“The assassin is in the lobby!” the mechanical voices roared above the din. Down corridors MacMillan heavy-duty weapons rolled, guns bristling like quills. Soldiers threw plastic cable spun from hand-projectors in an intricate web across the mouths of corridors. The milling, excited officials were herded toward the main entrance of the building. Outside, soldiers were setting up a ring of steel, a circle of men and guns. As the officials poured from the building they were examined visually one by one and then passed on.
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, directly at a clumsy MacMillan gun trying to wedge itself in the passage. As the locks of the gun slid down, Pellig squeezed through. The locks slammed viciously after him and the passage was sealed off.
“The assassin has left the lobby!” the mechanical voices squalled. “Remove that MacMillan weapon!”
The gun was hastily collected and propelled protesting and whirring to a storage locker. Troops poured after Pellig as he raced down deserted office corridors, cleared of officials and workers, yellow-lit passages that echoed with distant clangs.
Pellig thumb-burned his way through a wall and into the main reception lounge. The lounge was empty and silent. It was filled with chairs, vid and aud tapes, lush carpets and walls—but no people.
At his screen, Benteley started with recognition. This was the lounge where he had waited to see Reese Verrick . . .
The synthetic body skimmed from office to office, a weaving, darting thing that burned a path ahead of it without visible emotion or expression. Once it raced through a room of still-working officials. Screaming men and women scrambled wildly for escape. Desks were hastily abandoned in the frantic rush to exits. Pellig ignored the terrified workers and skimmed on, his feet barely touched the floor. At a checkpoint he seemed almost to rise and hurtle through the air, a blank-faced moist-haired Mercury.
The last commercial office fell behind. Pellig emerged before the vast sealed tank that was the Quizmaster’s inner fortress. He recoiled as his thumb-gun showered harmlessly against the thick rexeroid surface. Pellig stumbled away, momentarily bewildered.
“The assassin is at the inner office!” mechanical voices dinned above and around him, up and down corridors, in rooms throughout the elaborate building. “Surround and destroy him!”
Pellig raced in an uncertain circle—and again the red button twitched.
The new operator staggered, crashed against a desk, pulled the synthetic body quickly to its feet, and then proceeded to systematically burn his way around 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 it?”
“No,” Eleanor said, examining the break-down of the indicator board. “It’s 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 and burst uselessly. The body did not breathe.
Verrick laughed like an excited child. “See? They can’t stop him. He’s _in_.” He leaped up and down and pounded his fists against his knees. “Now he’ll kill him. Now!”
But the rexeroid tank, the massive inner fortress with its armory of guns and ipvic equipment, was empty.
Verrick squealed a high-pitched frenzied curse. “He’s not there! He’s gone!” His massive face melted with disappointment. “They got the son of a bitch out!”
At his own screen, Herb Moore jerked controls with convulsive dismay. Lights, indicators, meters and dials, flowed wildly. Meanwhile, the Pellig body stood rooted to the spot, one foot into the deserted chamber. There was the heavy desk Cartwright should have been sitting at. All that was left were files, warning apparatus, equipment and machinery. But Cartwright wasn’t there.
“Keep him looking!” Verrick shouted. “Cartwright must be around someplace!”
The sound of Verrick’s voice grated in Moore’s aud phones. His mind worked rapidly. On the screen, his technician had started the body into uncertain activity. The schematic showed Pellig’s pin at the very core of the Directorate: the assassin had arrived but there was no quarry.
“lt was a trap!” Verrick shouted in Moore’s ear. “A decoy! Now they’re going to destroy him!”
On all sides of the demolished fortress-cube, troops and weapons were in motion. Vast Directorate resources responding to Shaeffer’s hurried instructions.
“The assassin is at the inner cube!” mechanical speakers shrieked triumphantly. “Close in and kill him!”
“Get the assassin!”
“Shoot him down and grind him underfoot!”
Eleanor leaned close to Verrick’s hunched, massive shoulder. “They deliberately let him get in. Look—they’re coming for him.”
“Keep him moving!” Verrick shouted. “For God’s sake they’ll burn him to particles if he simply stands there!’
Down the wrecked corridor Pellig had cut, the snouts of guns poked inquisitively. Slow-rumbling equipment was solemnly organizing in a pattern of death, taking their time: there was no hurry.
Pellig floundered in confusion. He raced back down the passage and out of the cube, then sped from door to door like a trapped animal. Once he halted to burn down a MacMillan gun that had ventured too close and was clumsily taking aim. The gun dissolved and Pellig sprinted past its smoking ruin. But behind it the corridor was jammed with troops and weapons. He gave up and scurried back.
Herb Moore snapped an angry sentence to Verrick. “They took Cartwright out of Batavia.”
“Look for him.”
“He’s not there. It’s a waste of time.” Moore thought quickly. “Transfer me your analysis of ship-movements from Batavia. Especially in the last hour.”
“But-”
“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 and analytical data. “He’s on Luna,” Moore said. “They took him off in their C-plus ship.”
“You don’t know,” Verrick retorted angrily. “He may be in a sub-surface shelter of some kind.”
Moore ignored him and slammed home a switch. Buttons leaped with excitement; Moore’s body sagged limply against its protective ring.
At his own screen Ted Benteley saw the Pellig body jump and stiffen. A tremor crossed its features, a subtle alteration of the vapid face. 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. The steel and plastic fused together and bubbled away in molten fumes. Through the rent the synthetic body skimmed, a blank-faced 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 as it hung in the early-afternoon sky.
Below Pellig the 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 color 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—the body needed no air. And it didn’t respond to extreme temperature. The body was capable of interplanetary flight.
Peter Wakeman received the ipvic call from Shaeffer within a few seconds of the time Pellig left Earth. “He’s gone,” Shaeffer muttered. “He took off like a meteor out into space.”
“Heading where?” Wakeman demanded.
“Toward 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 time?”
“Any time,” Shaeffer said .wearily. “He’s on his way.”
Wakeman broke the connection and returned to his tapes and reports. His desk was a littered chaos of cigarette butts, coffee cups, and a still unfinished fifth of Scotch. 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. Pellig was 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 levels of the resort. “The assassin has survived our Batavia network. He’s on his way to Luna.”