room. Here--listen."

Ciel's voice said, "Don't worry, darling, we'll explain everything. And
when it's all over it will be for the best. You'll see that it will."

"All right, everybody," said Pell, half-belligerently, "what's the big
idea?"

"Big idea is right," Larkin's voice came back. "The biggest that ever
hit the human race. And as Ciel says we'll explain it all in a moment.
But first I'd like your word that you won't be foolish and make any kind
of a struggle. If you'll promise that you can come in the other room
here and we can all talk face to face."

Pell frowned. "I don't know--I'm not so sure I can honestly promise
that."

"Suit yourself, then. A few minutes from now it won't make any
difference anyway."

"Will you stop being so damned mysterious and tell me what it's all
about?"

Larkin's voice laughed. "Very well. I haven't had much chance to tell
about it, frankly. And I think you'll agree we've rather neatly kept our
parts under cover--until you got dangerously close to the answer,
anyway."

"Until I got close?"

"Certainly. Doc Wilcox's office on the moon was perhaps our one weakness
in the whole set-up. How you managed to stumble on to that, I'll never
know--your luck must have been with you."

"It wasn't luck, Larkin, it was a hunch."

"Still believe in hunches, eh? Well, we won't argue the point. At any
rate you wouldn't have found the enzyme any place else but there."

"Oh, so the enzyme does have something to do with it."

"Everything. Here--suppose I let Doctor Nebe