“I’m as far from satisfaction as it’s humanly possible to be.”
“Why?” she asked softly.
“I haven’t really done anything. I thought it was the Hills, but Wakeman was right. It isn’t the Hills—it’s the whole society. The stench is everywhere. Getting away from the Hill system doesn’t help me or anybody else.” He pushed his drink angrily away. “I could simply hold my nose and pretend it isn’t there. But that isn’t enough. Something has to be done about it. The whole weak, bright thing has to be pulled down. It’s rotten, corrupt . . . it’s ready to fall on its face. But something has to go up in its place; something has to be built. Tearing down isn’t enough. _I’ve got to help build up the new._ It has to be different for other people. I’d like to do something that really alters things. I have to do something that alters things.”
“Maybe you can.”
Benteley looked ahead into the future, from where he was sitting. “How? Where’ll the chance come from? I’m still a serf. I’m still tied down and under oath.”
“You’re young. We’re both young. We’ve got a lot of years ahead of us to do things and plan things.” Rita lifted her glass. “We’ve a whole lifetime to alter the course of the universe.”
Benteley smiled. “Okay. Ill drink to that.” He raised his own glass and touched hers with a clear clink. “But not too much.” His smile ebbed away. “Verrick is still hanging around. I’ll wait until he leaves to do my drinking.”
Rita finished feeding bits of paper to the white-hot candle flame. “What would happen if he killed you?”
“They’d shoot him.”
“What would happen if he killed my uncle?”
“They’d take away his power card. He’d never be Quizmaster.”
“He won’t be Quizmaster anyhow,” Rita said quietly.
“What’s on your mind?” Benteley roused himself. “What are you thinking?”
“I don’t believe he’ll go back empty-handed. He can’t stop at this point.” She glanced up at him, dark-eyed and serious. “It’s not over, Ted. He has to kill somebody.”
Benteley started to answer. At that moment a slim shadow fell over the table. He glanced up, one hand in his pocket, against the cold heel of his gun.
“Hello,” Eleanor Stevens said. “Mind if I join you?”
She sat down quietly facing them, hands folded calmly in front of her, a fixed, mechanical smile on her lips. Her green eyes flashed brightly at Benteley and then at Rita. In the half-shadows of the bar her hair glowed a deep rust red, soft and heavy against her bare neck and shoulders.
“Who are you?” Rita said.
Green eyes dancing, Eleanor leaned forward to light her cigarette from the candle. “Just a name. Not really a person, any more. Isn’t that right, Ted?”
“You better get out of here,” Benteley said. “I don’t think Verrick wants you with us.”
“I haven’t seen Verrick since I got here. Except at a distance. Maybe I’ll leave him. Maybe I’ll just walk off; everybody else seems to be doing it.”
“Be careful,” Benteley said.
“Careful? About what?” Eleanor blew a cloud of gray smoke around Benteley and Rita. “I couldn’t help hearing what you were saying. You’re right.” Her eyes were fixed intently on Rita; she spoke rapidly in a sharp, brittle voice. “Verrick is trying to decide. He wants you, Ted, but he’ll settle for Cartwright if he can’t get you. He’s down in his quarters trying to make up his mind. He used to have Moore around to arrange things in a neat mathematical equation. Assign an arbitrary value of plus 50 for killing Benteley. But minus 100 for being shot in retribution. Assign an arbitrary value of plus 40 for killing Cartwright. But a minus 50 for losing his power card. Both ways he loses.”
“That’s right,” Benteley said warily. “He loses both ways.”
“Here’s another,” Eleanor said brightly. “I thought this one up myself.” She nodded merrily to Rita. “I mean, you thought it up. But I made up the equation. Assign an arbitrary value of plus 40 for killing Cartwright. And then try this: assign a minus 100 by Cartwright for being killed. That takes care of that part; that’s for Reese. Then there’s my own, but that’s not much.”
“I don’t understand what you’re talking about,” Rita said indifferently.
“I do,” Benteley said. _”Look out!”_
Eleanor had already moved. On her feet like a silent cat, she grabbed up the aluminum candle and ground the tube of bubbling flame into Rita’s face.
