World of Chance

While he was trying to decide, a silent whoosh picked him up. He was back at A.G. Chemie. Before his eyes a miniature Pellig raced and darted on the microscopic screen; the next operator in the automaton's body was already working to solve the problem of escape. Davis sagged limply into a chair.

On the screen Keith Pellig burned through the plate-plastic window of the shop and floundered into the street. People screamed in horror. While everyone else raced about, the fat red-faced assistant stood as if turned to stone, his lips twitching, his body jerking. Suddenly he collapsed in a blubbery heap.

The scene shifted as Pellig escaped from the pack of people clustered in front of the store. The assistant was lost from sight. Al Davis was puzzled. Had Pellig des­troyed him? Pellig turned a corner, hesitated, then dis­appeared into a theatre.

The theatre was dark and Pellig blundered in confusion: bad tactics Davis realized. The darkness wouldn't affect the pursuers, who depended not on sight but on telepathic contact.

The operator in Pellig now realized his mistake and sought an exit. But already vague shapes were moving in on him. He hesitated, then dashed into a lavatory. From here he burned his way through the wall with his thumb-gun and emerged into an alley. There he stood considering trying to make up his mind. The vast shape of the Direct­torate building loomed ahead, a golden tower that caught the sunlight and sparkled it back. Pellig took a deep breath and started towards it at a relaxed trot... .

The body stumbled. A new operator, dazed with sur­prise, fought for control. The body smashed into a heap of garbage, struggled up, and then loped on. There were no visible pursuers. The body reached a busy street and hailed a taxi.

The cab roared off in the direction of the Directorate tower. Pellig relaxed against the cushions, and non­chalantly lit a cigarette. Calmly lounging in the back seat of a public taxi Keith Pellig sped towards the Directorate offices, his thumb-gun resting loosely on his lap.

Major Shaeffer stood in front of his desk and bellowed with fright.

"It's not possible," drummed the disorganized thoughts of the Corpsman nearest to him.

"There must be a reason," Shaeffer managed to think back.

"We lost him." Incredulous, fearful, the thoughts di

"You let him get away."

"Shaeffer, he disappeared. At the second station he ceased to exist."

"How?"

"I don't know. Remington passed him to Allison at the shop. The assassin began to run. Allison kept mental touch easily."

"The assassin must have raised a shield."

"There was no diminution. The entire personality was cut off instantly, not merely the thoughts."

Shaeffer cursed. "And Wakeman's on Luna. We can't use telepathy—I'll have to use the regular ipvic."

"Tell him something's terribly wrong. Tell him the assassin disappeared into thin air."

Shaeffer hurried to the transmission room. As he was jerking into life the closed-circuit to the Lunar resort a new flurry of transferred thoughts chilled him.

"I've picked him up!" came from an eager Corpswoman, relayed by the network from one point to another. "I've got him!"

"Where are you?" responded insistent calls from up and down the network. "Where is he?"

"Theatre. Near the clothing shop. Only a few feet from me; shall I go in? I can easily———"

The thought broke off.

Through the network radiated tortured, twisted, in­coherent, gibbering psychosis.

"Cut her out of the network," Shaeffer commanded savagely, and the quivering frenzy faded. He collapsed in a chair and pounded his throbbing forehead. What had happened?

He managed to raise Peter Wakeman on the ipvic vid­screen. "Peter," he croaked, "we're beaten."

Wakeman jerked violently. "What do you mean? Cartwright isn't even there!"

Shaeffer struggled with an unfamiliar medium of expres­sion. "We picked the assassin up, then we lost him. We picked him up later on—in another part of the city. Peter, he got past three stations. And he's still moving. How he——"

New thoughts from telepaths smashed at him with stu

"I have him!" The next station of the network, in excitement and jubilation. "His taxi is directly behind my own, heading directly for the main building."

"Kill him!" Shaeffer shuddered.

"I'm stopping my cab. I'll kill him as he tries to pass. His driver is drawing level with me. He's only yards away; I got him full-blast."

The mind sending the message screamed.

Shaeffer clapped his hands to his head and closed his eyes. Gradually the storm died. Mind after mind was smashed, short-circuited, blacked-out by the overload, by the shattering pain that lashed through the entire web of telepaths.

"Where is he?" Shaeffer shouted. "What happened?"

The next station responded faintly. "He lost him. He's dropped from the network. He's dead, I think. Burned-out. I'm in the area but I can't catch the mind he was sca

On the vidscreen Peter Wakeman's image tried hopelessly to gain Shaeffer's attention. Shaeffer was like a corpse, face dead and blank, all energy concentrated on the invisible struggle going on up and down the web-strands of the network.

"Listen to me," Wakeman commanded. "Once you get hold of his mind, stay with him. Follow him until the next station takes over. Maybe you're too far apart. Maybe———"

"I've got him," a thought came to Shaeffer. "I'll find him; he's close by."

The network quivered with excitement and suspense.

"I'm getting something strange." Doubt mixed with curiosity, then startled disbelief. "There must be more than one assassin. Yet that's not possible." Growing excite­ment. "I can actually see Pellig. He's going to enter the Directorate building by the main entrance; it's all there in his mind. Now he's thinking of crossing the street and going———"

Nothing.

Shaeffer waited. Still nothing came. "Did you kill him? Is he dead?"

"He's gone!" the thought came, hysterical and giggling. "He's standing in front of me and at the same time he's gone. He's here and he isn't here."

The telepath dribbled off in infantile mutterings, and Shaeffer dropped him from the network. It didn't make sense. Keith Pellig was standing face to face with a Corpsman, within easy killing-distance—yet Keith Pellig had vanished.

Verrick turned to Eleanor Stevens. "It's working better than we had calculated."

"Corps members depend on telepathic rapport. They hang on by mental contact, and if that's broken——" The girl's face was stricken. "Reese, I think you're driving them insane."

Verrick got up and moved away from the screen. "You watch for a while."

Eleanor shuddered. "I don't want to see it."

A buzzer sounded on the man's desk. "List of flights out of Batavia," a monitor told him. "Total count of time and destination for the last hour. Special note of unusual flights."

Verrick accepted the metalfoil sheet and dropped it into the litter heaped on his desk as he hoarsely said to Eleanor: "It won't be long."

His hands in his pockets, Keith Pellig was striding up the marble stairs leading to the main entrance of the central Directorate building at Batavia... directly towards Leon Cartwright's suite of offices.