"Look, Armstrong. I'm sane - yet."
"I hope you are, sir." But the man's bleak eyes were unconvinced.
"We've searched the place and phoned the guard detachments," he reported stiffly.
"There is nobody inside except the staff.
Nobody but you has been admitted through our gate today."
He glanced behind him uneasily. "The only odd thing is that call from Mr. Ironsmith." "He called me, too" - Forester tried to keep his voice from trembling - "about the child at the gate, but that doesn't explain how she got inside."
"Ironsmith said she had some message-"
"She did." Forester displayed the gray card, soiled from Jane Carter's fingers.
The two men studied it silently, and he saw the hard suspicion fade from Armstrong's eyes.
"Sorry, sir!" "Can't blame you." Feebly, Forester answered his apologetic grin.
"Now we can get at the problem."
They all went down again, to search the vault, but they found no intruder there.
The great safe was still intact, plastered with unbroken seals.
The long missiles lay safe in the racks.
But Forester gathered up the weeds the child had dropped, frowning at him dazedly.
"This math expert," Armstrong said. "How does he come in?"
"We'll find out."
Picking up the desk telephone, Forester told Ironsmith to meet him at the inside gate, right now.
They hurried silently back to the upper project, and out to the gate.
Two guards waited for each of them to sign the pass book and surrender his badges, and finally let them outside to meet Ironsmith, who was already waiting for them, leaning on his rusty bicycle and calmly chewing gum.
Forester asked him harshly:
"What about this little girl?"
"Who?" Ironsmith's easy grin had faded when he saw their tight faces, and now his gray eyes widened.
"Did Jane Carter come back again?"
Narrowly watching that open, boyish face, Forester realized suddenly how many secrets he had carried to the computing section.
He still couldn't quite believe that Ironsmith was a Triplanet agent, but a sudden sick panic tightened his voice.
"All right?" he rasped. "Who is Jane Carter?"
"I never saw her before-" Seeing the drooping weeds in Forester's hand, Ironsmith started slightly.
"Did she leave those?" he whispered.
"I saw her picking them, just outside the main gate, when I was riding down to meet her."
Searching his pink, bewildered face, Forester handed him the gray card.
He read it silently, and shook his sandy head.
In a flat, accusing voice, Forester said:
"What I want to know is why you called me about her."
"Just because I couldn't understand how she went away," Ironsmith answered innocently.
Handing back the gray card, he added quietly, "I'll go with you to Dragonrock Light."
"No, Chief!" Armstrong protested instantly.
"Let the Security Police look for this mysterious Mr. White.
Our job is here, and not playing cloak-and-dagger games with Triplanet spies."
A sudden apprehension shook his voice. "Sir, you wouldn't think of really going?"
Forester was a man of science.
Priding himself on the clear logic of his mind, he felt only scorn for intuition and mistrust for impulse.
His own reckless words astonished him now, for he said quietly,
"I'm going."
"If this White had any honest purpose," Armstrong objected, "he could contact you in some ordinary way.
I don't like the look of all this funny business, sir, and you know your life is far too valuable to risk in what is probably a Triplanet trap.
Why don't you just notify the police?"
But the technicians, after all, were a sort of military force, and Forester held command. He listened carefully to all the sensible cautions of Armstrong and the rest, but nothing altered that abrupt decision.
For the child's visit had left him no choice.
If strangers could enter and leave that guarded vault, they could wreck or steal his missiles at will.