World of Chance Read online

  Cartwright hesitated in an agony of doubt. "You say Verrick doesn't know about it? You're positive?"

  "Better tell him we're sure." Shaeffer's thoughts came to Wakeman.

  "We're positive," Wakeman said aloud, and it was a cold-blooded lie. To Shaeffer he thought: "Verrick prob­ably knows. But it doesn't matter; if everything goes right Pellig will never get out of Batavia."

  "And if he does?"

  "It's your job to stop him. I'm not really worried, but I'd feel better if Verrick's Hills didn't hold the land on three sides of our Luna site."

  Keith Pellig stood by Miss Lloyd as she seated herself in one of the liner's lounge chairs and folded her nervous hands together. He then sat down opposite her and glumly examined the ceiling. Miss Lloyd's cheeks burned. The nice-looking man was grim-faced and sullen; she repressed a desire to leap up and hurry downstairs to her seat.

  Within the Pellig body, Ted Benteley was deep in stormy thought. While he was reflecting, the mechanism was switched. Instantly he was back at the A.G. Chemie labs.

  It was a shock. He closed his eyes and hung on tight to the metal band that enclosed his body, a combination support and focus. On his ipvic-engineered vidscreen the scene he had just left glimmered brightly. The body cast a microwave sheet that bounced at close range and was relayed by ipvic along the control channel to Chemie in the form of a visual image. A miniature Margaret Lloyd was seated opposite a miniature Keith Pellig, in a micro­scopic lounge.

  "Who's in the Pellig thing?" Benteley demanded shakily.

  "Your friend Al Davis."

  Benteley noted the position of a luminous switch button. "Which switch represents you?"

  Moore ignored the question. "The switch will ignite your indicator a split-second before you're actually arced across. If you keep your eyes open you'll have warning."

  "In this game of musical chairs who gets left standing up?"

  "The body's not going to be blasted. It's going to reach Cartwright and destroy him."

  "Your lab is already constructing a second automaton," Benteley contradicted. "When this one is demolished you'll have the second ready to be named by the Challenge Con­vention."

  "If something goes wrong the operator within Pellig will be jerked back here before the body perishes."

  "Will you really be hooked into this rig?"

  "I'll be hooked in exactly like you."

  As Moore moved restlessly towards the exit lock, Benteley asked: "What happens to my real body while I'm over?"

  "As soon as you're arced out this stuff goes into action." Moore indicated the machinery that filled the metal chamber. "All this keeps the body functioning: supplies air, tests blood pressure, heart rate, carries off wastes, feeds, supplies water—whatever is needed."

  The exit lock slammed. Benteley was alone in the machinery-crammed cubicle.

  Benteley caught a glimpse on the screen of the liner and his heart constricted. The ship was getting near the sprawling Indonesian Empire, the largest functioning aggregate of human beings in the nine-planet system.

  The screen showed the passengers of the transport pre­paring to land. There was always this moment of tension as a sleek liner set itself down; then the sigh of relief as the reactors clicked off and the landing locks rumbled open.

  Keith Pellig and Margaret Lloyd joined the slowly moving crowd that pushed down the ramp to the passenger level. Benteley glanced away from them, to the outline of the Directorate's Batavia buildings. The landing field was linked directly to the main building grounds; the position of Pellig was indicated by a moving spot of colour.

  But no spot showed the position of the network of tele­paths.

  Wakeman arranged for the C-plus rocket to be brought to the surface from its locker. He poured himself a drink, gulped it hastily and then conferred with Shaeffer. "In half an hour Batavia will be a cul de sac for Pellig."

  Shaeffer's hurried response came back to him: "We now have an inferential report on Pellig. He boarded a regular non-stop liner at Bremen. Passage to Java. He's on his way somewhere between here and Europe."

  Wakeman hurried to Cartwright's private quarters. Cartwright was listlessly packing his things with the aid of Rita O'Neill. Rita was pale and tense, but composed. She was going through aud reference tapes with a high-­speed scanner, sorting those worth keeping. A slim, efficient figure with a lucky cat's foot dangling as she worked.

