“I know,” Cartwright said. “He’s going to give me a choice: Death or an arrangement. What’s the arrangement, Reese?”
Verrick dug into his pocket and got out his power card. “A swap,” he said. “Your card for mine.”
“That’ll make you Quizmaster,” Cartwright observed.
“And you’ll be alive. You’ll come out of this with your life. I’ll come out of it with the Quizmastership. The stalemate is broken.”
“Then you’ll have Benteley,” Cartwright said.
“That’s right,” Verrick answered.
Cartwright turned to Shaeffer. “Will he kill me if I refuse?”
Shaeffer was silent for a long time. “Yes,” he said at last. “He’ll kill you. He won’t leave here without killing you or getting Benteley back. If you don’t trade, he’ll pop you and give up his card. If you trade, he’ll have Benteley again. Either way he gets one of you. He knows he can’t get both.”
“Which would he prefer?” Cartwright asked, interested.
“He’d prefer to have Benteley. He’s reached the point where he respects you; almost admires you. And he has to have Benteley under control again.”
Cartwright searched his pockets until he found his neat little package of power cards. He sorted through them slowly. “Is this legal?” he said to Judge Waring.
“You can trade,” Waring said gruffly. “People buy and sell them all the time.”
Benteley half-rose. Helplessly, he gestured. “Cartwright, are you really—”
“Sit down and keep still,” Judge Waring snapped sharply. “You have no say in this.”
Cartwright found the correct card, checked it with his other papers, and then laid it down on the table. “There’s mine.”
“You’re willing to trade?” Verrick demanded.
“That’s right.”
“You understand what it means? You’re legally giving up your position. With your card goes everything.”
“I know,” Cartwright said. “I understand the law.”
Verrick turned around and faced Benteley. The two of them gazed at each other a moment, neither of them speaking. Then Verrick grunted. “It’s a deal,” he said.
“Wait,” Benteley said thickly. “For God’s sake, Cartwright. You can’t just—” He broke off futilely. “You know what he’ll do to me, don’t you?”
Cartwright ignored him; he was returning the little package of p-cards to his coat pocket. “Go ahead,” he said mildly to Verrick. “Let’s get it over with so I can go downstairs and see how Rita is.”
“Fine,” Verrick said. He reached forward and picked up Cartwright’s power card. “Now I’m Quizmaster.”
Cartwright’s hand came out of his pocket. With his small, antiquated popper he shot Reese Verrick directly in the heart. Still clutching the power card, Verrick slid forward and lay with his face against the table, eyes wide, mouth slack with wonder.
“Is it legal?” Cartwright asked the old Judge.
“Yes,” Waring admitted admiringly. “Absolutely.” He nodded solemnly. “Of course, you lose that packet of cards you hold.”
“I realize that,” Cartwright said. He tossed them to the Judge. “I like it here at the resort. This is the first time I’ve ever been in a modern leisure resort. I look forward to sunning myself and taking it easy. I’m an old man and I’m tired.”
Benteley sagged. “He’s dead. It’s over.”
“Oh, yes,” Cartwright agreed. “It’s completely over.” He got to his feet. “Now we can go downstairs and see how Rita is.”
SEVENTEEN
Rita O’Neill was on her feet when Benteley and Cartwright entered the infirmary. “I’m all right,” she said huskily. “What happened?”
“Verrick’s dead,” Benteley said.
“Yes, we’re all finished,” Cartwright added. He went up to his niece and kissed the pale transparent halo of bandage that covered the woman’s face. “You’ve lost some of your hair.”
“It’ll grow back,” Rita said. “Is he really dead?” She sat down shakily on a glistening medical table. “You killed him and came out with your own life?”
“I came out with everything but my power card,” Cartwright said. He explained what had happened. “Now there’s no Quizmaster. The bottle will have to be twitched ahead. It’ll take a day or so to set the mechanism forward.” He grinned wryly. “I should know; I’ve worked on it often enough.”
“It’s hard to believe,” Rita said. “It seems as if there’s always been a Reese Verrick.”
