Washington ? The Supreme Court pulsed with retirement speculation Friday, with rumors focusing first on the ailing chief justice, then the oldest member, and even the tiniest justice.

The buzz came one week after Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s decision to step down, giving the court its first vacancy in more than a decade.

The 80-year-old chief, William H. Rehnquist, has thyroid cancer. And though he’s been working full-time at the court, he’s noticeably frailer and it’s widely thought he will step down.

Many court observers believed that because of O’Connor’s announcement he would wait until this week to make the announcement. Speculation intensified as the week wore on.

The press room at the Supreme Court was filled, a rarity during a time when the court is not in session. And the rumors flew.

Chief Justice William Rehnquist departs his home in Arlington, Va., on Wednesday as speculation abounds on whether he will announce his retirement.

E-mails to reporters from various groups speculated when Rehnquist would make an announcement, and also speculated about other possibilities.

Justice John Paul Stevens, who is 85 and healthy, may be going, the speculation went. Stevens is the court’s liberal leader and would seem an unlikely prospect with a Republican in the White House and GOP-controlled Senate.

Next came hints that the real retirement would be that of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the petite opera lover President Clinton put on the bench in 1993.

Supreme Court officials had no news for reporters about Rehnquist, Stevens or Ginsburg.

But that didn’t keep the reporters from asking. Every move in and out of the public information office was tracked. Routine paperwork deliveries held prospects of being a retirement letter for the president.

“Bizarre,” said David Garrow, a Supreme Court historian at Emory University. “Feeding frenzy is overused, but it certainly fits.”

Rehnquist, a widower who lives alone, repeatedly refuses to answer questions about his future.

“I would bet Rehnquist is thinking it would be demeaning to the office of chief justice to put out a press release saying ‘I’m not retiring this summer,”‘ Garrow said.