Shaeffer and Cartwright exchanged glances. Verrick took no interest; he gazed down broodingly at his popper and paw-like hands.
“That really doesn’t matter,” Cartwright said. “But we should clear up one thing. Benteley is presently under oath to me, as Quizmaster. He took a positional oath.”
“But he can’t,” Verrick said. “He broke his oath to me; that negates his freedom to swear on.”
“Well,” Cartwright said, “I don’t consider that he broke his oath to you.”
“You betrayed him,” Shaeffer explained to Verrick.
Verrick reflected at length. “I’m not conscious of any betrayal. I performed the duties and obligations due from my end.”
“That’s not even remotely true,” Shaeffer contradicted.
There was a moment of silence.
Verrick grunted, retrieved his popper, examined it, and then shoved it back in his coat pocket. “We’ll have to get advice on this,” he murmured. “Let’s try to get Judge Waring up here.”
“Fine,” Cartwright agreed. “That’s satisfactory. Do you want to stay here during the interval?”
“Thanks,” Verrick said appreciatively. “I’m tired as hell. What I need is a good long rest.” He gazed around him. “This looks like just the place.”
Judge Felix Waring was a grouchy, hunched-over old gnome in a moth-eaten black suit and old-fashioned hat, a heavy legal binder under his arm. He was the highest ranking jurist in the system; and he had a long white beard.
“I know who you are,” he muttered curtly, glancing at Cartwright. “And you, too.” He nodded briefly at Verrick. “You and your million gold dollars. That Pellig of yours was a fizzle, wasn’t he?” He cackled gleefully. “I never liked the looks of him. I knew he was no good. He didn’t have a muscle on him.”
It was “morning” in the resort.
The ship that had brought Judge Waring had quietly disgorged MacMillan newsmachines, Hill officials, and more Directorate bureaucrats. Ipvic technicians came in their own ship; a steady stream of workmen moved through the sphincters into the balloon. Signalmen with tangled reels of communication wiring thrown over their shoulders wandered everywhere, stringing up ipvic tv equipment. Toward the middle of the day the resort became a hive of noisy, determined activity. Motion was everywhere, figures coming and going with serious expressions.
“How’s this?” a Directorate official was saying to one of the ipvic men.
“Not big enough. What about that place over there?”
“That’s the main game room.”
“That’ll be fine.” Equipment was waved toward the entrance arch. “The acoustics will be blurred but that’s okay, isn’t it?”
“Not on your life. We want no boom; use something smaller.”
“Don’t step through the balloon,” a soldier warned a work-crew setting up transmission equipment.
“It’s pretty tough,” a technician said. “This place was made to handle tourists and drunks.”
The central game room had rapidly filled with men and women in bright-colored vacation clothes. They scampered and played and amused themselves as the technicians and work-crews laid out tables and machinery. MacMillans were everywhere, getting underfoot and blundering among the game-players.
Benteley stood off in a corner watching gloomily. The laughing, gaily-clad men and women sprinted back and forth; shuffleboard was a popular sport, as well as softball and soccer. No purely intellectual games were permitted. This was a psych resort: the games were therapeutic. A few feet from Benteley a purple-haired young girl was determinedly hunched over a three-dimensional color board, forming elaborate combinations of shapes, tones, and textures, with sharp little quivers of her hands.
“It’s nice, here,” Rita O’Neill said in his ear.
Benteley nodded.
“We still have some time, before they begin.” Rita meditatively tossed a garishly-painted disc into the middle of a flock of robot ducks. One duck dutifully fell dead, and a score rang itself up on the marker. “You want to play something? Exercise and enjoy yourself? I’m dying to try some of these things out.”
The two of them edged through the people and into the side gym, Rita leading the way. Directorate soldiers had stripped off their green uniforms and were tilting with magnetic fields, pressure beams, artificial high-grav steps, a variety of muscle-building equipment. In the center of the room an interested group was watching a Corpsman wrestle a MacMillan robot.
