Space Station 1

Think about Clement. Think very hard about Clement. The tragedy had shaken him, had given him the look of a very guilty man. He had not wanted it to happen. He had been alarmed, appalled. Yes, think about Clement — that very secretive man.

The killer? You cant get rid of him, can you? He keeps coming back into, your mind. The killer had not tried to spare Helen Ramsey. He had killed her bodyguard and ripped a mask from her face. No attempt at protection there. But Clement could not have known about that. He had evidently been searching for Helen Ramsey himself. The news that she had been found had startled him, had given him a visible jolt.

Corriston did not think that the pattern would dissolve. A few of its features were becoming too clear now, the implications too inescapable. There was something going on that was ugly at the core of it, and the coming of the killer had simply brought it out into the open. Not too much into the open as yet perhaps, but the handwriting on the wall had at least become almost readable. Perhaps the accident to the freighter had also helped to bring it into the open. In some obscure way everything seemed to dovetail: Ramsey; the situation on Mars; Clement and the freighter; a twice disappearing Helen Ramsey; and an accusation of space-shock which was completely false and unjustified. Each seemed to hover just above the center of a very definite pattern.

And so did the masks! The masks in particular. Think, think hard about the masks and what the very existence of such masks on the Station implied.

The masks could only have been designed to cover the darkest deceit, to cover the most terrifying treachery.

How many officers and enlisted men on the Station were wearing masks? How many? And why? Was every officer on the Station wearing one? If the masks were thought necessary, if their employment had been made mandatory, there could be only one explanation.

Every officer and every enlisted man was masquerading. The Station was officered and manned by — a word he’d never liked from a dictionary of obsolete American slang came unbidden into his mind — Phonies!

The thought staggered him. For a moment he rejected it as inconceivable, outside the bounds of reason. But it remained on the perimeter of his consciousness and would not be dislodged. It came back and set itself down where its dominance over his mind could not be contested.

What else could it mean? Masks have only one purpose: to enable the wearer to avoid being recognized.

Quite obviously the phony officers could be wearing masks for only one reason: to conceal their real identities while they manned the Stations, carrying on the tasks of the men they had displaced.

Carrying on the tasks of the rightful officers, but with a difference. And that difference would almost certainly be criminal activity on a wide and daring scale.

The only question remaining to be answered was how high did that activity ascend? Did it ascend to the very top, to Commander Clement himself?