"How close would the body have had to be?" Cartwright asked.
"It got to within three miles of you. Two miles closer and Verrick would now be dominating the known system."
"No actual contact was necessary?"
"I had time for only a quick look at the wiring, but a standard proximity mechanism tuned to your brain pattern was wired into the circuit. And then there's the power of the bomb itself. The law specifies no weapon a man can't carry in one hand. The bomb was a regulation H-grenade from the last war."
"The bomb is." Cartwright reminded him.
"Everything depended on Pellig?" Rita asked.
"There was a second synthetic body. It's about half complete. Nobody at Chemie expected total disorganisation of the Corps; they got more than they hoped for. But Moore is out of the picture. The second body will never go into operation; only Moore can bring it to its final stages. He kept everybody else down to lower levels—and Verrick knows that."
"What happens when Moore reaches Preston?" Rita asked. "Then Moore will be back in the picture again."
"I didn't know about Preston," Benteley admitted. "I destroyed Moore's body so that he couldn't leave the synthetic. If Preston is going to help him he'll have to work fast. The synthetic won't last long in deep space."
"Why didn't you want him to kill me?" Cartwright inquired.
"I didn't care if he killed you. I wasn't thinking about you."
"That's not quite true," Shaeffer said. "The thought was there. When you made your psychological break you automatically switched against Verrick's strategy. You acted as an impeding agent semi-voluntarily."
Benteley wasn't listening. "I was tricked from the beginning," he said. "All of them were mixed up in it; Verrick, Moore, Eleanor Stevens. Wakeman tried to warn me. I came to the Directorate to get away from rottenness. I found myself doing its work; Verrick gave orders, I followed them."
"You have to have faith in yourself," Rita O'Neill said.
"I stood the rottenness as long as I could, then I rebelled. I think Verrick broke his oath to me... I think I was released. But maybe I'm wrong, and a felon."
"If you are," Shaeffer pointed out, "you can be shot on sight."
"A point came when the whole thing sickened me so much that I couldn't work with it any more, even if it means being hunted down and shot."
"That may happen," Cartwright said. "You say Verrick knew about the bomb?"
"That's right."
Cartwright reflected. "A protector isn't supposed to send a serf to his death. You didn't know Verrick had been deposed when you took your oath?"
"No. But they knew."
Cartwright rubbed his grizzed jaw with the back of his hand. "Well, possibly you have a case. You're an interesting person, Benteley. What are you going to do now? Are you going to take a fealty oath again?"
"I don't think so," Benteley said. "A man shouldn't become another man's serf."
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.