World of Chance

A wavering figure hovered within the mirror. He gazed mutely at it, at the waxen hair, the vapid mouth and lips, the colourless eyes. Arms limp and boneless at its sides; a spineless, bleached thing that blinked vacantly back at him, without sound or motion.

He screamed—and the image winked out. He plunged on along the corridors, feet barely skimming the carpets. He felt nothing under him. He was rising, carried upward by his great terror, a screaming, streaking thing that hurtled towards the high-domed roof above.

Arms out, he shot soundlessly through walls and panels, in and out of empty rooms, down deserted passages, a blinded, terrorized thing that flashed and wheeled in desperate efforts to escape.

With a crash he struck against a brick fireplace and fluttered down to the soft carpet. For a moment he lay bewildered, and then he was stumbling on, hurrying frantically, hands in front of his face.

Sounds ahead, and a glowing yellow light that filtered through a half-opened doorway. In a room a handful of men were sitting at a table covered with tapes and reports. An atronic bulb burned in the centre, a warm, unwavering miniature sun that pulled him hypnotically. Coffee cups, writers, men murmuring and poring over their work. One huge heavy-set man with massive, sloping shoulders.

"Verrick!" he shouted at the man. "Verrick, help me."

Reese Verrick glanced up angrily. "What do you want? I'm busy."

"Verrick!" he screamed, pulsing with terror. "Who am I?"

"You're Keith Pellig," Verrick answered irritably, wiping his forehead with one immense paw and pushing his tapes away. "You're the assassin picked by the Con­vention. You have to be ready to go to work in less than two hours."

Chapter VI

Groves continued working at his navigation table.

"Captain Groves, they're coming," Konklin said.

Groves nodded, and then returned to his navigation instruments.

The ship was now thirty astronomical units from the sun. Against the blackness of space bits of cold fire glowed, distant planets and suns wheeling silently round the creak­ing, lumbering ore freighter.

Down in the cargo hold fog lay over the dozing men and women. The warmth of the reactors had crept every­where: the vibrating metal floor had become a surface of dull-glowing heat. Within the last few hours dust and water vapour had settled on flushed skins, on pots and pans, and was dripping from the walls to form warm pools.

Bruno Jereti sat ru

Mary Uzich lay sprawled out resentfully among the bedding piled everywhere. "All those years of pla

"We didn't know Cartwright was going to be Quiz­master." The old carpenter tossed the bolt aside. "I voted to go back myself."

"Then why did you join the Society? What the hell did you come along for, if you're going to back out now?"

Jereti picked up a pipe wrench and examined it intently. "I suppose you don't remember the burnings."

"Burnings! You mean all the books?"

"I mean the other burnings. My grandad used to take me down to watch about once a week. It was sort of a public event, like a park concert."

"What the hell's a park concert?" Mary felt sleepy and sick. The metallic dust choked her throat. "I wish the filter system worked better," she complained.

"I'm talking about the things they burned," Jereti continued. "Television sets and cars and mixers—that sort of stuff. Once a week they burned them. Billions of dollars worth. They had a burning place in the centre of every town. We used to watch the cars and toasters and clothes and oranges and coffee and cigarettes—every god­damn thing in the world—flare up promptly at noon on Saturdays."

"That doesn't sound like fun."

"It was against the law to snatch any of it. Nobody had the money to buy it, so it was burnt. That's when I decided to become a Prestonite." The pipe wrench came apart in his hands and he began reassembling it. "They tried all the ways they could to sell the merchandise, but there was always too much of it."

"And the principle underlying all this made you cynical."

"The fault is with human nature; it's natural for one man to take advantage of another, if he can."

"Yet a little while ago you were willing to risk your life on this idealistic voyage in search of Flame Disc."

"A little while ago, but now Cartwright is in, and that means we're in, too. Maybe I shall get some of the things I used to see them burn."

"So you'll go back?"

"Well, perhaps. I'll have to think it over." Jereti gri

The metallic clouds, the vibration, the half-visible shapes, made the cargo hold seem a wasteland of phantoms. Mary Uzich brooded unhappily; the Society and John Preston's planet had become totally unconvincing.

"Maybe we're making a mistake," she said. "I've always believed in Flame Disc. Since I was a kid and picked up one of his books I've thought how wonderful it would be if we could get away from them. But maybe we need them to lead us."

"Captain Groves won't let them turn the ship back," Janet Sibley mumbled. She wiped her eyes with her drenched handkerchief. "He has a cupboard full of guns up there."

Janet Sibley moaned wretchedly. "I hate that dirty old boarding-house——" Her misery welled up in an agonizing flood. "I just can't go back!"

"How long did you live there?" Mary asked her.

"Eighteen years."

"Eighteen years ago I was just learning to walk."

"You're young and attractive," Janet Sibley quavered. "You can go anywhere. You don't know what it's like to sit in a filthy little room, just sitting and waiting."

"When did you join the Society?"

"I've sent a little money to the Society as long as I can remember. But I never went to any of the meetings. They sent me pamphlets, and I studied Mr. Preston's books. Then one day Mr. Cartwright came to see me. He couldn't talk me into going to a meeting; I was too afraid. But later on Captain Groves came and talked to me, because he was club leader for the Hill area where I lived. So I came. That was three years ago. And then Mr. Cartwright in­structed me the other day to bring my things and not say anything to anybody."

Janet Sibley ceased talking; Larry Thompson and Louise Tyler were listening.

Thompson gazed down at the old woman. His blue eyes were blank with shock, the eyes of a terrified boy suddenly faced with age and death and poverty.

Louise reached up and brushed the boy's blond hair back. "What planet was it, Larry."

"They went to Ganymede."

"Would you like to tell me—what those altereds are like?"

He made a jerky gesture. "The air's thin. About like Mars. Huge bladder-lungs. Spindly little legs." He shuddered. "Everybody in my family went, but me. Better to be dead!"

"Suppose we had children after we reached the Disc? They wouldn't be like Earth children. We'd change, too. The Disc is going to create altereds."

Thompson's mouth twitched violently. "I wouldn't have children that were monsters. If I'd met you before this trip started——"

"You can't raise a family on Earth! There're no jobs, nothing. Why do you think people go to work-camps? Or to squatters' colonies? Spawning monsters—but at least they're alive."

"Have you ever seen them?"

"Yes, I've seen them. I'm older than you... I was married once before. Bob and I signed on for a work-camp on Venus. Bob got fungoid spores in his lungs the first week. He swelled up and split open in front of my eyes. I came back to Earth."

"I didn't know," Thompson said.