World of Chance

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 preserved 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?"

"Thanks," Verrick answered. "You know that Pellig has left?"

Cartwright nodded. "He's heading for John Preston's ship."

The others followed them as they entered the dining-room. Benteley seated himself beside Rita O'Neill at the far end of a table; Verrick saw him but gave merely a momentary flicker of recognition. Shaeffer, the other Corpsmen and Directorate officials, took seats in the back­ground.

"I suppose he'll find it," Verrick murmured. "When I left Chemie he was already thirty-nine astronomical units out; I checked with the ipvic monitor." He accepted black coffee and sipped it with relief. "A devil of a lot has happened today."

"What would Moore do if he got hold of Preston's material?" Cartwright asked. "You know him better than I do."

"It's hard to say. Moore was always a lone wolf. I provided him with materials and he worked on his own on his projects. He's brilliant. He engineered the whole Pellig project."

Eleanor Stevens had come into the room. She stood nervous and uncertain, her thin hands clasped tightly together. After a moment of indecision she slipped into a seat in a recess and watched wide-eyed, a demure and terrified shape half lost in shadow.

"I wondered where you'd gone," Verrick called to her. "You raced me by a—" he examined his watch—"only a few minutes."

"Will Moore return to you if he gets what he wants?" Cartwright asked. "His oath... ?"

"He never worried about that sort of thing." Verrick's glance strayed. "Oaths don't seem as important as they once did."

Benteley said nothing. Under his fingers his gun was cold and moist with perspiration. His coffee cooled beside him, untouched. Rita O'Neill smoked convulsively, stubbed her cigarette out, lit another and then stubbed that.

"Are you going to call a second Challenge Convention?" Cartwright asked Verrick.

Verrick made an intricate pyramid with his massive hands, studied it, then dissolved it back into individual fingers. He gazed absently round the room.

"Why did you come here?" Rita O'Neill's voice cracked out.

Verrick's shaggy eyebrows pulled together in a frown as he turned to Cartwright for an explanation. "My niece," Cartwright said. He introduced them; Rita glared down at her coffee cup and said nothing. Verrick soon forgot her and went back to pyramiding his fingers.

"Of course," he said finally. "I don't know what Benteley has told you. I suppose you understand my set-up, by now."

"What Benteley didn't tell me orally, Shaeffer scanned," Cartwright answered.

"Then you know all I have to say by way of explanation. I don't intend to say anything about Herb Moore." He produced a gun which he propped up right against a milk jug. "I can't very well kill Benteley here..."

Shaeffer and Cartwright exchanged glances.

"We must clear up one thing," Cartwright said. "Ben­teley is now under oath to me, as Quizmaster."

Verrick snapped: "He broke his oath to me; that ends his freedom of choice."

Cartwright rejoined: "I don't consider that he broke his oath to you."

"You betrayed him," Shaeffer added.

Verrick grunted, retrieved his gun, and replaced it in his pocket. "We'll have to get advice on this," he murmured. "Let's try to get Judge Waring up here."

Judge Felix Waring, the highest ranking jurist in the system, was a grouchy, white-bearded gnome in a moth-eaten black suit and old-fashioned hat.

"I know who you are," he muttered, glancing at Cartwright. "And you, too." He nodded at Verrick. "That Pellig of yours was a fizzle, wasn't he?" He cackled glee­fully. "I never liked the looks of him—didn't have a muscle in him."

The ship that had brought Judge Waring had disgorged newsmachines, Hill officials, Directorate bureaucrats, and finally Sam Oster. Ipvic technicians had come in their own ship; signalmen with reels of communication wiring wandered everywhere, stringing up television equipment. Towards the middle of the day the place became a hive of noisy, determined activity. Motion was everywhere, figures coming and going... Benteley stood in a corner, watching gloomily.

"It's nice, here," Rita O'Neill said, settling herself for a doze.

Benteley nodded, then muttered: "So Judge Waring is going to make his decision amid all this din?"

In another corner Leon Cartwright was talking with a barrel-chested, grim-faced man, Sam Oster was congratu­lating him on his successful bout with his first assassin.

Benteley gazed at them until they separated. Finally he turned—and found himself facing Eleanor Stevens.

"Who is she?" Eleanor asked in a clipped voice.

"Cartwright's niece," he answered, following her gaze.

She shrugged and started away suddenly; after a moment

Benteley followed. "They're about to start; they're going to let that stupid old goat decide," she went on.

"I know," Benteley said listlessly.

"He hardly knows what's going on. Verrick pulled the wool over his eyes at the Convention; he'll do it again. Has there been any news about Moore?"

"An Ipvic screen has been set up, for Cartwright's use. Verrick doesn't care; he didn't interfere."

"What does it show?"

"I don't know. I haven't bothered to look." Benteley came to a halt. Through a half-open door he had caught a glimpse of a table and chairs, ash-trays, recording instru­ments. "Is that——"

"That's the room they set up." Suddenly Eleanor gave a cry of terror. "Please get me out of here!"

Reese Verrick had moved past the door of the room.

"He knows—about us," Eleanor said as they pushed among the people. "I came to warn you——"

"Too bad!" Benteley said vaguely.

"Don't you care?"

"There's nothing I can do to Reese Verrick."

"You can kill him!" Her voice was shrill with hysteria. "Before he kills both of us!"

"No," Benteley said, "I'm not going to kill Reese Verrick. I'll wait and see what happens. In any case, I'm finished with that."

"And—with me?"

"You knew about the bomb."

Eleanor shuddered. "What could I do?" She hurried after him, frantic with apprehension. "Ted, I couldn't stop it, could I?"

"You knew that night when we were together. When you talked me into it."

"Yes!" Eleanor slid defiantly in front of him, blocking his way. "That's right." Her green eyes glittered wildly. "I knew. But I meant everything I said to you."

Benteley turned away, disgusted.

"Listen to me." She caught imploringly at his arm.

"Reese knew, too. Everybody knew. It couldn't be helped—somebody had to be in the Pellig body."

Benteley stepped back as a grumbling white-bearded little old man pushed angrily past him towards the ante­chamber. He disappeared inside the room and dropped his heavy book on the table with a thump. He blew his nose, moved critically about examining the chairs, and finally took a seat at the head of the table. Reese Verrick, standing at the window, exchanged a few words with him. A moment later Leon Cartwright followed after Judge Waring.

Benteley's heart resumed beating, slowly and reluctantly. The session was about to begin.