Pellig consisted of a variety of human minds, altering personalities hooked to an intricate switch-mechanism, coming and going at random, in chance formation, without pattern, Minimax, randomness, a deep blur of M-game theory …
It was a lie.
Wakeman recoiled. Under the thick layer of game-theory was another level, a submarginal syndrome of hate and desire and terrible fear: jealousy of Benteley, a ceaseless terror of death, involved schemes and plans, a complicated gestalt of need and goal-oriented drive actualized in an overpowering sledge-hammer of ambition. Moore was a driven man, dominated by the torment of dissatisfaction. And his dissatisfaction culminated in ruthless webs of strategy.
The twitch of the Pellig machinery wasn’t random. Moore had complete control. He could switch operators into the body at any time; and pull them out at any time. He could set up any combination he pleased. He was free to hook and unhook himself at will. And …
Moore’s thoughts suddenly focused. He had spotted the Corpsman trailing him. The Pellig body shot quickly upward, poised, and then rained a thin stream of lethal death down on the scurrying telepath.
The man’s mind shrieked once, and then his physical being dissolved in a heap of incinerated ash. The sickening moment of a teep’s death rolled over Wakeman. Peter felt the lingering, tenacious and completely futile struggle of the mind to keep itself collected, to retain personality and awareness after the body was gone.
“Peter …” Like a cloud of volatile gas the Corpsman’s mind hung together, then slowly, inexorably, began to scatter. Its weak thoughts faded. “Oh, God …” The man’s consciousness, his bang dissolved into random particles of free energy. The mind ceased to be a unit. The gestalt that had been the man relaxed—and the man was dead.
Wakeman cursed his lost gun. He cursed himself and Cart-wright and everybody in the system. He threw himself behind a bleak boulder and lay crouched, as Pellig drifted slowly down and landed lightly on the dead surface of the moon. Pellig glanced around, seemed satisfied, and began his cautious prowl toward the luminous balloon three miles distant.
“Get him!” Wakeman radiated desperately. “He’s almost at the resort!”
There was no response. No other Corpsmen were close enough to pick up and relay his thoughts. With the death of the closest Corpsman, the jury-rigged network had shattered. Pellig was walking calmly through an undefended gash.
Wakeman leaped to his feet. He lugged an immense boulder waist-high and staggered to the top of the inclined rise. Below him Keith Pellig walked bland-faced, almost smiling. He appeared to be a gentle straw-haired youth, without guile or cunning. Wakeman managed to raise the rock above his head; the weak Lunar gravity was on his side. He swayed, lifted it high—and hurled it bouncing and crashing onto the swift-walking synthetic.
There was one startled glance as Pellig saw the rock coming. He scrambled easily away, a vast spring that carried him yards from the path of the lumbering boulder. From his mind came a blast of fear and surprise, a frantic panic. He stumbled, raised his thumb-gun toward Wakeman …
And then Herb Moore was gone.
The Pellig body altered subtly. Wakeman’s blood froze at the uncanny sight. Here, on the desolate surface of the moon, a man was changing before his eyes. The features shifted, melted momentarily, then reformed. It wasn’t the same. It wasn’t the same face … because it wasn’t the same man. Moore was gone and a new operator had taken over. Behind the pale blue eyes a different personality peered out.
The new operator wavered. He fought briefly for control, then managed to right the body as the rock bounced harmlessly away. Surprise, momentary confusion, radiated to Wakeman as he struggled for another boulder.
“Wakeman!” the thoughts came. “Peter Wakeman!”
Wakeman dropped his boulder and straightened up. The new operator had recognized him. It was a familiar thought-pattern; Wakeman probed quickly and deeply. For a moment he couldn’t place the personality; it was familiar but obscured by the immediacy of the situation. It was larded over with wary fear and antagonism. But he knew it, all right. There was no doubt.
It was Ted Benteley.
THIRTEEN
Out in dead space, beyond the known system, the creaking GM ore-carrier lumbered hesitantly along. In the control bubble Groves sat listening intently, his dark face rapt.
“The Flame Disc is still far away,” the vast presence murmured in his mind. “Don’t lose contact with my own ship.”
“You’re John Preston,” Groves said softly.
