Down the descent ramp Benteley raced. Reaching the ground, he plunged out onto the dark late-evening street As a group of Farben personnel streamed hesitantly out after him, he entered the illuminated taxi yard and hailed one of the parked urbtrans ships.
“Where to, sir or madam?” the MacMillan driver asked, as it slid back its doors and gunned its turbines.
“To Bremen,” Benteley gasped. He snapped his seat-straps in place and quickly slotted his neck against the take-off impact. “And make it fast.”
The MacMillan’s metallic voice sounded in agreement as it operated its jet portions. The small high-speed ship which was its mechanical body shot swiftly into the sky, and Farben fell behind.
“Set me down at the big interplan field,” Benteley ordered. “Do you know any interplan flight schedules?”
“No, but I can hook you up to an information circuit.”
“Forget it,” Benteley said. He wondered briefly how much of his conversation with Wakeman had been picked up by the balance of the Corps. Whether he liked it or not, Luna was the only place he stood a chance of safety. All nine planets were now Hill-operated death traps: Verrick would never rest until he had paid him back. But there was no telling what reception he would get from the Directorate. He might be shot on sight as one of Verrick’s agents. On the other hand, he might be regarded as Cartwright’s savior.
_Where was the synthetic body going?_
“Here’s the field, sir or madam,” the driver said to him. The taxi was settling down at the public parking lot.
The field was manned by Hill personnel. Benteley could see intercon liners and interplan transports resting here and there, and great hordes of people. Among the people Hill guards moved around keeping order. Suddenly Benteley changed his mind.
“Don’t set down. Head back up.”
“You name it, sir or madam.” The ship obediently rose.
“Isn’t there a military field around someplace?”
“The Directorate maintains a small military repair field at Narvik. You want to go there? It’s forbidden for non-military ships to set down in that area. I’ll have to drop you over the side.”
“Fine,” Benteley said. “That sounds like exactly what I want.”
Leon Cartwright was fully awake when the Corpsman came running to his quarters. “How far away is he?” Cart-wright asked. Even with the injection of sodium pentathol he had slept only a few hours.
“Pretty close, I suppose.”
“Peter Wakeman is dead,” the Corpsman said.
Cartwright got quickly to his feet. “Who killed him?”
“The assassin.”
“Then he’s here.” Cartwright yanked out his hand weapon. “What kind of defense can we put up? How did he find me? What happened to the network at Batavia?”
Rita O’Neill entered the room, white-faced and quiet. “The Corps broke down completely. Pellig forced his way directly to the inner fortress and found you were gone.”
Cartwright glanced briefly at her, then back at the Corpsman. “What happened to your people?”
“Our strategy failed,” the Corpsman said simply. “Verrick had some kind of deception. I think Wakeman had it analyzed before he died.”
Rita reacted. “Wakeman’s dead?”
“Pellig got him,” Cartwright said curtly. “That cuts us off from the Corps. We’re completely on our own.” He turned to the Corpsman. “What’s the exact situation? Have you definitely located the assassin?”
“Our emergency network has collapsed. When Wakeman was killed, we totally lost lock with Pellig. We have no idea where he is. We haven’t made any contact whatsoever.”
“If Pellig has got this far,” Cartwright said thoughtfully, “we don’t have much chance of stopping him.”
“Wakeman was handling it,” Rita blazed savagely. “You can do much better.”
“Why?”
“Because—” She shrugged impatiently. “Wakeman was nothing compared to you. He was a nonentity. A little _bureaucrat_.”
Cartwright showed her his gun. “Remember this? I had this popper in the back seat of the car for years. I never had to use it. It was still there; I sent a team to get it for me.” He ran his hand down the familiar metal tube. “Sentimental attachment, I suppose.”
“You’re going to defend yourself with that thing?” Rita’s black eyes smoldered furiously. “That’s all you’re going to do?”
“Right now I’m hungry,” Cartwright said mildly. “What time is it? We might as well have dinner while we’re waiting.”
“This isn’t the time—” Rita began, but at that moment the Corpsman cut her off.
“Mr. Cartwright,” he interrupted, “a ship from Earth is landing. Just a moment.” His attention turned inward and then he continued, “Major Shaeffer is aboard with the remaining Corpsmen. And—” He broke off. “There’s more. He wants to see you immediately.”
