STAR EAGLE HAD BEEN AS ACCOMMODATING AS
possible under the circumstances. The ship had a host of
maintenance robots, most of which were quite specialized and of no
practical use to the current crew, but a few could be turned into
convenience mechanisms in a pinch. One, a spindly thing with a
clamp and tray, was most useful: It was able to bring some blankets
and other such luxuries from the remains of the old ship, as well
as some more important items. An old casing with a medium-sized
hole in the top became a portable toilet; it was smelly and not
really built for human comfort and convenience, but it worked for
now—if their little robot took it out at least every twelve
hours or so to clean and sanitize it.
Water was no problem; the huge holding tanks on the ship
contained all that was needed and could create more out of
by-products if need be, all distilled pure. Food was much more
critical; Star Eagle had to improvise with what was handy, and the
result was a large cube of sickly green with the consistency of
cake icing and a taste that was a cross between dead grass and
library paste. It went down, however, did not upset, and provided
the minimum necessary to sustain them. Later they could have more
amenities; now they had to move, which meant that Star Eagle had to
learn how to drive the ship. The information was there, but it was
far more complicated than what a computer programmed and designed
to run an interplanetary freighter was used to. The sheer bulk of
data was the problem. All, even Star Eagle, knew their clock was
ticking, however. Even now Master System would be closing in on
them with heavily armed ships that knew exactly what they were up
against.
The big ship was hardly defenseless; it had an enormous range of
real and potential weapons at its disposal, suggesting that in the
old days Master System was not at all confident of what it would
find out in the farther reaches of space even though it knew where
it was going and had scouted the routes. Had there been resistance?
Had there been opposing interstellar civilizations? There was no
way to know.
It took more than three days to power up the systems and check
them out as best the computer could. Communication with the
computer pilot was still awkward, however. It could flash a message
on the bridge screens to let the humans know that it wanted to
talk, but only the helmet radios allowed good two-way conversation.
Still, it was now confident that it could at least get them out of
there—but to where?
“Initially it doesn’t matter,” Hawks told it.
“Just—away. Far away, and off the beaten track, as it
were.”
“The fact that the existing star charts are nine centuries
old doesn’t matter much,” Reba Koll assured them.
“There is some shift, but not a lot and nothing that
can’t easily be allowed for.” She worked with Star
Eagle, who had figured out how to put star charts and grids up on
the bridge screens without much trouble.
“I ain’t got time to explain how this drive
works,” she told them, “if, of course, I knew how it
did anyways. Best idea I can give you is if you take this here
piece of cloth and make it hump up—curve. That’s how space
is, really. Shortest distance ain’t across the top but
straight through. You punch a hole here and you come out there.
Course there’s lotsa other shit involved. There’s black
holes and gravity curvatures and all the rest. Don’t look at
me that way—I only fly ’em, I don’t hav’ta
understand ’em. Net result is you tell it you wanta go
there and if figures the route and trajectory and gets you
there in days or weeks instead of years or centuries like it would
the usual way. You let the pilot do the figures and time the jumps
and energy and speed. Now, I suggested some routes to Star Eagle,
but he’s got reservations.”
“The region she suggests is not well charted,” the
pilot explained. “Oh, the stars are charted well enough, but
there’s no detail. It was not part of the pattern of
resettlement. Also, to get there we will have to make a large
number of punches and this will intersect for the first half of the
journey with the routings to and from the remote colonies. We must
cross known shipping lanes.”
“Bah! That’s no worry!” Koll snorted.
“The odds of actually hitting within sensor range of any ship
is practically nil, but even if we did we could deal with those
freighters and supply ships. There’s little or no armament on
them. What’s to fight when you’re in Master
System’s territory?”
“I was thinking more of monitors and navigational
stations,” Star Eagle responded. “They could chart us
without us even knowing about it. We could be traced. This
interstellar punching is all straight-line routing. To change
direction, course, or speed you have to come out, readjust, then
punch in again. The amount of energy expended on the punch
determines how far you go before you come out again. Just measure
the energy level at the punch and note the course, direction, and
speed, and it wouldn’t take a computer to figure the
destination.”
“You’re not devious enough, pilot!” Koll told
it. “I’ll explain misdirection to you. A series of
small punches whenever we’re in a dangerous area. Each small
punch increases the number of possible courses, directions, and
speeds. Not even Master System has the resources to track down that
many variables.”
“That will take time, though,” the computer pointed
out. “There will be frequent recharges necessary. If we took
a more or less direct route to the region you suggest it would take
twenty-seven standard days. To do as you suggest would take three
to five times as long.”
“But we’d get there,” she noted. “And
we’d get there unknown and undetected. Maybe we’ll even
have this stinkhole livable by then. Plot your course with the
minimum number of exponential variables to get us there and get any
possible snoopers hopelessly lost and confused. If we don’t
get away clean, what difference did all this make?”
They took a vote—Sabatini excepted—and all agreed to
her plan.
“My energy is sufficient,” Star Eagle told them.
“Let’s do it.”
The vibrations, which had been growing throughout their tenure
on the big vessel, grew much stronger now, more intense. The
throbbing and pulsing sensation that at first had been difficult to
get used to but had become merely background noise was in the
background no longer.
“Everybody just lie on the floor as comfortably as you can
and grab hold of something solid—a chair or something like
that,” Koll instructed. “Once we’re completely up
to speed and out we’ll be able to regain some
movement.”
