“In your mind,” Shaeffer said, “is an interesting vortex of the usual fear and a very unusual syndrome I can’t analyze. Something about a ship.”
“You’re permitted to scan whenever you feel like it?”
“I can’t help it. If I sat here mumbling and talking you couldn’t help hearing me. When I’m with a group their thoughts blur, like a party of people all babbling at once. But there’s just you and me here.”
“The ship is on its way,” Cartwright said.
“It won’t get far. The first planet it tries to squat, Mars or Jupiter or Ganymede—”
“The ship is going all the way out. We’re not setting up another squatters’ colony.”
“You’re counting a lot on that antiquated old ore-carrier.”
“Everything we have is there.”
“You think you can hold on long enough?”
“I hope so.”
“So do I,” Shaeffer said dispassionately. “By the way.” He gestured toward the blooming island coming into existence ahead and below. “When we land, there will be an agent of Verrick’s waiting for you.”
Cartwright moaned sharply. “Already?”
“Not an assassin. There’s been no Challenge Convention yet. This man is under fief to Verrick, a personal staff member named Herb Moore. He’s been searched for weapons and passed. He just wants to talk to you.”
“How do you know this?”
“Within the last few minutes I’ve been getting the Corps headquarters. It’s all processed information going around from one to the next. We’re a chain, actually. You have nothing to worry about: at least two of us will be with you when you talk to him.”
“Suppose I don’t want to talk to him?”
“That’s your privilege.”
Cartwright snapped off the tv set as the ship lowered over the magnetic grapples. “What do you recommend?”
“Talk to him. Hear what he has to say. It’ll give you more of an idea what you’re up against.”
Herbert Moore was a handsome blond-haired man in his early thirties. He arose gracefully as Cartwright, Shaeffer, and two other Corpsmen entered the main lounge of the Directorate building.
“Greetings,” Moore said to Shaeffer in a bright voice.
Shaeffer pushed open the doors to the inner offices and stood aside as Cartwright entered. This was the first time the new Quizmaster had seen his inheritance. He stood in the doorway, his coat over his arm, completely entranced by the sight.
“This is a long jump from the Society building,” he said finally. Wandering slowly over, he touched the polished mahogany surface of the desk. “It’s a strange thing … I had all the abstract significance figured out in terms of power to do this, power to do that. I had it all down in symbolized form, but the sight of these carpets and this big desk—”
“This isn’t your desk,” Major Shaeffer told him. “This is your secretary’s desk. Eleanor Stevens, an ex-teep.”
“Oh.” Cartwright reddened. “Well, then where is she?”
“She left with Verrick. An interesting situation.” Major Shaeffer slammed the door after them, leaving Herb Moore in the plush lounge outside. “She was new in the Corps; she came after Verrick was Quizmaster. She was just seventeen and Verrick was the only person she ever served. After a couple of years she changed her oath from what we call a positional oath to a personal oath. When Verrick left, she packed up her stuff and trailed along.”
“Then Verrick has use of a teep.”
“She loses her supralobe, according to law. Interesting, that such personal loyalty could be built up. As far as I know, there’s no sexual relationship. In fact she’s been the mistress of Moore, the young man waiting outside there.”
Cartwright roamed around the luxurious office examining file cabinets, the massive ipvic sets, the chairs, the desk, the shifting random-paintings on the walls. “Where’s my office?”
Shaeffer kicked open a heavy door. He and the two other Corpsmen followed Cartwright past a series of check-points and thick protective stages into a bleak solid-rexeroid chamber. “Big, but not as lush,” Shaeffer said. “Verrick was a realist. When he came this was a sort of Arabian erotic house: bed girls lying around on all sides, plenty of liquor to drink, couches, music and colors going constantly. Verrick ripped all the bric-a-brac out, sent the girls to the Martian work-camps, tore down the fixtures and gingerbread, and built this.” Shaeffer rapped on the wall; it echoed dully. “A good twenty feet of rexeroid. It’s bomb-proof, bore-proof, shielded from radiation, has its own air-pumping system, its own temperature and humidity controls, its own food supply.” He opened a closet. “Look.”
