"It would have been, if we had notified him." There was grim amusement in Shaeffer's eyes. "If it hadn't been for the older teeps, we probably would have notified him first and taken our time getting here. Peter Wakeman made a big thing of it. Responsibility and duty, that sort of thing."
Cartwright made a mental note. He could have to look up Peter Wakeman.
"As we approached," Shaeffer continued slowly, "our first group picked up the thoughts of a large group of people, apparently leaving here. Your name was in their minds, and this location."
Cartwright became instantly wary. "Oh?"
"They were moving away from us, so we couldn't catch much. Something about a ship. Something to do with a long flight"
"You sound like a Government fortuneteller.''
"There was an intense field around them of excitement and fear."
"I can't tell you anything," Cartwright repeated, with emphasis. "I don't know anything about it." Ironically, he added: "Some creditors, perhaps."
In the courtyard outside the Society building Rita O'Neill paced around in a small, aimless circle, feeling suddenly lost. The great moment had come and passed; now it was part of history.
Against the Society building rose the small, barren crypt in which the remains of John Preston lay. She could see his dark, ill-formed body suspended within the yellowed fly-specked plasti-cube, hands folded over his bird-like chest, eyes shut, glasses eternally superfluous. Small hands, crippled with arthritis, a hunched-over near-sighted creature. The crypt was dusty; trash and debris were littered around it. Stale rubbish the wind had blown there and left. Nobody came to see Preston's remains. The crypt was a forgotten, lonely monument, housing a dismal shape of clay, impotent, discarded.
But half a mile away the fleet of archaic cars was unloading its passengers at the field. The battered GM ore freighter was jammed tight on the launcher; the people were clumsily climbing the narrow metal ramp into the unfamiliar hull.
The fanatics were on their way. They were setting out for deep space to locate and claim the mythical tenth planet of the Sol System, the legendary Flame Disc, John Preston's fabulous world, beyond the known universe.
THREE
BEFORE Cartwright reached the Directorate buildings at Batavia the word was out. He sat fixedly watching the tv screen, as the high-speed intercon rocket hurtled across the South Pacific sky. Below them were spread out blue ocean and endless black dots, conglomerations of metal and plastic house-boats on which Asiatic families lived, fragile platforms stretched from Hawaii to Ceylon.
The tv screen was wild with excitement. Faces blinked on and off; scenes shifted with bewildering rapidity. The history of Verrick's ten years was shown: shots of the massive, thick-browed ex-Quizmaster and resumes of what he had accomplished. There were vague reports on Cartwright.
He had to laugh, in a nervous aside that made the teeps start. Nothing was known about him, only that he was somehow connected with the Preston Society. The newsmachines had dug up as much as possible on the Society: it wasn't much. There were fragments of the story of John Preston himself, the tiny frail man creeping from the Information Libraries to the observatories, writing his books, collecting endless facts, arguing futilely with the pundits, losing his precarious classification, and finally sinking down and dying in obscurity. The meager crypt was erected. The first meeting of the Society was held. The printing of Preston's half-crazed, half-prophetic books was begun... .
Cartwright hoped that was all they knew. He kept his mental fingers crossed and his eyes on the tv screen.
He was now the supreme power of the nine-planet system. He was the Quizmaster, surrounded by a telepathic Corps, with a vast army and warfleet and police force at his disposal. He was unopposed administrator of the random bottle structure, the vast apparatus of classification, Quizzes, lotteries, and training schools.
On the other hand, there were the five Hills, the industrial framework that supported the social and political system.
"How far did Verrick get?" he asked Major Shaeffer.
Shaeffer glanced into his mind to see what he wanted. "Oh, he did fairly well. By August he would have eliminated the random twitch and the whole M-Game structure."
"Where is Verrick now?"
"He left Batavia for the Farben Hill, where he's strongest. He'll operate from there; we caught some of his plans."
"I can see your Corps is going to be valuable."
"Up to a point. Our job is to protect you: that's all we do. We're not spies or secret agents. We merely guard your life."
"What's been the ratio in the past?"
"The Corps came into existence a hundred and sixty years ago. Since then we've protected fifty-nine Quizmasters. Of that number we've been able to save eleven from the Challenge."
"How long did they last?"
"Some a few minutes, some several years. Verrick lasted about the longest, although there was old McRae, back in '78, who ran his whole thirteen years. For him the Corps intercepted over three hundred Challengers; but we couldn't have done it without McRae's help. He was a wily bastard. Sometimes I think he was a teep."
"A telepathic Corps," Cartwright mused, "which protects me. And public assassins to murder me."
"Only one assassin at a time. Of course, you could be murdered by an amateur unsanctioned by the Convention. Somebody with a personal grudge. But that's rare. He wouldn't get anything out of it except the loss of his p-card. He'd be politically neutralized; he'd be barred from becoming Quizmaster. And the bottle would have to be stepped ahead one twitch. A thoroughly unsatisfactory event."
"Give me my length ratio."
"Average, two weeks."
Two weeks, and Verrick was shrewd. The Challenge Conventions wouldn't be sporadic affairs put together by isolated individuals, hungry for power. Verrick would have everything organized. Efficient, concerted machinery would be turning out one assassin after another, creeping and crawling toward Batavia without end, until at last the goal was reached and Leon Cartwright was destroyed.
"In your mind," Shaeffer said, "is an interesting vortex of the usual fear and a very unusual syndrome I can't analyze. Something about a ship."
"You're permitted to scan whenever you feel like it?"
"I can't help it. If I sat here mumbling and talking you couldn't help hearing me. When I'm with a group their thoughts blur, like a party of people all babbling at once. But there's just you and me here."
"The ship is on its way," Cartwright said.
"It won't get far. The first planet it tries to squat, Mars or Jupiter or Ganymede—"
"The ship is going all the way out. We're not setting up another squatters' colony."
"You're counting a lot on that antiquated old ore-carrier."
"Everything we have is there."
"You think you can hold on long enough?"
"I hope so."
"So do I," Shaeffer said dispassionately. "By the way." He gestured toward the blooming island coming into existence ahead and below. "When we land, there will be an agent of Verrick's waiting for you."
Cartwright moaned sharply. "Already?"
"Not an assassin. There's been no Challenge Convention yet. This man is under fief to Verrick, a personal staff member named Herb Moore. He's been searched for weapons and passed. He just wants to talk to you."
"How do you know this?"
"Within the last few minutes I've been getting the Corps headquarters. It's all processed information going around from one to the next. We're a chain, actually. You have nothing to worry about: at least two of us will be with you when you talk to him."
"Suppose I don't want to talk to him?"
"That's your privilege."
Cartwright snapped off the tv set as the ship lowered over the magnetic grapples. "What do you recommend?"