“Will you take Leon someplace else?”
“It’s not worth it. This is as good a place as any. At least there aren’t many minds to blur scanning here.” Wakeman got stiffly to his feet and pushed away his half-finished drink. He felt old; and his bones ached. “I’m going downstairs to go over the tapes we scanned on Herb Moore, particularly the ones we got the day he came to talk to Cartwright. Maybe I can put something together.”
Rita slipped on a robe and tied the sash around her slim waist. She dug her feet into ankle-length boots and fished together her brush and sun-glasses and lotion. “How much time do we have before he gets here?”
“We should start getting ready. Things are moving fast. Too fast for anyone’s good. It all seems to be … falling apart.”
“I hope you can do something.” Rita’s voice was calm, emotionless. “Leon’s resting. I made him lie down; the doctor gave him a shot of something to make him sleep.”
Wakeman lingered. “I did what I thought was right. I must have left something out. It’s clear we’re fighting something much more complex and cunning than we realized.”
“You should have let him run it,” Rita said. “You took the initiative out of his hands. You’re like Verrick and the rest of them. You never believed he could manage. You treated him like a child until he gave up and believed it himself.”
“I’ll stop Pellig,” Wakeman said quietly. “I’ll correct things. I’ll find out what it is and stop him someplace, before he gets to your uncle. It’s not Verrick who’s running things. Verrick could never work anything out this clever. It must be Moore.”
“It’s too bad,” Rita said, “that Moore isn’t on our side.”
“I’ll stop him,” Wakeman repeated. “Some way, somehow.”
“Between drinks, maybe.” Rita halted for a moment to tie the laces on her boots, and then she disappeared down a descent ramp toward Cartwright’s private quarters. She didn’t look back.
Keith Pellig climbed the wide marble stairs of the Directorate building with confidence. He walked swiftly, keeping up with the fast-moving crowd of classified bureaucrats pushing good-naturedly into the elevators and passages and offices. In the main lobby Pellig halted a moment to get his bearings.
With a thunderous din, alarm bells went off throughout the building.
The good-natured milling of officials and visitors abruptly ceased. Faces lost their friendly monotony; in an instant the easy-going crowd was transformed into a suspicious, fearful mass. From concealed speakers harsh mechanical voices dinned:
“Clear the building! Everyone must leave the building!” The voices shrilled in a deafening cacophony. “The assassin is in the building! Everyone must leave!”
Pellig lost himself in the swirling waves of men and women pouring around with ominous grimness. He edged, darted, pushed his way into the interior of the mass, toward the labyrinth of passages that led from the central lobby.
There was a scream. Someone had recognized him. There was rapid firing, a blackened, burned-out patch of charred bodies, as guns were fired in crazed panic. Pellig escaped and continued circling warily, keeping in constant motion.
“The assassin is in the main lobby!” the mechanical voices blared. “Concentrate on the main lobby!”
“There he is!” a man shouted. Others took up the roar. “That’s him, there!”
On the roof of the building the first wing of military transports was settling down. Green-clad soldiers poured out and began descending in lifts. Heavy weapons and equipment appeared, dragged to lifts or grappled over the side to the ground level.
At his screen, Reese Verrick pulled away briefly and said to Eleanor Stevens, “They’re moving in non-teeps. Does that mean—”
“It means the Corps has been knocked out,” Eleanor answered. “They’re through. Finished.”
“Then they’ll track Pellig visually. That’ll cut down the value of our machinery.”
“The assassin is in the lobby!” the mechanical voices roared above the din. Down corridors MacMillan heavy-duty weapons rolled, guns bristling like quills. Soldiers threw plastic cable spun from hand-projectors in an intricate web across the mouths of corridors. The milling, excited officials were herded toward the main entrance of the building. Outside, soldiers were setting up a ring of steel, a circle of men and guns. As the officials poured from the building they were examined visually one by one and then passed on.
But Pellig wasn’t coming out. He started back once—and at that moment the red button jumped, and Pellig changed his mind.
