World of Chance

After a moment Preston answered. "I want to tell you about Flame Disc—that's what I consider important."

To hell with Flame Disc, Moore thought savagely. "How long have you been preserved by this equipment?" he demanded.

"You must hear me out," Preston said stubbornly. "I have to tell you about the Disc."

Moore cursed inwardly. He would have to listen, though each minute the life-fluid dripped from the synthetic body. "Can I examine your machinery?" he pressed.

"Yes, but listen to me now; I may not live much longer."

Moore grabbed a tool from a wall and bored rapidly into the bank of controls. While he worked, the old man's whisper continued.

"I have to remain here," Preston said. "I don't dare leave. If I returned to Earth I should be destroyed. How much you know of the situation I can only guess. To some, my search for the tenth planet has seemed a lunatic scheme. The search has been long... and it has brought me nothing."

Moore glanced up. "You found Flame Disc, didn't you?"

"I didn't labour for anything of personal value. The Disc isn't my property; I'm only a guardian waiting until the real owners come. It was for them that I worked." His chest rose and fell with exhaustion. Then energy briefly surged through the withered veins. "All my life I've struggled to find a way for them so that they could keep on moving. If they stop, it's the end of the race. They can't stagnate and die. Death or migration... .

Moore was intent only on the circuits spread out before him. His eyes feverish, his fingers flying, he burrowed into the humming mechanism.

"You had better disappear," Leon Cartwright said to Benteley. "I'll talk to Verrick."

"He might as well stay here," Shaeffer said to Cart­wright, "he can't leave the place and Verrick knows he's here."

"Verrick can just walk in?" Benteley said helplessly.

"Of course," Cartwright said.

"Do you mind being present?" Shaeffer asked Benteley. "It may be—difficult."

"I'll stay," Benteley replied.

Verrick and his small group pushed slowly through the door. They removed their suits and glanced cautiously around.

Cartwright greeted Verrick and the two of them shook hands. "A cup of coffee?"

"Thanks," Verrick answered. "You know that Pellig has left?"

Cartwright nodded. "He's heading for John Preston's ship."

The others followed them as they entered the dining-room. Benteley seated himself beside Rita O'Neill at the far end of a table; Verrick saw him but gave merely a momentary flicker of recognition. Shaeffer, the other Corpsmen and Directorate officials, took seats in the back­ground.

"I suppose he'll find it," Verrick murmured. "When I left Chemie he was already thirty-nine astronomical units out; I checked with the ipvic monitor." He accepted black coffee and sipped it with relief. "A devil of a lot has happened today."

"What would Moore do if he got hold of Preston's material?" Cartwright asked. "You know him better than I do."

"It's hard to say. Moore was always a lone wolf. I provided him with materials and he worked on his own on his projects. He's brilliant. He engineered the whole Pellig project."

Eleanor Stevens had come into the room. She stood nervous and uncertain, her thin hands clasped tightly together. After a moment of indecision she slipped into a seat in a recess and watched wide-eyed, a demure and terrified shape half lost in shadow.

"I wondered where you'd gone," Verrick called to her. "You raced me by a—" he examined his watch—"only a few minutes."

"Will Moore return to you if he gets what he wants?" Cartwright asked. "His oath... ?"

"He never worried about that sort of thing." Verrick's glance strayed. "Oaths don't seem as important as they once did."

Benteley said nothing. Under his fingers his gun was cold and moist with perspiration. His coffee cooled beside him, untouched. Rita O'Neill smoked convulsively, stubbed her cigarette out, lit another and then stubbed that.

"Are you going to call a second Challenge Convention?" Cartwright asked Verrick.

Verrick made an intricate pyramid with his massive hands, studied it, then dissolved it back into individual fingers. He gazed absently round the room.

"Why did you come here?" Rita O'Neill's voice cracked out.

Verrick's shaggy eyebrows pulled together in a frown as he turned to Cartwright for an explanation. "My niece," Cartwright said. He introduced them; Rita glared down at her coffee cup and said nothing. Verrick soon forgot her and went back to pyramiding his fingers.

"Of course," he said finally. "I don't know what Benteley has told you. I suppose you understand my set-up, by now."

"What Benteley didn't tell me orally, Shaeffer sca

"Then you know all I have to say by way of explanation. I don't intend to say anything about Herb Moore." He produced a gun which he propped up right against a milk jug. "I can't very well kill Benteley here..."

Shaeffer and Cartwright exchanged glances.

"We must clear up one thing," Cartwright said. "Ben­teley is now under oath to me, as Quizmaster."

Verrick snapped: "He broke his oath to me; that ends his freedom of choice."

Cartwright rejoined: "I don't consider that he broke his oath to you."

"You betrayed him," Shaeffer added.

Verrick grunted, retrieved his gun, and replaced it in his pocket. "We'll have to get advice on this," he murmured. "Let's try to get Judge Waring up here."

Judge Felix Waring, the highest ranking jurist in the system, was a grouchy, white-bearded gnome in a moth-eaten black suit and old-fashioned hat.

"I know who you are," he muttered, glancing at Cartwright. "And you, too." He nodded at Verrick. "That Pellig of yours was a fizzle, wasn't he?" He cackled glee­fully. "I never liked the looks of him—didn't have a muscle in him."

The ship that had brought Judge Waring had disgorged newsmachines, Hill officials, Directorate bureaucrats, and finally Sam Oster. Ipvic technicians had come in their own ship; signalmen with reels of communication wiring wandered everywhere, stringing up television equipment. Towards the middle of the day the place became a hive of noisy, determined activity. Motion was everywhere, figures coming and going... Benteley stood in a corner, watching gloomily.

"It's nice, here," Rita O'Neill said, settling herself for a doze.

Benteley nodded, then muttered: "So Judge Waring is going to make his decision amid all this din?"

In another corner Leon Cartwright was talking with a barrel-chested, grim-faced man, Sam Oster was congratu­lating him on his successful bout with his first assassin.

Benteley gazed at them until they separated. Finally he turned—and found himself facing Eleanor Stevens.

"Who is she?" Eleanor asked in a clipped voice.

"Cartwright's niece," he answered, following her gaze.

She shrugged and started away suddenly; after a moment

Benteley followed. "They're about to start; they're going to let that stupid old goat decide," she went on.

"I know," Benteley said listlessly.

"He hardly knows what's going on. Verrick pulled the wool over his eyes at the Convention; he'll do it again. Has there been any news about Moore?"

"An Ipvic screen has been set up, for Cartwright's use. Verrick doesn't care; he didn't interfere."

"What does it show?"

"I don't know. I haven't bothered to look." Benteley came to a halt. Through a half-open door he had caught a glimpse of a table and chairs, ash-trays, recording instru­ments. "Is that——"

"That's the room they set up." Suddenly Eleanor gave a cry of terror. "Please get me out of here!"

Reese Verrick had moved past the door of the room.

"He knows—about us," Eleanor said as they pushed among the people. "I came to warn you——"