"I remember now," she nodded. "The funny little guy who was already here when you brought us over. As I recollect, you couldn't get him into the elevator and out of sight fast enough."
"I should hope that I did," the newspaperman replied. While they walked, he unsnapped one of the breast pockets of his field jacket and pulled out his nickel cigarette case. "I've been uneasy about the choice to relocate the lot of you here ever since I helped to do it. And I haven't been shy about saying that to anyone who'd listen. It just so happens that recent events persuaded Carter and Santana to see it my way."
"What recent events do you mean?" Constance asked.
Lamont stopped walking while he cupped his hands over his mouth to light his cigarette. While he returned the lighter to his pocket, he answered: "We found Clifford Ashton." His eyes were fixed on her scrutinizingly, as if he were carefully gauging her reaction to the news.
Constance looked at him blankly, trying to place the name. "Is that supposed to mean something to me?" She asked.
"Our first visit here," Lamont explained levelly, "Clifford went missing while we were exploring this garden. We didn't find him again until we came back with the first group of refugees. He was waiting for us when your group arrived, right outside the lift."
Constance struggled to reconstruct her memory of that day. So much had happened in a short period of time, and the experience of seeing the tower and the garden for the first time had been utterly overwhelming. She did recall, though, that there had been a commotion when the elevator shuttle had first brought them to the garden. "I remember now," she nodded. "The funny little guy who was already here when you brought us over. As I recollect, you couldn't get him into the elevator and out of sight fast enough."
"Clifford had been communing with the tower for two days by that time." Lamont went on to recount a convoluted story in which Ashton had been brought back to Westward, but had convinced them to return him to the tower not long afterward. Then he had disappeared for a second time, only to turn up not in the tower as they had expected, but rather on Westward.
In her present state of distraction, Constance was having trouble keeping track of the details in Lamont's account. "He sounds like the squirrelly type," she finally agreed. "But what's this got to do with me?"
Lamont exhaled a cloud of smoke, looking slightly exasperated. "What we found out is that Clifford had been hiding aboard Westward for the better part of a week. His encounter with the tower had convinced him that he needed to sabotage the ship so that we wouldn't be able to leave. Not only that, but he was so hellbent on the task that he was willing to take great personal risks to do it. We finally found him hiding near the atomic batteries, sick nearly to death."
Constance regarded the newspaperman, startled. "He was busting up the ship? How good a job did he do?"
"He had some moderate success," Lamont admitted.
"Do you mean to tell me that Westward is in worse condition than it was before?" Constance demanded. "And y'all are trying to bring us back anyhow?"