“Very healthful,” Benteley said grimly.
“Oh, this is a wonderful place. Don’t you think Leon has put on weight? He looks a lot better since the Pellig business ended.”
“He’ll probably live to be an old man,” Benteley agreed.
Rita flushed. “There’s no need for that. You can’t really be loyal to anybody, can you? You’re only thinking of yourself.”
Benteley moved on; after a moment Rita followed. “Is Judge Waring going to make his decision with all these enthusiasts running around?” Benteley demanded. He had come to a raised web on which tanned figures were stretching out in the sun. “Everybody seems to be having a wonderful time. Even the MacMillans are enjoying themselves. The menace is past. The assassin has departed.”
Rita happily took off her clothes, gave diem to a mechanical attendant, and tossed herself into one of the quavering webs. Low-grav counterfields released her body; she spun dizzily into the depths of the web and after a time emerged, breathless and flushed, clutching wildly for something to hang onto.
Benteley pulled her to a standing position. “Take it easy.”
“I forgot about the low grav.” Laughing and excited, she pulled away from him and aimed herself for a deeper section of the webs.. “Come on, it’s fun! I never realized, before.”
“I’ll watch,” Benteley said gloomily.
The woman’s lithe body disappeared for a time. The web vibrated and bounced; eventually she emerged to the surface and lay stretched languidly out, the artificial sun gleaming from her perspiring back and shoulders. Closing her eyes, she yawned gratefully.
“It’s good to rest,” she murmured drowsily.
“This is the place for it,” Benteley paraphrased Verrick. “If you have nothing else on your mind.”
There was no answer. Rita was asleep.
Benteley stood with his hands in his pockets, surrounded by a blur of joyful color and motion. Laughing people romped by him; ceaseless games were started and restarted. In a corner Leon Cartwright was talking with a barrel-chested grim-faced man. Harry Tate, president of the Inter-Plan Visual Industries Corporation, was congratulating Cartwright on his successful bout with his first assassin. Benteley gazed at the two of them until they separated. Finally he turned away from the webs—and found himself facing Eleanor Stevens.
“Who is she?” Eleanor asked in a bright, clipped voice.
“Cartwright’s niece.”
“Have you known her very long?”
“I just met her.”
“She’s pretty. She’s older than I, isn’t she?” Eleanor’s small face was frigid as metal; she smiled up at him like a merry tin doll. “She must be thirty, at least.”
“Not quite,” Benteley said.
Eleanor shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.” She started away suddenly; after a moment Benteley warily followed. “Want a drink?” she said over her shoulder. “It’s so damn hot in here. All the yelling gives me a headache.”
“No thanks,” Benteley said, as Eleanor hastily scooped a martini from a wall-tray. “I want to stay sober.”
Eleanor strolled along, turning the tall glass this way and that between her thin fingers. “They’re about to start. They’re going to let that stupid old goat decide.”
“I know,” Benteley said listlessly.
“He hardly knows what’s going on. Verrick pulled the wool over his eyes at the Convention; hell do it again. Has there been any news about Moore?”
“Ipvic has their screen set up here, 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, ashtrays, recording instruments. “Is that-”
“That’s the room they set up.” Suddenly Eleanor gave a cry of terror. _”Ted, please get me out of here!”_
Reese Verrick had moved past the door of the room.
“He knows,” Eleanor said icily, as she pushed aimlessly among the laughing people. “I came to warn you—remember? Ted, he knows.”
“Too bad,” Benteley said vaguely.
“Don’t you care?”
“I’m sorry,” Benteley said. “There’s nothing I can do to Reese Verrick. If there was, I suppose I’d do it. Maybe not.”
“You can kill him!” Her voice was shrill with hysteria. “You have a gun. You can kill him before he kills both of us!”
“No,” Benteley said. “I’m not going to kill Reese Verrick. That’s out. 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. I meant it all, Ted.”