World of Chance Page 10

  The body stumbled. A new operator, dazed with sur­prise, fought for control. The body smashed into a heap of garbage, struggled up, and then loped on. There were no visible pursuers. The body reached a busy street and hailed a taxi.

  The cab roared off in the direction of the Directorate tower. Pellig relaxed against the cushions, and non­chalantly lit a cigarette. Calmly lounging in the back seat of a public taxi Keith Pellig sped towards the Directorate offices, his thumb-gun resting loosely on his lap.

  Major Shaeffer stood in front of his desk and bellowed with fright.

  "It's not possible," drummed the disorganized thoughts of the Corpsman nearest to him.

  "There must be a reason," Shaeffer managed to think back.

  "We lost him." Incredulous, fearful, the thoughts dinned back and forth throughout the network. "Walter Reming­ton picked him up as he stepped off the ship. He had him. And then——"

  "You let him get away."

  "Shaeffer, he disappeared. At the second station he ceased to exist."

  "How?"

  "I don't know. Remington passed him to Allison at the shop. The assassin began to run. Allison kept mental touch easily."

  "The assassin must have raised a shield."

  "There was no diminution. The entire personality was cut off instantly, not merely the thoughts."

  Shaeffer cursed. "And Wakeman's on Luna. We can't use telepathy—I'll have to use the regular ipvic."

  "Tell him something's terribly wrong. Tell him the assassin disappeared into thin air."

  Shaeffer hurried to the transmission room. As he was jerking into life the closed-circuit to the Lunar resort a new flurry of transferred thoughts chilled him.

  "I've picked him up!" came from an eager Corpswoman, relayed by the network from one point to another. "I've got him!"

  "Where are you?" responded insistent calls from up and down the network. "Where is he?"

  "Theatre. Near the clothing shop. Only a few feet from me; shall I go in? I can easily———"

  The thought broke off.

  Through the network radiated tortured, twisted, in­coherent, gibbering psychosis.

  "Cut her out of the network," Shaeffer commanded savagely, and the quivering frenzy faded. He collapsed in a chair and pounded his throbbing forehead. What had happened?

  He managed to raise Peter Wakeman on the ipvic vid­screen. "Peter," he croaked, "we're beaten."

  Wakeman jerked violently. "What do you mean? Cartwright isn't even there!"

  Shaeffer struggled with an unfamiliar medium of expres­sion. "We picked the assassin up, then we lost him. We picked him up later on—in another part of the city. Peter, he got past three stations. And he's still moving. How he——"

  New thoughts from telepaths smashed at him with stunning force. "I have him. But he's not——" Con­fusion and uncertainty. "But, Shaeffer, it isn't the same mind!"

  "I have him!" The next station of the network, in excitement and jubilation. "His taxi is directly behind my own, heading directly for the main building."

  "Kill him!" Shaeffer shuddered.

  "I'm stopping my cab. I'll kill him as he tries to pass. His driver is drawing level with me. He's only yards away; I got him full-blast."

  The mind sending the message screamed.

  Shaeffer clapped his hands to his head and closed his eyes. Gradually the storm died. Mind after mind was smashed, short-circuited, blacked-out by the overload, by the shattering pain that lashed through the entire web of telepaths.

  "Where is he?" Shaeffer shouted. "What happened?"

  The next station responded faintly. "He lost him. He's dropped from the network. He's dead, I think. Burned-out. I'm in the area but I can't catch the mind he was scanning. The mind he was scanning is gone!"

  On the vidscreen Peter Wakeman's image tried hopelessly to gain Shaeffer's attention. Shaeffer was like a corpse, face dead and blank, all energy concentrated on the invisible struggle going on up and down the web-strands of the network.

  "Listen to me," Wakeman commanded. "Once you get hold of his mind, stay with him. Follow him until the next station takes over. Maybe you're too far apart. Maybe———"

  "I've got him," a thought came to Shaeffer. "I'll find him; he's close by."

  The network quivered with excitement and suspense.

  "I'm getting something strange." Doubt mixed with curiosity, then startled disbelief. "There must be more than one assassin. Yet that's not possible." Growing excite­ment. "I can actually see Pellig. He's going to enter the Directorate building by the main entrance; it's all there in his mind. Now he's thinking of crossing the street and going———"

  Nothing.

  Shaeffer waited. Still nothing came. "Did you kill him? Is he dead?"

  "He's gone!" the thought came, hysterical and giggling. "He's standing in front of me and at the same time he's gone. He's here and he isn't here."

  The telepath dribbled off in infantile mutterings, and Shaeffer dropped him from the network. It didn't make sense. Keith Pellig was standing face to face with a Corpsman, within easy killing-distance—yet Keith Pellig had vanished.

