Footsteps and hoarse, heavy breathing sounded behind him. The ramp shuddered under a ponderous weight. Verrick had followed.
“Wait a minute, Benteley,” he said. “I’ll come along with you. I have an arrangement I want to discuss with Cartwright, a business transaction I think he’ll be interested in.”
Verrick waited until Judge Waring, muttering and fumbling with his chair, had finally seated himself. Across from him Cartwright sat straight and white-faced, still coming out of shock.
“How’s your niece?” Verrick asked.
“She’ll be all right,” Cartwright said. “Thanks to Benteley.”
“Yes,” Verrick agreed. “I always thought Benteley had something. I knew he could act when it was necessary. It was her face Eleanor struck for?”
“They can fix her up with artigraft. It didn’t get to her eyes; mostly her skin and hair. It was her eyes the girl was after.”
Benteley couldn’t stop looking at Reese Verrick. Verrick seemed calm and collected. His breathing had returned to normal; his face had a gray, mottled look but his hands had stopped trembling. It was as if he were recovering his strength from an orgy of sexual passion, a spasm of total release, brief and overwhelming.
“What do you want?” Cartwright asked him. He turned to Judge Waring. “I don’t know what this is about.”
“No,” Judge Waring agreed crossly. “What is this, Reese? What have you got on your mind?”
“I want you to be here,” Verrick said to him. “I have a proposal to offer Cartwright. I want you to hear it out and see that it’s legal.” He got out his massive popper and placed it on the table in front of him. “We’ve come to a dead end. I think nobody will disagree. You can’t kill me, Leon. I’m not an assassin; it would be murder and you’d be liable. I’m here as a guest.”
“You’re perfectly welcome,” Cartwright said tonelessly, not taking his eyes from Verrick.
“I came here to kill Benteley, but I can’t. Stalemate. Stalemate on all sides: you can’t kill me, I can’t kill Benteley, and I can’t kill you.”
Silence.
“Or can I?” Verrick said thoughtfully. He examined his popper. “I think maybe I will.”
Judge Waring spoke up disgustedly. “You’ll be out of the M-game the rest of your life. That’s a stupid thing to do. What’ll it get you?”
“Pleasure. Satisfaction.”
“Will it be any satisfaction to lose your p-card?” Judge Waring demanded.
“No,” Verrick admitted. “But I have my three Hills. That won’t be affected.”
Cartwright didn’t stir. He nodded slightly, following Verrick’s line of reasoning. “At least you’d come out of this alive. You’d be that much ahead of me, wouldn’t you?”
“That’s right,” Verrick agreed. “I wouldn’t be Quizmaster, but neither would you. They’d have to twitch the bottle again.”
Shaeffer entered the room. He glanced at Judge Waring and took a seat. “Leon,” he said to Cartwright, “this is a bluff on his part. The girl took him the idea before he killed her. He doesn’t intend to kill you. He wants to scare you—” Shaeffer’s cold eyes flickered. “Interesting.”
“I know,” Cartwright said. “He’s going to give me a choice: Death or an _arrangement_. What’s the arrangement; Reese?”
Verrick dug into his pocket and got out his power card. “A swap,” he said. “Your card for mine.”
“That’ll make you Quizmaster,” Cartwright observed.
“And you’ll be alive. You’ll come out of this with your life. I’ll come out of it with the Quizmastership. The stalemate is broken.”
“Then you’ll have Benteley,” Cartwright said.
“That’s right,” Verrick answered.
Cartwright turned to Shaeffer. “Will he kill me if I refuse?”
Shaeffer was silent for a long time. “Yes,” he said at last. “Hell kill you. He won’t leave here without killing you or getting Benteley back. If you don’t trade, hell pop you and give up his card. If you trade, he’ll have Benteley again. Either way he gets one of you. He knows he can’t get both.”
“Which would he prefer?” Cartwright asked, interested.
“He’d prefer to have Benteley. He’s reached the point where he respects you; almost admires you. And he has to have Benteley under control again.”
Cartwright searched his pockets until he found his neat little package of power cards. He sorted through them slowly. “Is this legal?” he said to Judge Waring.
“You can trade,” Waring said gruffly. “People buy and sell them all the time.”
