The Grand Wheel

Cadence stayed close behind Scarne, hanging on to his shoulder and staring wide-eyed at the alien. ‘Sorry if I was too familiar,’ Scarne said. ‘Tell me, Pendragon, what do you know about luck?’

‘Ah, luck!’ hissed Pendragon. ‘That is what I do not have.’

‘Tell me about it,’ Scarne said reasonably. ‘How do people use it where you come from?’

Pendragon flapped his extremities, a gesture conveying impatience. ‘You’re beginning to sound like Marguerite Dom. He pesters me sick on the subject.’ He paused, adding thoughtfully: ‘There, now, is a being who has luck. Plenty of it.’

‘He says he knows how to propitiate Lady.’

‘Lady?’

‘The goddess of luck.’

Pendragon paused again. ‘I don’t believe in any gods or goddesses. You’d better get out of here. Something tells me you’re trespassers.’

The creature released the stick-mike and retreated to the back of the tank. Cadence, who had heard of the alien but never seen him before, nudged Scarne urgently. ‘Go on, ask it!’ she whispered hoarsely. ‘It will know!’

Scarne decided he was wasting his time. He turned his back on the tank, took Cadence by the hand and led her away.

In the distance, the hum of a machine started up. They came to a series of signposts, all of them cryptic: MARK II STORE; EARMARKED CYTUS COMPONENTS; IDENTIFICATION DATA. Scarne lingered at the last, and might have followed it if he had not noticed the last of the signs, which bore a script written in randomatic symbols only. It pointed in the direction from which the machine hum emanated.

He turned to Cadence. ‘Look, you can go back if you like, and put yourself in the clear. I can take it from now on.’

‘No,’ she said, pale-faced. ‘We’ll stick together.’

‘Okay.’ Forcing himself not to break into a run, Scarne led the way.

The hum grew louder, and then seemed to subside somewhat. Without warning Scarne found, he believed, what he was looking for. They were suddenly on the threshold of a vault slightly different from those they had been passing through. In the centre of the vault several men were deep in conversation around a table, a computation unit in front of each. He recognized one of them as the tall negro who was a member of the mathematical cadre; the faces of the others were indistinct. The table was littered with papers.

The whole of the long wall behind them comprised a bank of machinery: a huge instrument panel, and a battery of smaller pieces of apparatus. It was one of these that was giving off the hum.

As soon as he spotted the scene Scarne drew Cadence into the cover of a pillar. He was not sure if one of the attendants standing at the instrument panel had seen him.

He peeped out. The negro rose and walked to the bank of instruments, saying something to the attendant. The latter began adjusting settings.

There was little doubt in Scarne’s mind that this was where the work on the luck equations was being done. Now was the time to withdraw, he told himself. He obviously couldn’t gain any definite data himself, for the moment. But he could tell the Legitimacy where to stage their raid, or whatever. The question was, could he calm Cadence’s doubts about him?

He was about to creep away when a bland computer voice spoke out of the air, seemingly right into his ear.

‘You are in a restricted area. Do you have proper authorization?’

‘Yes,’ Scarne muttered.

‘State it.’

Scarne fumbled in his mind for something to say. ‘You answer the description of no authorized person,’ the computer voice resumed. ‘Please do not move.’

Someone stepped into Scarne’s line of view. It was the black mathematician. The two of them stared at one another for some moments.

Scarne turned to Cadence. ‘Stay here. I’m going to talk to that man.’

He went forward. But before he had taken as much as a step unconsciousness came down on him like a curtain.

Mocking laughter. ‘Here he comes again. What a clown.’

Scarne returned to awareness for the third time. Dom’s method of interrogation was swift, relatively painless (though anything but pleasant), but the mind did tend to close down every few minutes or so.

He was strapped to a low table. The helmet-like cap on his skull, attached by wires to a nearby apparatus, reminded him of the skull-cap of an identity machine. Whenever Dom asked a question it delivered a brain charge, making it impossible for Scarne either to lie or to withhold. The sensation was as if his brain was being sucked out through a straw.

As well as Dom and two white-gowned assistants, Cadence was in the room. But as far as he knew she had not been on the interrogation-table. She stood pressed against the wall, ashen-faced.

‘See how easily gulled you are, my dear?’ Dom told her. He turned back to Scarne. ‘I confess to disappointment,’ he said petulantly. ‘I was coming to look on you as a valuable partner. Now it transpires you are a spy and a cheat! How could you do this to me, Cheyne?’