"You sound like a Government fortune-teller."
"There was an atmosphere of excitement and fear. And some anger."
"Creditors, perhaps."
"One thought was passed on to me. You might file it away. Somebody in that group was pleasantly contemplating you lying dead with a crushed-in skull."
In the courtyard outside the Society building Rita O'Neill stood watching the unit rising into the mid-morning sky. One by one the elements disappeared in the direction of Batavia.
She walked in a circle, suddenly lost. The great moment had come and gone.
Against the Society building stood the small crypt in which the remains of John Preston lay. She could see his dark, ill-formed body suspended within the yellowed, fly-specked plasti-cube, hands folded over his bird-like chest, eyes shut, glasses eternally superfluous. The crypt was dusty; trash and debris were littered about it. Nobody came to see Preston's remains. A forgotten, lonely monument, housing a dismal shape of clay.
Half a mile away the fleet of archaic cars was unloading its passengers. The battered ore freighter was jammed tight on the launcher; the people were clumsily climbing the narrow metal ramp into the unfamiliar hull.
The fanatics were setting out to locate and claim the mythical tenth planet of the Sol System. The legendary Flame Disc, John Preston's fabulous world beyond the known universe.
Chapter III
Before Cartwright reached the Directorate buildings at Batavia the news was out. He sat fixedly watching the television screen as the high-speed intercon rocket hurtled across the South Pacific sky. Below them spread the blue ocean and endless black dots, conglomerations of metal and plastic houseboats on which Asiatic families lived. Fragile platforms stretched from Hawaii to Ceylon.