“It’s true, though.” Cartwright searched his pockets and brought out a dog-eared black notebook. He made a check mark and then closed it. “Everything but Herb Moore. We still have that to worry about. The ship hasn’t yet landed, and the Pellig body is somewhere in the area, somewhere within a few hundred thousand miles of Flame Disc.” He hesitated, then continued, “As a matter of fact, the ipvic monitor says Moore reached Preston’s ship and entered it.”
There was an uneasy silence.
“Could he destroy our ship?” Rita asked.
“Easily,” Benteley said. “He could probably wreck a good part of the Disc at the same time.”
“Maybe John Preston will do something to him,” Rita suggested hopefully. But there was no conviction in her voice.
“Part of this depends on the next Quizmaster,” Benteley pointed out. “Some kind of a work-crew should go out and try to round up Moore. The body will be deteriorating; we might be able to destroy him some way.”
“Not after he reaches Preston,” Cartwright said gloomily.
“I think we should approach the next Quizmaster on it,” Benteley persisted. “Moore will be a menace to the system.”
“Very easily.”
“You think the next Quizmaster would agree?”
“I think so,” Cartwright said, “since you’re the next Quizmaster. That is, assuming you’ve still got the power card I gave you.”
Benteley had the card. Unbelievingly, he got it out and examined it. The card flipped from his trembling fingers; he pounced on it and swept it jerkily up. “You expect me to believe this?”
“No, not for another twenty-four hours.”
Benteley turned the card over and studied every part of it. The p-card looked like any other; the same shape and size and color and texture. “Where the hell did you get it?”
“The original owner thought five dollars was a good price for it, considering market conditions. I forget his name.”
“You’ve been carrying this around?”
“I’ve been carrying a whole packet of them around,” Cartwright answered. “I took a loss on that one, but I wanted to make sure you accepted it. And I wanted to be sure it was a legal, binding transaction. Not a loan but a regular sale, the kind that goes on constantly.”
“Give me awhile to adjust.” Benteley managed to get the p-card back in his pocket. “Is this really on the level?”
“Yes,” Cartwright said. “And don’t lose it.”
“Then you’ve worked out a system of prediction. The thing everyone has been looking for. That’s how you got to be Quizmaster.”
“No,” Cartwright answered. “I can’t predict the bottle twitches any better than the next person. I have no formula.”
“But you had this card! You know what’s coming up!”
“What I did,” Cartwright admitted, “was tamper with the bottle machinery. During my lifetime I’ve had access to Geneva a thousand times. I threw a bias on it. I can’t predict what it’s going to do, so I did the next best thing. I set up the numbers of the power cards I had been able to buy in such a way that they constitute the next nine twitches. If you think a minute, I got to be Quizmaster on my own power card, not one I bought. I should have worked that out better; that gives me away, if anybody stops long enough to analyze it.”
“How long ago did you begin to work on this?” Benteley asked.
“When I was a young man. Like everybody else I wanted a f
ool-proof system by which I could predict the twitches. I studied all the papers on bottle construction, Heisenberg’s Principle, everything related to randomness and prediction, cause and effect. I got in as a general repairman of electronic equipment. When I was in my late thirties I worked on the bottle at Geneva, down in the basic controls. By that time I realized I couldn’t predict it. Nobody could. The Uncertainty Principle is on the level; the movement of sub-atomic particles on which the twitches are based is beyond human calculation.”
“Was that ethical?” Benteley asked. “That kicks over the board, doesn’t it?”
“I played the game for years,” Cartwright said. “Most people go on playing the game all their lives. Then I began to realize the rules were set up so I couldn’t win. Who wants to play that kind of game? We’re betting against the house and the house always wins.”
“That’s true,” Benteley agreed. After a time he said, “No, there’s no point in playing a rigged game. But what’s your answer? What do you do when you discover the rules are fixed so you can’t win?”
