Moore's thoughts suddenly focused. He had spotted the Corpsman trailing him. The Pellig body shot quickly upward, poised, and then rained a thin stream of lethal death down on the scurrying telepath.
The man's mind shrieked once, and then his physical _being_ dissolved in a heap of incinerated ash. The sickening moment of a teep's death rolled over Wakeman. Peter felt the lingering, tenacious and completely futile struggle of the mind to keep itself collected, to retain personality and awareness after the body was gone.
"Peter..." Like a cloud of volatile gas the Corpsman's mind hung together, then slowly, inexorably, began to scatter. Its weak thoughts faded. "Oh, God..." The man's consciousness, his being dissolved into random particles of free energy. The mind ceased to be a unit. The gestalt that had been the man relaxed—and the man was dead.
Wakeman cursed his lost gun. He cursed himself and Cartwright and everybody in the system. He threw himself behind a bleak boulder and lay crouched, as Pellig drifted slowly down and landed lightly on the dead surface of the moon. Pellig glanced around, seemed satisfied, and began his cautious prowl toward the luminous balloon three miles distant.
"Get him!" Wakeman radiated desperately. "He's almost at the resort!"
There was no response. No other Corpsmen were close enough to pick up and relay his thoughts. With the death of the closest Corpsman, the jury-rigged network had shattered. Pellig was walking calmly through an undefended gash.
Wakeman leaped to his feet. He lugged an immense boulder waist-high and staggered to the top of the inclined rise. Below him Keith Pellig walked bland-faced, almost smiling. He appeared to be a gentle straw-haired youth, without guile or cunning. Wakeman managed to raise the rock above his head; the weak Lunar gravity was on his side. He swayed, lifted it high—and hurled it bouncing and crashing onto the swift-walking synthetic.
There was one startled glance as Pellig saw the rock coming. He scrambled easily away, a vast spring that carried him yards from the path of the lumbering boulder. From his mind came a blast of fear and surprise, a frantic panic. He stumbled, raised his thumb-gun toward Wakeman...
And then Herb Moore was gone.
The Pellig body altered subtly. Wakeman's blood froze at the uncanny sight. Here, on the desolate surface of the moon, a man was changing before his eyes. The features shifted, melted momentarily, then reformed. It wasn't the same. It wasn't the same face... because it wasn't the same man. Moore was gone and a new operator had taken over. Behind the pale blue eyes a different personality peered out.
The new operator wavered. He fought briefly for control, then managed to right the body as the rock bounced harmlessly away. Surprise, momentary confusion, radiated to Wakeman as he struggled for another boulder.
_"Wakeman!"_ the thoughts came. "Peter Wakeman!"
Wakeman dropped his boulder and straightened up. The new operator had recognized him. It was a familiar thought-pattern; Wakeman probed quickly and deeply. For a moment he couldn't place the personality; it was familiar but obscured by the immediacy of the situation. It was larded over with wary fear and antagonism. But he knew it, all right. There was no doubt.
_It was Ted Benteley._
THIRTEEN
OUT IN dead space, beyond the known system, the creaking GM ore-carrier lumbered hesitantly along. In the control bubble Groves sat listening intently, his dark face rapt.
"The Flame Disc is still far away," the vast presence murmured in his mind. "Don't lose contact with my own ship."
"You're John Preston," Groves said softly.
"I am very old," the voice replied. "I have been here a long time."
"A century and a half," Groves said. "It's hard to believe."
"I have waited here. I knew you would be coming. My ship will hover nearby; you will probably pick up its mass from time to time. If everything goes correctly I'll be able to guide you to the actual landing on the Disc."
"Will you be there?" Groves asked. "Will you meet us?"
There was no answer. The voice had faded; he was alone.
Groves got unsteadily to his feet and called Konklin. A moment later both Konklin and Mary Uzich hurried into the control bubble. Jereti loped a few paces behind. "You heard him," Groves said thickly.
"It was Preston," Mary whispered.
"He must be old as hell," Konklin said. "A little old man, waiting out here in space for us to come, waiting all these years..."
"I think we'll get there," Groves said. "Even if they managed to kill Cartwright, we'll still reach the Disc."
"What did Cartwright say?" Jereti asked Groves. "Did it perk him up to hear about Preston?"
Groves hesitated. "Cartwright was preoccupied."
"But surely he—"
"He's about to be murdered!" Groves savagely flicked on the manual controls. "He hasn't got time to think about anything else."
Nobody said anything for awhile. Finally Konklin asked, "Has there been any late news?"
"I can't raise Batavia. Military black-out has completely screened out the ipvic lines. I picked up emergency troop movements from the inner planets toward Earth. Directorate wings heading home."
"What's that mean?" Jereti asked.
"Pellig has reached Batavia. And something has gone wrong. Cartwright must have his back to the wall. Somehow, the teep Corps must have failed."
Wakeman shouted frantically. "Benteley! Listen to me! Moore has it rigged; you're being tricked. _It's not random."_
It was hopeless. No sound carried. Without atmosphere his voice died in his helmet. Benteley's thoughts radiated to him clear and distinct; but there was no way Wakeman could communicate back. He was boxed-in, baffled. The figure of Keith Pellig and the mind of Ted Benteley were only a few yards from him—and there was no way he could make contact.
Benteley's thoughts were mixed. It's Peter Wakeman, he was thinking. The teep I met in the lounge. He realized that he was in danger; he was aware of the nearby luminous resort balloon. Wakeman caught an image of Cartwright: the job of killing. And beneath that, Benteley's deep aversion and doubt, his distrust of Verrick and his dislike of Herb Moore. Benteley was undecided. For an instant the thumb-gun wavered.
Wakeman scrambled down the ridge onto the level plain. With frantic haste he sketched vast crude letters in the ancient dust: "MOORE TRICKED YOU. NOT RANDOM."
Benteley saw the words, and the vapid face of Keith Pellig hardened. Benteley's thoughts congealed. _What the hell?_ He was thinking. Then he realized that Wakeman was teeping him, that a one-sided conversation was going on with himself as transmitter and the telepath as receiver. "Go on, Wakeman," Benteley radiated harshly. "What do you mean, tricked?"
In Benteley's mind, there was ironic amusement. He was seeing a telepath, an advanced mutant human, sketching clumsy figures in the dust like some primitive reduced to the most primal means of communication. Wakeman wrote desperately: "MOORE WILL KILL YOU AND CARTWRIGHT TOGETHER."
Benteley's mind radiated amazement. "What do you mean?" Then suspicion. "This is some kind of strategy. There must be other teeps coming." His thumb-gun came quickly up...
"BOMB." Wakeman, panting for breath, sought a new surface on which to write. But he had written enough. Benteley was filling in the details himself. A phantasmagoria of comprehension: vivid glimpses of his fight with Moore, his sexual relations with Moore's mistress, Eleanor Stevens, Moore's jealousy of him. It flashed through Benteley's mind in bewildering procession, and he lowered the thumb-gun.
'They're seeing this," Benteley thought. "All the operators at their screens. And Moore; he's seeing it, too."