Thirteen months! Cornelius shuddered. It was going to be a long, cold wait, and the pay and bonuses accumulating for him were scant comfort now, four hundred and eighty million miles from the sun.

“Wonderful place to do research,” continued Viken. “All the facilities, hand-picked colleagues, no distractions—and, of course…” He jerked his thumb at the planet and turned to leave.

Cornelius followed, wallowing awkwardly. “It is very interesting, no doubt,” he puffed. “Fascinating. But really, Dr. Viken, to drag me way out here and make me spend a year-plus waiting for the next ship—to do a job which may take me a few weeks…”

“Are you sure it’s that simple?” asked Viken gently. His face swiveled around, and there was something in his eyes that silenced Cornelius. “After all my time here, I’ve yet to see any problem, however complicated, which when you looked at it the right way didn’t become still more complicated.”

* * *

They went through the ship’s air lock and the tube joining it to the station entrance. Nearly everything was underground. Rooms, laboratories, even halls, had a degree of luxuriousness—why, there was a fireplace with a real fire in the common room! God alone knew what that cost! Thinking of the huge chill emptiness where the king planet laired, and of his own year’s sentence, Cornelius decided that such luxuries were, in truth, biological necessities.

Viken showed him to a pleasantly furnished chamber which would be his own. “We’ll fetch your luggage soon, and unload your psionic stuff. Right now, everybody’s either talking to the ship’s crew or reading his mail.”

Cornelius nodded absently and sat down. The chair, like all low-gee furniture, was a mere spidery skeleton, but it held his bulk comfortably enough. He felt in his tunic, hoping to bribe the other man into keeping him company for a while. “Cigar? I brought some from Amsterdam.”

“Thanks.” Viken accepted with disappointing casualness, crossed long, thin legs and blew grayish clouds.

“Ah…are you in charge here?”

“Not exactly. No one is. We do have one administrator, the cook, to handle what little work of that type may come up. Don’t forget, this is a research station, first, last, and always.”

“What is your field, then?”

Viken frowned. “Don’t question anyone else so bluntly, Dr. Cornelius,” he warned. “They’d rather spin the gossip out as long as possible with each newcomer. It’s a rare treat to have someone whose every last conceivable reaction hasn’t been—no, no apologies to me. ’S all right. I’m a physicist, specializing in the solid state at ultra-high pressures.” He nodded at the wall. “Plenty of it to be observed—there!”

“I see.” Cornelius smoked quietly for a while. Then: “I’m supposed to be the psionics expert, but, frankly, at present I’ve no idea why your machine should misbehave as reported.”

“You mean those, uh, K tubes have a stable output on Earth?”

“And on Luna, Mars, Venus—everywhere, apparently, but here.” Cornelius shrugged. “Of course, psibeams are always persnickety, and sometimes you get an unwanted feedback when—no. I’ll get the facts before I theorize. Who are your psimen?”