“Fine,” Cartwright said. “Where is he?”
“He’ll meet you here. He’s coming up the ramp right now.”
Cartwright fumbled in his coat pocket for his crumpled pack of cigarettes. “Strange,” he said to Rita. “Wakeman dead, after all his careful planning.”
“I’m not sorry for Wakeman. I only wish you’d do something instead of just standing there.”
“Well,” Cartwright said, “I can’t go anywhere. And we’ve tried everything we know. There’s not a hell of a lot left, when you get down to it. I can’t help thinking if one man is really determined to kill another, there’s not much that can be done to stop him. You can delay him, you can make it hard for him, you can do a lot of intricate things that take up a lot of time and energy, but sooner or later he shows up.”
“I think I liked you better when you were afraid,” Rita said bitterly. “At least I understood that.”
“Don’t you understand this?”
“You were afraid of death. Now you’re not human—you have no emotions. Maybe you’re dead. You might as well be dead.”
“I’ll make a concession,” Cartwright said. “I’ll sit facing the door.” He settled gingerly on the edge of a table, his popper in his palm, a dispassionate expression on his face. “What does Pellig look like?” he asked the Corpsman.
“Young. Thin. Blond. No special characteristics.”
“What kind of weapon is he using?”
“He has a thumb-gun. That’s a heat beam principle. Of course he may have something more we don’t know about.”
“I want to recognize Pellig when I see him,” Cartwright explained to Rita. “He may be the next person through that door.”
The next person through the door was Major Shaeffer.
“I brought this man with me,” Shaeffer explained to Cartwright, as he entered the room. “I think you’ll want to talk to him.”
A dark, neatly-dressed classified man in his early thirties had entered slightly behind Shaeffer. He and Cartwright shook hands as Shaeffer briefly introduced them.
“This is Ted Benteley,” Shaeffer said. “A serf of Reese Verrick’s.”
“You’re a little premature,” Cartwright said. “You can go downramp to the pool and the game room and the bar. The assassin ought to be showing up any time, now; it won’t be long.”
Benteley laughed, sharply and tensely. He was more rumpled and on edge than they had first realized.
“Shaeffer is incorrect,” he said. “I’m not under oath to Verrick any longer. I left him.”
“You broke your oath?” Cartwright asked.
“He broke his oath to me. I left in a considerable hurry. I came here directly from Farben. There were complications.”
“He killed Herb Moore,” Shaeffer said.
“Not exactly,” Benteley corrected. “I killed his body.”
Rita’s breath caught sharply. “What happened?”
Benteley explained the situation. When he was perhaps half through, Cartwright interrupted with a question. “Where’s Pellig? The last we heard he was around here, somewhere, not more than a few miles from the resort.”
“The Pellig body is on its way toward deep space,” Benteley said. “Moore isn’t interested in you; he’s got his own problems. When he realized he was stuck in the synthetic body, he left Luna and headed straight out.”
“Headed where?” Cartwright asked.
“I don’t know.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Rita said impatiently. “He’s not after you; that’s what’s important. Maybe he went insane. Maybe he’s lost control of the body.”
“It’s possible,” Benteley admitted. “It was an event he didn’t expect; he had just smashed your teep net.” He explained how Moore destroyed Peter Wakeman.
“We know that,” Cartwright said. “What kind of velocity is the synthetic capable of?”
“C-plus,” Benteley answered. “Aren’t you satisfied Moore is moving away from here?”
Cartwright licked his lips. “I know where he’s going.”
There was a quick murmur and then Shaeffer said, “Of course.” He rapidly scanned Cartwright’s mind. “He has to find some way to stay alive. Benteley gave me a lot of involuntary material on the way here; I can construct most of the missing parts. Moore will undoubtedly find Preston with the information he has.”
Benteley was astounded. “Preston! Is he alive?”
“That explains the prior informational request,” Cartwright said. “Verrick must have tapped the closed-circuit ipvic beam from the ship.” His cigarette came to an end; he dropped it, ground it out wrathfully, and lit another. “I should have paid more attention when Wakeman brought it up.”