"Where to?" Cartwright asked.
"I don't know."
"It doesn't matter," Rita said impatiently. "He's not after you; that's what's important. Perhaps he became insane. Perhaps he's lost control of the body."
"I doubt it. Moore will keep struggling to the end; he's desperate and totally ruthless." Benteley described how Moore had destroyed Peter Wakeman.
"We're aware of that," Cartwright said. "What kind of velocity is the synthetic body capable of?"
"C-plus," Benteley answered. He was puzzled by the question. "Aren't you satisfied Moore is moving away from here?"
Cartwright licked his dry lips. "I know where he's going."
There was a murmur and then Shaeffer said: "Of course!" He rapidly scanned Cartwright's mind. "He has to find some way to stay alive. Benteley gave me a lot of involuntary material on the trip here; I can fit in most of the missing parts. Moore will undoubtedly be able to find Preston with the information he has."
Benteley was astounded. "Preston alive!"
"That explains the prior informational request," Cartwright mused. "Verrick must have tapped the closed-circuit ipvic beam from the ship." His cigarette came to an end; he dropped it, ground it out wrathfully, lit another. "I should have paid more attention when Wakeman brought it up."
"What could you have done?" Shaeffer inquired.
"Our ship is close to Preston's. Moore wouldn't be interested in it, though. He's after the method by which John Preston has kept himself alive; he'll be trying to get hold of the apparatus to adapt it for his own use." Cartwright shook his head irritably. "Is there any way we can set up a screen to follow his movements?"
"I suppose so," Benteley said. "Ipvic arranged a con- stant visual beam from the body back to Chemie. We could cut into it; it's still being relayed."
"I'd like to keep a visual check on the Pellig body." Cartwright slid his gun into a suitcase on the floor. "We're better off now, of course. Thanks, Benteley." He nodded vaguely to Benteley. "Pellig won't be coming here. We don't have to worry about that, any more."
Rita was eyeing Benteley intently. "You didn't break your oath? You don't consider yourself a felon?"
Benteley returned her hard stare. "Verrick broke his oath to me. He released me by betraying me."
There was an uncomfortable silence.
"Well," Cartwright said, "let's have something to eat, and you can explain the rest to us." He moved towards the door, the ghost of a smile on his tired face. "We have time, now. My assassin is a thing of the past."
As they ate, Benteley put his feelings into words. "I killed Moore because I had no choice. In a few seconds he would have turned Pellig over to a technician and returned to his own body at Chemie. Pellig would have gone on and detonated against you; some of Moore's staff are as loyal as that."
"How close would the body have had to be?" Cartwright asked.
"It got to within three miles of you. Two miles closer and Verrick would now be dominating the known system."
"No actual contact was necessary?"
"I had time for only a quick look at the wiring, but a standard proximity mechanism tuned to your brain pattern was wired into the circuit. And then there's the power of the bomb itself. The law specifies no weapon a man can't carry in one hand. The bomb was a regulation H-grenade from the last war."
"The bomb is." Cartwright reminded him.
"Everything depended on Pellig?" Rita asked.
"There was a second synthetic body. It's about half complete. Nobody at Chemie expected total disorganisation of the Corps; they got more than they hoped for. But Moore is out of the picture. The second body will never go into operation; only Moore can bring it to its final stages. He kept everybody else down to lower levels—and Verrick knows that."
"What happens when Moore reaches Preston?" Rita asked. "Then Moore will be back in the picture again."
"I didn't know about Preston," Benteley admitted. "I destroyed Moore's body so that he couldn't leave the synthetic. If Preston is going to help him he'll have to work fast. The synthetic won't last long in deep space."
"Why didn't you want him to kill me?" Cartwright inquired.
"I didn't care if he killed you. I wasn't thinking about you."
"That's not quite true," Shaeffer said. "The thought was there. When you made your psychological break you automatically switched against Verrick's strategy. You acted as an impeding agent semi-voluntarily."