  "Keep hold of that," Wakeman said to her, indicating the charm.

  Rita glanced up. "Any news?"

  "Pellig will be here any minute. Our own ship is almost ready."

  Cartwright roused himself. "Look, I don't want to get caught out in space——"

  Wakeman was astonished at the words, and at the thoughts he caught behind them. Naked fear had invaded the old man's mind. "The ship is the new experimental C-plus. We'll be there almost instantly. Nobody can stop a C-plus once it's in motion."

  Cartwright grunted miserably and began pawing at his heap of shirts. "I'll do what you say, Wakeman. I trust you." He went on clumsily packing, but becoming stronger each moment was an urge to hurry into the reinforced inner office Verrick had constructed and lock himself in. Wake­man deliberately turned his mind from Cartwright's to Rita O'Neill's.

  And got a shock. Hatred radiated from the girl's mind directly at him. He was taken aback by its suddenness; it hadn't been there a moment before.

  Rita saw the expression on his face, and changed her thoughts. Quick, canny, she had sensed his awareness; now she was thinking of the aud tape humming in her ears as she operated the scanner.

  "What is wrong?" he barked at her. "What's wrong?"

  Rita said nothing, but her lips pressed together until they were white. Abruptly she turned and hurried from the room.

  "I can tell you," Cartwright said hoarsely as he slammed at his battered suitcases. "She blames you for this."

  "For what?"

  Cartwright picked up his cases and moved slowly towards the door. "I'm her uncle and she's always seen me in authority. Now I'm mixed up in something I don't under­stand and I can't control. I have to rely on you." He moved aside to let Wakeman open the door. "I suppose I've changed, since I came here. She's disappointed, and she blames you."

  The C-plus ship was up-ended on the emergency platform in the centre of the main building. As soon as Cartwright, his niece and the group of Corpsmen had entered the hull locks slid smoothly into place. The roof of the building rolled back and the bright noon sky blazed down.

  Wakeman fastened Rita's belt and then his own. She said nothing to him but her hostility had melted a little. "We may black-out during the flight. The ship is robot-operated." Wakeman settled down in his seat. Sensitive machinery moved and high-powered reactors screamed shrilly into life. He relaxed and drank in the sleek purr of the drive as it warmed. It was a beautiful ship; the first actually made from the original model and designs.

  "You know how I feel," Rita O'Neill said to him abruptly. "You were scanning me."

  "I know how you felt. I don't think you still feel that way."

  "It's irrational to blame you. You're doing your job the best you can."

  "I'm doing the right thing." He waited a moment. "Well? The ship's ready to take off."

  Cartwright managed to nod. "I'm ready."

  Wakeman considered briefly. "Any sign?" he thought to Shaeffer.

  "Another passenger transport coming in," the rapid thought came back. "Entering scanning range any moment."

  Pellig would arrive at Batavia; that was certain. He would search for Cartwright; that was also certain. The unknown was Pellig's detection and death. It could be assumed that if he escaped the telepath net he would locate the Lunar site. And if he located that... .

  "There's no protection on Luna," Wakeman thought to Shaeffer. "We're giving up all positive defence once we take Cartwright there."

  Shaeffer agreed. "But I think we'll get Pellig here at Batavia."

  "We'll take the chance." Wakeman gave
the signal and the ship moved. First the regular turbine thrust, then the furious lash of energy as the C-plus drive swung into life, sparked by the routine release of power. For a moment the ship hovered over the Directorate buildings, glowing and shimmering. Then the drive caught, and in an instant the ship hurtled from the surface in a flash of blinding speed that rolled black waves of unconsciousness over the people within.

  As the darkness engulfed Peter Wakeman a vague satisfaction drifted through his dwindling mind. Keith Pellig would find nothing at Batavia. Nothing but his own death. The Corps's strategy was working out.

  At the moment Wakeman's signal sent the glowing C-plus ship away from Batavia the regular liner rumbled to a slow halt at the space field and slid back its locks.

  Keith Pellig walked eagerly down the metal ramp and into the sunlight, blinking and peering excitedly at his first view of the Directorate buildings.

