Mike closed his eyes. "Eighteen billions down the drain just because a robot was taught theology. What price glory?"

22

Captain Sir Henry Quill scowled and rubbed his finger tips over the top of his shiny pink pate. "Your evidence isn"t enough to convict, Golden Wings."

"I know it isn"t, Captain," admitted Mike the Angel. "That"s why I want to round everybody up and do it this way. If he can be convinced that we _do_ have the evidence, he may crack and give us a confession."

"What about Lieutenant Mellon"s peculiar actions? How does that tie in?"

"Did you ever hear of Lysodine, Captain?"

Captain Quill leaned back in his chair and looked up at Mike. "No. What is it?"

"That"s the trade name for a very powerful drug--a derivative of lysurgic acid. It"s used in treating certain mental ailments. A bottle of it was missing from Mellon"s kit, according to the inventory Chief Pasteur took after Mellon"s death.

"The symptoms of an overdose of the drug--administered orally--are hallucinations and delusions amounting to acute paranoia. The final result of the drug"s effect on the brain is death. It wasn"t my blow to the solar plexus, or the sedative that Pasteur gave him, or Vaneski"s shot with a stun gun that killed Mellon. It was an overdose of Lysodine."

"Can the presence of this drug be detected after death?"

"Pasteur says it can. He won"t even have to perform an autopsy. He can do it from a blood sample."

Captain Quill sighed. "As I said, Mister Gabriel, your evidence is not quite enough to convict--but it is certainly enough to convince.

Therefore, if Chief Pasteur"s a.n.a.lysis shows Lysodine in Lieutenant Mellon"s body, I"ll permit this theatrical denouement." Then his eyes hardened. "Mike, you"ve done a fine job so far. I want you to bring me that son of a b.i.t.c.h"s head on a platter."

"I will," promised Mike the Angel.

23

Captain Sir Henry Quill, Bart., stood at the head of the long table in the officers" wardroom and looked everyone over. The way he did it was quite impressive. His eyes were narrowed, and his heavy, thick, black brows dominated his face. Beneath the glow plates in the overhead, his pink scalp gleamed with the soft, burnished shininess of a well-polished apple.

To his left, in order down the table, were Mike the Angel, Lieutenant Keku, and Leda Crannon. On his right were Commander Jeffers, Ensign Vaneski, Lieutenant Commander von Liegnitz, and Dr. Morris Fitzhugh.

Lieutenant Mellon"s seat was empty.

Black Bart cleared his throat. "It"s been quite a trip, hasn"t it? Well, it"s almost over. Mister Gabriel finished the conversion of the power plant yesterday; Treadmore"s men can finish up. We will leave on the _Fireball_ in a few hours.

"But there is something that must be cleared up first.

"A man died on the way out here. The circ.u.mstances surrounding his death have been cleared up now, and I feel that we all deserve an explanation." He turned to Mike the Angel. "Mister Gabriel--if you will, please."

Mike stood up as the captain sat down. "The question that has bothered me from the beginning has been: Exactly what killed Lieutenant Mellon?

Well, we know now. We know what killed him and why he died.

"He was murdered. Deliberately, and in cold blood."

That froze everybody at the table.

"It was done by a slow-acting but nonetheless deadly drug that took time to act, but did its job very well.

"There were several other puzzling things that happened that night.

Snook.u.ms began behaving irrationally. It is the height of coincidence that a robot and a human being should both become insane at almost the same time; therefore we have to look for a common cause."

Lieutenant Commander von Liegnitz raised a tentative hand, and Mike said: "Go ahead."

"I was under the impression that the robot went mad because Mellon had filled him full of theological nonsense. It would take a madman to do anything like that to a fine machine--therefore I see no peculiar coincidence."

"That"s exactly what the killer wanted us to think," Mike said. "But it wasn"t Mellon that fed Snook.u.ms theology. Mellon was a devout churchman; his record shows that. He would never have tried to convert a machine to Christianity. Nor would he have tried to ruin an expensive machine.

"How do I know that someone else was involved?"

He looked at the giant Lieutenant Keku. "Do you remember when we took Mellon to his quarters after he tried to brain von Liegnitz? We found half a bottle of wine. That disappeared during the night--because it was loaded with Lysodine, and the killer didn"t want it a.n.a.lyzed.

"But, more important, as far as Snook.u.ms is concerned, is that I looked over the books on Mellon"s desk that night. There weren"t many, and I knew which ones they were. When Captain Quill and I checked Mellon"s books after his death, someone had returned his copy of _The Christian Religion and Symbolic Logic_. It had not been there the night before."

"Mike," said Pete Jeffers, "why would anybody here want to kill Lew thataway? What would anybody have against him?"

"That"s the sad part about it, Pete. Our murderer didn"t even have anything against Mellon. He wanted--and _still_ wants--to kill _me_."

"I don"t quite follow," Jeffers said.

"I"ll give it to you piece by piece. The killer wanted no mystery connected with my death. There are reasons for that, which I"ll come to in a moment. He had to put the blame on someone or something else.

"His first choice was Snook.u.ms. It occurred to him that he could take advantage of the fact that I"m called "Mike the Angel." He borrowed Mellon"s books and began pumping theology into Snook.u.ms. He figured that would be safe enough. Mellon would certainly lend him the books if he pretended an interest in religion; if anything came out afterward, he could--he thought--claim that Snook.u.ms got hold of the books without his knowing it. And that sort of muddy thinking is typical of our killer.

"He told Snook.u.ms that I was an angel, you see. I couldn"t be either hurt or killed. He protected himself, of course, by telling Snook.u.ms that he mustn"t reveal his source of data. If Snook.u.ms told, then the killer would be punished--and that effectively shut Snook.u.ms up. He couldn"t talk without violating the First Law.

"Unfortunately, the killer couldn"t get Snook.u.ms to do away with me.

Snook.u.ms knew perfectly well that an angel can blast anything at will--through the operation of G.o.d. Witness what happened at Sodom and Gomorrah. Remember that Snook.u.ms has accepted all this data as _fact_.

"Now, if an angel can kill, it is obvious that Snook.u.ms would not dare attack an angel, especially if he had been ordered to do so by a human."

"Just a minute, Commander," said Dr. Fitzhugh, corrugating his face in a frown. "That doesn"t hold. Even if an angel _could_ blast him, Snook.u.ms would attack if ordered to do so. The Second Law of obedience supersedes the Third Law of self-preservation."

"You"re forgetting one thing, Doctor. An angel of G.o.d would _know_ who had ordered the attack. It would be the human who ordered the attack, not Snook.u.ms, who would be struck by Heavenly Justice. And the First Law supersedes the Second."

Fitzhugh nodded. "You"re right, of course."

"Very well, then," Mike continued, "since the killer could not get Snook.u.ms to do me in, he had to find another tool. He picked Lieutenant Mellon.

"He figured that Mellon was in love with Leda Crannon. Maybe he was; I don"t know. He figured that Mellon, knowing that I was showing Miss Crannon attention, would, under the influence of the lysurgic acid derivative, try to kill me. He may even have suggested it to Mellon after Mellon had taken a dose of the drugged wine.

"But that plan backfired, too. Mellon didn"t have that kind of mind. He knew my attentions and my intentions were honorable, if you"ll pardon the old-fashioned language. On the other hand, he knew that von Liegnitz had a reputation for being--shall we say--a ladies" man. What happened after that followed naturally."