Benteley wasn't listening. "I was tricked from the beginning," he said. "All of them were mixed up in it; Verrick, Moore, Eleanor Stevens. Wakeman tried to warn me. I came to the Directorate to get away from rottenness. I found myself doing its work; Verrick gave orders, I followed them."
"You have to have faith in yourself," Rita O'Neill said.
"I stood the rottenness as long as I could, then I rebelled. I think Verrick broke his oath to me... I think I was released. But maybe I'm wrong, and a felon."
"If you are," Shaeffer pointed out, "you can be shot on sight."
"A point came when the whole thing sickened me so much that I couldn't work with it any more, even if it means being hunted down and shot."
"That may happen," Cartwright said. "You say Verrick knew about the bomb?"
"That's right."
Cartwright reflected. "A protector isn't supposed to send a serf to his death. You didn't know Verrick had been deposed when you took your oath?"
"No. But they knew."
Cartwright rubbed his grizzed jaw with the back of his hand. "Well, possibly you have a case. You're an interesting person, Benteley. What are you going to do now? Are you going to take a fealty oath again?"
"I don't think so," Benteley said. "A man shouldn't become another man's serf."
Rita O'Neill spoke up. "You should join my uncle's staff. You should swear allegiance to him."
They were all looking at him. Benteley said nothing for a while. "The Corps takes an occupational oath, doesn't it?" he asked presently.
"That's right," Shaeffer said. "That's the oath Peter Wakeman thought so much of."
"If you're interested," Cartwright said, his shrewd old eyes on Benteley, "I'll swear you in—as Quizmaster. With merely an occupational oath."
Benteley got slowly to his feet and stood waiting as Cartwright rose. With Rita O'Neill and Shaeffer watching silently he recited the positional oath to Quizmaster Cartwright, then abruptly took his seat.
"Now you're part of us officially," Rita O'Neill said, her eyes dark and intense. "You saved my uncle's life. You saved all our lives; the body would have blown this place to bits. You should have killed Verrick while you were at it. He was there, too."
Benteley strode out of the room and into the corridor. A few Directorate officials stood here and there talking softly. Benteley wandered aimlessly past them, his mind in a turmoil. Soon Rita O'Neill appeared at the doorway and stood watching him, her arms tightly folded. "I'm sorry," she said presently. She came up beside him, breathing rapidly, red lips half-parted. "I shouldn't have said that. You've done enough." She put her fingers on his arm.
Benteley pulled away. "I broke my oath to Verrick; let's face it. But that's all I will do. I killed Moore—he was as soulless as he is bodiless. But I'm not going to touch Reese Verrick."
Rita's eyes blazed. "Don't you know what he would do to you if he caught you?"
"You don't know when to stop. I swore service to your uncle; isn't that enough?" He faced her defiantly.
She hesitated uncertainly.
"You respect my uncle." She broke off, embarrassed. "Don't you respect me?"
Benteley grinned crookedly. "Of course. In fact..."
At the end of the hall Major Shaeffer appeared. He shouted at Benteley: "Benteley, run!"
Benteley stood paralysed. Then he jerked away from Rita O'Neill and raced down the corridor to the descent ramp. Corpsmen and Directorate officials scurried everywhere. He reached the ground level and ran desperately.
A clumsy figure in
a half-removed protective suit blocked his way. Eleanor Stevens, red hair flaming, face pale, hurried to him. "Get out of here!" she panted. In the heavy, unfamiliar suit she stumbled and nearly fell. "Ted," she wailed, "don't try to fight him—just run! If he gets you———"
Benteley nodded. "He'll kill me."
Reese Verrick had arrived.
Chapter XIII
In an immense emptiness the synthetic body moved. Like a planet it spread through miles of silence and clouds of dark dust, the void that made up this universe. Its face was calm and placid, a vapid mask that showed nothing of the agony inside.