  Chapter X

  At 5.30 a.m. the heavy construction rocket settled down in the centre of what had once been London. In front of it and behind it razor-sharp transports hissed to smooth land­ings and disgorged parties of armed guards. They quickly fanned out and took up positions to intercept stray Directorate police patrols.

  Within a few moments the old building that was the offices of the Preston Society had been surrounded.

  Reese Verrick stepped out and followed his construction workers to the side of the building. The air was chill and thin; buildings and streets were moist with night dampness, grey, silent structures with no sign of life.

  "This is the place," the foreman said to Verrick. He indicated a courtyard strewn with rubble. "The monument is there."

  Verrick raced up the littered path to the courtyard. Workmen were already tearing down the steel and plastic monument; the yellowed plastic cube which was John Preston's crypt had been yanked down and was resting on the concrete. Within the translucent crypt the dried-up shape had shifted slightly to one side; the face was obscured by an arm flung across the glasses and nose.

  "So that's John Preston!" Verrick said.

  The foreman squatted down to examine the seams of the crypt. "It's a vacuum-seal, of course. If we open it here it'll pulverize to dust particles."

  "All right," Verrick agreed reluctantly. "Take the whole works to the labs. We'll open it there."

  The work crews who had entered the building reappeared with armloads of pamphlets, tapes, records, endless boxes of documents and printing supplies. "The place is a store­room," one of them said to the foreman. "They had junk heaped to the ceiling. There seems to be a false wall and some kind of subsurface meeting chamber. We're knocking the wall down."

  Verrick wandered into the building and found himself in the front office; only the bare water-stained walls, peeling and dirty, remained. The office led to a yellow hall. Verrick headed down it, past a fly-specked photograph of John Preston still hanging among some rusty hooks. "Don't forget this," he said to his foreman.

  Beyond the picture a section of wall had been torn away, disclosing a crude false passage running parallel to the hall. Workmen were swarming about, hunting for more concealed entrances.

  Verrick folded his arms and studied the photograph. Preston had been a tiny, withered leaf of a creature with wrinkled ears in a tangle of hair. Small, almost feminine, lips above a stubbled chin, not prominent but hard with determination. A crooked, lumpish nose (Preston was partly Jewish) surmounted an unsightly neck protruding from a food-stained shirt.

  It was Preston's eyes that attracted Verrick. Two un­compromising, steel-sharp orbs that smouldered behind thick lenses. They glowered fiercely at Verrick; their alive-ness startled him. Even behind the dusty glass of the photograph the eyes seemed hot with fire and life and excitement.

  Verrick turned away as the foreman announced:

  "All loaded—the crypt, the stuff we found in the build­ing, the snap-models of the layout..."

  Verrick followed his foreman back to the ship and almost immediately they were on their way back to A.G. Chemie.

  Herb Moore appeared as the yellowed cube was lowered to a lab table. "This is his crypt?" he asked as he began rubbing dirt from the translucent shield that covered John Preston's withered body. "Get this stuff off," he ordered.

  "It's old," one of the technicians protested. "We'll have to work carefully or it'll turn to powder."

  Moore grabbed a cutting tool and began severing the shield from its base.

  The shield split, brittle and dry with age. Moore clawed it away and from the opened cube a cloud of musty air billowed out and swirls of dust danced in their faces and made them cough and pull back.

  Round the work-table vidcameras ground away, making a permanent record of the procedure.

  Moore impatiently signalled. Two technicians lifted the wizened body and held it at eye-level. Moore poked at the face with a pointed probe, then suddenly grabbed the right arm. It came off without resistance and Moore stood holding it foolishly.

  The body was a plastic dummy.

  "Imitation!" He threw the arm down violently.

  Moore walked all around the dummy, saying nothing to Verrick until he had examined it from all sides. Finally he took hold of the hair and tugged. The skull-covering came off, disclosing a metal hemisphere. Moore tossed the wig to one of the robots and then turned his back on the exhibit.

  "It looks exactly like the photograph," Verrick said admiringly as he stepped nearer to the table.

  Moore laughed. "Naturally! The dummy was made first and then photographed. But it's probably about the way Preston looked." His eyes flickered. "Looks, I mean."

