She held back as he stepped forward. “But why are you asking about that? I thought you wanted to know the location of the game.”
“It’s in the form of a special code,” he told her. “The cadre has possession of it.”
He knew his explanations were inadequate and that she was beginning to realize it. He also knew he was out on a limb, jumping off the board without seeing if there was any water in the pool. But it didn’t matter. Either he would be cured or he would be dead.
The arched opening gave onto another, similar vault, and so on. It was a veritable maze of replicated units. Scame pressed forward, past looming crates and enigmatic chests, sometimes past uncrated machinery. He had intended to bluff his way through if challenged, but in fact there seemed to be no one about.
Occasionally there were closed doors, and deeper into the maze notices and directional arrows began to appear. Scame pulled himself up short before one door which bore no legend, but instead an outline of an aquatic-looking, meanta-like shape. The door was locked, but his electronic skeleton key soon dealt with that; he eased himself inside, followed by Cadence.
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The chamber was smaller than the cellar of Dom’s manse on Luna, but its contents were the same. Pendragon reposed in his murky tank, surrounded by his life-support equipment. At the sound of their entrance he stirred slightly, undulating a few feet to the stick-mike, which he grasped in a flapper-like limb. “Who is it?”
“A friend,” Scarne said, moving to stand squarely before the tank. “We’ve met before.”
“I don’t have any friends here,” Pendragon responded. “Still, you’ve already told me something about yourself. You crawl.”
Cadence stayed close behind Scame, hanging on to his shoulder and staring wide-eyed at the alien. “Sorry if I was too familiar,” Scarne said. “Tell me, Pendragon, what do you know about luck?”
“Ah, luck!” hissed Pendragon. “That is what I do not have.”
“Tell me about it,” Scame said reasonably. “How do people use it where you come from?”
Pendragon flapped his extremities, a gesture conveying impatience. “You’re beginning to sound like Marguerite Dom. He pesters me sick on the subject.” He paused, adding thoughtfully: “There, now, is a being who has luck. Plenty of it.”
“He says he knows how to propitiate Lady.” “Lady?” “The goddess of luck.”
Pendragon paused again. “I don’t believe in any gods or goddesses. You’d better get out of here. Something tells me you’re trespassers.”
The creature released the stick-mike and retreated to the back of the tank. Cadence, who had heard of the alien but never seen him before, nudged Scame urgently. “Go on, ask it!” she whispered hoarsely. “It will know!”
Scame decided he was wasting bis time. He turned his back on the tank, took Cadence by the hand and led her away. In the distance, the hum of a machine started up.
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They came to a series of signposts, all of them cryptic:
MARK II STORE; EARMARKED CYTUS COMPONENTS; IDENTIFICATION DATA. Scame lingered at the last, and might have followed it if he had not noticed the last of the signs, which bore a script written in randomatic symbols only. It pointed in the direction from which the machine hum emanated.
He turned to Cadence. “Look, you can go back if you like, and put yourself in the clear. I can take it from now on.”
“No,” she said, pale-faced. “We’ll stick together.” “Okay.” Forcing himself not to break into a run, Scame led the way.
The hum grew louder, and then seemed to subside somewhat. Without warning Scame found, he believed, what he was looking for. They were suddenly on the threshold of a vault slightly different from those they had been passing through. In the center of the vault several men were deep in conversation around a table, a computation unit in front of each. He recognized one of them as the tall Negro who was a member of the mathematical cadre; the faces of the others were indistinct. The table was littered with papers.
The whole of the long wall behind them comprised a bank of machinery: a huge instrument panel, and a battery of smaller pieces of apparatus. It was one of these that was giving off the hum.
As soon as he spotted the scene Scame drew Cadence into the cover of a pillar. He was not sure if one of the attendants standing at the instrument panel had seen him.
He peeped out. The Negro rose and walked to the bank of instruments, saying something to the attendant. The latter began adjusting settings.
There was little doubt in Scarne’s mind that this was where the work on the luck equations was being done. Now was the time to withdraw, he told himself. He obviously couldn’t gain any definite data himself, for the moment. But he could tell the Legitimacy
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where to stage their raid, or whatever. The question was, could he calm Cadence’s doubts about him?
He was about to creep away when a bland computer voice spoke out of the air, seemingly right into his ear.
“You are in a restricted area. Do you have proper authorization?”
“Yes,” Scarne muttered.
“State it.”
Scarne fumbled in his mind for something to say. “You answer the description of no authorized person,” the computer voice resumed. “Please do not move.”
Someone stepped into Scarne’s line of view. It was the black mathematician. The two of them stared at one another for some moments.
Scame turned to Cadence. “Stay here. I’m going to talk to that man.”
He went forward. But before he had taken as much as a step unconsciousness came down on him like a curtain.
Mocking laughter. “Here he comes again. What a clown.”
Scarne returned to awareness for the third time. Dom’s method of interrogation was swift, relatively painless (though anything but pleasant), but the mind did tend to close down every few minutes or so.
He was strapped to a low table. The helm-like cap on his skull, attached by wires to a nearby apparatus, reminded him of the skullcap of an identity machine. Whenever Dom asked a question it delivered a brain-charge, making it impossible for Scame either to lie or to withhold. The sensation was as if his brain was being sucked out through a straw.
As well as Dom and two white-gowned assistants, Cadence was also in the room, but as far as he knew she had not been on the interrogation table. She stood pressed against the wall, ashen-faced.
“See how easily gulled you are, my dear?” Dom told her. He turned back to Scame. “I confess to disappointment,” he said petulantly. “I was coming to look
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on you as a valuable partner. Now it transpires you are a spy and a cheat! How could you do this to me, Cheyne?”
Scarne had already confessed that he was a Legitimacy recruit, set on the trail of the Wheel’s reported ability to control luck. The first part of his confession was nothing new; his conversation in the ledge restaurant earlier in the day had been recorded, as was nearly everything that went on in public in Chasm.
He heaved in his bonds and groaned, partly because of the helplessness of his position, partly because of his humiliation in front of Cadence. “I couldn’t help it,” he said in a weak voice. “They planted an addiction on me. I’m their creature.”
Dom leaned closer. “You said something this afternoon. Your aerosols …”
Scame nodded, then let his sweat-dampened head fall back on the table. “My supply. The drug I have to take. Disguised as deodorant.”
Dom tutted. “Nasty. I had those aerosols opened. But whatever was in them instantly denatured.”
“Yes,” said Scame, closing ids eyes. Will they let me kill myself? he wondered. They must let me kill myself. Because otherwise-
“It’s a special trick,” he said. “The aerosols are a special environment that keep the compound stable. Expel the drug or break them open, and it straight away decomposes-unless it can get into the one other environment where it can survive: my bloodstream, no one else’s.”
They weren’t using the brain charge on him now, evidently thinking it unnecessary. “They’ve got me every way,” he finished. “The compound is specific, synthesized exclusively for myself.”
Dom drew back, bis hands raised in astonishment, his expression solicitous. “Is that all that bothers you, Cheyne? But why didn’t you tell me?”
“How could I tell you? I was stuck in the middle!”
“But I could have had you cured!”
Scame was surprised at Dom’s ignorance. “This poi—
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son is foolproof,” he said with a shake of his head. “It can’t be analyzed.”
“Faugh. That’s what they tell you-typical of them. I have some excellent biochemists here. They’ve dealt with this kind of thing before. I assure you they’ll rustle up an antidote in less than twenty-four hours.”