Forty thousand kilometers away and on station, Arnold Nagy
jumped in his seat and then sat up straight. “She’s
moving, Doc! They’re underway!”
“Strap in!” Clayben shouted back from below.
“Punch in the codes and maintain distance and monitoring! We
don’t want to lose them!”
The great ship came to life on the outside, as well. Red and
green lights flashed on along the length and breadth of the ship,
and in the rear huge engines flared into brilliance.
Quite slowly at first, but very clearly, the big ship turned and
began to pull away from its siblings in orbit around Jupiter. On
the bridge, loose objects floated toward the back wall and the
vibration grew intense, joined now by yet another strange
sound.
“Thunder,” Cloud Dancer whispered. “It sounds
like the approach of a great storm across the prairie. This is
truly a mighty ship. Does it have a name?”
“None that means anything anymore, I suspect,” her
husband replied.
“Then it should be the Thunder,” she said.
“That is the awe that it inspires, and that is its sound and
being, its soul.”
“What about it, everyone? Star Eagle? Shall this ship
henceforth be the Thunder?”
“It is an appropriate and mighty name,” China
responded.
“And easy to remember,” Chow Dai added.
The computer was agreeable. “Then we are the
Thunder. I think it is a good name.”
“I think I’m gonna puke,” Carlo Sabatini
said.
For something so huge, the ship’s acceleration rate was
startling. Within two hours it had cleared the grip of mighty
Jupiter and was heading in a great arc that would take it first
away, then back toward the mighty giant at tremendous speed. It
would use this combination of speed and the gravity of the mighty
planet to build up massive acceleration very quickly.
As the speed grew, the more pronounced the sounds of thunder
became, as if just outside and all around them raged a great
storm.
For those on the bridge, the long hours of getting underway and
the limitations it placed on them was simultaneously exciting,
somewhat frightening, and extremely boring. Finally, however, the
rate smoothed out, and they could move about easily again. But some
of the vibration and noise remained, giving them a constant feeling
of motion, even though inside the ship all was calm and still.
“We’re being followed,” Star Eagle reported.
“A single ship. Small. Unfamiliar design. I have searched all
database patterns and can find nothing close to it. Great power. It
might well be interstellar capable.”
Reba Roll frowned. “Master System? A Val?”
“It is somewhat like their ships, but it is not one of
them. Besides, my sensors show a life-support system activated
aboard it. Not certain, but it is probably a rogue ship, like
us.”
China thought that over. “It’s possible that
Melchior had something in reserve. Those fighters it tried to use
against us were pretty impressive overall and also of a unique
design. They were using a sister ship of our old ship to give
chase. Star of Islam, I believe. Could the Star
have carried it?”
“Not inside,” the pilot told her, “but
piggybacked on the exterior it would be no problem at all. It
contains weapons systems that might be close to what their fighters
had, but those fighters were not manned. Any action
recommended?”
China talked it over with Reba Koll and the others.
“No,” she finally replied. “If we hail it,
they’ll know we know about them and possibly make it harder
for us to keep track of them. If we slow to bring them in range of
our weapons it will also cause great delay in us getting out of
here, which is the first priority. Are you certain there is only
one? No more?”
“Yes. One.”
“Then let it follow. If it gets within weapons range, hail
it and order it to stand down and be boarded or destroy it. If it
attacks, defend. Otherwise, do nothing until we are well away from
this stellar system. Even if they are of Melchior they are in an
illegal ship engaged in prohibited activity. My guess is that they
did not think we could do what we have done, but now that we have
they want what we want but for themselves. We will deal with them
when we can.”
“Acknowledged. I am now receiving faint stop orders on
both superspace and subspace command frequencies. Master System
knows about the Thunder.”
“To be expected,” Raven commented.
“We’re hotter than a burial fire right now.
What’s the odds of us being intercepted by any force that
could do us any real harm?”
“Very slim. Negligible. They might get a ship in before I
can make the punch but nothing that could handle these systems.
They really don’t make weapons ships like that. A Val ship
would have the most firepower, and that would be little more than
that of the fighters Melchior sent against us. The security
computer informs me that this ship is able to take virtually any
known system of its own day, and they were far more heavily armed
then than now. Our worst enemy would be another ship like this one,
and it is unlikely that such would be set against us. Too easy to
avoid. Security believes it most likely that Master System will
order ships constructed specifically to exploit our weaknesses and
take us out, but that will take considerable time. If we can get
lost the first time, and if we are careful, it is unlikely even
they will find us when they can surprise us and take us.”
“Then they won’t try to take us aboard,” Raven
surmised. “We’re no real threat or problem cooped up in
this monster. If they can’t trace us now, they’ll put
out all the alarms and wait for us to move.”
Hawks sighed. “Yeah. If we know where three of
the rings are, good old Master System knows where all of them are,
I bet, and has a pretty good eye out for them. Unlike those
bastards from Melchior back there, it doesn’t really have to
chase us. It just has to wait, and we must come to them.”
“Infinite patience is one of the hallmarks of
computers,” China noted darkly.
Hawks scratched his chin. “Don’t get too downcast.
Maybe it is impossible. So is what we have done so
far.”
A few hours later the pilot reported, “I have attained
sufficient speed for a punch and we are sufficiently clear of
Jupiter’s gravitational pull that I can compensate for it.
There should not be any untoward effects, but I cannot predict for
certain, never having done it before.”