The next operator was eager and ready. He had everything worked out the moment he entered the synthetic body. Down a side corridor he sprinted, directly at a clumsy MacMillan gun trying to wedge itself in the passage. As the locks of the gun slid down, Pellig squeezed through. The locks slammed viciously after him and the passage was sealed off.
“The assassin has left the lobby!” the mechanical voices squalled. “Remove that MacMillan weapon!”
The gun was hastily collected and propelled protesting and whirring to a storage locker. Troops poured after Pellig as he raced down deserted office corridors, cleared of officials and workers, yellow-lit passages that echoed with distant clangs.
Pellig thumb-burned his way through a wall and into the main reception lounge. The lounge was empty and silent. It was filled with chairs, vid and aud tapes, lush carpets and walls—but no people.
At his screen, Benteley started with recognition. This was the lounge where he had waited to see Reese Verrick …
The synthetic body skimmed from office to office, a weaving, darting thing that burned a path ahead of it without visible emotion or expression. Once it raced through a room of still-working officials. Screaming men and women scrambled wildly for escape. Desks were hastily abandoned in the frantic rush to exits. Pellig ignored the terrified workers and skimmed on, his feet barely touched the floor. At a checkpoint he seemed almost to rise and hurtle through the air, a blank-faced moist-haired Mercury.
The last commercial office fell behind. Pellig emerged before the vast sealed tank that was the Quizmaster’s inner fortress. He recoiled as his thumb-gun showered harmlessly against the thick rexeroid surface. Pellig stumbled away, momentarily bewildered.
“The assassin is at the inner office!” mechanical voices dinned above and around him, up and down corridors, in rooms throughout the elaborate building. “Surround and destroy him!”
Pellig raced in an uncertain circle—and again the red button twitched.
The new operator staggered, crashed against a desk, pulled the synthetic body quickly to its feet, and then proceeded to systematically burn his way around the side of the rexeroid tank.
In his office, Verrick rubbed his hands with satisfaction. “Now it won’t be long. Is that Moore operating it?”
“No,” Eleanor said, examining the break-down of the indicator board. “It’s one of his staff.”
The synthetic body emitted a supersonic blast. A section of the rexeroid tank slid away, and the concealed passage lay open. The body hurried up the passage without hesitation.
Under its feet gas capsules popped and burst uselessly. The body did not breathe.
Verrick laughed like an excited child. “See? They can’t stop him. He’s in.” He leaped up and down and pounded his fists against his knees. “Now he’ll kill him. Now!”
But the rexeroid tank, the massive inner fortress with its armory of guns and ipvic equipment, was empty.
Verrick squealed a high-pitched frenzied curse. “He’s not there! He’s gone!” His massive face melted with disappointment. “They got the son of a bitch out!”
At his own screen, Herb Moore jerked controls with convulsive dismay. Lights, indicators, meters and dials, flowed wildly. Meanwhile, the Pellig body stood rooted to the spot, one foot into the deserted chamber. There was the heavy desk Cartwright should have been sitting at. All that was left were files, warning apparatus, equipment and machinery. But Cartwright
wasn’t there.
“Keep him looking!” Verrick shouted. “Cartwright must be around someplace!”
The sound of Verrick’s voice grated in Moore’s aud phones. His mind worked rapidly. On the screen, his technician had started the body into uncertain activity. The schematic showed Pellig’s pin at the very core of the Directorate: the assassin had arrived but there was no quarry.
“It was a trap!” Verrick shouted in Moore’s ear. “A decoy! Now they’re going to destroy him!”
On all sides of the demolished fortress-cube, troops and weapons were in motion. Vast Directorate resources responding to Shaeffer’s hurried instructions.
“The assassin is at the inner cube!” mechanical speakers shrieked triumphantly. “Close in and kill him!”
“Get the assassin!”
“Shoot him down and grind him underfoot!”
Eleanor leaned close to Verrick’s hunched, massive shoulder. “They deliberately let him get in. Look—they’re coming for him.”
“Keep him moving!” Verrick shouted. “For God’s sake they’ll burn him to particles if he simply stands there!”
