Rita O'Neill spoke up. "You should join my uncle's staff. You should swear allegiance to him."
They were all looking at him. Benteley said nothing for a while. "The Corps takes an occupational oath, doesn't it?" he asked presently.
"That's right," Shaeffer said. "That's the oath Peter Wakeman thought so much of."
"If you're interested," Cartwright said, his shrewd old eyes on Benteley, "I'll swear you in—as Quizmaster. With merely an occupational oath."
Benteley got slowly to his feet and stood waiting as Cartwright rose. With Rita O'Neill and Shaeffer watching silently he recited the positional oath to Quizmaster Cartwright, then abruptly took his seat.
"Now you're part of us officially," Rita O'Neill said, her eyes dark and intense. "You saved my uncle's life. You saved all our lives; the body would have blown this place to bits. You should have killed Verrick while you were at it. He was there, too."
Benteley strode out of the room and into the corridor. A few Directorate officials stood here and there talking softly. Benteley wandered aimlessly past them, his mind in a turmoil. Soon Rita O'Neill appeared at the doorway and stood watching him, her arms tightly folded. "I'm sorry," she said presently. She came up beside him, breathing rapidly, red lips half-parted. "I shouldn't have said that. You've done enough." She put her fingers on his arm.
Benteley pulled away. "I broke my oath to Verrick; let's face it. But that's all I will do. I killed Moore—he was as soulless as he is bodiless. But I'm not going to touch Reese Verrick."
Rita's eyes blazed. "Don't you know what he would do to you if he caught you?"
"You don't know when to stop. I swore service to your uncle; isn't that enough?" He faced her defiantly.
She hesitated uncertainly.
"You respect my uncle." She broke off, embarrassed. "Don't you respect me?"
Benteley grinned crookedly. "Of course. In fact..."
At the end of the hall Major Shaeffer appeared. He shouted at Benteley: "Benteley, run!"
Benteley stood paralysed. Then he jerked away from Rita O'Neill and raced down the corridor to the descent ramp. Corpsmen and Directorate officials scurried everywhere. He reached the ground level and ran desperately.
A clumsy figure in a half-removed protective suit blocked his way. Eleanor Stevens, red hair flaming, face pale, hurried to him. "Get out of here!" she panted. In the heavy, unfamiliar suit she stumbled and nearly fell. "Ted," she wailed, "don't try to fight him—just run! If he gets you———"
Benteley nodded. "He'll kill me."
Reese Verrick had arrived.
Chapter XIII
In an immense emptiness the synthetic body moved. Like a planet it spread through miles of silence and clouds of dark dust, the void that made up this universe. Its face was calm and placid, a vapid mask that showed nothing of the agony inside.
Herb Moore urged the body relentlessly forward. He felt nothing, saw nothing; stars, planets, the cosmos, had ceased to exist for him. He knew only an internal reality, the lash of his own pain. Farther and farther he took the body away from Earth, past the dull inner planets, Mars and its flow of commerce, freighters and transports. Somewhere along the way he instinctively veered the body from the ominously growing bulk of Jupiter. The giant planet with its own intricate system fell slowly behind, and Moore burst out into deep space. He didn't look back or think about the civilization that lay behind him. His race, his world, had dwindled and faded. His own body, the body of Herbert Moore, was dead. The realization made him hurl the synthetic body madly onwards but soon he allowed it to slow up whilst he examined instruments and computed his approximate location.
He was fifty-two astronomical units out. He was in dead space, beyond the known system. And still the synthetic body hurtled outward, away from the planet on which he had died. Back there he was a corpse; here he was a living spark of fury that never ceased moving. As long as he kept moving he was alive.
He checked his radar. A faint mass, billions of miles away, registered and he turned the body towards it. Mechanism gave him the celestial equator and the degree at which he could expect the Disc—if the Society's calculations were correct.
Slowly a speck separated itself from the frozen canopy and began to swell. It was the tenth planet.
For him there was nothing on Flame Disc. He ignored it, turning his attention to his meters and searching the skies for something else. Something that should be near by.
Without warning he was struggling in a lethal cloud of jet exhaust, a radio-active trail strung across the void. He plunged through it and out again, hung for a time, then painstakingly began creeping along it. The trail led to one opaque shape, the lumbering ore-carrier, the battered Society ship making its slow way forward, port lights winking, exhausts belching incandescence.
Moore rested; the synthetic's organs were functioning laboriously—the strain of flight was corroding them. He allowed the body a measure of recuperation, and then plunged ruthlessly on. The thing he sought was somewhere close to the ore-carrier. If he searched long enough he would cross its path. Patiently he maneuvered the synthetic back and forth an infinite number of times, missing no area of the space near by.
And there it was.
He headed for it, half blinded by exhilaration. The ship danced and glowed before him, a strange shape like nothing he had ever seen before. A little way off he halted and, hanging motionless, examined it intently.
John Preston's ship was ball-shaped, a smooth metallic sphere that was falling behind the lumbering ore-carrier. There was no visible propulsion mechanisms. Nothing marred the polished surface; no ports or fins. It drifted quietly through space, a glowing bubble dancing and bobbing among dust clouds.
Moore brought the synthetic close to the featureless globe and wondered how he could enter it. The cold surface twisted faintly below him; the globe was revolving as it moved. Presently Moore dropped the body until its clutching fingers met the polished surface. He clung frantically—but there was nothing to grip. He bounced away and spun dizzily, but the mass of the globe drew him back. He lay sprawled on it, moving as it moved, turning as it revolved.
For a long time he clung there, wondering and puzzled. Then panic seized him He had to get in; already the artificial material of the synthetic body was deteriorating. It hadn't been made for deep space; in the intense cold it was becoming brittle. The slightest blow would snap him in half, and with each passing moment more of his fuel was consumed. The body was wearing out and when it ceased functioning the last spark that was Herbert Moore would perish.
The thought was too much. Here, in the dismal reaches beyond the known universe, his mind would flicker and die. His personality, his being, would cease within a matter of hours unless he could bring the synthetic body out of the frozen chill of deep space, back to warmth.
He had to find a way into the globe.
In the end he savagely burned a tunnel through the steel hull. Inch by inch, painfully and exhaustingly, he bored until a flash of air and light burst out from the interior. With clumsy, nervous fingers he clawed his way in, slithering through the still smoking tunnel and dropped with a crash in the midst of humming machinery. Air shrieked past him out to the rent he had made in the hull. Quickly he sealed it and then turned to see where he was.
He was in a single chamber. The globe was a shell, a. hollow sphere of power and equipment, cables and relays and endless dials and meters. For a moment he stood bewildered. Then he located a narrow path that led through the throbbing generators. He pushed past rows of high-tension leads, suddenly apprehensive; to incinerate the synthetic body after coming this far...