  Verrick turned to Eleanor Stevens. "It's working better than we had calculated."

  "Corps members depend on telepathic rapport. They hang on by mental contact, and if that's broken——" The girl's face was stricken. "Reese, I think you're driving them insane."

  Verrick got up and moved away from the screen. "You watch for a while."

  Eleanor shuddered. "I don't want to see it."

  A buzzer sounded on the man's desk. "List of flights out of Batavia," a monitor told him. "Total count of time and destination for the last hour. Special note of unusual flights."

  Verrick accepted the metalfoil sheet and dropped it into the litter heaped on his desk as he hoarsely said to Eleanor: "It won't be long."

  His hands in his pockets, Keith Pellig was striding up the marble stairs leading to the main entrance of the central Directorate building at Batavia... directly towards Leon Cartwright's suite of offices.

  Chapter XI

  Peter wakeman had made a mistake.

  He sat for a long time letting this realization seep over him. With shaking fingers he got a bottle from his luggage and poured himself a drink. There was a scum of dried-up protine in the glass. He threw the whole thing into a dis­posal slot and sat sipping from the bottle. Then he got to his feet and entered the lift to the top floor of the Luna resort.

  Corpsmen were relaxing in a tank of sparkling blue water. Above them a dome of transparent plastic kept the fresh spring-scented air in, and the bleak void of the land­scape out. Laughter, the splash of lithe bodies, the flutter of colour, the texture of bare flesh, blurred past him as he crossed the deck.

  Rita O'Neill was sun-bathing a little way beyond the main group of people. Her sleek body gleamed moistly in the hot light. When she saw Wakeman she sat up quickly, her black hair cascading down to her tanned shoulders and back.

  "Is everything all right?" she asked.

  Wakeman threw himself down in a deck chair. "I was talking to Shaeffer," he said, "back at Batavia."

  Rita took a brush and began stroking out her cloud of hair. "What did he have to say?" she asked, as casually as she could. Her eyes were serious.

  Wakeman allowed the warmth to lull him to silence. Not far off, the crowd of frolicking bathers splashed and laughed and played games. A shimmering water-ball lifted itself up and hung like a sphere before it plunged down into the grip of a Corpsman. Against her towel, Rita's body was a dazzling shape of brown and black, supple lines of flesh moulded firmly into the charm of youth.

  "They can't stop him," Wakeman said at last. "He'll be here not long from now. My calculations were wrong."

  Rita's eyes widened. She stopped brushing, then started again, slowly and methodically. "Does he know Leon is here?"

  "Not yet. But it's only a question of time."

  "And we can't defend him here?"

  "We can try.
Perhaps I can find out what went wrong. I may get more information about Keith Pellig."

  "Will you take Leon somewhere else?"

  "This is as good a place as any. At least there aren't many minds to blur scanning." Wakeman got stiffly to his feet; he felt old and his bones ached. "I'm going down­stairs and go over the tapes we scanned on Herb Moore—those we got the day he came to talk to Cartwright."

  Rita slipped on a robe, tied a sash around her slim waist and dug her feet into boots. "How long before he gets here?"

  "We should start getting ready. Things are moving fast."

  "I hope you can do something." Rita's voice was calm, emotionless. "Leon's resting. I made him lie down."

  Wakeman lingered. "I did what I thought was right, but I must have forgotten something. We're fighting something much more cunning than we realized."

  "You should have let Leon run things," Rita said. "You took the initiative out of his hands. Like Verrick and the rest of them, you never believed he could manage. You treated him like a child, and he gave up and believed it himself."

  "I'll stop Pellig," Wakeman said quietly, "before he gets to your uncle. It's not Verrick who's running things—he could never work anything like this. It must be Moore."

  "It's too bad," Rita said, "that Moore isn't on our side."

  "I'll stop him," Wakeman repeated. "Somehow."

  Rita disappeared down a ramp leading to Cartwright's private quarters. She didn't look back.

  Keith Pellig climbed the stairs of the Directorate building with confidence. He walked swiftly, keeping up with the fast-moving crowd of classified bureaucrats pushing into the lifts, passages and offices. In the main lobby he halted to get his bearings.

  In a thunderous din alarm bells sounded throughout the building. The milling of officials and visitors abruptly ceased. Faces lost their friendly lines and in an instant the easy-going crowd was transformed into a suspicious, anxious mass. From concealed speakers harsh mechanical voices proclaimed:

  "Everyone must leave the building!" The voices shrilled up deafeningly. "The assassin is in the building."

  Pellig lost himself in the swirling waves of men and women. He edged, darted, pushed his way into the interior of the mass, towards the labyrinth of passages that led from the central lobby.