The closet was a small arsenal.
“Verrick could handle every kind of gun known. Once a week we all went out in the jungle and shot up everything in sight. Nobody can get into this room except through the regular door. Or—” He ran his hands over one of the walls. “Verrick never missed a trick. He designed this and supervised every inch of it. When it was finished, all the workmen were off to the camps, like Pharaoh and his tombs. During the final hours the Corps was excluded.”
“Why?”
“Verrick had equipment installed he didn’t plan to use while Quizmaster. However, we teeped some of the workmen as they were being loaded aboard transports. Teeps are always curious when someone tries to exclude them.” He slid a section of wall aside. “This is Verrick’s special passage. Ostensibly, it leads out. Realistically, it leads in.”
Cartwright tried to ignore the chill perspiration coming out on his palms and armpits. The passage opened up behind the big steel desk; it wasn’t hard to picture the rexeroid wall sliding back and the assassin emerging directly behind the new Quizmaster. “What do you suggest? Should I have it sealed?”
“The strategy we’ve worked out doesn’t involve this apparatus. We’ll sow gas capsules under the flooring, the length of the passage, and forget about it. The assassin will be dead before he reaches this inner lock.” Shaeffer shrugged. “But this is minor.”
“I’ll take your advice,” Cartwright managed to say. “Is there anything else I ought to know at this point?”
“You ought to hear Moore. He’s a top-flight biochemist, a genius in his own way. He controls the Farben research labs; this is the first time he’s been around here in years. We’ve been trying to scan something on his work, but frankly, the information is too technical for us.”
One of the other teeps, a small dapper man with mustache and thinning hair, a shot glass in one hand, spoke up. “It would be interesting to know how much of that stuff Moore deliberately formulates in technical jargon to throw us off.”
“This is Peter Wakeman,” Shaeffer said.
Cartwright and Wakeman shook hands. The teep’s fingers were dainty and fragile; diffident fingers with none of the strength Cartwright was used to finding in his unclassifieds. It was hard to believe this was the man who headed the Corps, who had swung it away from Verrick at the critical moment. “Thanks,” Cartwright said.
“You’re welcome. But it had nothing to do with you.”
The teep showed equal interest in the tall old man. “How does one get to be a Prestonite? I haven’t read any of the books; are there three?”
“Four.”
“Preston was the odd-ball astronomer who got the observatories to watch for his planet—right? They trained their telescopes and found nothing. Preston went out after it and finally died in his ship. Yes, I once thumbed through _Flame Disc_. The man who owned it was a real crackpot; I tried to teep him. All I got was a chaotic jumble of passion.”
“How do I teep?” Cartwright asked tightly.
There was a time of absolute silence. The three teeps were all at work on him; he forced his attention on the elaborate tv set in the corner and tried to ignore them.
“About the same,” Wakeman said presently. “You’re oddly phased for this society. The M-game places a great emphasis on the Aristotelian Golden Mean. You’ve got everything tied up in your ship. Outhouse or palace, if your ship goes down that’s the end of you.”
“It won’t go down,” Cartwright told him harshly. The three teeps were amused. “In a universe of chance, nobody can predict,” said Shaeffer dryly. “It probably will be destroyed. Yet, it might get through.”
“After you’ve talked to Moore,” Wakeman said, “it’ll be interesting to see if you still predict success.”
Herb Moore slid lithely to his feet as Cartwright and Wakeman entered the lounge.
“Sit down,” Cartwright said. “I’ll talk to you here.”
Moore remained standing. “I won’t take up much of your time, Mr. Cartwright. I know you’ve got plenty to do.”
Wakeman grunted sourly.
“What do you want?” Cartwright demanded.
“Let’s put it this way. You’re in, Verrick is out. You hold the supreme position in the system. Right?”
“His strategy,” Wakeman said thoughtfully, “is to convince you you’re an amateur. That much we can get. He wants you to think you’re a sort of janitor sitting in the boss’ chair while he’s out closing some big deal.”