Seated before the vid-tap the ipvic technicians had set up for Farben, Verrick and Moore gazed with incredulous amazement at the scene. Groves, a miniature figure, lost in rolling flame, was dwarfed to the size of a helpless insect by the surge of pure energy that played around him. From the aud speaker above the screen the booming voice, distorted and dimmed by millions of miles of space, thundered out.
_"... our warning. If you attempt to ignore our friendly efforts to guide your ship, if you try to navigate on your own, then we cannot promise..."_
"What is it?" Verrick croaked, blank-faced and dazed. "Is this rigged? Are they glimmed on the bug, trying to dazzle us with this set-up?" He began to tremble. "Or is this really-"
"Shut up," Moore grated. He peered hastily around. "You have a tape running on this?"
Verrick nodded, slack-jawed. "What have we got in on, in God's name? There's those legends and rumors of fabulous beings out there, but I never believed them. I never thought it could really be true!"
Moore examined the vid and aud tape recorders and then turned briskly to Verrick. "You think this is a supernatural manifestation, do you?"
"It's from another civilization." Verrick quavered with awe and terror. "This is incredible. We've made contact with another race."
"Incredible is right," Moore said tartly. As soon as the transmission ceased, and the screen had faded into black silence, he snatched up the tapes and hurried them out of the Farben buildings to the Public Information Library.
Within an hour the analysis was in, from the main Quiz research organs in Geneva. Moore grabbed the report up and carried it to Reese Verrick.
"Look at this." He slammed the report down in the middle of Verrick's desk. "Somebody's being taken, but I'm not sure who."
Verrick blinked in confusion. "What is it? What's it say? Is that voice—"
"That was John Preston." There was a peculiar expression on Moore's face. "He once recorded part of his _Unicorn_; the Information Library has it all down on aud, along with vid shots for us to compare. There is absolutely no doubt of it."
Verrick gaped foolishly. "I don't understand. Explain it to me."
"John Preston is out there. He's been waiting for that ship and now he's made contact with it. Hell lead it to the Disc."
"But Preston died a hundred and fifty years ago!"
Moore laughed sharply. "Don't kid yourself. Get that crypt open as soon as possible and you'll understand. _John Preston is still alive._"
TEN
THE MacMillan robot moved languidly up and down the aisle collecting tickets. Overhead, the midsummer sun beat down and was reflected from the gleaming silver hull of the sleek intercon rocket liner. Below, the vast blue of the Pacific Ocean lay sprawled out, an eternal surface of color and light.
"It really looks nice," the straw-haired young man said to the pretty girl in the seat next to him. "The ocean, I mean. The way it mixes with the sky. Earth is about the most beautiful planet in the system."
The girl lowered her portable tv-lenses, blinked in the sudden glare of natural sunlight, and glanced in confusion out the window. "Yes, it's nice," she admitted shyly.
She was a very young girl, not over eighteen at the most. Her breasts were small and up-tilted; her hair was curly and short, a halo of dark orange—the latest color style-around her slim neck and finely-cut features. She blushed and returned hastily to her tv-lenses.
Beside her, the harmless, pale-eyed young man got out his package of cigarettes, took one, and then politely offered her the gold-encased pack.
"Thanks," she said nervously, in a throaty quaver, as her long crimson-tipped fingernails grappled with the cigarette. "Thanks," she said again, as he applied his gold cigarette lighter in her behalf.
"How far are you going?" the young man inquired presently.
"To Peking. I have a job at the Soong Hill-I think. I mean, I got a notice for an interview." She fluttered with her miniature purse. "I have it somewhere. Maybe you can look at it and tell me what it means; I don't understand all those legal phrases they use." She added quickly, "Of course, when I get to Batavia, then Walter can..."
"Your classified?"
The girl's blush deepened. "Yes, class 11-76. It isn't much, but it helps." Hurriedly, she brushed ashes from her silk embroidered neck scarf and right breast. "I just got my classification last month." After a hesitation, she asked: "Are you classified? I know some people are touchy, especially those who aren't..."
The young man indicated his sleeve. "Class 56-3."
"You sound so ... cynical."
The young man laughed his thin colorless laugh. "Maybe I am." He eyed the girl benignly. "What's your name?"
"Margaret Lloyd." She lowered her eyes shyly.
"My name's Keith Pellig," the young man said, and his voice was even thinner and drier than before.
The girl thought about it a moment. "Keith Pellig?" For an instant her smooth forehead wrinkled unnaturally. "I think I've heard that name, haven't I?"
"You may have." There was ironic amusement in the toneless voice. "It isn't important, though. Don't worry about it."
"It always bothers me when I don't remember things." Now that she knew the young man's name, it was permissible to speak openly. "I wouldn't have got my classification except that I'm living with a very important person. He's meeting me at Batavia." Pride mixed with modesty showed on her guileless face. "Walter fixed things up for me. Otherwise I never would have made it."
"Good for him," Keith Pellig said.
The MacMillan robot slid up beside them and extended its grapple. Margaret Lloyd quickly passed over her ticket and Keith Pellig did the same.
"Greetings, brother," Pellig said cryptically to the robot, as his ticket stub was punched and returned.
After the robot was gone Margaret Lloyd said to him, "Where are you going?"
"Batavia."
"On business?"
"I'd call it business." Pellig smiled humorlessly. "When I've been there awhile, I may start calling it pleasure. My attitude varies."
"You talk so strangely," the girl said, puzzled and more than somewhat awed by the complexities of an older man.
"I'm a strange person. Sometimes I hardly know what I'm going to do or say next. Sometimes I seem a stranger to myself. Sometimes what I do surprises me and I can't understand why I do it." Pellig stubbed out his cigarette and lit another; the ironic smile had left his face and he scowled dark and troubled. His words slowed down until they came out painfully, intensely. "It's a great life, if you don't weaken."
"What does that mean? I never heard that before."
"A phrase from an old manuscript." Pellig peered past her, out the wide window at the ocean below, "Well be there, soon. Come upstairs to the bar and I'll buy you a drink."
Margaret Lloyd fluttered with fear and excitement. "Is it all right?" She was terribly flattered. "I mean, since I'm living with Walter and—"
"It's all right," Pellig said, getting to his feet and moving moodily down the aisle, his hands deep in his pockets. "I'll even buy you two drinks. Assuming I still know who you are, after we get up there."
Peter Wakeman gulped down a glass of tomato juice, shuddered, and pushed the analysis across the breakfast table to Cartwright. "It really is Preston. It's no supernatural being from another system."
Cartwright's numb fingers played aimlessly with his coffee cup. "I can't believe it."
Rita O'Neill touched his arm. "That's what he meant in the book. He planned to be there to guide us. The Voices."