Turner was silent.

Lucky went on. "If you were so frightened of city-wide catastrophe that night, why didn't you think of your wife? You spoke of rescuing people, of escaping the city. Did you never consider your wife's safety? There were chambers in the basement of her apartment house. Two minutes and she would have been safe. You had only to call her, give her one word of warning. But you didn't. You let her sleep."

Turner mumbled something.

Lucky said, "Don't say you forgot. That's completely unbelievable. You might have forgotten anything, but not your wife's safety. Let me suggest an alternative explanation. You were not worried about your wife because you knew she was in no real danger. You knew she was in no real danger because you knew the lock in the dome would never be opened." Lucky's voice was hard with anger. "You knew the lock in the dome would never be opened because you yourself were in mental control of the man at the lever. It was your very fondness for your wife that betrayed you. You could not bring yourself to disturb her sleep merely in order to make your phony act more plausible."

Turner said suddenly, "I'm not saying anything more without a lawyer. What you have isn't evidence."

Lucky said, "It's enough to warrant a full Council investigation, though… Dr. Morriss, would you have him taken in custody in preparation for flight under guard to Earth? Bigman and I will go with him. We'll see that he gets there safely."

At the hotel again, Bigman said worriedly, "Sands of Mars, Lucky, I don't see how we're going to get proof against Turner. All your deductions sound convincing and all that, but it isn't legal proof."

Lucky, with a warm yeast dinner inside himself, was able to relax for the first time since he and Bigman had penetrated the cloud barrier that encircles Venus. He said, "I don't think the Council will be mainly interested in legal proof or in getting Turner executed."

"Lucky! Why not? That cobber…"

"I know. He's a murderer several times over. He definitely had dictatorial ambitions, so he's a traitor, too. But more important than either of those things is the fact that he created a work of genius."

Bigman said, "You mean his machine?"

"I certainly do. We destroyed the only one in existence, probably, and we'll need him to build another. There are many questions we'd like answered. How did Turner control the V-frogs? When he wanted Lou Evans killed, did he instruct the V-frogs in detail, tell them every step of the procedure, order them to bring up the giant patch? Or did he simply say, 'Kill Evans,' and allow the V-frogs to do their jobs like trained dogs in whatever way they thought best?

"Then, too, can you imagine the use to which an instrument such as that can be put? It may offer us an entirely new method of attack on mental diseases, a new way of combating criminal impulses. It may even, conceivably, be used to prevent wars in the future or to defeat the enemies of Earth quickly and bloodlessly if a war is forced upon us. Just as the machine was dangerous in the hands of one ambition-riddled man, it can be very useful and beneficial in the hands of the Council."

Bigman said, "Do you think the Council will argue him into building another machine?"

"I think so, and with proper safeguards, too. If we offer him pardon and rehabilitation, with an alternative of life imprisonment with no chance of ever seeing his wife again, I think he'll agree to help. And, of course, one of the first uses of the machine would be to investigate Turner's own mind, help cure it of his abnormal desire for power, and save for the service of humanity a first-class brain."

The next day they would be leaving Venus, heading once again for Earth. Lucky thought with pleasant nostalgia of the beautiful blue sky of his home planet, the open air, the natural foods, the space and scope of land life. He said, "Remember, Bigman, it is easy to 'protect society' by executing a criminal, but that will not bring back his victims. If one can cure him instead and use him to make life better and brighter for that society, how much more has been accomplished!"