Herb Moore urged the body relentlessly forward. He felt nothing, saw nothing; stars, planets, the cosmos, had ceased to exist for him. He knew only an internal reality, the lash of his own pain. Farther and farther he took the body away from Earth, past the dull inner planets, Mars and its flow of commerce, freighters and transports. Somewhere along the way he instinctively veered the body from the ominously growing bulk of Jupiter. The giant planet with its own intricate system fell slowly behind, and Moore burst out into deep space. He didn't look back or think about the civilization that lay behind him. His race, his world, had dwindled and faded. His own body, the body of Herbert Moore, was dead. The realization made him hurl the synthetic body madly onwards but soon he allowed it to slow up whilst he examined instruments and computed his approximate location.
He was fifty-two astronomical units out. He was in dead space, beyond the known system. And still the synthetic body hurtled outward, away from the planet on which he had died. Back there he was a corpse; here he was a living spark of fury that never ceased moving. As long as he kept moving he was alive.
He checked his radar. A faint mass, billions of miles away, registered and he turned the body towards it. Mechanism gave him the celestial equator and the degree at which he could expect the Disc—if the Society's calculations were correct.
Slowly a speck separated itself from the frozen canopy and began to swell. It was the tenth planet.
For him there was nothing on Flame Disc. He ignored it, turning his attention to his meters and searching the skies for something else. Something that should be near by.
Without warning he was struggling in a lethal cloud of jet exhaust, a radio-active trail strung across the void. He plunged through it and out again, hung for a time, then painstakingly began creeping along it. The trail led to one opaque shape, the lumbering ore-carrier, the battered Society ship making its slow way forward, port lights winking, exhausts belching incandescence.
Moore rested; the synthetic's organs were functioning laboriously—the strain of flight was corroding them. He allowed the body a measure of recuperation, and then plunged ruthlessly on. The thing he sought was somewhere close to the ore-carrier. If he searched long enough he would cross its path. Patiently he maneuvered the synthetic back and forth an infinite number of times, missing no area of the space near by.
And there it was.
He headed for it, half blinded by exhilaration. The ship danced and glowed before him, a strange shape like nothing he had ever seen before. A little way off he halted and, hanging motionless, examined it intently.
John Preston's ship was ball-shaped, a smooth metallic sphere that was falling behind the lumbering ore-carrier. There was no visible propulsion mechanisms. Nothing marred the polished surface; no ports or fins. It drifted quietly through space, a glowing bubble dancing and bobbing among dust clouds.
Moore brought the synthetic close to the featureless globe and wondered how he could enter it. The cold surface twisted faintly below him; the globe was revolving as it moved. Presently Moore dropped the body until its clutching fingers met the polished surface. He clung frantically—but there was nothing to grip. He bounced away and spun dizzily, but the mass of the globe drew him back. He lay sprawled on it, moving as it moved, turning as it revolved.
For a long time he clung there, wondering and puzzled. Then panic seized him He had to get in; already the artificial material of the synthetic body was deteriorating. It hadn't been made for deep space; in the intense cold it was becoming brittle. The slightest blow would snap him in half, and with each passing moment more of his fuel was consumed. The body was wearing out and when it ceased functioning the last spark that was Herbert Moore would perish.
The thought was too much. Here, in the dismal reaches beyond the known universe, his mind would flicker and die. His personality, his being, would cease within a matter of hours unless he could bring the synthetic body out of the frozen chill of deep space, back to warmth.
He had to find a way into the globe.
In the end he savagely burned a tunnel through the steel hull. Inch by inch, painfully and exhaustingly, he bored until a flash of air and light burst out from the interior. With clumsy, nervous fingers he clawed his way in, slithering through the still smoking tunnel and dropped with a crash in the midst of humming machinery. Air shrieked past him out to the rent he had made in the hull. Quickly he sealed it and then turned to see where he was.
He was in a single chamber. The globe was a shell, a. hollow sphere of power and equipment, cables and relays and endless dials and meters. For a moment he stood bewildered. Then he located a narrow path that led through the throbbing generators. He pushed past rows of high-tension leads, suddenly apprehensive; to incinerate the synthetic body after coming this far...
