Philip Dick - World of Chance

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.

"Of course," Cartwright said.

"Do you mind being present?" Shaeffer asked Benteley. "It may be—difficult."

"I'll stay," Benteley replied.

Verrick and his small group pushed slowly through the door. They removed their suits and glanced cautiously around.

Cartwright greeted Verrick and the two of them shook hands. "A cup of coffee?"

"Thanks," Verrick answered. "You know that Pellig has left?"

Cartwright nodded. "He's heading for John Preston's ship."

The others followed them as they entered the dining-room. Benteley seated himself beside Rita O'Neill at the far end of a table; Verrick saw him but gave merely a momentary flicker of recognition. Shaeffer, the other Corpsmen and Directorate officials, took seats in the back­ground.

"I suppose he'll find it," Verrick murmured. "When I left Chemie he was already thirty-nine astronomical units out; I checked with the ipvic monitor." He accepted black coffee and sipped it with relief. "A devil of a lot has happened today."

"What would Moore do if he got hold of Preston's material?" Cartwright asked. "You know him better than I do."

"It's hard to say. Moore was always a lone wolf. I provided him with materials and he worked on his own on his projects. He's brilliant. He engineered the whole Pellig project."

Eleanor Stevens had come into the room. She stood nervous and uncertain, her thin hands clasped tightly together. After a moment of indecision she slipped into a seat in a recess and watched wide-eyed, a demure and terrified shape half lost in shadow.

"I wondered where you'd gone," Verrick called to her. "You raced me by a—" he examined his watch—"only a few minutes."

"Will Moore return to you if he gets what he wants?" Cartwright asked. "His oath... ?"

"He never worried about that sort of thing." Verrick's glance strayed. "Oaths don't seem as important as they once did."