Wakeman decided. "All right. Well take the chance; the odds are good enough." He gave the mental signal and the ship moved into position for the take-off. Automatic grapples lined it up with its destination, the pale dead eye hanging dully in the noon-day sky. Wakeman closed his eyes and forced relaxation on his body-muscles.
The ship moved. First, there was the regular turbine thrust, then the furious lash of energy as the C-plus drive swung into life, sparked by the routine release of power.
For a moment the ship hovered over the Directorate buildings, glowing and shimmering. Then the C-plus drive caught, and in an instant the ship hurtled from the surface in a flash of blinding speed that rolled black waves of unconsciousness over the people within.
As the darkness relentlessly collected Peter Wakeman, a vague blur of satisfaction drifted through his dwindling mind. Keith Pellig would find nothing at Batavia, nothing but his own death. The Corps' strategy was working out.
In the moment Wakeman's signal sent the glowing C-plus ship away from Batavia, the regular intercon liner rumbled to a slow halt at the space field and slid back its locks.
With a group of businessmen and commuters, Keith Pellig stepped eagerly down the metal ramp and emerged in the sunlight, blinking and peering excitedly around him, at his first view of the Directorate buildings, the endless hurrying people and traffic—and the waiting network of teeps.
ELEVEN
AT FIVE-THIRTY A.M. the heavy construction rocket settled down in the center of what had once been London. In front of it and behind it thin razor-sharp transports hissed to smooth landings and disgorged parties of armed guards. They quickly fanned out and took up positions to intercept stray Directorate police patrols.
Within a few moments the dilapidated old building that was the offices of the Preston Society had been surrounded.
Reese Verrick, in a heavy wool greatcoat and boots, stepped out and followed his construction workers down the sidewalk and around the side of the building. The air was chill and thin; buildings and streets were moist with night dampness, gray silent structures with no sign of life.
"This is the place," the foreman said to Verrick. "They own this old barn.'' He indicated the courtyard, strewn with rubble and waste. "The monument is there."
Verrick paced ahead of the foreman, up the debris-littered path to the courtyard. The workmen were akeady tearing down the steel and plastic monument. The yellowed plastic cube which was John Preston's crypt had been yanked down and was resting on the frozen concrete among bits of trash and paper that had accumulated through the months. Within the translucent crypt the dried-up shape had shifted slightly to one side; the face was obscured by one pipe-stem arm flung across the glasses and nose.
"So that's John Preston," Verrick said thoughtfully.
The foreman squatted down and began examining the seams of the crypt. "It's a vacuum-seal, of course. If we open it here it'll pulverize to dust particles."
Verrick hesitated. "All right," he agreed reluctantly. "Take the whole works to the labs. Well open it there."
The work crews who had entered the building appeared with armloads of pamphlets, tapes, records, furniture, light fixtures, clothing, endless boxes of raw paper and printing supplies. "The whole place is a storeroom," one of them said to the foreman. "They have junk heaped to the ceiling. There seems to be a false wall and some kind of sub-surface meeting chamber. We're prying the wall out and getting in there."
This was the slatternly run-down headquarters from which the Society had operated. Verrick wandered into the building and found himself in the front office. The work crews were collecting everything in sight; only the bare water-stained walls, peeling and dirty, remained. The front office led onto a yellow hall. Verrick headed down it, past a dusty fly-specked photograph of John Preston still hanging among some rusty scarf hooks. "Don't forget this," he said to his foreman. "This picture here."
Beyond the picture a section of wall had been torn away. A crude false passage ran parallel to the hall; workmen were swarming around, hunting within the passage for additional concealed entrances.
"We suppose there's some kind of emergency exit," the foreman explained. "We're looking for it, now."
Verrick folded his arms and studied the photograph of John Preston. Preston had been a small man, like most cranks. He was a tiny withered leaf of a creature with prominent wrinkled ears pulled forward by his heavy hornrimmed glasses. There was a wild tangle of dark gray hair, rough and uncut and uncombed, and small, almost feminine lips. His stubbled chin was not prominent, but hard with determination. He had a crooked, lumpish nose, a jutting Adam's apple and unsightly neck protruded from his food-stained shirt.
It was Preston's eyes that attracted Verrick: harsh, blazing, two uncompromising steel-sharp orbs that smoldered behind his thick lenses. Preston glared out, furious with wrath, like an ancient prophet. One crabbed hand was up, fingers twisted with arthritis. It was almost a gesture of defiance, but more of _pointing_. The eyes glowered fiercely at Verrick; their aliveness startled him. Even behind the dust-thick glass of the photograph, the eyes were hot with fire and life and feverish excitement. Preston had been a bird-like cripple, a bent-over half-bund scholar, astronomer and linguist... _And what else?_
"We located the escape passage," Verrick's foreman said to him. "It leads to a cheap public sub-surface garage. They probably came and went in ordinary cars. This building seems to have been their only headquarters. They had some kind of clubs spread around Earth, but those met in private apartments and didn't number over two or three members apiece."
"Is everything loaded?" Verrick demanded.
"All ready to go: the crypt, the stuff we found in the building, and snap-models of the layout here, for future reference."
Verrick followed his foreman back to the construction ship. A few moments later they were on their way back to Farben.
Herb Moore appeared immediately, as the yellowed cube was being lowered to a lab work-table. "This is his crypt?" he demanded.
"I thought you were hooked into that Pellig machinery," Verrick said, taking off his greatcoat.
Moore ignored him and began rubbing dirt from the translucent shield that covered John Preston's withered body. "Get this stuff off," he ordered his technicians.
"It's old," one of them protested. "We have to work carefully or it'll turn to powder."
Moore grabbed a cutting tool and began severing the shield from its base. "Powder, hell. He probably built this thing to last a million years."
The shield split, brittle and dry with age, Moore clawed it away and dropped it to splinter against the floor. From the opened cube a cloud of stale musty air billowed out; swirls of dust danced in the faces of Moore and his assistants and made them cough and pull back. Around the worktable vidcameras ground away, taking a permanent record of the procedure and materials examined.
Moore impatiently signalled. Two MacMillans lifted the wizened body from the hollow cube and held it suspended at eye-level on their surface of magnetic force. Moore poked at the face of the body with a pointed probe; suddenly he grabbed the right arm and yanked. The arm came off without resistance and Moore stood holding it foolishly.
The body was a plastic dummy.
"See?" he shouted. "Imitation!" He threw the arm down violently; one of the MacMillans caught it before it reached the floor. Where the arm had been attached a hollow tear gaped. The body itself was hollow. Metal ribs supported it, careful struts placed by a master builder.