  A scream—someone had recognized him. A blackened, burned-out patch as guns were fired in 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. Soldiers poured out and began descending in lifts. Heavy weapons and equipment appeared, dragged to lifts or grappled over the side to the ground.

  At his screen, Reese Verrick pulled away briefly and said to Eleanor Stevens: "They're moving in non-telepaths. Does that mean——"

  "It means that the Corps has been knocked out," Eleanor answered.

  "Then they'll track Pellig visually. That'll cut down the value of our telepathic machinery."

  "The assassin is in the lobby!" the mechanical voices roared above the din. Soldiers threw plastic cable spun from projectors in an intricate web across corridors. The excited officials were herded towards the main exit. Out­side, more soldiers were setting up a cordon of men and guns.

  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, easily clearing an abandoned gun wedged in the passage.

  "The assassin has left the lobby!" the mechanical voices bawled.

  Troops poured after Pellig as he raced down corridors, cleared of officials and workers, but Pellig thumb-burned his way through a wall and into the main reception lounge, now empty and silent. The synthetic body skimmed from office to office, a weaving darting thing that burned a path ahead. The last office fell behind and Pellig stood before the sealed tank that was the Quizmaster's inner fortress. He recoiled as his thumb-gun showered harmlessly against the thick rexeroid surface.

  "The assassin is in the inner office!" mechanical voices dinned. "Surround and destroy him!"

  Pellig raced in an uncertain circle—and again the red button shone.

  The new operator staggered, crashed against a desk, pulled the synthetic body quickly to its feet, and then began to burn his way to 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?"

  "No," Eleanor said, examining the indicator board. "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 uselessly. The body did not breathe.

  Verrick laughed like an excited child. "They can't stop him! He's in!" He leaped up and down and pounded his fists on his knees. "Now he'll kill him. Now!"

  The rexeroid tank, the massive inner fortress with its armoury of guns and ipvic equipment, was empty.

  Verrick squealed a high-pitched, frenzied curse. "He's not there! He's gone! They got him away!"

  At his own screen Herb Moore convulsively jerked con­trols and lights, indicators, meters and dials, flashed wildly. Meanwhile, the Pellig body stood rooted in the deserted chamber. There was the heavy desk Cartwright should have been sitting at but he wasn't there.

  "Keep him looking!" Verrick shouted. "Cartwright must be somewhere!"

  The sound of Verrick's voice grated in Moore's aud phones. On the screen, his technician had started the body into uncertain activity. The schematic showed Pellig's location dot 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. "Now they're going to destroy him!"

  On all sides of the demolished armoured chamber troops were in motion, Directorate resources responding to Shaeffer's hurried instructions.

  Eleanor leaned close to Verrick's hunched shoulders. "They deliberately let him get in. Now—they're coming for him."

  "Keep him moving!" Verrick shouted. "They'll burn him to ashes if he simply stands there!"

  Pellig floundered in confusion. He raced along the passage and out of the chamber, then sped from door to door like a trapped animal. Once he halted to burn down a gun that had ventured too close and was taking aim. The gun dissolved and Pellig sprinted past its smoking ruin, but behind it the corridor was jammed with troops. He gave up and scurried back.

  Herb Moore snapped a sentence to Verrick: "They took Cartwright out of Batavia."

  "Look for him!"

  "He's not there." Moore thought quickly. "Transfer to me your analysis of ship-movements from Batavia. 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. "He's on Luna," Moore decided. "They took him off in, their C-plus ship."

  Moore slammed home a switch; buttons leaped excitedly. Moore's body sagged limply.

  At his own screen Ted Benteley saw the Pellig body jump and stiffen. 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, fusing the steel and plastic together in a molten mass. Through the rent the synthetic body skimmed, a 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.

  Below Pellig 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 colour 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 that the body needed no air, that it didn't respond to extreme temperature. It was capable of inter-planetary flight.

  It was doing that now.

  Peter Wakeman received the ipvic call from Shaeffer within a few seconds of the time when Pellig left Earth. "He's gone," Shaeffer muttered. "He took off like a meteor."

  "Heading where?" Wakeman demanded.

  "Towards 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 moment."

  Wakeman broke the connection and returned to his tapes and reports. His desk was a chaos of cigarette butts, coffee cups, and an unfinished drink. 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. A fractured personality artificially segmented into unattached com­plexes, each with its own drives, characteristics and strategy. Shaeffer had been right to call in regular non-telepathic 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 assassin has survived our Batavia network. He's on his way to Luna."

  He radiated what he had learned about Pellig and what he believed. The answering thoughts came back instantly.

  "A robot?"