On the vidscreen Peter Wakeman's image tried hopelessly to gain Shaeffer's attention. Shaeffer was like a corpse, face dead and blank, all energy concentrated on the invisible struggle going on up and down the web-strands of the network.
"Listen to me," Wakeman commanded. "Once you get hold of his mind, stay with him. Follow him until the next station takes over. Maybe you're too far apart. Maybe———"
"I've got him," a thought came to Shaeffer. "I'll find him; he's close by."
The network quivered with excitement and suspense.
"I'm getting something strange." Doubt mixed with curiosity, then startled disbelief. "There must be more than one assassin. Yet that's not possible." Growing excitement. "I can actually see Pellig. He's going to enter the Directorate building by the main entrance; it's all there in his mind. Now he's thinking of crossing the street and going———"
Nothing.
Shaeffer waited. Still nothing came. "Did you kill him? Is he dead?"
"He's gone!" the thought came, hysterical and giggling. "He's standing in front of me and at the same time he's gone. He's here and he isn't here."
The telepath dribbled off in infantile mutterings, and Shaeffer dropped him from the network. It didn't make sense. Keith Pellig was standing face to face with a Corpsman, within easy killing-distance—yet Keith Pellig had vanished.
Verrick turned to Eleanor Stevens. "It's working better than we had calculated."
"Corps members depend on telepathic rapport. They hang on by mental contact, and if that's broken——" The girl's face was stricken. "Reese, I think you're driving them insane."
Verrick got up and moved away from the screen. "You watch for a while."
Eleanor shuddered. "I don't want to see it."
A buzzer sounded on the man's desk. "List of flights out of Batavia," a monitor told him. "Total count of time and destination for the last hour. Special note of unusual flights."
Verrick accepted the metalfoil sheet and dropped it into the litter heaped on his desk as he hoarsely said to Eleanor: "It won't be long."
His hands in his pockets, Keith Pellig was striding up the marble stairs leading to the main entrance of the central Directorate building at Batavia... directly towards Leon Cartwright's suite of offices.
Chapter XI
Peter wakeman had made a mistake.
He sat for a long time letting this realization seep over him. With shaking fingers he got a bottle from his luggage and poured himself a drink. There was a scum of dried-up protine in the glass. He threw the whole thing into a disposal slot and sat sipping from the bottle. Then he got to his feet and entered the lift to the top floor of the Luna resort.
Corpsmen were relaxing in a tank of sparkling blue water. Above them a dome of transparent plastic kept the fresh spring-scented air in, and the bleak void of the landscape out. Laughter, the splash of lithe bodies, the flutter of colour, the texture of bare flesh, blurred past him as he crossed the deck.
Rita O'Neill was sun-bathing a little way beyond the main group of people. Her sleek body gleamed moistly in the hot light. When she saw Wakeman she sat up quickly, her black hair cascading down to her tanned shoulders and back.
"Is everything all right?" she asked.
Wakeman threw himself down in a deck chair. "I was talking to Shaeffer," he said, "back at Batavia."
Rita took a brush and began stroking out her cloud of hair. "What did he have to say?" she asked, as casually as she could. Her eyes were serious.
Wakeman allowed the warmth to lull him to silence. Not far off, the crowd of frolicking bathers splashed and laughed and played games. A shimmering water-ball lifted itself up and hung like a sphere before it plunged down into the grip of a Corpsman. Against her towel, Rita's body was a dazzling shape of brown and black, supple lines of flesh moulded firmly into the charm of youth.
"They can't stop him," Wakeman said at last. "He'll be here not long from now. My calculations were wrong."
Rita's eyes widened. She stopped brushing, then started again, slowly and methodically. "Does he know Leon is here?"
"Not yet. But it's only a question of time."
"And we can't defend him here?"
"We can try. Perhaps I can find out what went wrong. I may get more information about Keith Pellig."
"Will you take Leon somewhere else?"
"This is as good a place as any. At least there aren't many minds to blur scanning." Wakeman got stiffly to his feet; he felt old and his bones ached. "I'm going downstairs and go over the tapes we scanned on Herb Moore—those we got the day he came to talk to Cartwright."
Rita slipped on a robe, tied a sash around her slim waist and dug her feet into boots. "How long before he gets here?"
"We should start getting ready. Things are moving fast."
"I hope you can do something." Rita's voice was calm, emotionless. "Leon's resting. I made him lie down."
Wakeman lingered. "I did what I thought was right, but I must have forgotten something. We're fighting something much more cunning than we realized."
"You should have let Leon run things," Rita said. "You took the initiative out of his hands. Like Verrick and the rest of them, you never believed he could manage. You treated him like a child, and he gave up and believed it himself."
"I'll stop Pellig," Wakeman said quietly, "before he gets to your uncle. It's not Verrick who's running things—he could never work anything like this. It must be Moore."
"It's too bad," Rita said, "that Moore isn't on our side."
"I'll stop him," Wakeman repeated. "Somehow."
Rita disappeared down a ramp leading to Cartwright's private quarters. She didn't look back.
Keith Pellig climbed the stairs of the Directorate building with confidence. He walked swiftly, keeping up with the fast-moving crowd of classified bureaucrats pushing into the lifts, passages and offices. In the main lobby he halted to get his bearings.
In a thunderous din alarm bells sounded throughout the building. The milling of officials and visitors abruptly ceased. Faces lost their friendly lines and in an instant the easy-going crowd was transformed into a suspicious, anxious mass. From concealed speakers harsh mechanical voices proclaimed:
"Everyone must leave the building!" The voices shrilled up deafeningly. "The assassin is in the building."
Pellig lost himself in the swirling waves of men and women. He edged, darted, pushed his way into the interior of the mass, towards the labyrinth of passages that led from the central lobby.
A scream—someone had recognized him. A blackened, burned-out patch as guns were fired in panic. Pellig escaped and continued circling warily, keeping in constant motion.
"The assassin is in the main lobby!" the mechanical voices blared. "Concentrate on the main lobby."
"There he is!" a man shouted. Others took up the roar "That's him, there!"
On the roof of the building the first wing of military transports was settling down. Soldiers poured out and began descending in lifts. Heavy weapons and equipment appeared, dragged to lifts or grappled over the side to the ground.
At his screen, Reese Verrick pulled away briefly and said to Eleanor Stevens: "They're moving in non-telepaths. Does that mean——"
"It means that the Corps has been knocked out," Eleanor answered.
"Then they'll track Pellig visually. That'll cut down the value of our telepathic machinery."
"The assassin is in the lobby!" the mechanical voices roared above the din. Soldiers threw plastic cable spun from projectors in an intricate web across corridors. The excited officials were herded towards the main exit. Outside, more soldiers were setting up a cordon of men and guns.