"Keep him looking!" Verrick shouted. "Cartwright must be around someplace!"
The sound of Verrick's voice grated in Moore's aud phones. His mind worked rapidly. On the screen, his technician had started the body into uncertain activity. The schematic showed Pellig's pin at the very core of the Directorate: the assassin had arrived but there was no quarry.
"lt was a trap!" Verrick shouted in Moore's ear. "A decoy! Now they're going to destroy him!"
On all sides of the demolished fortress-cube, troops and weapons were in motion. Vast Directorate resources responding to Shaeffer's hurried instructions.
"The assassin is at the inner cube!" mechanical speakers shrieked triumphantly. "Close in and kill him!"
"Get the assassin!"
"Shoot him down and grind him underfoot!"
Eleanor leaned close to Verrick's hunched, massive shoulder. "They deliberately let him get in. Look—they're coming for him."
"Keep him moving!" Verrick shouted. "For God's sake they'll burn him to particles if he simply stands there!'
Down the wrecked corridor Pellig had cut, the snouts of guns poked inquisitively. Slow-rumbling equipment was solemnly organizing in a pattern of death, taking their time: there was no hurry.
Pellig floundered in confusion. He raced back down the passage and out of the cube, then sped from door to door like a trapped animal. Once he halted to burn down a MacMillan gun that had ventured too close and was clumsily taking aim. The gun dissolved and Pellig sprinted past its smoking ruin. But behind it the corridor was jammed with troops and weapons. He gave up and scurried back.
Herb Moore snapped an angry sentence to Verrick. "They took Cartwright out of Batavia."
"Look for him."
"He's not there. It's a waste of time." Moore thought quickly. "Transfer me your analysis of ship-movements from Batavia. Especially in the last hour."
"But-"
"We know he was there up to an hour ago. Hurry!"
The metalfoil rolled from its slot by Moore's hand. He snatched it up and scanned the entries and analytical data. "He's on Luna," Moore said. "They took him off in their C-plus ship."
"You don't know," Verrick retorted angrily. "He may be in a sub-surface shelter of some kind."
Moore ignored him and slammed home a switch. Buttons leaped with excitement; Moore's body sagged limply against its protective ring.
At his own screen Ted Benteley saw the Pellig body jump and stiffen. A tremor crossed its features, a subtle alteration of the vapid face. A new operator had entered it; above Benteley the red button had moved on.
The new operator wasted no time. He burned down a handful of troops and then a section of wall. The steel and plastic fused together and bubbled away in molten fumes. Through the rent the synthetic body skimmed, a blank-faced projectile plunging in an arcing trajectory. A moment later it emerged from the building and, still gaining velocity, hurtled straight upward at the dull disc of the moon as it hung in the early-afternoon sky.
Below Pellig the Earth fell away. He was moving out into free space.
Benteley sat paralyzed at his screen. Suddenly everything made sense. As he watched the body race through darkening skies that lost their blue color and gained pinpoints of unwinking stars, he understood what had happened to him. It had been no dream. The body was a miniature ship, equipped in Moore's reactor labs. And—he realized with a rush of admiration—the body needed no air. And it didn't respond to extreme temperature. The body was capable of interplanetary flight.
Peter Wakeman received the ipvic call from Shaeffer within a few seconds of the time Pellig left Earth. "He's gone," Shaeffer muttered. "He took off like a meteor out into space."
"Heading where?" Wakeman demanded.
"Toward Luna." Shaeffer's face suddenly collapsed. "We gave up. We called in regular troops. The Corps couldn't do a thing."
"Then I can expect him any time?"
"Any time," Shaeffer said .wearily. "He's on his way."
Wakeman broke the connection and returned to his tapes and reports. His desk was a littered chaos of cigarette butts, coffee cups, and a still unfinished fifth of Scotch. Now there was no doubt: Keith Pellig was not a human being. He was clearly a robot combined with high-velocity reactor equipment, designed in Moore's experimental labs. But that didn't explain the shifting personality that had demoralized the Corpsmen. Unless...
Some kind of multiple mind came and went. Pellig was a fractured personality artificially segmented into unattached complexes, each with its own drives, characteristics and strategy. Shaeffer had been right to call in regular non-telepathic troops.
Wakeman lit a cigarette and aimlessly spun his good luck charm until it tugged loose from his hand and banged into the tapes stacked on his work-desk. _He almost had it._ If he had more time, a few days to work the thing out... He got up suddenly and headed for a supply locker. "Here's the situation," he thought to the Corpsmen scattered around the levels of the resort. "The assassin has survived our Batavia network. He's on his way to Luna."
His announcement provoked horror and dismay. There was a quick scramble from sun decks and bathing pools, bedrooms and lounges and cocktail bars.
"I want every Corpsman in a Parley suit," Wakeman continued. "This didn't work at Batavia, but I want you to set up a make-shift network. The assassin has to be intercepted outside the balloon." He radiated what he had learned about Pellig and what he believed. The answering thoughts came back instantly.
"A robot?"
"A multiple-personality synthetic?"
"Then we can't go by mind-touch. Well have to lock on physical-visual appearance."
"You can catch murder-thoughts," Wakeman disagreed, as he. buckled on his Parley suit. "But don't expect continuity. The thought-processes will cut off without warning. Be prepared for the impact; that's what destroyed the Corps at Batavia."
"Does each separate complex bring a new strategy?"
"Apparently."
This brought amazement and admiration. "Fantastic! A brilliant contributionl"
"Find him," Wakeman thought grimly, "and kill him on the spot. As soon as you catch the murder-thought, burn him to ash. Don't wait for anything."
Wakeman grabbed up the fifth of Scotch and poured himself one last good drink from what had been Reese Verrick's private stock. He locked his Farley helmet in place and snapped on the air-temp feed lines. He collected a hand popper and hurried to one of the exit sphincters of the resort balloon.
The arid, barren expanse of waste was a shock. He stood fumbling with his humidity and gravity control, adjusting to the sight of an infinity of dead matter.
The moon was a ravaged, blasted plain. There were gaping craters where the original meteors had smashed away the life of the satellite. Nothing stirred, no wind or dust tremor or flutter of life. Wherever Wakeman looked there was only the pocked expanse of rubble, heaped debris littered across the bone-harsh cliffs and cracks. The face of the moon had dried up and split. The skin, the flesh, had been eroded away by millenniums of ruthless abrasion. Only the skull was left, vacant eye sockets and gaping mouth. As Wakeman stepped gingerly forward, he was tramping over the features of a death's-head.
Behind him the resort glowed and twinkled, a luminous balloon of warmth and comfort and relaxation.
While Wakeman was hurrying across the deserted landscape, a rattled thought hammered jubilantly in his brain. "Peter, I've spotted him! He landed just now a quarter mile from me!"
Wakeman began to run awkwardly over the rubbled stone, one hand on his popper. "Keep close to him," he thought back. "And keep him away from the balloon."