On the screen the passengers of the transport were getting fussily to their feet and preparing to land. There was always this moment of suspense and tension as the sleek liner set itself down; then the sigh of relief as the reactors clicked off and the landing locks rumbled open.
Keith Pellig got clumsily to his feet and made vague motions toward Margaret Lloyd. The two of them joined the slowly-moving crowd that pushed down the ramp to the passenger level. Davis was doing fairly well; once he stumbled, but that was all. Benteley glanced up tautly at the detailed schematic of the Directorate's Batavia buildings. The landing field was linked directly to the main building grounds; the position of Pellig was already indicated on the schematics by a moving pin of color.
There it was—but no pin showed the position of the teep network. Without effort Benteley could calculate how soon the first contact between Pellig, the artificial android, and the teep network, would occur. In minutes, it could be figured on one hand.
Wakeman arranged for the C-plus rocket to be brought up to the surface from its storage locker. He poured himself a drink of Scotch, gulped it hastily, and then conferred with Shaeffer. "In half an hour Batavia will be a _cul-de-sac_ for Pellig. Bait but no quarry."
Shaeffer's hurried response came back to him. "We now have an inferential report on Pellig. He boarded a regular non-stop intercon liner at Bremen. Passage to Java. He's on his way someplace between here and Europe."
"You don't know which ship?"
"He has a non-specific commute ticket. But we can assume he's already taken off."
Wakeman hurried upstairs to Cartwright's private quarters. Cartwright was listlessly packing his things with the aid of two MacMillan robots and Rita O'Neill. Rita was pale and tense, but composed. She was going through aud reference tapes with a high-speed scanner, sorting those worth keeping. Wakeman found himself smiling at the slim, efficient figure with a lucky cat's foot dangling between her breasts as she worked.
"Keep hold of that," Wakeman said to Rita, indicating the cat's foot.
She glanced quickly up. "Any news?"
"Pellig will be showing up any minute. Transports land all the time; we have somebody there to check them in. Our own ship is almost ready." He indicated Cartwright's unpacked things. "Do you want me to help you pack?"
Cartwright roused himself. "Look, I don't want to get caught out in space. I—don't want to."
Wakeman was astonished at the words, and at the thoughts he caught behind them. A naked fear trickled piteously through the old man's mind, up from the deepest levels. "We won't get caught in space," Wakeman said rapidly; there wasn't much time for any more shilly-shallying. "The ship is the new experimental C-plus, the first off the assembly-line. We'll be there almost instantly. Nobody can Stop a C-plus once it's in motion."
Cartwright's gray lips twitched. "Is it a good thing to break up the Corps? You said some will be here and some will go with us. And I know you can't scan over that great a distance. Wouldn't it be—"
"Goddam it," Rita O'Neill said explosively. She threw down her armload of tapes. "Stop doing what you're doing! It's not like you!"
Cartwright grunted miserably and began pawing at his heap of shirts. "I'll do what you say, Wakeman. I trust you." He went on clumsily packing, but from his terrified and bewildered mind leaked the growing tendrils of his primitive, atavistic longing-fear. It swelled and became stronger each moment: the overpowering urge to hurry into the reinforced inner office Verrick had constructed, and to lock himself in. Wakeman flinched as the raw primal panic hit him, the frantic desire to claw a way back into the womb. He deliberately turned his mind from Cartwright's to Rita O'Neill's.
As he did so, Wakeman got a further shock. A thin icy column of hate radiated from the girl's mind directly at him. He quickly began untangling it, surprised and taken aback by its suddenness: it hadn't been there before.
Rita saw the expression on his face, and her thoughts changed. Quick, canny, she had sensed his awareness; she was thinking now of the aud tape humming through her ears as she operated the scanner. She passed it on to him; he was deafened by a furious roar of voices, speeches, lectures, parts of Preston's books, arguments, comments...
"What is it?" he said to her. "What's wrong?"
Rita said nothing, but her lips pressed together until they were white. Abruptly she turned and hurried out of the room.
"I can tell you what it is," Cartwright said hoarsely. He slammed his battered suitcases and locked them. "She blames you for this."
"For what?"
Cartwright caught up his two eroded suitcases and moved slowly toward the hall door. "You know, I'm her uncle. She's always seen me at the head of things, in authority, giving orders and making plans. Now I'm mixed up in something I don't understand." His voice died into a troubled murmur. "Situations I can't control. I have to rely on you." He moved wanly aside to let Wakeman open the door. "I suppose I've changed, since I came here. She's disappointed... and she blames you for it."
"Oh," Wakeman said. He moved after Cartwright, aware of two things: that he didn't understand people as well as he thought; and that finally Cartwright had made up his mind to do as the Corps suggested.
The C-plus ship was up-ended on the emergency platform in the center of the main building. As soon as Cartwright and his niece and the group of Corpsmen had entered, the hull locks slid smoothly into place and sealed themselves tight. The roof of the building rolled back and the bright noon-day sky blazed down.
"This is a small ship," Cartwright observed. He had turned pale and sickly; his hands shook as he strapped himself to his seat. "Interesting design."
Wakeman quickly fastened Rita's belt for her and then his own. She said nothing to him; the pencil of hostility had melted a little. "We may black-out during the flight. The ship is robot-operated." Wakeman settled down in his seat and thought the go-ahead signal to the intricate mechanism beneath them. The sensitive relays responded, the machinery shifted, and, someplace close by, high-powered reactors screamed shrilly into life.
With the ship responsive to his thoughts, Wakeman enjoyed the luxury of imagining a vast steel and plastic extension of his own small body. He relaxed and drank in the clean, sleek purr of the drive as it warmed. It was a beautiful ship: the first actually made from the original model and designs.
"You know how I feel," Rita O'Neill said to him abruptly, shattering his temporary pleasure. "You were scanning me."
"I know how you felt. I don't think you still feel that way."
"Perhaps not; I don't know. It's irrational to blame you. You're doing your job the best you can."
"I think," Wakeman said, "I'm doing the right thing. I think I've got this under control." He waited a moment. "Well? The ship's ready to take off."
Cartwright managed to nod. "I'm ready."
Wakeman considered briefly. "Any sign?" he thought to Shaeffer.
"Another passenger transport coming in," the rapid thought came back. "Entering scanning range any moment."
Pellig would arrive at Batavia; that was certain. He would search for Cartwright; that was also certain. The unknown was Pellig's detection and death. It could be assumed that if he escaped the teep net, he would locate the Lunar resort. And if he located the resort...
"There's no protection on Luna," Wakeman thought to Shaeffer. "We're giving up all positive defense once we take him there."
"That's right," Shaeffer agreed. "But I think well get Pellig here at Batavia. Once we make contact, that's it."