“Won’t be nothin’,” Reba Koll assured
them. “Might sound like the whole ship’s breakin’
apart, but don’t let that worry you none. Once it’s
done, it’ll be still and quiet as death until we come out the
other side. You might get some funny feelings inside or even some
hallucinations, but they’ll only last a real short while, and
it’s a good idea to sit or lie down ’cause most
everybody gets a little dizzy, but it all passes pretty fast and
each time you do it the effects will be less and less. Just relax
and don’t let it scare you.”
They waited, nervous in spite of Koll’s assurances, and
the punch came.
First there was tremendous vibration that continued to build
with a supporting roaring sound until it seemed to engulf them. At
that moment the lights blinked and the sound seemed to fade as if
swallowed up in some huge drain; the vibration, too, settled down
to a level far lower than that produced by the regular space drive.
There was a wave of dizziness, and some nausea, and each one of
them found his or her attention fixed on something—an object,
a reflection, even another person—unable to tear away that
gaze. Even China, who could see nothing, appeared to be staring at
something specific in her world of darkness.
Hawks stared involuntarily at the blind girl and she seemed to
shimmer, taking on a wraithlike appearance of stunning beauty. She
seemed to float up and come toward him, then change again into a
horrible, skeletal monster, jaws open, coming for him—
He screamed, and suddenly everything was back to normal. He
found himself sweating and shaken, breathing hard, and it took a
few moments for him to get hold of himself and look around and
reaffirm reality. The others had varying degrees of reaction, but
all of them clearly had seen something, something uniquely
their own. Sabatini looked scared to death, and the Chows were
shivering. Sooner or later, Hawks decided, he would find out what
each had seen, but for now he just noted the differences. Of them
all, Raven and Warlock looked the least affected and the least
concerned.
The thunder was quiet now; there was nothing but a very low
steady vibration through the deck and walls, quite distant. None of
them, except perhaps Koll, understood what had just happened, but
Hawks grasped at least the basics. Somehow, they were no longer in
the universe at all. Somehow, now, they were in another medium,
somewhere else, traveling across a ripple in space-time by
the shortest available route.
It was a frightening, awesome concept, yet it meant one thing
above all.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Raven commented aloud
to no one in particular. “We actually got away.”
Spanning hundreds, perhaps thousands, of light-years by the
punch method was incredible, but it still took time.
Some of that time was spent in attaining a more livable,
civilized environment. Star Eagle now had a reasonable command of
the ship’s systems and how they worked. The maintenance
computer subsystem was employed creating and then using an army of
spindly robots that were able to turn chambers in the bow of the
Thunder into reasonably private rooms. Much of the old
ship was dismantled, its essential parts modified and duplicated by
the Thunder’s transmuters. A square meter of
passenger-lounge carpeting was sufficient for the transmuters to
create a carpeted floor for the new rooms and for the bridge. The
old ship’s toilets were modified and duplicated, as well, and
tied into new piping using the vast support system of the
Thunder. The old ship’s transmuter-driven automated
galley was reinstalled with some modifications, allowing the old
menus to be used. The bridge chairs were replaced with copies of
the more practical and comfortable passenger lounge chairs. Since
the Thunder wasted nothing and recycled everything, even a
shower chamber was possible, although in the zero gravity it had to
be a more or less sealed system and strictly a one-at-a-time
affair.
Of equal importance were the interfaces that had to be designed
and installed between the passengers and the pilot and master of
the Thunder, a central amplifier and communications system
that might eventually extend to the whole of the ship; a way of
specifying human-supplied designs for the transmuters to work with,
to create things like furnishings for the new cabins and some basic
clothing. The women chose robes with soft linings and rope ties;
the men got flimsy versions of Sabatini’s usual shirt and
pants. Only Manka Warlock broke the pattern by insisting on the
shirt and pants for herself.
China and Reba Koll worked on installing the interface helmets
on the bridge. China was anxious to see if they would work here as
on the old, smaller ship. The idea of interfacing with Star Eagle
and becoming one with this ship excited her.
Some tubular lighting was arranged, but it was still kept low
and indirect. In normal space there was no power problem, but
during a punch the ship was the only reality; there was nothing at
all outside, according to the pilot. Nothing. That meant that all
transmuting—all power consumption—was accomplished
using materials within the ship, and particularly with all the
modifications and construction going on it was a drain. There was a
consensus not to start cannibalizing the ship for luxuries until
they knew their limits and understood their new environment.
They also began exploring the ship.
There were over twenty thousand pods in the transport bay. There
had been a hundred ships like this one, and an Earth population of
possibly six billion, when the grand project had begun. That meant
that each ship had made hundreds of round trips over the two or
more centuries of interstellar colonization. The time frame was not
clear in the records, but the evidence here was clear enough. The
Thunder was a veteran indeed. Slave ship, Hawks couldn’t help thinking.
“How many worlds are charted as being part of the
settlement?” he asked Star Eagle.
“Four hundred and forty-seven,” was the reply.
“But it might not be complete. The region spans over forty
thousand light-years.”
He tried doing some quick math in his head. That was only about
thirteen or fourteen million a world!
“The initial populations were not large,” the
computer agreed. “Nor was Mars, the prototype, if you
remember. There are almost two hundred million Martians now, and
they have a relatively slow birth rate. You forget that Earth was
limited in its reproductive rates and carefully regulated, but that
this does not necessarily hold true for these worlds. It is
entirely possible that we could find planets with billions on
them—or planets with few, if any, survivors. How would we
know?”
