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...
And then he saw him.
For the first time in his life Moore was filled with awe. Here was something beyond anything he had ever known or done. He backed away a few steps, his courage draining. He felt a humbleness and he looked away.
"Welcome," the old man said gently. "Don't be afraid.
I'm only another human being like yourself. I am John Preston."
He was encased in a web of fragile wires, a cage of glittering machinery whose constant whirr vibrated through the sphere. He seemed to stand within a column of some volatile substance.
Moore had never seen flesh so ancient. It was clear that John Preston could live only in the bath of nourishing fluid that encased him; he could not survive outside. What remained of him was as fragile as a withered leaf—just cracked brownish flesh on brittle stalks of bone. Disappointment welled up in Moore; bitter despair choked his throat and brought tears to his eyes. What he had come for, the thing on which his life depended, was a relic, not a man at all.
This creature was John Preston, suspended in a nourishing bath of salt solution; fed and maintained by a vast sphere of intricate machinery...
"I am very old," John Preston mumbled, his voice mechanically amplified by a bank of speakers above him, "and I am almost completely deaf and paralysed." The paper-thin lips twisted in what might have been an apologetic smile. "I can't really see you clearly."
"So you're Preston? It's hard to believe."
The ancient head, supported by a hoop of struts, nodded faintly. The old man seemed to be watching Moore intently with two deep-sunk orbs that glowed like fires within the bulging skull beneath grey, spicier-web hair. It was some while before the blackened teeth moved and words came again.
"It has been a long wait." The eyes gleamed, but Moore realized that there was no sight there. One by one the old man's senses had deteriorated and left him. "Many, many long days alone."
"How long?" Moore asked curiously.
His question hadn't been heard, so he made his own computation. John Preston's death had been reported a century and a half ago. And he had already lived eighty-seven years before that... Preston was already old.
Preston had become a spindly old man before he had left Earth to head out to deep space. He was tottering before he had entered the nourishing bath.
"What is it?" Moore demanded avidly. "This bath, all this machinery! What's the principle?"
After a moment Preston answered. "I want to tell you about Flame Disc—that's what I consider important."
To hell with Flame Disc, Moore thought savagely. "How long have you been preserved by this equipment?" he demanded.
"You must hear me out," Preston said stubbornly. "I have to tell you about the Disc."
Moore cursed inwardly. He would have to listen, though each minute the life-fluid dripped from the synthetic body. "Can I examine your machinery?" he pressed.
"Yes, but listen to me now; I may not live much longer."
Moore grabbed a tool from a wall and bored rapidly into the bank of controls. While he worked, the old man's whisper continued.
"I have to remain here," Preston said. "I don't dare leave. If I returned to Earth I should be destroyed. How much you know of the situation I can only guess. To some, my search for the tenth planet has seemed a lunatic scheme. The search has been long... and it has brought me nothing."
Moore glanced up. "You found Flame Disc, didn't you?"
"I didn't labour for anything of personal value. The Disc isn't my property; I'm only a guardian waiting until the real owners come. It was for them that I worked." His chest rose and fell with exhaustion. Then energy briefly surged through the withered veins. "All my life I've struggled to find a way for them so that they could keep on moving. If they stop, it's the end of the race. They can't stagnate and die. Death or migration... .
Moore was intent only on the circuits spread out before him. His eyes feverish, his fingers flying, he burrowed into the humming mechanism.
"You had better disappear," Leon Cartwright said to Benteley. "I'll talk to Verrick."
"He might as well stay here," Shaeffer said to Cartwright, "he can't leave the place and Verrick knows he's here."
"Verrick can just walk in?" Benteley said helplessly.