Isaac Asimov - Asimov's Mysteries

Only the desk in the center of the room was brilliantly lit by a tight-beamed lamp. It was littered with papers and opened printed books. A small viewer was threaded with film, and a clock with an old-fashioned round-faced dial hummed with subdued merriment.

Ashley found himself unable to recall that it was late afternoon outside and that the sun was quite definitely in the sky. Here, within, was a place of eternal night. There was no sign of any window, and the clear presence of circulating air did not spare him a claustrophobic sensation.

He found himself moving closer to Davenport, who seemed insensible to the unpleasantness of the situation.

Davenport said in a low voice, 'He'll be here in a moment, sir.'

'Is it always like this?' asked Ashley.

'Always. He never leaves this place, as far as I know, except to trot across the campus and attend his classes.'

'Gentlemen! Gentlemen!' came a reedy, tenor voice. 'I am so glad to see you. It is good of you to come.'

A round figure of a man bustled in from another room, shedding shadow and emerging into the light.

He beamed at them, adjusting round, thick-lensed glasses upward so that he might look through them. As his fingers moved away, the glasses slipped downward at once to a precarious perch upon the round nubbin of his snub nose. 'I am Wendell Urth,' he said.

The scraggly gray Van Dyke on his pudgy, round chin did not in the least add to the dignity which the smiling face and the stubby ellipsoidal torso so noticeably lacked.

'Gentlemen! It is good of you to come,' Urth repeated, as he jerked himself backward into a chair from which his legs dangled with the toes of his shoes a full inch above the floor. 'Mr. Davenport remembers, perhaps, that it is a matter of-uh-some importance to me to remain here. I do not like to travel, except to walk, of course, and a walk across the campus is quite enough for me.'

Ashley looked baffled as he remained standing, and Urth stared at him with a growing bafflement of his own. He pulled a handkerchief out and wiped his glasses, then replaced them, and said, 'Oh, I see the difficulty. You want chairs. Yes. Well, just take some. If there are things on them, just push them off.

Push them off. Sit down, please.'

Davenport removed the books from one chair and placed them carefully on the floor. He pushed the chair toward Ashley. Then he took a human skull off a second chair and placed the skull even more carefully on Urth's desk. Its mandible, insecurely wired, unhinged as he transferred it, and it sat there with jaw askew.

'Never mind,' said Urth, affably, 'it will not hurt. Now tell me what is on your mind, gentlemen?' Davenport waited a moment for Ashley to speak, then, rather gladly, took over. 'Dr. Urth, do you remember a student of yours named Jennings? Karl Jennings?'

Urth's smile vanished momentarily with the effort of recall. His somewhat protuberant eyes blinked. 'No,' he said at last. 'Not at the moment.'

'A geology major. He took your extraterrology course some years ago. I have his photograph here, if that will help.'

Urth studied the photograph handed him with nearsighted concentration, but still looked doubtful. Davenport drove on. 'He left a cryptic message which is the key to a matter of great importance. We have so far failed to interpret it satisfactorily, but this much we see-it indicates we are to come to you.'

'Indeed? How interesting! For what purpose are you to come to me?'

'Presumably for your advice on interpreting the message.'

'May I see it?'

Silently Ashely passed the slip of paper to Wendell Urth. The extraterrologist looked at it casually, turned it over, and stared for a moment at the blank back. He said, 'Where does it say to ask me?'

Ashley looked startled, but Davenport forestalled him by saying, The arrow pointing to the symbol of the Earth. It seems clear.'

'It is clearly an arrow pointing to the symbol for the planet Earth. I suppose it might literally mean "go to the Earth" if this were found on some other world.'

'It was found on the Moon, Dr. Urth, and it could, I sup pose mean that. However, the reference to you seemed clear once we realized that Jennings had been a student of yours.'

'He took a course in extraterrology here at the University?' That's right.'

'In what year, Mr. Davenport?'

'In '18.'

'Ah. The puzzle is solved.'

'You mean the significance of the message?' said Davenport.

'No, no. The message has no meaning to me. I mean the puzzle of why it is that I did not remember him, for I remember him now. He was a very quiet fellow, anxious, shy, self-effacing-not at all the sort of person anyone would remember. Without this'-and he tapped the message-'I might never have remembered him.'

'Why does the card change things?' asked Davenport.

The reference to me is a play on words. Earth-Urth. Not very subtle, of course, but that is Jennings. His unattainable delight was the pun. My only clear memory of him is his occasional attempts to perpetrate puns. I enjoy puns, I adore puns, but Jennings-yes, I remember him well now-was atrocious at it.

Either that, or distressingly obvious at it, as in this case. He lacked all talent for puns, yet craved them so much--'

Ashley suddenly broke in. This message consists entirely of a kind of wordplay, Dr. Urth. At least, we believe so, and that fits in with what you say.'

'Ah!' Urth adjusted his glasses and peered through them once more at the card and the symbols it carried. He pursed his plump lips, then said cheerfully, 'I make nothing of it.'

'In that case--' began Ashley, his hands balling into fists.

'But if you tell me what it's all about,' Urth went on, 'then perhaps it might mean something.'

Davenport said quickly, 'May I, sir? I am confident that this man can be relied on-and it may help.'

'Go ahead,' muttered Ashley. 'At this point, what can it hurt?'

Davenport condensed the tale, giving it in crisp, telegraphic sentences, while Urth listened carefully, moving his stubby fingers over the shining milk-white desktop as though he were sweeping up invisible cigar ashes. Toward the end of the recital, he hitched up his legs and sat with them crossed like an amiable Buddha.

When Davenport was done, Urth thought a moment, then said, 'Do you happen to have a transcript of the conversation reconstructed by Ferrant?'

'We do,' said Davenport. 'Would you like to see it?'

'Please.'

Urth placed the strip of microfilm in a scanner and worked his way rapidly through it, his lips moving unintelligibly at some points. Then he tapped the reproduction of the cryptic message. 'And this, you say, is the key to the entire matter? The crucial clue?'

'We think it is, Dr. Urth.'

'But it is not the original. It is a reproduction.'

'That is correct.'

The original has gone with this man, Ferrant, and you believe it to be in the hands of the Ultras.'

'Quite possibly.'

Urth shook his head and looked troubled. 'Everyone knows my sympathies are not with the Ultras. I would fight them by all means, so I don't want to seem to be hanging back, but-what is there to say that this mind-affecting object exists at all? You have only the ravings of a psychotic and your dubious deductions from the reproduction of a mysterious set of marks that may mean nothing at all.'

'Yes, Dr. Urth, but we can't take chances.'

'How certain are you that this copy is accurate? What if the original has something on it that this lacks, something that makes the message quite clear, something without which the message must remain impenetrable?'

'We are certain the copy is accurate.'

'What about the reverse side? There is nothing on the back of this reproduction. What about the reverse of the original?'

'The agent who made the reproduction tells us that the back of the original was blank.'