“Four hundred forty-seven,” Raven commented.
“Minimum. Good thing we know where three of the rings
are.”
“Ever the optimist,” Hawks retorted. “We know
the worlds where they are, but nothing about those worlds
and nothing about how many possible leaders could have them. And
that leaves us with just four hundred and forty-four other worlds
in which to find the last ring. Perhaps our grandchildren or
great-grandchildren might find it.”
“Don’t you worry, Chief. We’ll find it. We
didn’t come this far to fail in that. Stealin’
it, and the others, will be the tough job.”
“Please pardon the intrusion,” Chow Dai put in,
“but might I be permitted to ask why, if this Master System
knows that we know, it will not just collect or hide all four,
perhaps all five, from us before we can even try for
them?”
It was a good question. “There’s no easy answer to
that,” Hawks told her. “It remains a possibility, but I
think not for several reasons. First, those rings are the only
avenue to us. It knows we’re going after them, and so it will
be waiting for us. Second, there’s something very odd going
on here. There’s more than just us in this. Maybe you should
ask Raven about that.”
The Crow’s eyebrows went up. “Don’t know what
you mean, Chief. I told you the straight stuff. Chen’s the
only one I know behind all this. Word of honor.”
Hawks privately doubted that Raven’s honor was worth very
much, but he knew it was fruitless to press the point. It was even
possible that the former security man was telling the truth. Why
would Chen select this crew—particularly this
group—and think they had a snowball’s chance in hell of
succeeding? He’d asked himself that a thousand times and had
no answer, yet Chen was a wily, even brilliant man. Did Chen, and
perhaps Raven, know something that might explain it, and might also
explain how they had been able in the first place to pull this off
under a system that had some cracks but no chasms? They had walked
through the Grand Canyon of cracks in Master System’s rule,
and they should not have been able to do so.
In many ways, the Thunder proved something of a
disappointment in that beyond its transport bays and incredible
lengths of corridors and catwalks there was little else with any
use for humans. In spite of the mysteries of the bridge and its
interfaces, the ship had never been built with humans in mind for
anything except cargo. Much of the romance engendered by the mere
sight and thought of such a ship was gone in the sterile metals and
plastics of the reality. Star Eagle could show them more than they
could see themselves on the screens of the
bridge—another anomaly. If the ship was run by a remote
computer brain directly connected to service and security subbrains
and to the mobile machines they controlled, why were there viewing
screens on the bridge?
The star drive was actually forward and well shielded against
any type of prying. It appeared that “punch” was indeed
as good a word as any for what it did; it appeared to focus
forward, open up some sort of hole in space-time, and allow the
ship through, encased somewhat in an energy field to protect it
from whatever forces were out there now. The massive rear drives
were strictly for in-system movement and docking, and were not used
in interstellar flight at all.
The top of the ship, as oriented from the bridge, consisted of
massive tanks of gases, fuels, and all else needed both to sustain
the human cargo and to provide whatever was necessary to the
ship’s systems. If the Thunder had a weak point,
this was it, but the tanks were armored to an amazing degree and
atop them were complexes of defensive weapons. If a potential
attacker somehow got past the fourteen small automated fighters
that provided the ship’s primary defense, there would still
be no easy taking of the main ship.
Below were the four massive cargo bays, in one of which sat the
remains of the interplanetary ship that had brought them from
Melchior. Each of the bays had extensive equipment for moving and
reaching almost any point in the cavities, and independent
medium-sized transmuters.
“One thing I haven’t figured out,” Raven said,
“is how they got all those people in here and back out again.
There’s no docking piers for support ships.”
“This ship could never land anywhere,” China
explained. “The transmuter is the heart of Master
System’s whole scheme. It is the heart of everything that
also makes the rest possible. Some are used simply to manufacture
spare parts, repairs, and to recycle everything that can no longer
be used. The corps of robots Star Eagle is using were nothing but
plans in the ship’s data banks, fed to transmuters along with
something of necessary mass—exhaust gases, waste products, debris,
garbage. The mass is transformed into energy and then reformed as
whatever solid matter the ship might need. There are transmuters in
the bow which can literally scoop up space debris—rock, dust,
gases—and feed them into the storage tanks above us in
compressed form. When we’re inside a punch, as now, the ship
uses this stored material to keep itself and everything else going.
These were very low when we moved out, but in the transit of
Jupiter the ship picked up enough to fill those holding
tanks.”
“Yeah, but—people?”
“In the same way that the things can change one form of
matter or energy into another, it can also maintain a specific
object. All of it is catalogued when it is picked up, so if
necessary it could be reformed as itself. We could put you
in a transmuter, reduce you to energy, then beam that energy to a
receiving transmuter along with that pattern. You would then be
converted back into yourself. The process would take only as long
as light required to travel the distance.”
“Space travel without spaceships,” Hawks commented.
“Incredible.”
“But very limited. First, there must be a matching
transmuter at the destination. Second, the signal must be very
powerful to retain its full consistency from station to station,
which limits its range. Third, it is strictly line of sight, and
conditions must be perfect. In the old days, initial setup ships
must have been sent to all the new worlds and transmuter receiving
stations established at various points on each planet’s
surface. Then, when the passengers came along, they could be beamed
serially—one at a time—to the receiving stations. What
you send from here is precisely what you get down there. There is a
mobile transmuter system in the main cargo area that seems almost
like a gun; it is designed to move along guides on the catwalks and
line up to each cargo cavity. It is connected to the external
system, so we know that the people were put to sleep on Earth, then
beamed up to here and inserted sequentially into the holding
modules. Upon arrival at the new world, the process was reversed.
