Cartwright’s gray lips twitched. “Is it a good thing to break up the Corps? You said some will be here and some will go with us. And I know you can’t scan over that great a distance. Wouldn’t it be—”
“Goddam it,” Rita O’Neill said explosively. She threw down her armload of tapes. “Stop doing what you’re doing! It’s not like you!”
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 from his terrified and bewildered mind leaked the growing tendrils of his primitive, atavistic longing-fear. It swelled and became stronger each moment: the overpowering urge to hurry into the reinforced inner office Verrick had constructed, and to lock himself in. Wakeman flinched as the raw primal panic hit him, the frantic desire to claw a way back into the womb. He deliberately turned his mind from Cartwright’s to Rita O’Neill’s.
As he did so, Wakeman got a further shock. A thin icy column of hate radiated from the girl’s mind directly at him. He quickly began untangling it, surprised and taken aback by its suddenness: it hadn’t been there before.
Rita saw the expression on his face, and her thoughts changed. Quick, canny, she had sensed his awareness; she was thinking now of the aud tape humming through her ears as she operated the scanner. She passed it on to him; he was deafened by a furious roar of voices, speeches, lectures, parts of Preston’s books, arguments, comments . . .
“What is it?” he said to her. “What’s wrong?”
Rita said nothing, but her lips pressed together until they were white. Abruptly she turned and hurried out of the room.
“I can tell you what it is,” Cartwright said hoarsely. He slammed his battered suitcases and locked them. “She blames you for this.”
“For what?”
Cartwright caught up his two eroded suitcases and moved slowly toward the hall door. “You know, I’m her uncle. She’s always seen me at the head of things, in authority, giving orders and making plans. Now I’m mixed up in something I don’t understand.” His voice died into a troubled murmur. “Situations I can’t control. I have to rely on you.” He moved wanly aside to let Wakeman open the door. “I suppose I’ve changed, since I came here. She’s disappointed . . . and she blames you for it.”
“Oh,” Wakeman said. He moved after Cartwright, aware of two things: that he didn’t understand people as well as he thought; and that finally Cartwright had made up his mind to do as the Corps suggested.
The C-plus ship was up-ended on the emergency platform in the center of the main building. As soon as Cartwright and his niece and the group of Corpsmen had entered, the hull locks slid smoothly into place and sealed themselves tight. The roof of the building rolled back and the bright noon-day sky blazed down.
“This is a small ship,” Cartwright observed. He had turned pale and sickly; his hands shook as he strapped himself to his seat. “Interesting design.”
Wakeman quickly fastened Rita’s belt for her and then his own. She said nothing to him; the pencil of hostility had melted a little. “We may black-out during the flight. The ship is robot-operated.” Wakeman settled down in his seat and thought the go-ahead signal to the intricate mechanism beneath them. The sensitive relays responded, the machinery shifted, and, someplace close by, high-powered reactors screamed shrilly into life.
With the ship responsive to his thoughts, Wakeman enjoyed the luxury of imagining a vast steel and plastic extension of his own small body. He relaxed and drank in the clean, 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, shattering his temporary pleasure. “You were scanning me.”
“I know how you felt. I don’t think you still feel that way.”
“Perhaps not; I don’t know. It’s irrational to blame you. You’re doing your job the best you can.”
“I think,” Wakeman said, “I’m doing the right thing. I think I’ve got this under control.” 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 teep net, he would locate the Lunar resort. And if he located the resort . . .
“There’s no protection on Luna,” Wakeman thought to Shaeffer. “We’re giving up all positive defense once we take him there.”
“That’s right,” Shaeffer agreed. “But I think well get Pellig here at Batavia. Once we make contact, that’s it.”
Wakeman decided. “All right. Well take the chance; the odds are good enough.” He gave the mental signal and the ship moved into position for the take-off. Automatic grapples lined it up with its destination, the pale dead eye hanging dully in the noon-day sky. Wakeman closed his eyes and forced relaxation on his body-muscles.
The ship moved. First, there was 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 C-plus 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 relentlessly collected Peter Wakeman, a vague blur of satisfaction drifted through his dwindling mind. Keith Pellig would find nothing at Batavia, nothing but his own death. The Corps’ strategy was working out.
In the moment Wakeman’s signal sent the glowing C-plus ship away from Batavia, the regular intercon liner rumbled to a slow halt at the space field and slid back its locks.
With a group of businessmen and commuters, Keith Pellig stepped eagerly down the metal ramp and emerged in the sunlight, blinking and peering excitedly around him, at his first view of the Directorate buildings, the endless hurrying people and traffic—and the waiting network of teeps.
ELEVEN
AT FIVE-THIRTY A.M. the heavy construction rocket settled down in the center of what had once been London. In front of it and behind it thin 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 dilapidated old building that was the offices of the Preston Society had been surrounded.
Reese Verrick, in a heavy wool greatcoat and boots, stepped out and followed his construction workers down the sidewalk and around the side of the building. The air was chill and thin; buildings and streets were moist with night dampness, gray silent structures with no sign of life.
“This is the place,” the foreman said to Verrick. “They own this old barn.” He indicated the courtyard, strewn with rubble and waste. “The monument is there.”
Verrick paced ahead of the foreman, up the debris-littered path to the courtyard. The workmen were akeady 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 frozen concrete among bits of trash and paper that had accumulated through the months. Within the translucent crypt the dried-up shape had shifted slightly to one side; the face was obscured by one pipe-stem arm flung across the glasses and nose.
“So that’s John Preston,” Verrick said thoughtfully.
The foreman squatted down and began examining the seams of the crypt. “It’s a vacuum-seal, of course. If we open it here it’ll pulverize to dust particles.”
Verrick hesitated. “All right,” he agreed reluctantly. “Take the whole works to the labs. Well open it there.”
The work crews who had entered the building appeared with armloads of pamphlets, tapes, records, furniture, light fixtures, clothing, endless boxes of raw paper and printing supplies. “The whole place is a storeroom,” one of them said to the foreman. “They have junk heaped to the ceiling. There seems to be a false wall and some kind of sub-surface meeting chamber. We’re prying the wall out and getting in there.”
This was the slatternly run-down headquarters from which the Society had operated. Verrick wandered into the building and found himself in the front office. The work crews were collecting everything in sight; only the bare water-stained walls, peeling and dirty, remained. The front office led onto a yellow hall. Verrick headed down it, past a dusty fly-specked photograph of John Preston still hanging among some rusty scarf hooks. “Don’t forget this,” he said to his foreman. “This picture here.”