Davenport cried out and half-rose from his chair. Peyton brought up his arms with an effort, but so quickly that he managed to catch the Bell.

Peyton said, 'You damned fool. Don't throw it around that way.'

'You respect Singing Bells, do you ?'

'Too much to break one. That's no crime, at least.' Peyton stroked the Bell gently, then lifted it to his ear and shook it slowly, listening to the soft clicks of the Lunoliths, those small pumice particles, as they rattled in vacuum.

Then, holding the Bell up by the length of steel wire still attached to it, he ran a thumbnail over its surface with an expert, curving motion. It twanged! The note was very mellow, very flutelike, holding with a slight vibrato that faded lingeringly and conjured up pictures of a summer twilight.

For a short moment, all three men were lost in the sound.

And then Dr. Urth said. Throw it back, Mr. Peyton. Toss it here!' and held out his hand in peremptory gesture.

Automatically Louis Peyton tossed the Bell. It traveled its short arc one-third of the way to Dr. Urth's waiting hand, curved downward and shattered with a heartbroken, sighing discord on the floor.

Davenport and Peyton stared at the grey slivers with equal wordlessness and Dr. Urth's calm voice went almost unheard as he said, 'When the criminal's cache of crude Bells is located, I'll ask that a flawless one, properly polished, be given to me, as replacement and fee.'

'A fee? For what?' demanded Davenport irritably.

'Surely the matter is now obvious. Despite my little speech of a moment ago, there is one piece of Earth's environment that no space traveler carries with him and that is Earth's surface gravity. The fact that Mr. Peyton could so egregiously misjudge the toss of an object he obviously valued so highly could mean only that his muscles are not yet readjusted to the pull of Earthly gravity. It is my professional opinion, Mr. Davenport, that your prisoner has, in the last few days, been away from Earth. He had either been in space or on some planetary object considerably smaller in size than the Earth-as, for example, the Moon.'

Davenport rose triumphantly to his feet. 'Let me have your opinion in writing,' he said, hand on blaster, 'and that will be good enough to get me permission to use a psycho-probe.'

Louis Peyton, dazed and unresisting, had only the numb realization that any testament he could now leave would have to include the fact of ultimate failure.

Afterword.

My stories generally bring me mail from my readers- usually very pleasant mail, even when some embarrassing point must be brought up. Alter this story was published, lor instance, I received a letter from a young man who said he was inspired by Dr. Urth's reasoning to check on the problem of whether differences in weight would really affect the manner in which an object was thrown. In the end, he made a science project out of it.

He prepared objects, all of the same size and appearance but of different weights, and had people throw them, without saying in advance which were heavy and which were light. He found that all the objects were thrown with roughly equal accuracy. This has bothered me a bit, but I have decided that the young man's findings are not strictly applicable. Merely by holding an object in preparation to throwing it, one estimates-quite unconsciously-it's weight and adjusts the muscular effort to correspond, provided one is accustomed to the intensity of the gravity field under which one is operating. Astronauts on their Sights have generally been strapped in and have not operated under low gravity except for short'walks in space.' Apparently these walks have proven surprisingly tiring, so it would seem a change in gravity requires considerable acclimation. And a return to earth's gravity after such acclimation would require considerable re-acclimation. So-as of now, at least-I stand pat with Dr. Urth.

The Talking Stone.

The asteroid belt is large and its human occupancy small. Larry Vernadsky, in the seventh month of his year-long assignment to Station Five, wondered with increasing frequency if his salary could possibly compensate for a nearly solitary confinement seventy million miles from Earth. He was a slight youth, who did not bear the look of either a spationautical engineer or an asteroid man. He had blue eyes and butter-yellow hair and an invincible air of innocence that masked a quick mind and an isolation-sharpened bump of curiosity.

Both the look of innocence and the bump of curiosity served him well on board the Robert Q. When the Robert Q. landed on the outer platform of Station Five, Vernadsky was on board almost immediately. There was an eager delight about him which, in a dog, would have been accompanied by a vibrating tail and a happy cacophony of barks.

The fact that the captain of the Robert Q. met his grins with a stern sour silence that sat heavily on his thick-featured face made no difference. As far as Vernadsky was concerned the ship was yearned-for company and was welcome. It was welcome to any amount of the millions of gallons of ice or any of the tons of frozen food concentrates stacked away in the hollowed-out asteroid that served as Station Five. Vernadsky was ready with any power tool that might be necessary, any replacement that might be required for any hyperatomic motor.

Vernadsky was grinning all over his boyish face as he filled out the routine form, writing it out quickly for later conversion into computer notation for filing. He put down ship's name and serial number, engine number, field generator number, and so on, port of embarkation ('asteroids, damned lot of them, don't know which was last' and Vernadsky simply wrote 'Belt' which was the usual abbreviation for 'asteroid belt'); port of destination ('Earth'); reason for stopping ('stuttering hyperatomic drive').