They probably never even knew about all this. They went to sleep on
Earth and woke up on a strange world.”
“But not necessarily the way they left,” Raven
noted. “I saw a Martian once. They came from human stock but
there’s no way they’re human like us.”
China nodded. “That was the primary function of the
missing fourth module in the core. It was preprogrammed with
certain necessary biological information. The cargo bay mobile
transmuter made a new pass after all were aboard and the ship was
underway. Each human occupant was once more dissolved to energy and
then reformed as something else—a human able to live and
survive on the target world. Otherwise, it would have taken
thousands of years to change those worlds into places fit for human
habitation. The transmuting of individual humans must be extremely
precise and exacting, requiring a second core module and probably
supporting data banks to get it right. Many human beings certainly
died each time a new form was attempted before the computers got it
right. Then they sent a small colony to the new world to see if
they could and would survive there. Only then did mass
transmutations and movements of large numbers of people begin. It
was the only logical way such a plan could be carried out, but the
cost in lives must have been quite high.”
“Even when they got there,” Hawks put in, a bit awed
and more than a little frightened by all this, “this would
change the body, but not the mind, a mind used to thinking in human
terms, to seeing things according to human standards, even
themselves. They had to learn to be alien creatures. Many
would be unable to do so. Many more would go mad.”
“That’s true,” she agreed. “Although I
suspect that the mindprinters were used to minimize it. Take data
and information from the early colonists who survived and adapted,
and feed it to the newcomers when they come down. The mindprinter
taught most of us the English we are using, and made some of this
possible. It could teach the basics.”
Hawks had a sudden, uneasy thought. “You say it takes a
receiving station to work as a transport mechanism? Then how will
we get to wherever it is Koll is taking us? How will we get down
there? And, when we go after the rings, how will we get to the
target planet? Assuming the stations on the planets are still
operational, we can’t use them. It would be like a thief
walking up to the front door, knocking, and announcing himself to
the intended victim.”
“Getting to the surface of a world not in the system
should be possible,” she told him. “Star Eagle assures
me he can duplicate the necessary receiving station and get it down
using one of the fighters, although I suspect it’s more
complex than that. Getting into the other worlds will be much
tougher. For one thing, the Thunder is going to be rather
obvious in a stellar system controlled by Master System. We will
have to work on that.”
“Bah!” Raven snorted. “We are like children in
this! The technology is so beyond us that we are no less ignorant
than Cloud Dancer! We might as well be villagers faced with great
magic!”
“So?” China responded. “What difference does
that make? Back at the Center where you lived and worked, did you
really understand why and how the light came on when you touched
the wall switch? Did you understand the process by which your food
arrived, or did you just take it for granted and eat it? The same
for the heating and the air conditioning and all the rest. I can
fly a skimmer, but I have only a vague idea of how it works. I can
use powerful computers, yet I do not truly understand how they
think and the intricacies of their work. One does not have to know
how something works to use it. Many people have been killed by guns
wielded by gunmen who have not the slightest idea of the physics
involved. Even Star Eagle does not understand some of that which he
is doing. He was never intended to run a ship of this type and
complexity. He does, however, have access to the operating
instructions and can run them.”
“Point taken,” Hawks replied. “All right, so
we savages can manage this thing. I think the time has come to have
a council meeting and decide just what the hell we are really going
to do.”
They sat in a circle on the bridge, relaxed but interested, not
all of them understanding what this more formal meeting was
for.
“I called this meeting, but that may be a temporary
usurpation of authority,” Hawks began. “Among my
people, this would be a tribal council convened to create rules,
objectives, and policies for all. We come from different places and
different backgrounds. We think in different tongues, and some of
us have less in common with one another than even we might think.
However, we come here with a common bond. We are all fugitives. We
all live under a death sentence or even worse. We also share a
secret, of sorts. We know that there is a way to beat Master
System. We know that there is a way to totally destroy the
dictatorship of the machine. We are all here, together, with no
others to share our bond, and we are, in a sense, stuck with each
other, like it or not. We are all escaping now, but not to a
specific place or a specific set of objectives. Before we can
discuss the future and set those objectives, we must have someone
in charge, not as dictator or chief but as chairman, as it were, of
a collective.”
“You’re doin’ fine, Chief,” Raven said.
“I’m content to let you chair the meetings and bang the
drums. Some of us know about the different parts of humanity and
some of us know a lot about machines but you’re the one
person here with the education to see the big picture. Any
objections?”
There were some nervous glances from side to side, but nobody
seemed to be unhappy with that.
“Very well, I assume the leadership, but when a majority
of you is dissatisfied with it, I will step down. I will appoint
our China, here, second in command and with full authority. I think
the two of us are better at planning than in direct action. Very
well. We then proceed to the first really important item on the
agenda. Captain Koll, just where are we heading?”
“In the bush, sir. A region two punches off any known
interstellar routes. It was crudely scouted in the old days by
Master System and there were some early experiments on some planets
there, but none proved out. There are several stellar systems there
that show some promise and might possibly sustain a land base with
the support of the Thunder. We can’t be expected to
live in this can indefinitely. It’s not healthy and
it’s a sitting duck. If we’re tied to it absolutely
we’ll just have to accept a life of constantly being on the
run, or heading this thing out and just punching until we’re
so far away even we couldn’t find our way back. If
we’re gonna stay close enough to Master System to do some
damage, then we can’t ever have all our eggs in one basket.