  Eleanor Stevens detached herself from the watching group and approached the dummy cautiously. "You think he's still alive in his own body?" Eleanor asked. "That isn't possible!"

  Moore didn't answer. He was staring at the dummy; he had picked up the arm again and was mechanically pulling loose the fingers one by one. The look on his face was nothing Eleanor had ever seen before.

  Abruptly he shook himself and hurried to the door. "Pellig should be entering the defence network. I want to be part of things when that happens."

  Verrick and Eleanor followed quickly after him, the dummy forgotten.

  "This should be interesting," Verrick muttered as he hurried to his office. Expectation gleamed in his heavy face as he snapped on the screen the ipvic technicians had set up for him. With Eleanor standing nervously behind him he prepared himself for the sight of Keith Pellig stepping from the transport to the field at Batavia.

  Keith Pellig took a deep breath of warm fresh air and then glanced round. The field was crowded. Hordes of Directorate bureaucrats and milling groups of passengers were waiting fussily for ships; a constant din of noise and furious activity; the roar of ships and loudspeakers; the rumble of surface vehicles.

  Al Davis noted all this as he halted the Pellig body and waited for Miss Lloyd to catch up with him.

  "There he is," she gasped, bright-eyed and entranced by the sights. She began waving frantically. "Walter!"

  A thin-faced man in his middle forties was edging through the throng of people. He was a typical classified official of the Directorate, one of its vast army of desk men.

  He waved to Miss Lloyd and called out, but his words were lost in the general uproar.

  Davis had to keep moving; he had to get rid of the chattering girl and her middle-aged companion and move towards the Directorate buildings. Down his sleeve and into his right hand ran the slender wire that fed his thumb-gun. The first moment the Quizmaster appeared in front of him—a quick movement of his hand, thumb raised, a tide of lethal energy released...

  At that moment he caught sight of the expression on Walter's face.

  Al Davis blindly moved the Pellig body towards the street and the lines of surface cars. Walter was a telepath, of course. There had been a flash of recognition as he had caught Davis's thoughts during a brief run-through of his programme of assassination. A group of people separated them and the Pellig body
sprawled against a railing. With one bound Davis carried it over the railing.

  He glanced back—Walter was not far behind him.

  Davis strode on. He had to keep moving. Surface cars honked and roared; he ignored them.

  Full realization was just beginning to hit him; any of the crowd might be a telepath. The word passed on, scanned from one mind to the next... The network was a chain ring; he had run up against the first link. He halted, then ducked into a shop. He dimly sensed rather than saw the group of figures quietly entering the entrance behind him. He ducked down, then dashed down an aisle between counters. What next? They were at both doors; he had trapped himself. He thought frantically, des­perately. What next?

  While he was trying to decide, a silent whoosh picked him up. He was back at A.G. Chemie. Before his eyes a miniature Pellig raced and darted on the microscopic screen; the next operator in the automaton's body was already working to solve the problem of escape. Davis sagged limply into a chair.

  On the screen Keith Pellig burned through the plate-plastic window of the shop and floundered into the street. People screamed in horror. While everyone else raced about, the fat red-faced assistant stood as if turned to stone, his lips twitching, his body jerking. Suddenly he collapsed in a blubbery heap.

  The scene shifted as Pellig escaped from the pack of people clustered in front of the store. The assistant was lost from sight. Al Davis was puzzled. Had Pellig des­troyed him? Pellig turned a corner, hesitated, then dis­appeared into a theatre.

  The theatre was dark and Pellig blundered in confusion: bad tactics Davis realized. The darkness wouldn't affect the pursuers, who depended not on sight but on telepathic contact.

  The operator in Pellig now realized his mistake and sought an exit. But already vague shapes were moving in on him. He hesitated, then dashed into a lavatory. From here he burned his way through the wall with his thumb-gun and emerged into an alley. There he stood considering trying to make up his mind. The vast shape of the Direct­torate building loomed ahead, a golden tower that caught the sunlight and sparkled it back. Pellig took a deep breath and started towards it at a relaxed trot... .