And then he saw him.
For the first time in his life Moore was filled with awe. Here was something beyond anything he had ever known or done. He backed away a few steps, his courage draining. He felt a humbleness and he looked away.
"Welcome," the old man said gently. "Don't be afraid.
I'm only another human being like yourself. I am John Preston."
He was encased in a web of fragile wires, a cage of glittering machinery whose constant whirr vibrated through the sphere. He seemed to stand within a column of some volatile substance.
Moore had never seen flesh so ancient. It was clear that John Preston could live only in the bath of nourishing fluid that encased him; he could not survive outside. What remained of him was as fragile as a withered leaf—just cracked brownish flesh on brittle stalks of bone. Disappointment welled up in Moore; bitter despair choked his throat and brought tears to his eyes. What he had come for, the thing on which his life depended, was a relic, not a man at all.
This creature was John Preston, suspended in a nourishing bath of salt solution; fed and maintained by a vast sphere of intricate machinery...
"I am very old," John Preston mumbled, his voice mechanically amplified by a bank of speakers above him, "and I am almost completely deaf and paralysed." The paper-thin lips twisted in what might have been an apologetic smile. "I can't really see you clearly."
"So you're Preston? It's hard to believe."
The ancient head, supported by a hoop of struts, nodded faintly. The old man seemed to be watching Moore intently with two deep-sunk orbs that glowed like fires within the bulging skull beneath grey, spicier-web hair. It was some while before the blackened teeth moved and words came again.
"It has been a long wait." The eyes gleamed, but Moore realized that there was no sight there. One by one the old man's senses had deteriorated and left him. "Many, many long days alone."
"How long?" Moore asked curiously.
His question hadn't been heard, so he made his own computation. John Preston's death had been reported a century and a half ago. And he had already lived eighty-seven years before that... Preston was already old.
Preston had become a spindly old man before he had left Earth to head out to deep space. He was tottering before he had entered the nourishing bath.
"What is it?" Moore demanded avidly. "This bath, all this machinery! What's the principle?"
After a moment Preston answered. "I want to tell you about Flame Disc—that's what I consider important."
To hell with Flame Disc, Moore thought savagely. "How long have you been pre
served by this equipment?" he demanded.
"You must hear me out," Preston said stubbornly. "I have to tell you about the Disc."
Moore cursed inwardly. He would have to listen, though each minute the life-fluid dripped from the synthetic body. "Can I examine your machinery?" he pressed.
"Yes, but listen to me now; I may not live much longer."
Moore grabbed a tool from a wall and bored rapidly into the bank of controls. While he worked, the old man's whisper continued.
"I have to remain here," Preston said. "I don't dare leave. If I returned to Earth I should be destroyed. How much you know of the situation I can only guess. To some, my search for the tenth planet has seemed a lunatic scheme. The search has been long... and it has brought me nothing."
Moore glanced up. "You found Flame Disc, didn't you?"
"I didn't labour for anything of personal value. The Disc isn't my property; I'm only a guardian waiting until the real owners come. It was for them that I worked." His chest rose and fell with exhaustion. Then energy briefly surged through the withered veins. "All my life I've struggled to find a way for them so that they could keep on moving. If they stop, it's the end of the race. They can't stagnate and die. Death or migration... .
Moore was intent only on the circuits spread out before him. His eyes feverish, his fingers flying, he burrowed into the humming mechanism.
* * *
"You had better disappear," Leon Cartwright said to Benteley. "I'll talk to Verrick."
"He might as well stay here," Shaeffer said to Cartwright, "he can't leave the place and Verrick knows he's here."
"Verrick can just walk in?" Benteley said helplessly.
"Of course," Cartwright said.
"Do you mind being present?" Shaeffer asked Benteley. "It may be—difficult."
"I'll stay," Benteley replied.
Verrick and his small group pushed slowly through the door. They removed their suits and glanced cautiously around.
Cartwright greeted Verrick and the two of them shook hands. "A cup of coffee?"
World of Chance Page 12