“You do what I did: you draw up new rules and play by them. Rules by which all the players have the same odds. And the M-game doesn’t give those odds. The M-game, the whole classification system, is stacked against us. So I said to myself, what sort of rules would be better? I sat down and worked them out. From then on I played according to them, as if they were already in operation.” He added, “And I joined the Preston Society.”
“Why?”
“Because Preston saw through the rules, too. He wanted what I wanted, a game in which everybody stood a chance of winning. Not that I expect everybody to carry off the same size pot at the end of the game. I don’t intend to divide the winnings evenly. But I think everybody ought to have his chance at those winnings.”
“Then you knew you were Quizmaster even before they came to notify you.”
“I knew weeks in advance. I had set a bias on the bottle the last time I was called to repair it. Every time I worked on the mechanism I threw more and more bias on it. The last time I was able to get complete control. At this moment it doesn’t operate randomly at all. I have it stacked years ahead … But that won’t be necessary, now. I didn’t have anybody to take over, in those days.”
“What are you going to do now?” Benteley asked. “You can’t hold power again.”
“I told you: I’m going to retire. Rita and I never really stopped long enough to enjoy ourselves. I’m going to spend the rest of my days sunning myself in some modern leisure resort, like this one. I’m looking forward to sleeping, contemplating, printing leaflets.”
“What kind of leaflets?”
“On the Care and Maintenance of Electronic Equipment,” Cartwright said. “My specialty.”
Rita spoke up. “You have about twenty-four hours, Ted. Then you’re Quizmaster. You’re where my uncle was, a few days ago. You’ll be waiting for them to come and notify you. That was quite a moment, when we heard them landing on the roof. And Major Shaeffer came clumping in with his briefcase.”
“Shaeffer knows,” Cartwright said. “He and I worked it out before I gave you the card.”
“Then the Corps will respect the twitch?”
“The Corps will respect you,” Cartwright answered quietly. “It’s going to be a big job. Things are happening. The stars are opening up like roses. The Disc is out there … a halfway point. The whole system will be changing.”
“You think you can handle it?” Rita asked Benteley.
“I think so,” Benteley said thoughtfully. “I wanted to get where I could make changes; here I am.” Suddenly he laughed. “I’m probably the first person who was ever under oath to himself. I’m both protector and serf at the same time. I have the power of life and death over myself.”
“Maybe,” Cartwright said, impressed, “that might catch on. It sounds like a good kind of oath, to me. You take full responsibility for protection and for carrying out the work. You have nobody to answer to but your own—conscience. Is that the right word?”
Major Shaeffer hurried into the room. “That’s the right word, according to the history tapes. I have some information. The ipvic monitor’s in with a final report on Moore.”
It took a moment. Then Cartwright responded. “Final?”
“The ipvic people followed the synthetic body to the point it entered Preston’s ship; you knew that. The body entered the ship, spoke to Preston, and began investigating the machinery that maintains Preston. At that point the image cut off.”
“Cut off? Why?”
“According to the repair technicians, the synthetic body detonated itself. Moore, the ship, John Preston and his machinery, were blown to ash. A direct visual image has already been picked up by innerplan astronomers.”
“Did some kind of field trigger the bomb?” Benteley asked. “It was critical as hell.”
“The ipvic image showed Moore deliberately opening the synthetic’s chest and shorting the bomb-leads.” Shaeffer shrugged. “It would be interesting to find out why. I think we better send out a crew to see what can be put back together. I’m not really going to sleep easily until I know the whole story.”
“I agree,” Benteley said feelingly.
Cartwright got out his black notebook. With a look of bewilderment on his seamed, aged face, he checked off the last item and restored it to his pocket. “Well, that takes care of that. We can pick over the ash later; right now we have other things to think about.” He examined his heavy pocket watch. “The ship should be landing soon. If nothing has gone wrong, Groves will presently be setting down on Flame Disc.”
The Disc was big. Brake-jets screamed shrilly against the rising tug of gravity. Bits of metal paint flaked down around Groves; an indicator smashed and somewhere within the hull a feed-line snapped.
