The Corpsman was excited and incredulous. "He landed like a meteor. I was already a mile outside the balloon when your orders came. I saw a flash; I went to investigate."
"How far from the balloon are you?"
"About three miles."
_Three miles._ Keith Pellig was that close to his prey. Wakeman cut his gravity-pressure to minimum and rushed forward wildly. With great leaps and bounds he covered the distance toward his fellow Corpsman; behind him the glowing balloon of light dwindled and fell away. Panting, gasping for breath, he fled toward the assassin.
He stumbled over a crack and pitched head-first on his face. As he struggled up the shrill hiss of escaping air whined in his ears. With one hand he dragged out the emergency repair pack; and with the other he fumbled for his popper. It was gone. He had lost it, dropped it somewhere among the ancient heaps of debris around him.
The air was going fast. He forgot the gun and concentrated on patching his Farley suit. The plastic goo hardened instantly, and the terrifying hiss cut off. As he began searching frantically among the boulders and dust, a new string of thoughts struck excitedly at him.
"He's moving! He's heading toward the balloon. He's located the resort."
Wakeman cursed, and gave up looking for the popper. He set off at a bounding trot toward the Corpsman. A high ridge rose ahead of him; he sprinted up it and half-slid, half-rolled down the far side. A vast bowl stretched out ahead of him. Craters and ugly gaping wounds leered in the skull-face. The Corpsman's thoughts came to him strongly, now. He was close by.
And for the first time, he caught the thoughts of the assassin.
Wakeman stopped rigid. "That's not Pellig!" he radiated back wildly. "That's Herb Moore!"
Moore's mind pulsed with frenzied activity. Unaware that he was being teeped, he had let down all barriers. His eager, high-powered thoughts and drives poured out in a ceaseless flood-tide that mounted to fever pitch as he spotted the glowing balloon that encased the Directorate's vacation resort.
Wakeman stood frozen, concentrating on the stream of mental energy lapping at him. It was all there, the whole story. Moore's super-charged mind contained every fragment of it, all the missing pieces he had held back before.
Pellig consisted of a variety of human minds, altering personalities hooked to an intricate switch-mechanism, coming and going at random, in chance formation, without pattern, Minimax, randomness, a deep blur of M-game theory...
It was a lie.
Wakeman recoiled. Under the thick layer of game-theory was another level, a submarginal syndrome of hate and desire and terrible fear: jealousy of Benteley, a ceaseless terror of death, involved schemes and plans, a complicated gestalt of need and goal-oriented drive actualized in an overpowering sledge-hammer of ambition. Moore was a driven man, dominated by the torment of dissatisfaction. And his dissatisfaction culminated in ruthless webs of strategy.
_The twitch of the Pellig machinery wasn't random._ Moore had complete control. He could switch operators into the body at any time; and pull them out at any time. He could set up any combination he pleased. He was free to hook and unhook himself at will. And...
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."