'How many in your crew, Captain ?' asked Vernadsky, as he looked over ship's papers.

The captain said, Two. Now how about looking over the hyperatomics ? We've got a shipment to make.' His cheeks were blue with dark stubble, his bearing that of a hardened and lifelong asteroid miner, yet his speech was that of an educated, almost a cultured, man.

'Sure.' Vernadsky lugged his diagnostic kit to the engine room, followed by the captain. He tested circuits, vacuum degree, force-field density with easy-going efficiency.

He could not help wondering about the captain. Despite his own dislike for his surroundings he realized dimly that there were some who found fascination in the vast emptiness and freedom of space. Yet he guessed that a man like this captain was not an asteroid miner for the love of solitude alone.

He said, 'Any special type of ore you handle?'

The captain frowned and said, 'Chromium and manganese.'

That so ? ... I'd replace the Jenner manifold, if I were you.'

'Is that what's causing the trouble ?'

'No, it isn't. But it's a little beat-up. You'd be risking another failure within a million miles. As long as you've got the ship in here--'

'All right, replace it. But find the stutter, will you?'

'Doing my best, Captain.'

The captain's last remark was harsh enough to abash even Vernadsky. He worked awhile in silence, then got to his feet. 'You've got a gamma-fogged semireflector. Every time the positron beam circles round to its position the drive flickers out for a second. You'll have to replace it.'

'How long will it take?'

'Several hours. Maybe twelve.'

'What ? I'm behind schedule.'

'Can't help it.' Vernadsky remained cheerful. There's only so much I can do. The system has to be flushed for three hours with helium before I can get inside. And then I have to calibrate the new semireflector and that takes time. I could get it almost right in minutes, but that's only almost right. You'd break down before you reach the orbit of Mars.'

The captain glowered. 'Go ahead. Get started.'

Vernadsky carefully maneuvered the tank of helium on board the ship. With ship's pseudo-grav generators shut off, it weighed virtually nothing, but it had its full mass and inertia. That meant careful handling if it were to make turns correctly. The maneuvers were all the more difficult since Vernadsky himself was without weight.

It was because his attention was concentrated entirely on the cylinder that he took a wrong turn in the crowded quarters and found himself momentarily in a strange and darkened room.

He had time for one startled shout and then two men were upon him, hustling his cylinder, closing the door behind him.

He said nothing, while he hooked the cylinder to the intake valve of the motor and listened to the soft, soughing noise as the helium flushed the interior, slowly washing absorbed radioactive gases into the all-accepting emptiness of space.

Then curiosity overcame prudence and he said, 'You've got a silicony aboard ship, Captain. A big one.'

The captain turned to face Vernadsky slowly. He said in a voice from which all expression had been removed, 'Is that right?'

'I saw it. How about a better look?'

'Why?'

Vernadsky grew imploring. 'Oh, look, Captain, I've been on this rock over half a year. I've read everything I could get hold of on the asteroids, which means all sorts of things about the siliconies. And I've never seen even a little one. Have a heart.'

'I believe there's a job here to do.'

'Just helium-flushing for hours. There's nothing else to be done till that's over. How come you carry a silicony about, anyway, Captain?'

'A pet. Some people like dogs. I like siliconies.'

'Have you got it talking?'

The captain flushed. 'Why do you ask?'

'Some of them have talked. Some of them read minds, even.'

'What are you ? An expert on these damn things ?'

'I've been reading about them. I told you. Come on, Captain. Let's have a look.'

Vernadsky tried not to show that he noticed that there was the captain facing him and a crewman on either side of him. Each of the three was larger than he was, each; weightier, each-he felt sure-was armed.

Vernadsky said, 'Well, what's wrong? I'm not going to steal the thing. I just want to see it.'

It may have been the unfinished repair job that kept him alive at the moment. Even more so, perhaps, it was his look of cheerful and almost moronic innocence that stood him in good stead.

The captain said. 'Well, then, come on.'

And Vernadsky followed, his agile mind working and his pulse definitely quickened.

Vernadsky stared with considerable awe and just a little revulsion at the gray creature before him. It was quite true that he had never seen a silicony, but he had seen trimensional photographs and read descriptions. Yet there is something in a real presence for which neither words nor photographs are substitutes.

Its skin was of an oily smooth grayness. Its motions were slow, as became a creature who burrowed in stone and was more than half stone itself. There was no writhing of muscles beneath that skin; instead it moved in slabs as thin layers of stone slid greasily over one another.

It had a general ovoid shape, rounded above, flattened below, with two sets of appendages. Below were the 'legs,' set radially. They totaled six and ended in sharp flinty edges, reinforced by metal deposits. Those edges could cut through rock, breaking it into edible portions.

On the creature's flat undersurface, hidden from view unless the silicony were overturned, was the one opening into its interior. Shredded rocks entered that interior. Within, limestone and hydrated silicates reacted to form the silicones out of which the creatures's tissues were built. Excess silica re-emerged from the opening as hard white pebbly excretions.

