"Why did you come here?" Rita O'Neill's voice cracked out.
Verrick's shaggy eyebrows pulled together in a weary frown. He didn't know Rita, obviously. He turned to Cartwright for an explanation. "My niece," Cartwright said. He introduced them; Rita glared down at her coffee cup and said nothing. Her lips turned white and she clenched her fists until Verrick forgot her and went back to pyramiding his fingers and brooding.
"Of course," Verrick said finally, "I don't know what Benteley has told you. I suppose you understand my set-up, by now."
"What Benteley didn't tell me orally, Shaeffer scanned," Cartwright answered.
Verrick muttered obscurely. "Then you know all I have to say by way of explanation," he finished. He raised his massive head. "Can I take that for granted?"
"Yes," Cartwright said, nodding. "Of course."
"I don't intend to bring in anything to do with Herb Moore. As far as I'm concerned that's over and finished." Verrick struggled with his pocket and finally brought out a massive Hopper popper, which he propped upright against his water glass and napkin ring. "I can't very well kill Benteley here at the table. I'll wait until later on." A thought struck him. "I don't have to kill him here at the resort. He can go back with me and I'll kill him along the way, somewhere."
Shaeffer and Cartwright exchanged glances. Verrick took no interest; he gazed down broodingly at his popper and paw-like hands.
"That really doesn't matter," Cartwright said. "But we should clear up one thing. Benteley is presently under oath to me, as Quizmaster. He took a positional oath."
"But he can't," Verrick said. "He broke his oath to me; that negates his freedom to swear on."
"Well," Cartwright said, "I don't consider that he broke his oath to you."
"You betrayed him," Shaeffer explained to Verrick.
Verrick reflected at length. "I'm not conscious of any betrayal. I performed the duties and obligations due from my end."
"That's not even remotely true," Shaeffer contradicted.
There was a moment of silence.
Verrick grunted, retrieved his popper, examined it, and then shoved it back in his coat pocket. "We'll have to get advice on this," he murmured. "Let's try to get Judge Waring up here."
"Fine," Cartwright agreed. "That's satisfactory. Do you want to stay here during the interval?"
"Thanks," Verrick said appreciatively. "I'm tired as hell. What I need is a good long rest." He gazed around him. "This looks like just the place."
Judge Felix Waring was a grouchy, hunched-over old gnome in a moth-eaten black suit and old-fashioned hat, a heavy legal binder under his arm. He was the highest ranking jurist in the system; and he had a long white beard.
"I know who you are," he muttered curtly, glancing at Cartwright. "And you, too." He nodded briefly at Verrick. "You and your million gold dollars. That Pellig of yours was a fizzle, wasn't he?" He cackled gleefully. "I never liked the looks of him. I knew he was no good. He didn't have a muscle on him."
It was "morning" in the resort.
The ship that had brought Judge Waring had quietly disgorged MacMillan newsmachines, Hill officials, and more Directorate bureaucrats. Ipvic technicians came in their own ship; a steady stream of workmen moved through the sphincters into the balloon. Signalmen with tangled reels of communication wiring thrown over their shoulders wandered everywhere, stringing up ipvic tv equipment. Toward the middle of the day the resort became a hive of noisy, determined activity. Motion was everywhere, figures coming and going with serious expressions.
"How's this?" a Directorate official was saying to one of the ipvic men.
"Not big enough. What about that place over there?"
"That's the main game room."
"That'll be fine." Equipment was waved toward the entrance arch. "The acoustics will be blurred but that's okay, isn't it?"
"Not on your life. We want no boom; use something smaller."
"Don't step through the balloon," a soldier warned a work-crew setting up transmission equipment.
"It's pretty tough," a technician said. "This place was made to handle tourists and drunks."
The central game room had rapidly filled with men and women in bright-colored vacation clothes. They scampered and played and amused themselves as the technicians and work-crews laid out tables and machinery. MacMillans were everywhere, getting underfoot and blundering among the game-players.
Benteley stood off in a corner watching gloomily. The laughing, gaily-clad men and women sprinted back and forth; shuffleboard was a popular sport, as well as softball and soccer. No purely intellectual games were permitted. This was a psych resort: the games were therapeutic. A few feet from Benteley a purple-haired young girl was determinedly hunched over a three-dimensional color board, forming elaborate combinations of shapes, tones, and textures, with sharp little quivers of her hands.
"It's nice, here," Rita O'Neill said in his ear.
Benteley nodded.
"We still have some time, before they begin." Rita meditatively tossed a garishly-painted disc into the middle of a flock of robot ducks. One duck dutifully fell dead, and a score rang itself up on the marker. "You want to play something? Exercise and enjoy yourself? I'm dying to try some of these things out."
The two of them edged through the people and into the side gym, Rita leading the way. Directorate soldiers had stripped off their green uniforms and were tilting with magnetic fields, pressure beams, artificial high-grav steps, a variety of muscle-building equipment. In the center of the room an interested group was watching a Corpsman wrestle a MacMillan robot.
"Very healthful," Benteley said grimly.
"Oh, this is a wonderful place. Don't you think Leon has put on weight? He looks a lot better since the Pellig business ended."
"He'll probably live to be an old man," Benteley agreed.
Rita flushed. "There's no need for that. You can't really be loyal to anybody, can you? You're only thinking of yourself."
Benteley moved on; after a moment Rita followed. "Is Judge Waring going to make his decision with all these enthusiasts running around?" Benteley demanded. He had come to a raised web on which tanned figures were stretching out in the sun. "Everybody seems to be having a wonderful time. Even the MacMillans are enjoying themselves. The menace is past. The assassin has departed."
Rita happily took off her clothes, gave diem to a mechanical attendant, and tossed herself into one of the quavering webs. Low-grav counterfields released her body; she spun dizzily into the depths of the web and after a time emerged, breathless and flushed, clutching wildly for something to hang onto.
Benteley pulled her to a standing position. "Take it easy."
"I forgot about the low grav." Laughing and excited, she pulled away from him and aimed herself for a deeper section of the webs.. "Come on, it's fun! I never realized, before."
"I'll watch," Benteley said gloomily.
The woman's lithe body disappeared for a time. The web vibrated and bounced; eventually she emerged to the surface and lay stretched languidly out, the artificial sun gleaming from her perspiring back and shoulders. Closing her eyes, she yawned gratefully.
"It's good to rest," she murmured drowsily.
"This is the place for it," Benteley paraphrased Verrick. "If you have nothing else on your mind."
There was no answer. Rita was asleep.
Benteley stood with his hands in his pockets, surrounded by a blur of joyful color and motion. Laughing people romped by him; ceaseless games were started and restarted. In a corner Leon Cartwright was talking with a barrel-chested grim-faced man. Harry Tate, president of the Inter-Plan Visual Industries Corporation, was congratulating Cartwright on his successful bout with his first assassin. Benteley gazed at the two of them until they separated. Finally he turned away from the webs—and found himself facing Eleanor Stevens.