Somebody’s gotta survive, with the information on the rings
and the story of all this.”
“I find the ship more than adequate,” China
responded. “It can be modified to support many more of us,
and it gives us mobility. We do not seem a likely group for
survival on a hostile world.”
There were several nods, but Hawks understood what Koll was
saying.
“This is not and cannot be a passive vessel,” he
told them. “We are going to have to get what we cannot make
for ourselves. The interstellar shipping system is totally
automated and runs that way. Right now it is vulnerable, perhaps
wide open to us. We need smaller, more practical interstellar
vessels. We need backups to our systems. We will also need
information channels, and that will mean direct contact with
freebooters and the like, those who live outside the system. We
will need to pillage and plunder, as it were, and also to
reconnoiter our target systems without advertising our presence to
Master System. Everyone, even the freebooters themselves, might be
our enemy. The captain is correct. If we are to be pirates, we must
have a place to study and bury our loot. We will eventually require
more people, perhaps as allies. And, finally, these confines are no
place to raise children, and we will have children, won’t we,
China?”
She nodded somberly. “Yes. Star Eagle was checking out the
transmuter system and eventually required a human.
It—tickles. All over. Nothing more. You are not even aware
that it is done until it is over. In so doing, he also had to make
a molecule-by-molecule memory map of me in order to reconstruct me.
I was aware that a transmuter was used upon me by Clayben’s
staff on Melchior. I was not aware until now of the extent.”
Her voice was dry, hollow, as if that tough exterior was about to
fragment into a million pieces.
Star Eagle broke in. “She has been thoroughly
transmuted,” the computer pilot reported, “although the
changes are not so obvious. I had hoped to be able to restore her
to some semblance of normalcy with my devices, but that is
impossible. Perhaps Master System could restore her, but I cannot.
There is a certain—instability—inherent in a full
transmutation. I knew that just from the small transmuters on the
old ship. There are some minor losses each time something is
actually changed—no loss if absolutely reconstructed. That
was why a separate core was needed to transmute the human cargo of
this ship. There is literally no tolerance for errors. The losses
she suffered at the hands of Melchior are negligible, but to do it
again would compound those losses. Reassembly might well kill or
cripple her. There is some indication that this is actually built
into the system when dealing with complex organic life forms.
Master System wanted to make certain that none of those it created
could change themselves back. It wanted permanency, and it designed
it into the system.”
“I was—am—a genetic experiment,” China
explained. “My father worked to create me. My extreme
beauty—I am not saying that to be egotistical—and my
very high intelligence were part of it. I was part of a larger
project to breed a race of superior intellects, intellects that
might do more than simply cheat on the system. I was but stage one,
however; that race was to be bred, and it was my purpose to be one
of those who would bear the next generation that might be the
rebels. It was to escape this life as a breeding factory that I
fled. I saw my father as unfeeling, as even evil, and I ran into
the hands of Clayben, who was far more unfeeling and evil than my
father ever dreamed of being. Melchior was Clayben’s playpen,
possibly the only place in the known universe where such vast
knowledge and power could be wielded without restraint by human
beings. He examined me, discovered my background, and decided my
father was correct.”
“But you escaped from him, as well,” Chow Dai
noted.
“Not soon enough. They analyzed what my father’s
geneticists and biochemists had done and made improvements on it in
computer models, but as you know such modifications would not be
inheritable if induced, unlike my father’s more direct
approach with laboratory eggs and sperm. They were also aware of
all that I had accomplished in escaping my father, Center, and even
Earth. They wanted my mind and my body—in that, at
least, their ideas were better than my father’s—but
they wanted me secure, particularly if I was to work with their
best computers and data bases. Melchior was originally established
as a research station by Master System to create the Martians. It
has a small but very workable transmuter. They use it for many
experiments. Captain Koll’s tail is a good
example.”
“I’m more familiar with it than you know,
dearie,” Koll said enigmatically.
“At any rate, they modified me. All of me. Incorporated
their genetic changes to be inheritable, building on my
father’s work. Star Eagle can tell you the rest.”
“They wanted to make certain she couldn’t pull a
fast one on them,” the pilot told them. “That was how
they hit on the blindness. She is not merely blind—she does
not even have the processing inputs for visual images. The entire
interconnection system simply isn’t there as it is in you.
This is not a genetic modification; her children will see. There
may be devices that bypass all of that that might just work, but I
have no knowledge of them. She is also what might only be called a
baby factory. Brain and body chemistry is set up for that. Her
natural and normal condition is pregnancy. When she is not pregnant
she will have almost no self-control. She will become increasingly
frenzied until that condition is restored, after which she will
again be as she is now. The combination of genetic work and
Melchior’s modifications is astonishing. She is resistant to
much of what afflicts others. She will age very slowly and heal
very quickly. Her defensive and regenerative powers are enormous
and automatic. She could very easily remain youthful and sexually
functional for sixty or seventy years.”
That got them all. Sixty or seventy years with pregnancy a
natural condition . . .
“Even in my day there was ways to beat that,” Reba
Koll noted. “Fool the body into thinkin’ it’s
pregnant, or, hell, take out the equipment if you can’t shut
it off.”