“I am very old,” the voice replied. “I have been here a long time.”
“A century and a half,” Groves said. “It’s hard to believe.”
“I have waited here. I knew you would be coming. My ship will hover nearby; you will probably pick up its mass from time to time. If everything goes correctly I’ll be able to guide you to the actual landing on the Disc.”
“Will you be there?” Groves asked. “Will you meet us?”
There was no answer. The voice had faded; he was alone.
Groves got unsteadily to his feet and called Konklin. A moment later both Konklin and Mary Uzich hurried into the control bubble. Jereti loped a few paces behind. “You heard him,” Groves said thickly.
“It was Preston,” Mary whispered.
“He must be old as hell,” Konklin said. “A little old man, waiting out here in space for us to come, waiting for all these years …”
“I think we’ll get there,” Groves said. “Even if they managed to kill Cartwright, we’ll still reach the Disc.”
“What did Cartwright say?” Jereti asked Groves. “Did it perk him up to hear about Preston?”
Groves hesitated. “Cartwright was preoccupied.”
“But surely he—”
“He’s about to be murdered!” Groves savagely flicked on the manual controls. “He hasn’t got time to think about anything else.”
Nobody said anything for a while. Finally Konklin asked, “Has there been any late news?”
“I can’t raise Batavia. Military black-out has completely screened out the ipvic lines. I picked up emergency troop movements from the inner planets toward Earth. Directorate wings heading home.”
“What’s that mean?” Jereti asked.
“Pellig has reached Batavia. And something has gone wrong. Cartwright must have his back to the wall. Somehow, the teep Corps must have failed.”
Wakeman shouted frantically. “Benteley! Listen to me! Moore has it rigged; you’re being tricked. It’s not random.”
It was hopeless. No sound carried. Without atmosphere his voice died in his helmet. Benteley’s thoughts radiated to him clear and distinct; but there was no way Wakeman could communicate back. He was boxed-in, baffled. The figure of Keith Pellig and the mind of Ted Benteley were only a few yards from him—and there was no way he could make contact.
Benteley’s thoughts were mixed. It’s Peter Wakeman, he was thinking. The teep I met in the lounge. He realized that he was in danger; he was aware of the nearby luminous resort balloon. Wakeman caught an image of Cartwright: the job of killing. And beneath that, Benteley’s deep aversion and doubt, his distrust of Verrick and his dislike of Herb Moore. Benteley was undecided. For an instant the thumb-gun wavered.
Wakeman scrambled down the ridge onto the level plain. With frantic haste he sketched vast crude letters in the ancient dust: “MOORE TRICKED YOU. NOT RANDOM.”
Benteley saw the words, and the vapid face of Keith Pellig hardened. Benteley’s thoughts congealed. What the hell? He was thinking. Then he realized that Wakeman was teeping him, that a one-sided conversation was going on with himself as transmitter and the telepath as receiver. “Go on, Wakeman,” Benteley radiated harshly. “What do you mean, tricked?”
In Benteley’s mind, there was ironic amusement. He was seeing a telepath, an advanced mutant human, sketching clumsy figures in the dust like some primitive reduced to the most primal means of communication. Wakeman wrote desperately: “MOOR
E WILL KILL YOU AND CARTWRIGHT TOGETHER.”
Benteley’s mind radiated amazement. “What do you mean?” Then suspicion. “This is some kind of strategy. There must be other teeps coming.” His thumb-gun came quickly up …
“BOMB.” Wakeman, panting for breath, sought a new surface on which to write. But he had written enough. Benteley was filling in the details himself. A phantasmagoria of comprehension: vivid glimpses of his fight with Moore, his sexual relations with Moore’s mistress, Eleanor Stevens, Moore’s jealousy of him. It flashed through Benteley’s mind in bewildering procession, and he lowered the thumb-gun.
“They’re seeing this,” Benteley thought. “All the operators at their screens. And Moore; he’s seeing it, too.”
Sensing instant danger, Wakeman leaped up and ran clumsily at the Pellig figure. Gesturing excitedly, trying to shout across the airless void, he got within two feet before Benteley halted him with an ominous wave of his thumb-gun.
“Stay away from me,” Benteley thought grimly. “I’m still not sure of you. You’re working for Cartwright.”
