Stranger in a Strange Land

conclusions."
                "But I told you so. They never came near my floor."
                "Yes. But it tells us something more. This occurred hours before you pulled your jail break for Mike-about eight hours earlier, as Cavendish sets their arrival in the presence of the phony 'Man from Mars' at 9.14 Thursday morning. That is to say, the government still had Mike under their thumb at that moment. In the same building. They could have exhibited him. Yet they took the really grave risk of offering a phony for inspection by the most noted Fair Witness in Washington-in the country. Why?"
                He waited. Jill answered slowly, "You're asking me? I don't know. Ben told me that he intended to ask Mike if he wanted to leave the hospital-and help him to do so if he said, 'Yes.'"
                "Which Ben did try, with the phony."
                "So? Out, Jubal, they couldn't have known that Ben intended to do that . . . and, anyhow, Mike wouldn't have left with Ben."
                "Why not? Later that day he left with you."
                "Yes-but I was already his 'water brother,' just as you are now. He has this crazy Martian idea that he can trust utterly anyone with whom he has shared a drink of water. With a 'water brother' he is completely docile and with anybody else he is stubborn as a mule. Ben couldn't have budged him." She added, "At least that is the way he was last week-he's changing awfully fast."
                "So he is. Too fast, maybe. I've never seen muscle tissue develop so rapidly-I'm sorry I didn't weigh him the day you arrived. Never mind, back to Ben-Cavendish reports that lien dropped him and the lawyer, a chap named Frisby, at nine thirty-one, and Ben kept the cab. We don't know where Ben went then. But an hour later he-or let's say somebody who said he was Ben-phoned that message to Paoli Flat."
                "You don't think it was Ben?"
                "I do not. Cavendish reported the license number of the cab and my scouts tried to get a look at the daily trip tape for that cab. If Ben used his credit card, rather than feeding coins into the cab's meter, his charge number should be printed on the tape-but even if he paid cash the tape should show where the cab had been and when."
                "Well?"
                Harshaw shrugged. "The records show that that cab was in for repairs and was never in use Thursday morning. That gives us two choices: either a Fair Witness misread or misremembered a cab's serial number or somebody tampered with the record." He added grimly, "Maybe a jury would decide that even a Fair Witness could glance at a cab's serial number and misread it, especially if he had not been asked to remember it-but I don't believe it . . . not when the Witness is James Oliver Cavendish. Cavendish would either be certain of that serial number-or his report would never mention it."
                Harshaw scowled and went on, "Jill, you're forcing me to rub my own nose in it-and I don't like it, I don't like it at all! Granted that Ben could have sent that message, it is most unlikely that he could have tampered with the daily record of that cab . . and still less believable that he had any reason to. No, let's face it. Ben went somewhere in that cab- and somebody who could get at the records of a public carrier went to a lot of trouble to conceal where he went . . and sent a phony message to keep anyone from realizing that he had disappeared."
                "'Disappeared!' Kidnapped, you mean!"
                "Softly, Jill. 'Kidnapped' is a dirty word."
                "It's the only word for it! Jubal, how can you sit there and do nothing when you ought to be shouting it from the-"
                "Stop it, Jill! There's another word. Instead of kidnapped, he might be dead."
                Gillian slumped. "Yes," she agreed dully. "That's what I'm really afraid of."
                "So am I. But we'll assume he is not, until we have seen his bones. But it's one or the other-so we assume that he is kidnapped. Jill, what's the greatest danger about kidnapping? No, don't bother your pretty head; I'll tell you. The greatest danger to the victim is a hue-and-cry-because if a kidnapper is frightened, he will almost always kill his victim. Had you thought of that?"
                Gillian looked