e
in the alarm-wired room off the machine-weapon-guarded main corridor of
the security-policed Temple of Mankind.

The Mace, symbol of Alexander's power, was a pretty little baton barely
two feet long. Its staff was mastodon ivory, the paleontologists had
determined. One end sported a solid ball of gold hardly as big as a
fist; studded with rubies, but none set quite so close as to actually
touch.

The other end, balancing the ball of gold, mounted the largest single
polished emerald crystal in the discovered universe. Neither the Moon or
Mars had produced anything in the emerald line equivalent to what had
come out of the mists of Earthly history.

* * * * *

Disregarding the bulletin, Jason kept Moglaut at the servo-tracer. In
the night's smallest hours it began placidly to hum on Lonnie's aura
again.

"What happened?" Jason said. "What did you do?"

Moglaut shrugged.

"You must have done something. What was it?"

Moglaut, not looking up from the purring machine, shook his head.

"All right. You can go now." Jason watched the genius disappear
hurriedly through the door. From the door he watched the man scutter
down the long, long corridor out of sight. The first thing in the
morning, Jason promised himself, he'd have a session about Moglaut with
Lab Nine's chief.

The first thing in the morning brought word that Lab Nine's erratic
genius had stumbled himself out of the seventeenth-floor window of his
suburban apartment to his death. Lab Nine's chief clucked sorrowfully.

Jason shook his head and wondered. After exhaustive investigation (zero
data) he still wondered. That's all he was able to do, wonder.

The second time Jason's servo-tracer on Lonnie hiccupped and dozed off
was at 12:01 a.m., August 7th, 2008, just one day after the Diamond
Throne arrived on Earth. The single, glittering diamond crystal,
misshapen like an armchair and larger than one, had been mined out of
the core of Tycho's crater. And it was also just two days before the
Moon Throne would have been installed in the unbreakable safety of
Raichi Museum!

"Jason, you're insane," his superior told him when Jason, reinforced by
an astounding public furore, brought the matter up. "He owned it. He had
no reason to steal it from himself. Besides, one man alone couldn't
budge that enormous--"

"It won't do any harm to look-see."

"It can do a lot of harm!" The Commissioner glanced quickly at the
ceiling. "