Wakeman scratched frantically: “PELLIG SET TO DETONATE WHEN CLOSE TO CARTWRIGHT. MOORE WILL SWITCH YOU IN BODY AT MOMENT.”
“Does Verrick know?” Benteley demanded.
“YES.”
“Eleanor Stevens?”
“YES.”
Benteley’s mind flashed anguish. “How do I know this is true? Prove it!”
“EXAMINE YOUR BODY. LOCATE POWER LEADS. TRACE CIRCUIT TO BOMB.”
Benteley’s fingers flew as he ripped at the synthetic chest. His mind flashed technical data as he found the main wiring that interlaced the body beneath the artificial layer of skin. He tore loose a whole section of material and probed deep in the humming circuit of the synthetic body, as Wakeman crouched a few feet away, heart frozen in his chest, clutching futilely for the good luck charm he had dropped in his office and never retrieved.
Benteley was wavering. The last clinging mist of loyalty to Verrick was rapidly fading. In its place hatred and disgust were forming. “So that’s the way it’s worked,” he thought finally. An embryonic strategy flashed through his mind. “All right, Wakeman.” His mind hardened. “I’m taking the body back. All the way to Farben.”
Wakeman sagged. “Thank God,” he said out loud.
Benteley leaped into activity. Realization that Moore was watching made his fingers a blur of motion as he inspected the reactor and jet controls, and then, without a sound, flashed the synthetic robot and ship up into the black sky, toward Earth.
The body had moved almost a quarter mile before Herb Moore sent the selector mechanism twitching. Shatteringly, without warning, Ted Benteley found himself sitting in his chair at Farben, surrounded by his protective ring.
On the miniature screen before him, the Pellig body hurtled back downward toward the moon-face in a wide arc. It located the suddenly scampering figure of Peter Wakeman and directed its thumb-gun. Wakeman saw what was coming. He stopped running and stood, oddly calm and dignified, as the synthetic body dropped low, spun, and then incinerated him. Moore was in control again.
Benteley struggled up from his protective ring. He tore loose the wires that ran under his skin, his tongue, into his armpits and ears. In an instant he was at the door of the cubicle, reaching for the heavy steel handle.
The door was sealed.
He had expected it. Back at the humming banks of machinery, he tore loose a handful of relays. A flashing pop as the main power cables shorted, sending up acrid fumes and throwing the meters to a dead halt. The door fell open, its lock inoperative. Benteley raced down the hall toward Moore’s central lab. On the way he crashed into a lounging Hill guard. Benteley knocked him down and grabbed the man’s Popper. He turned the corner and plunged into the lab.
Moore lay limp and motionless within his own protective ring. Around him a group of his technicians were working on the second synthetic body, already partly assembled in the fluid baths suspended over the worktables. None of the technicians was armed.
Circling the lab was a honeycomb of chambers, small cubicles in which men sat at screens, eyes fixed intently, bodies supported by identical equipment. A momentary vision of mirror duplications of his own cube, the other operators, and then Benteley broke away. He waved the fluttering technicians back and glanced briefly into Moore’s screen. The body hadn’t reached the resort balloon; he was in time.
Benteley killed the limp, unprotesting body of Herb Moore.
The effect on the Pellig body was instantaneous. It gave a convulsive leap that carried it in a spinning trajectory off the Lunar surface. The body whirled and darted grotesquely, a crazed thing dancing a furious rhythm of death. Somewhere along the line, as the body swooped and soared, it managed to pull itself out and level off. Moore led the body upward, arced it in a vast sweeping circle, and then shot off for deep space.
On the screen, the Lunar surface receded. It dwindled and became a ball. Then a dot. Then it was gone.
The lab doors burst open. Verrick and Eleanor Stevens entered quickly. “What did you do?” Verrick demanded hoarsely. “He’s gone crazy; he’s heading away from …”
He saw the lifeless body of Herb Moore.
“So that’s it,” he said softly.
Benteley got out of the lab—fast. Verrick didn’t try to stop him; he stood aimlessly fumbling at Moore’s corpse, his massive face slack and vacant, numbed with shock.
