"Verrick quacked!" the machines cried. "Prestonite bottled to One! A twitch of the bottle this morning at nine-thirty Batavia time! Verrrrrick quaaaaaacked!"
The power switch had come, the event the harbingers had expected. Verrick had been switched from the number One position; he was no longer Quizmaster. He had plunged to the bottom, out of the Directorate completely.
And Benteley had sworn an oath to him.
It was too late to turn back. He was on his way to the A.G. Chemie Hill. All of them were caught up together in the rush of events that was shivering through the nine-planet system like a winter storm.
Chapter II
Early in the morning Leon Cartwright drove carefully along the narrow, twisting streets in his ancient '82 Chevrolet. As usual, he wore an outmoded but immaculate suit and a shapeless hat was crushed against his head. Everything about him breathed obsolescence and age; he was perhaps sixty, a lean, sinewy man, tall and straight but small-boned, with mild blue eyes and liver-spotted wrists. His arms were thin but strong and wiry. He had an almost gentle expression on his gaunt face.
In the back seat lay heaps of mailing-tapes ready to be sent out. The floor sagged under heavy bundles of metal-foil to be imprinted and franked. An old raincoat was in the corner, together with a lunchbox and a number of discarded overshoes.
The buildings on both sides of Cartwright were old and faded, peeling things with dusty windows and drab neon signs. Relics of the last century, like himself and his car. Drab men in faded clothing, eyes blank and unfriendly, lounged in doorways. Dumpy middle-aged women in shapeless coats dragged rickety shopping carts into dark stores, to pick fretfully over the stale food to be lugged back to their restless families.