How extraterrologists had puzzled over the smooth pebbles that lay scattered in small hollows within the rocky structure of the asteroids until the siliconies were first discovered. And how they marveled at the manner in which the creatures made silicones-those silicone-oxygen polymers with hydrocarbon side chains-perform so many of the functions that proteins performed in terrestrial life.

From the highest point on the creature's back came the remaining appendages, two inverse cones hollowed in opposing directions and fitting snugly into parallel recesses running down the back, yet capable of lifting upward a short way. When the silicony burrowed through rock, the 'ears' were retracted for streamlining. When it rested in a hollowed-out cavern, they could lift for better and more sensitive reception. Their vague resemblance to a rabbit's ears made the name silicony inevitable. The more serious extraterrologists, who referred to such creatures habitually as Siliconeus asteroidea, thought the 'ears' might have something to do with the rudimentary telepathic powers the beasts possessed. A minority had other notions.

The silicony was flowing slowly over an oil-smeared rock. Other such rocks lay scattered in one corner of the room and represented, Vernadsky knew, the creature's food supply. Or at least it was its tissue-building supply. For sheer energy, he had read, that alone would not do.

Vernadsky marveled. 'It's a monster. It's more than a foot across.'

The captain grunted noncommittally.

'Where did you get it ?' asked Vernadsky.

'One of the rocks.'

'Well, listen, two inches is about the biggest anyone's found. You could sell this to some museum or university on Earth for a couple of thousand dollars, maybe.'

The captain shrugged. 'Well, you've seen it. Lets get back to the hyperatomics.'

His hard grip was on Vernadsky's elbow and he was turning away, when there was an interruption in the form of a slow and slurring voice, a hollow and gritty one.

It was made by the carefully modulated friction of rock against rock and Vernadsky stared in near horror at the speaker.

It was the silicony, suddenly becoming a talking stone. It said, 'The man wonders if this thing can talk.'

Vernadsky whispered, 'For the love of space. It does!'

'All right,' said the captain impatiently, 'you've seen it and heard it, too. Let's go now.'

'And it reads minds,' said Vernadsky.

The silicony said, 'Mars rotates in two four hours three seven and one half minutes. Jupiter's density is one point two two. Uranus was discovered in the year one seven eight one. Pluto is the planet which is most far. Sun is heaviest with a mass of two zero zero zero zero zero zero...'

The captain pulled Vernadsky away. Vernadsky, half-walking backward, half-stumbling, listened with fascination to the fading bumbling of zeroes.

He said, 'Where does it pick up all that stuff, Captain ?'

There's an old astronomy book we read to him. Real old.'

'From before space travel was invented,' said one of the crew members in disgust. 'Ain't even a fillum. Regular print.' 'Shut up,' said the captain.

Vernadsky checked the outflow of helium for gamma radiation and eventually it was time to end the flushing and work in the interior. It was a painstaking job, and Vernadsky interrupted it only once for coffee and a breather.

He said, with innocence beaming in his smile, 'You know the way I figure it, Captain? That thing lives inside rock, inside some asteroid all its life. Hundreds of years, maybe. It's a damn big thing and it's probably a lot smarter than the run-of-the-mill silicony. Now you pick it up and it finds out the universe isn't rock. It finds out a trillion things it never imagined. That's why it's interested in astronomy. It's this new world, all these new ideas it gets in the book and in human minds, too. Don't you think that's so?'

He wanted desperately to smoke the captain out, get something concrete he could hang his deductions on. For this reason he risked telling what must be half the truth, the lesser half, of course.

But the captain, leaning against a wall with his arms folded, said only, 'When will you be through?'

It was his last comment and Vernadsky was obliged to rest content. The motor was adjusted finally to Vernadsky's satisfaction, and the captain paid the reasonable fee in cash, accepted his receipt, and left in a blaze of ship's hyper-energy.

Vernadsky watched it go with an almost unbearable excitement. He made his way quickly to his sub-etheric sender.

'I've got to be right,' he muttered to himself. 'I've got to be.'

Patrolman Milt Hawkins received the call in the privacy of his home station on Patrol Station Asteroid No. 72. He was nursing a two-day stubble, a can of iced beer, and a film viewer, and the settled melancholy on his ruddy, wide-cheeked face was as much the product of loneliness as was the forced cheerfulness in Vernadsky's eyes.

Patrolman Hawkins found himself looking into those eyes and was glad. Even though it was only Vernadsky, company was company. He gave him the big hello and listened luxuriously to the sound of a voice without worrying too strenuously concerning the contents of the speech.

Then suddenly amusement was gone and both ears were on the job and he said, 'Hold it. Ho-Id it. What are you talking about?'

'Haven't you been listening, you dumb cop? I'm talking my heart out to you.'

'Well, deal it out in smaller pieces, will you ? What's this about a silicony?'