Benteley slammed the candle away; with a tinny grumble it rolled from the table and clanked onto the floor. Soundlessly, Eleanor slipped around the table to Rita O’Neill. Rita sat pawing helplessly at her eyes. Her black hair and skin were smoking and charred; the acrid odor of seared flesh filled the murky air of the bar. Eleanor yanked the woman’s hand away. Something glittered between the girl’s fingers, a jagged scarf-pin that came swiftly up at Rita’s eyes. Benteley hurled the girl away; she clung to him desperately, clawing and stabbing blindly until he shook her loose. Green eyes wild and glazed, she spun away and vanished into the black shadows of the room.
Benteley turned quickly to Rita O’Neill. “I’m all right,” Rita said between clenched teeth. “Thanks. The candle went out and she didn’t get me with the pin. Better try to catch her.”
People on all sides were leaping up and hurrying over. Eleanor had already disappeared from the bar, out into the corridor. A MacMillan medical attendant wheeled efficiently from its emergency locker, into the bar and over to the table. Rapidly, it cleared the people back, Benteley along with the others.
“Go on,” Rita said patiently, her hands over her face, elbows resting against the table. “You know where she’s going. Try to stop her. You know what he’ll do to her.”
Benteley left the bar. The corridor was deserted. He began to run toward the descent lift. A moment later he emerged on the ground level of the resort. A few people stood around here and there. At the far end of the corridor he glimpsed a flash of green and red; he raced forward. He turned a corner—and stopped dead.
Eleanor Stevens stood facing Reese Verrick. “Listen to me,” she was saying. “Don’t you understand? _It’s the only way._” Her voice rose in shrill panic. “Reese, for God’s sake believe me. Take me back! I’m sorry. I won’t do it again. I left you but I won’t do it again. I’m bringing you this, aren’t I?”
Verrick saw Benteley. He smiled slightly and reached out to take firm hold of Eleanor’s wrist with his iron-hard fingers. “We’re back together. All three of us.”
“You’ve got it wrong,” Benteley said to him. “She didn’t mean to betray you. She’s completely loyal to you.”
“I don’t think so,” Verrick said. “She isn’t worth anything. She’s treacherous, childish. She’s no good.”
“Then let her go.”
Verrick considered. “No,” he said finally. “I’m not going to let her go.”
“Reese!” the girl wailed. “I told you what they said! I told you how you can do it. Don’t you understand? You can do it, now. I made it possible. Take me back, please take me back!”
“Yes,” Verrick admitted, “I can do it. But I had already worked it out.”
Benteley stepped in fast. But this time not fast enough.
“Ted!” Eleanor screamed. “Help me!”
Verrick swept her up and lugged her in three giant strides to a supply-sphincter. Beyond the transparent balloon the dead, bleak surface of the moon stretched out. Verrick lifted the screaming, struggling girl high and with one quick shove, threw her sprawling through the sphincter, outside the balloon.
Benteley stood paralyzed, as Verrick stepped away from the sphincter. The girl stumbled and fell into the rubble and heaps of frigid rock, arms flailing, her breath a frozen cloud hanging from her mouth and nose. She tried to drag herself to her feet; her body half-turned toward the balloon, face distorted, eyes bulging. For one pleading instant she crept like a mashed insect toward Benteley, hands groping, clutching futilely.
Then her chest and visceral cavity burst. Benteley closed his eyes as an expanding mass of rupturing, lashing organs burst into the airless void of the Lunar surface, a sickening explosion of organic parts that immediately solidified to brittle crystals. It was over. The girl was dead.
Numbed, Benteley plucked out his hand weapon. People were racing up the corridor; an emergency alarm was wailing unhappily up and down. Verrick stood unmoving, without any particular expression.
Shaeffer knocked Benteley’s popper from his numb hand. “No good—she’s dead. She’s dead!”
Benteley nodded. “Yes, I know.” Shaeffer bent to pick up the gun. “I’ll keep this.”
“He’s going to get away with it,” Benteley said.
“It’s legal,” Shaeffer agreed. “She wasn’t classified.”
Benteley moved away. Vaguely, he made his way back to the ramp in the direction of the infirmary. Images of the dead girl drifted around him, mixed with the burning face of Rita O’Neill and the cold dead horror of the moon’s surface. He stumbled onto the ascent ramp and started dully up.