“Not here. Her body would treat any control method I might
be able to come up with as if it were a disease and destroy it or
render it ineffective. The same would go for psychochemicals.
Surgical alteration would be repaired and healed quickly by the
body and in the interim she would still be possessed of the lust
and frenzy, which is induced by chemicals made in her own body.
They knew she had used mindprinters before to her advantage, along
with psychochemical alterations, and they wanted to be certain she
could not do so again. To remove her reproductive organs would be
far worse. It would drive her horribly and irreparably mad. A
bullet in the brain would be kinder, and quicker. No, they fed her
mindprint into their computers and their computers came up with an
absolute system. I am not certain what Clayben intended—breed
his own super race, perhaps. In the meantime, so long as she was
pregnant, he had the complete services of her mind and
abilities.”
That stunned those who hadn’t already known about it, but
Hawks had a different point to this information. “Understand
this well, then. We need her mind and her skills; therefore, she
will receive what she needs when she requires it. If we are to have
a substantial second generation, then it might fall to them
eventually to get the last of the rings. We require a
colony.”
“There’s darker stuff here, Chief,” Raven put
in. “More than that problem. I been listenin’ to all
this and, as you know, I followed it when we was still researching
the whole thing, and when I first heard about these transmuters I
figured our problem on getting into our target world was solved. We
could change ourselves into what was needed. Now I see that’s
not gonna happen. For one thing, old Star Eagle don’t have
the codes and genetic shit to do it to any of us. For another, even
if he did, it’s a one-way trip. There’s no way
I’m gonna be changed into a monster for good, or, even if it
was something I didn’t mind bein’, wind up bein’
left forever on some world while somebody else sticks them rings in
Master System’s ass.”
“A good point,” Hawks agreed. “I’m
afraid we might have to face the transmuter to accomplish our
goals, at least at the start, but while that sacrifice might have
to be made by some or even all of us, I could not ask anyone to
place him- or herself in the position of having to remain
behind. I am personally prepared to make any sacrifice, including
death or mutilation, to end the tyranny, but only if it means
something. I would not shed an eyelash if it meant that an Isaac
Clayben or a Lazlo Chen, who is much the same sort, would wind up
our masters. I know enough history to understand that achieving a
revolution is not the same as winning it. I am as dedicated to our
revolution as I can be, but I am equally dedicated to not replacing
Master System with a human monster.”
“I’m afraid I shall have to insist on a planetary
base,” Star Eagle interjected. “I will need time to
convert this ship into something more practical, and I will require
independence and mobility.”
“All right, so we’re agreed that far,” Raven
said. “So we go out there and we build a base, more than a
colony. Then what?”
“As I said, piracy. We need mobility. We have the only
active colony ship in the known universe. We need another ship,
preferably more than one. Their data banks alone might tell us of
other targets worth hitting and the schedules we need. We outfit
them. Either Star Eagle converts them to our side or we learn to
fly them without a core. Outfit them. Weapons. Sensors. Our own
communications and codes. Then it will be time for some of us to
make contact with the freebooters. By that time we’ll have
something of a mysterious reputation. We need information. We need
to know about these worlds we’re going to be going to. Who
are the people there? What’s the culture, the language, the
physical and biological problems? Who’s in charge and who
runs what? Which leader wears a large gold ring with a design in
it? Does anyone know of another that we do not? Step by step, a bit
at a time, with infinite patience and dedication.”
“It sounds impossible,” China commented.
“It’s not. Difficult, yes. Dangerous, yes. Certain?
By no means. I would say the odds are against us overwhelmingly.
But impossible it certainly is not. I have thought it through and
thought it through until my head burst, but I think I have it now.
What Raven and Warlock, there, and Chen as well, knew from the
start.” He looked at the Crow and the Jamaican beauty.
“It can’t be impossible, can it? It is
required to be at least possible.”
The Crow grinned. “You got it, Chief. You’re smarter
than I thought. I would have explained it, sooner or later, but why
bother now?”
“I do not understand this,” Cloud Dancer commented.
“Pardon my ignorance, but I must have much of this explained.
The evil lord I understand, and his great power, and the use of the
talismans to break his power,
but—required?”
“Don’t feel bad,” China said. “They just
lost me, too.”
“Think about the story,” Hawks urged them.
“Master System is incredibly powerful, but it is a computer.
A computer designed by humans. All this, all this subjugation of
humanity, the reduction of Earth to primitivism, the diaspora that
scattered and somewhat dehumanized the vast bulk of humanity, all
was simply an interpretation by that computer of its
creators’ command. Think about that. Command. It was
commanded to find a way so that humanity could never
destroy itself completely. It was commanded to find a way
so humanity could never use its terrible weapons of mass
destruction nor spread them. It was a classic deal-with-a-demon
fable. Out of fear, or desperation, or whatever, those people
raised a great demon and they offered it absolute power over them
and their dominions in exchange for safety. They tried as best they
could to build into their wish every safeguard, to close every
loophole, but the demon, being a demon, was far too clever for even
the most brilliant of mere mortals and found the loopholes anyway.
It granted their wish—and took away the souls of their
children and grandchildren unto the last generation and swept away
all their works. But we’re safe—from everything except
the demon.”
“But they must still have suspected or they wouldn’t
have created the rings in the first place,” China pointed
out.
