Ben Caxton investigates Smith's double and is detained by the authorities

Ben Caxton’s investigation of the supposed Valentine Michael Smith turns a question about a television appearance into a test of who controls access to the truth. Caxton brings a lawyer and a prestigious Fair Witness to Bethesda Medical Center, but the encounter offers no decisive proof; when he pursues the matter privately by calling the Executive Palace, the authorities use the taxi itself to detain him without public commotion.

The Investigation Takes Shape

Caxton prepares to challenge the barriers around Smith’s hospital confinement with conspicuous professional care. He retains James Oliver Cavendish as his Fair Witness: an experienced, highly regarded witness trained in total recall and professional hypnosis, whose reputation before the Federation High Court lends weight to an account that might otherwise be dismissed. The fee is steep by Caxton’s standards, but he expects the Post syndicate to cover it. He also brings Mark Frisby, a junior lawyer from the firm representing the syndicate, although Frisby has already warned him that Caxton has no legal standing or right to demand an interview.

At Bethesda Medical Center, Caxton makes the request publicly rather than allowing it to disappear into a private exchange with the staff. When asked to state his business, he announces loudly that Caxton of the Crow’s Nest has arrived with a lawyer and a Fair Witness to interview Smith, the Man from Mars. The announcement unsettles the receptionist’s professional composure, then sends her to inform the hospital director. Caxton’s tactic is not simply to ask for access: he makes the refusal, if one comes, harder to keep quiet.

The Hospital Interview

Gil Berquist, who is present at the hospital, initially treats Caxton’s demand as an intrusion into a sick man’s rest. He points out that Smith has already made a public appearance on television the previous night, against his physician’s advice, and says the patient needs quiet and time to recover and become oriented. Caxton answers with the rumor that the broadcast may have been faked. Berquist immediately raises the prospect of a slander suit, but Caxton does not retreat into a vague allegation. He insists that he wants to know whether the person on television was actually Smith and asks to see the patient himself.

The crowded reception area falls quiet as the exchange becomes public. Berquist glances at Cavendish, then arranges a visit, allowing Caxton to go in alone. The hospital staff lead the party through a dim room kept that way because Smith’s eyes are not accustomed to Earth’s light levels. A hydraulic bed occupies the center; Smith lies partly concealed by the liquid-supported plastic surface and a sheet drawn to his armpits. He looks at the visitors without speaking, his face expressionless. Caxton recognizes him as apparently the same man he saw on television, but that resemblance leaves the central question unresolved: he has seen a young man in a hospital bed, not independently established the man’s identity.

The sight makes Caxton fear that Jill’s suspicion may have exposed him to a ruinous slander action. Yet his response is not to accept the hospital’s explanation. He asks Smith whether he is Valentine Michael Smith and then whether he is the Man from Mars. Smith’s replies do not settle the issue. When Berquist and the physician move to end the visit, Caxton asks one more question about the girls on Earth—something Douglas had asked in the television interview. He tries to compare the patient’s response with the broadcast, but the encounter still does not give him a firm basis to distinguish the real Smith from a substitute. The scene turns access into evidence, then shows how little access alone can prove.

Doubt After the Visit

Once outside, Caxton articulates the weakness in what he has seen. He and Frisby watched a man of roughly the expected age in a hospital bed; the claim that he was Smith came from Berquist, whose political career, Caxton argues, makes his assurances untrustworthy. The supposed psychiatrist’s credentials also remain obscure: when Caxton tried to establish where he had studied psychiatry, the answer was evaded. Caxton asks Cavendish whether anything he observed convinced him that the patient was the Man from Mars. The Fair Witness’s involvement therefore sharpens the question rather than automatically answering it.

Frisby favors the ordinary explanation, reasoning that the simplest account is that the patient really is Smith. Caxton cannot make himself accept that conclusion. He has the cab return toward Bethesda, then recognizes that another demand to see Smith on the same morning would likely be refused and would not produce an effective column. But professional frustration does not end the investigation: Caxton has built his syndicated career by finding ways past a refusal, and he decides to keep trying.

The Private Call and Detention

Caxton turns to the Executive Palace after learning that Dr. Nelson has not seen the broadcast and has no reason to think it was faked. Nelson also dismisses the premise that anyone could own Mars, saying that it belongs to the Martians; Caxton’s hypothetical attempt to pursue the issue goes nowhere. He then calls the Palace and demands to speak to the Secretary General. The move comes more from reflex than from a developed plan. As a reporter and lippmann, Caxton has learned that a tightly held secret can sometimes be breached by going to the top and making himself intolerably troublesome. He knows that provoking powerful officials is dangerous, but has habitually relied on the influence attached to his work in the press.

This time, however, his call is not public. The authorities do not connect him to the Secretary General; instead, he argues with a succession of underlings, growing more aggressive. While he is occupied, the taxi leaves its parking level. When Caxton notices, its controls no longer obey him. He realizes that the call has been traced, the taxi identified, and its robot pilot placed under an overriding police frequency. The vehicle is being used to arrest him and deliver him quietly, without the visibility he might have gained by making his challenge in public.

Caxton regrets leaving Cavendish behind, but quickly shifts from regret to action. He clears the radio call and tries to reach Frisby, only for the taxi to land in an enclosed courtyard, where the walls cut off his signal. The door will not open. As he becomes light-headed and loses consciousness, the investigation’s immediate result is not proof about Smith’s identity but Caxton’s removal from public view. His belief in the protective power of press attention has failed precisely because he pursued the Palace through a private channel: the system can answer a public challenge with argument, but a hidden call gives it the opportunity to make the investigator disappear into custody.