Benteley half-rose. Helplessly, he gestured. “Cartwright, are you really—”
“Sit down and keep still,” Judge Waring snapped sharply. “You have no say in this.”
Cartwright found the correct card, checked it with his other papers, and then laid it down on the’table.
“There’s mine.”
“You’re willing to trade?” Verrick demanded.
“That’s right.”
“You understand what it means? You’re legally giving up your position. With your card goes everything.”
“I know,” Cartwright said. “I understand the law.”
Verrick turned around and faced Benteley. The two of them gazed at each other a moment, neither of them speaking. Then Verrick grunted. “It’s a deal,” he said.
“Wait,” Benteley said thickly. “For God’s sake, Cartwright. You can’t just—” He broke off futilely. “You know what he’ll do to me, don’t you?”
Cartwright ignored him; he was returning the little package of p-cards to his coat pocket. “Go ahead,” he said mildly to Verrick. “Let’s get it over with so I can go downstairs and see how Rita is.”
“Fine,” Verrick said. He reached forward and picked up Cartwright’s power card. “Now I’m Quizmaster.”
Cartwright’s hand came out of his pocket. With his small, antiquated popper he shot Reese Verrick directly in the heart. Still clutching the power card, Verrick slid forward and lay with his face against the table, eyes wide, mouth slack with wonder.
“Is it legal?” Cartwright asked the old Judge.
“Yes,” Waring admitted admiringly. “Absolutely.” He nodded solemnly. “Of course, you lose that packet of cards you hold.”
“I realize that,” Cartwright said. He tossed them to the Judge. “I like it here at the resort. This is the first time I’ve ever been in a modern leisure resort. I look forward to sunning myself and taking it easy. I’m an old man and I’m tired.”
Benteley sagged. “He’s dead. It’s over.”
“Oh, yes,” Cartwright agreed. “It’s completely over.” He got to his feet. “Now we can go downstairs and see how Rita is.”
SEVENTEEN
RITA O’NEILL was on her feet, when Benteley and Cartwright entered the infirmary. “I’m all right,” she said huskily. “What happened?”
“Verrick’s dead,” Benteley said.
“Yes, we’re all finished,” Cartwright added. He went up to his niece and kissed the pale transparent halo of bandage that covered the woman’s face. “You’ve lost some of your hair.”
“It’ll grow back,” Rita said. “Is he really dead?” She sat down shakily on a glistening medical table. “You killed him and came out with your own life?”
“I came out with everything but my power card,” Cartwright said. He explained what had happened.
“Now there’s no Quizmaster. The bottle will have to be twitched ahead. It’ll take a day or so to set the mechanism forward.” He grinned wryly. “I should know; I’ve worked on it often enough.”
“It’s hard to believe,” Rita said. “It seems as if there’s always been a Reese Verrick.”
“It’s true, though.” Cartwright searched his pockets and brought out a dog-eared black notebook. He made a check mark and then closed it. “Everything but Herb Moore. We still have that to worry about. The ship hasn’t yet landed, and the Pellig body is somewhere in the area, somewhere within a few hundred thousand miles of Flame Disc.” He hesitated, then continued, “As a matter of fact, the ipvic monitor says Moore reached Preston’s ship and entered it.”
There was an uneasy silence.
“Could he destroy our ship?” Rita asked.
“Easily,” Benteley said. “He could probably wreck a good part of the Disc at the same time.”
“Maybe John Preston will do something to him,” Rita suggested hopefully. But there was no conviction in her voice.
“Part of this depends on the next Quizmaster,” Benteley pointed out. “Some kind of a work-crew should go out and try to round up Moore. The body will be deteriorating; we might be able to destroy him some way.”
“Not after he reaches Preston,” Cartwright said gloomily.
“I think we should approach the next Quizmaster on it,” Benteley persisted. “Moore will be a menace to the system.”
“Very easily.”
“You think the next Quizmaster would agree?”
“I think so,” Cartwright said, “since you’re the next Quizmaster. That is, assuming you’ve still got the power card I gave you.”
Benteley had the card. Unbelievingly, he got it out and examined it. The card slipped from his trembling fingers; he pounced on it and swept it jerkily up. “You expect me to believe this?”
“No, not for another twenty-four hours.”
Benteley turned the card over and studied every part of it. The p-card looked like any other; the same shape and size and color and texture. “Where the hell did you get it?”