"Remember," Leopold warned us as we left. "Not one word about this to Mattern!" * * * * * At the base that night, Colonel Mattern and his seven aides were remarkably curious about our day's activities. They tried to make it seem as if they were taking a sincere interest in our work, but it was perfectly obvious to us that they were simply goading us into telling them what they had anticipated--that we had found absolutely nothing. This was the response they got, since Leopold forbade mentioning Ozymandias. Aside from the robot, the truth was that we _had_ found nothing, and when they learned of this they smiled knowingly, as if saying that had we listened to them in the first place we would all be back on Earth seven days earlier, with no loss. The following morning after breakfast Mattern announced that he was sending out a squad to look for fusionable materials, unless we objected. "We'll only need one of the halftracks," he said. "That leaves two for you. You don't mind, do you?" "We can get along with two," Leopold replied a little sourly. "Just so you keep out of our territory." "Which is?" Instead of telling him, Leopold merely said, "We've adequately examined the area to the southeast of here, and found nothing of note. It won't matter to us if your geological equipment chews the place up." Mattern nodded, eyeing Leopold curiously as if the obvious concealment of our place of operations had aroused suspicions. I wondered whether it was wise to conceal information from Mattern. Well, Leopold wanted to play his little game, I thought; and one way to keep Mattern from seeing Ozymandias was not to tell him where we would be working. "I thought you said this planet was useless from your viewpoint, Colonel," I remarked. Mattern stared at me. "I'm sure of it. But it would be idiotic of me not to have a look, wouldn't it--as long as we're spending the time here anyway?" I had to admit that he was right. "Do you expect to find anything, though?" He shrugged. "No fissionables, certainly. It's a safe bet that everything radioactive on _this_ planet has long since decomposed. But there's always the possibility of lithium, you know." "Or pure tritium," Leopold said acidly. Mattern merely laughed, and made no reply. Half an hour later we were bound westward again to the point where we had left Ozymandias. Gerhardt, Webster and I rode together in one halftrack, and Leopold and Marshall occupied the other. The third, with two of Mattern's men and the prospecting equipment, ventured off to the southeast toward the area Marshall and Webster had fruitlessly combed the day before. Ozymandias was where we had left him, with the sun coming up behind him and glowing round his sides. I wondered how many sunrises he had seen. Billions, perhaps.