Down the wrecked corridor Pellig had cut, the snouts of guns poked inquisitively. Slow-rumbling equipment was solemnly organizing in a pattern of death, taking their time: there was no hurry.
Pellig floundered in confusion. He raced back down the passage and out of the cube, then sped from door to door like a trapped animal. Once he halted to burn down a MacMillan gun that had ventured too close and was clumsily taking aim. The gun dissolved and Pellig sprinted past its smoking ruin. But behind it the corridor was jammed with troops and weapons. He gave up and scurried back.
Herb Moore snapped an angry sentence to Verrick. “They took Cartwright out of Batavia.”
“Look for him.”
“He’s not there. It’s a waste of time.” Moore thought quickly. “Transfer me your analysis of ship-movements from Batavia. Especially in the last hour.”
“But—”
“We know he was there up to an hour ago. Hurry!”
The metalfoil rolled from its slot by Moore’s hand. He snatched it up and scanned the entries and analytical data. “He’s on Luna,” Moore said. “They took him off in their C-plus ship.”
“You don’t know,” Verrick retorted angrily. “He may be in a sub-surface shelter of some kind.”
Moore ignored him and slammed home a switch. Buttons leaped with excitement; Moore’s body sagged limply against its protective ring.
At his own screen Ted Benteley saw the Pellig body jump and stiffen. A tremor crossed its features, a subtle alteration of the vapid face. A new operator had entered it; above Benteley the red button had moved on.
The new operator wasted no time. He burned down a handful of troops and then a section of wall. The steel and plastic fused together and bubbled away in molten fumes. Through the rent the synthetic body skimmed, a blank-faced projectile plunging in an arcing trajectory. A moment later it emerged from the building and, still gaining velocity, hurtled straight upward at the dull disc of the moon as it hung in the early-afternoon sky.
Below Pellig the Earth fell away. He was moving out into free space.
Benteley sat paralyzed at his screen. Suddenly everything made sense. As he watched the body race through darkening skies that lost their blue color and gained pinpoints of unwinking stars, he understood what had happened to him. It had been no dream. The body was a miniature ship, equipped in Moore’s reactor labs. And—he realized with a rush of admiration—the body needed no air. And it didn’t respond to extreme temperature. The body was capable of interplanetary flight.
Peter Wakeman received the ipvic call from Shaeffer within a few seconds of the time Pellig left Earth. “He’s gone,” Shaeffer muttered. “He took off like a meteor out into space.”
“Heading where?” Wakeman demanded.
“Toward Luna.” Shaeffer’s face suddenly collapsed. “We gave up. We called in regular troops. The Corps couldn’t do a thing.”
“Then I can expect him any time?”
“Any time,” Shaeffer said wearily. “He’s on his way.”
Wakeman broke the connection and returned to his tapes and reports. His desk was a littered chaos of cigarette butts, coffee cups, and a still unfinished fifth of Scotch. Now there was no doubt: Keith Pellig was not a human being. He was clearly a robot combined with high-velocity reactor equipment, designed in Moore’s experimental labs. But that didn’t explain the shifting personality that had demoralized the Corpsmen. Unless …
Some kind of multiple mind came and went. Pellig was a fractured personality artificially segmented into unattached complexes, each with its own drives, characteristics and strategy. Shaeffer had been right to call in regular nontelepathic troops.
Wakeman lit a cigarette and aimlessly spun his good luck charm until it tugged loose from his hand and banged into the tapes stacked on his work-desk. He almost had it If he had more time, a few days to work the thing out … He got up suddenly and headed for a supply locker. “Here’s the situation,” he thought to the Corpsmen scattered around the levels of the resort. “The assassin has survived our Batavia network. He’s on his way to Luna.”
His announcement provoked horror and dismay. There was a quick scramble from sun decks and bathing pools, bedrooms and lounges and cocktail bars.
“I want every Corpsman in a Farley suit,” Wakeman continued. “This didn’t work at Batavia, but I want you to set up a make-shift network. The assassin has to be intercepted outside the balloon.” He radiated what he had learned about Pellig and what he believed. The answering thoughts came back instantly.
“A robot?”