“We’re about to collapse,” Konklin grated.
Groves reached up and twisted off the overhead light. The control bubble faded into darkness.
“What the hell?” Konklin began. And then he saw it.
From the viewscreen a soft light radiated, a pale, cold fire that glittered in a moist sheen over the figures of Groves and Konklin and the control machinery. No stars, no black emptiness of space were visible: the immense face of the planet had silently expanded until it filled everything. Flame Disc lay directly below. The long flight was over.
“It’s eerie,” Konklin muttered.
“That’s what Preston saw.”
“What is it? Some kind of algae?”
“Not this far out. Probably radioactive minerals.”
“Where is Preston?” Konklin demanded. “I thought his ship was going to guide us all the way.”
Groves hesitated, then answered reluctantly. “My meters picked up a thermonuclear explosion about three hours ago. Distance from us, perhaps ten thousand miles. Since the explosion Preston’s ship hasn’t registered on my gravity indicators. Of course, with the Disc so close a tiny mass like that might not—”
Jereti came hurrying into the control bubble. He saw the screen and halted. “Good God. That’s it!”
“That’s our new home,” Konklin said. “Big, isn’t it?”
“What makes that funny light? It’s like a séance in here. You’re sure that’s a planet? Maybe it really is a space serpent. I don’t think I’d like to live around a space serpent, no matter how big it is.”
Konklin left the bubble and hurried down the vibrating thundering corridor. The silent green glow seemed to follow him as he descended a ramp and came out on the main level. At the door of his cabin, he halted and stood a moment listening.
Down in the cargo hold meager possessions were being assembled. Pots and pans, bedding, food, clothing, were being gathered up and collected. A murmur of excited, subdued voices filtered up over the din of the brake-jets. Gardner, the jet stoker, was starting to give out Dodds pressure suits and helmets.
Konklin pushed open the cabin door and entered.
Mary glanced quickly up. ?
??Are we there?”
“Not quite. All ready to step out on our new world?”
Mary indicated their heap of possessions. “I’m packing.”
Konklin laughed. “You and everybody else. Put that stuff back where it was; we’re going to live here until we get the subsurface domes set up.”
“Oh,” Mary said. Abashed, she began carrying things back to drawers and cupboards and storage lockers. “Aren’t we even going to set up some sort of—colony?”
“Sure we are.” Konklin slapped the bulkhead above his shoulder. “And this is it.”
Mary lingered with an armload of clothes. “Bill, it’ll be nice, won’t it? I mean, it’ll be hard at first but later on it won’t be so bad. We’ll be living mostly underground, the way they do on Uranus and Neptune. That’s pretty nice, isn’t it?”
“We’ll make out all right.” Konklin gently took the clothes from her arms. “Let’s get down to the cargo hold and find ourselves Dodds suits. Gardner’s giving them out.”
Janet Sibley greeted them, nervous and fluttering with excitement. “I can’t get into mine,” she gasped. “It’s too small!”
Konklin helped her zip the heavy material. “Remember for God’s sake, when you’re outside be careful and don’t trip. These are the old type suits. You can puncture them on sharp rocks and be dead in a second.”
“Who gets to step out first?” Mary asked, as she slowly zipped up her bulky suit. “Captain Groves?”
“Whoever’s closest to the hatch.”
“Maybe it’ll be me,” Jereti said, coming into the hold and grabbing up his suit. “Maybe I’ll be the first human being to set foot on Flame Disc.”
They were still fastening their suits and talking together in small nervous groups when the landing sirens shrieked into life. “Grab hold!” Konklin shouted above the wailing din. “Hang on to something and get your suits going!”
The ship struck with a roar that tossed them about like dry leaves. Supplies and possessions pitched everywhere, as the hull twisted and bucked violently. The brake-jets moaned and fought to slow the rocking ship as it plowed hideously into the ice-hard surface of the planet. The lights flickered and faded out. In the blackness the thunder of the jets and the ear-splitting squeal of metal against rock deafened and scattered passengers into paralysis.