Down the descent ramp Benteley raced. Reaching the ground, he plunged out onto the dark late-evening street. As a group of Farben personnel streamed hesitantly out after him, he entered the illuminated taxi yard and hailed one of the parked urbtrans ships.
“Where to, sir or madam?” the MacMillan driver asked, as it slid back its doors and gunned its turbines.
“To Bremen,” Benteley gasped. He snapped his seat-straps in place and quickly slotted his neck against the take-off impact. “And make it fast.”
The MacMillan’s metallic voice sounded in agreement as it operated its jet portions. The small high-speed ship which was its mechanical body shot swiftly into the sky, and Farben fell behind.
“Set me down at the big interplan field,” Benteley ordered. “Do you know any interplan flight schedules?”
“No, but I can hook you up to an information circuit.”
“Forget it,” Benteley said. He wondered briefly how much of his conversation with Wakeman had been picked up by the balance of the Corps. Whether he liked it or not, Luna was the only place he stood a chance of safety. All nine planets were now Hill-operated death traps: Verrick would never rest until he had paid him back. But there was no telling what reception he would get from the Directorate. He might be shot on sight as one of Verrick’s agents. On the other hand, he might be regarded as Cartwright’s savior.
Where was the synthetic body going?
“Here’s the field, sir or madam,” the driver said to him. The taxi was settling down at the public parking lot.
The field was manned by Hill personnel. Benteley could see intercon liners and interplan transports resting here and there, and great hordes of people. Among the people Hill guards moved around keeping order. Suddenly Benteley changed his mind.
“Don’t set down. Head back up.”
“You name it, sir or madam.” The ship obediently rose.
“Isn’t there a military field around someplace?”
“The Directorate maintains a small military repair field at Narvik. You want to go there? It’s forbidden for non-military ships to set down in that area. I’ll have to drop you over the side.”
“Fine,” Benteley said. “That sounds like exactly what I want.”
Leon Cartwright was fully awake when the Corpsman came running to his quarters. “How far away is he?” Cartwright asked. Even with the injection of sodium pentathol he had slept only a few hours. “Pretty close, I suppose.”
“Peter Wakeman is dead,” the Corpsman said.
Cartwright got quickly to
his feet. “Who killed him?”
“The assassin.”
“Then he’s here.” Cartwright yanked out his hand weapon. “What kind of defense can we put up? How did he find me? What happened to the network at Batavia?”
Rita O’Neill entered the room, white-faced and quiet. “The Corps broke down completely. Pellig forced his way directly to the inner fortress and found you were gone.”
Cartwright glanced briefly at her, then back at the Corpsman. “What happened to your people?”
“Our strategy failed,” the Corpsman said simply. “Verrick had some kind of deception. I think Wakeman had it analyzed before he died.”
Rita reacted. “Wakeman’s dead?”
“Pellig got him,” Cartwright said curtly. “That cuts us off from the Corps. We’re completely on our own.” He turned to the Corpsman. “What’s the exact situation? Have you definitely located the assassin?”
“Our emergency network has collapsed. When Wakeman was killed, we totally lost lock with Pellig. We have no idea where he is. We haven’t made any contact whatsoever.”
“If Pellig has got this far,” Cartwright said thoughtfully, “we don’t have much chance of stopping him.”
“Wakeman was handling it,” Rita blazed savagely. “You can do much better.”
“Why?”
“Because—” She shrugged impatiently. “Wakeman was nothing compared to you. He was a nonentity. A little bureaucrat.”
Cartwright showed her his gun. “Remember this? I had this popper in the back seat of the car for years. I never had to use it. It was still there; I sent a team to get it for me.” He ran his hand down the familiar metal tube. “Sentimental attachment, I suppose.”
“You’re going to defend yourself with that thing?” Rita’s black eyes smoldered furiously. “That’s all you’re going to do?”
“Right now I’m hungry,” Cartwright said mildly. “What time is it? We might as well have dinner while we’re waiting.”
“This isn’t the time—” Rita began, but at that moment the Corpsman cut her off.
“Mr. Cartwright,” he interrupted, “a ship from Earth is landing. Just a moment.” His attention turned inward and then he continued, “Major Shaeffer is aboard with the remaining Corpsmen. And—” He broke off. “There’s more. He wants to see you immediately.”