“A multiple-personality synthetic?”
“Then we can’t go by mind-touch. We’ll have to lock on physical-visual appearance.”
“You can catch murder-thoughts,” Wakeman disagreed, as he buckled on his Farley suit. “But don’t expect continuity. The thought-processes will cut off without warning. Be prepared for the impact; that’s what destroyed the Corps at Batavia.”
“Does each separate complex bring a new strategy?”
“Apparently.”
This brought amazement and admiration. “Fantastic! A brilliant contribution!”
“Find him,” Wakeman thought grimly, “and kill him on the spot. As soon as you catch the murder-thought, burn him to ash. Don’t wait for anything.”
Wakeman grabbed up the fifth of Scotch and poured himself one last good drink from what had been Reese Verrick’s private stock. He locked his Farley helmet in place and snapped on the air-temp feed lines. He collected a hand popper and hurried to one of the exit sphincters of the resort balloon.
The arid, barren expanse of waste was a shock. He stood fumbling with his humidity and gravity control, adjusting to the sight of an infinity of dead matter.
The moon was a ravaged, blasted plain. There were gaping craters where the original meteors had smashed away the life of the satellite. Nothing stirred, no wind or dust tremor or flutter of life. Wherever Wakeman looked there was only the pocked expanse of rubble, heaped debris littered across the bone-harsh cliffs and cracks. The face of the moon had dried up and split. The skin, the flesh, had been eroded away by millenniums of ruthless abrasion. Only the skull was left, vacant eye sockets and gaping mouth. As Wakeman stepped gingerly forward, he was tramping over the features of a death’s-head.
Behind him the resort glowed and twinkled, a luminous balloon of warmth and comfort and relaxation.
While Wakeman was hurrying across the deserted landscape, a rattled thought hammered jubilantly in his brain. “Peter, I’ve spotted him! He landed just now a quarter mile from me!”
Wakeman began to run awkwardly over the rubbled stone, one hand on his popper. “Keep close to him,” he thought back. “And keep him away from the balloon.”
The Corpsman was excited and incredulous. “He landed like a meteor. I was already a mile outside the balloon when your orders came.
I saw a flash; I went to investigate.”
“How far from the balloon are you?”
“About three miles.”
Three miles. Keith Pellig was that close to his prey. Wakeman cut his gravity-pressure to minimum and rushed forward wildly. With great leaps and bounds he covered the distance toward his fellow Corpsman; behind him the glowing balloon of light dwindled and fell away. Panting, gasping for breath, he fled toward the assassin.
He stumbled over a crack and pitched head-first on his face. As he struggled up the shrill hiss of escaping air whined in his ears. With one hand he dragged out the emergency repair pack; and with the other he fumbled for his popper. It was gone. He had lost it, dropped it somewhere among the ancient heaps of debris around him.
The air was going fast. He forgot the gun and concentrated on patching his Farley suit. The plastic goo hardened instantly, and the terrifying hiss cut off. As he began searching frantically among the boulders and dust, a new string of thoughts struck excitedly at him.
“He’s moving! He’s heading toward the balloon. He’s located the resort.”
Wakeman cursed, and gave up looking for the popper. He set off at a bounding trot toward the Corpsman. A high ridge rose ahead of him; he sprinted up it and half-slid, half-rolled down the far side. A vast bowl stretched out ahead of him. Craters and ugly gaping wounds leered in the skull-face. The Corpsman’s thoughts came to him strongly now. He was close by.
And for the first time, he caught the thoughts of the assassin.
Wakeman stopped rigid. “That’s not Pellig!” he radiated back wildly. “That’s Herb Moore!”
Moore’s mind pulsed with frenzied activity. Unaware that he was being teeped, he had let down all barriers. His eager, high-powered thoughts and drives poured out in a ceaseless flood-tide that mounted to fever pitch as he spotted the glowing balloon that encased the Directorate’s vacation resort.
Wakeman stood frozen, concentrating on the stream of mental energy lapping at him. It was all there, the whole story. Moore’s super-charged mind contained every fragment of it, all the missing pieces he had held back before.