“Indeed. I think, perhaps, it was simply part of the
bargain. The demon, as all great legends have it, must
fulfill the wishes as stated. It is compelled to do so. One
safeguard was the rings—the magic talismans, as my wife
referred to them—and what went with them. A guarantee of some
access. The rings must be in human hands—humans with
authority. If any are lost or destroyed, duplicates must be made
and provided to said leaders. The other part of the bargain must be
a guarantee of access. We have a right to go
after the rings, to gather them together, and to make our way with
them to Master System and use them. A right, guaranteed as
part of the bargain—the core program of Master System itself,
a core that could not be altered. Another part of the
bargain.”
China nodded, and even Cloud Dancer, Reba Koll, and the Chows
seemed to get the idea. Sabatini sulked off in a corner in silence,
and Silent Woman was as impassive as ever.
“It could scatter them among the stars, because there were
now humans out there with authority of sorts,” China said in
wonder. “It could try to stamp out all knowledge of the rings
and their purpose and use. But it could not violate the basics. It
just made it damned near impossible for anybody to actually do
it.”
“Perhaps not as impossible as you think,” Raven
responded. “We never really thought it was an accident that
the data on the rings survived all these centuries, or that it was
discovered now. See, there’s a real indication that Master
System is gonna radically change people, even on Earth. Wipe out
civilization and knowledge, push us back to the start, make us
little better than apes with clubs. But, see, that really
would make it impossible. Old Master System slipped up. By
merely making that decision it forced itself into a vulnerable
position. Ten to one it’s pulled back now from doing that,
thanks to us, because otherwise it might make a lot more teams like
us ’cause it has to. But before it fully understood
what it was doing, we got out—and maybe others. We might not
be the only ones who know and got away, you know. We might not even
be the only ones Chen arranged for. There’s that ship that
was following us, for example.”
That was a sobering thought.
“In the light of first things first, what should we do
about that ship?” Hawks asked them.
“Blow ’em out of the skies,” Reba Koll
replied. “You can’t give any quarter in this and expect
to succeed.”
“That would solve the problem,” Hawks
admitted, “but I don’t see any reason right now to do
so. If we must, we must, but I just can’t see any direct
purpose to indiscriminate killing. If it was a Val ship, it’s
be different, but it’s definitely got humans on
board.”
“You got the question wrong, Chief,” Raven
interjected. “It’s why is it following us? It
can’t take us; but it’s taking a big risk that
we’ll take it. If they wanted to join up, they’d have
called us by now. If it was Master System, there wouldn’t be
people on board for any reason. They’d just get in the way.
Figure it’s this Nagy fellow and maybe others from Melchior.
They know about the rings thanks to the mindprints they took from
you, but they don’t know where to look. We could really use
that ship but we have to destroy it or lose it unless they give it
to us. They’re just on our tail ’cause they don’t
know where to go and they’re otherwise as lost as we are. I
say we try to lose ’em. Can you shake them, Star
Eagle?”
“The problem would be in the energy required for quick
punches in and out,” the computer reported. “Yes, I
could lose them. It is not that difficult, but it would leave us
without punch power for quite some time and exposed while
we’re still in the shipping lanes. There is a low, but
definite, probability that we might be sensed or spotted by Master
System.”
Hawks sighed. “All right, then. When we punch out,
we’ll give them one chance and a warning. If nothing else, it
might reveal just who they are and whether they are acting alone.
If we can’t cut a deal and they won’t talk to us, then
we will take some sort of drastic action. Before I will kill or
expose us to needless risk, though, I would like to know who it is
I am killing and why.”
“Ship still back there, Star Eagle?”
“Yes. It
has dropped back but is still within range.”
Hawks sighed.
“Open up communications and patch me through,
then.”
“Channels are open. You are on the three most common
frequencies. I will narrow it when and if they reply. We are
exposed in this position although I sense nothing nearby or in
range. Even so, I would rather not make broad-band broadcasts. The
signals will travel, and it might be one more way of being
traced.”
“This is Jon Nighthawk aboard the Thunder to the
ship in our wake. Respond, please.”
There was no reply.
“This is Hawks aboard the Thunder. I would rather
talk but I cannot risk this sort of broadcast for long, If I
receive no response from you I will have no choice but to determine
you a hostile ship and order fighters to launch and commence action
against you. You have one minute.”
He paused, then said, “Fifty seconds,” and counted
down every ten seconds. He was not bluffing, but if he launched he
would have to recover those fighters, as well, and that would be
needless delay in the middle of a shipping lane.
“Ten . . . nine . . . eight . . . seven . . . ”
“All right, damn it! We’re here,” came a gruff
male voice through the speakers. “I suppose this was
inevitable anyway.”
“You are following us,” Hawks
noted, “not the other way around. You must have thought it
through—that if you were close enough to keep us on your
sensors the reverse was also true.”
“We assumed nothing of the sort. Who would have believed
you could attain mastery of a ship like that in so short a time?
Very well, let’s talk. You’re in trouble, and so are
we.”
“We are not nearly in the same predicament as you are. If
we are all on the same side here, why follow? Why not hail us and
join us?”
There was a pause. “Because it would be my death at the
least if I were to fall into your hands, and a very unpleasant one,
that’s why.”
“I’d know that voice anywhere,” Reba Koll
muttered. “That’s Clayben! Shoot him, damn it! Rip
his guts out!”
Hawks was startled by the outburst, but ignored it. “I can
see your point from the reaction here, Doctor. Captain Koll
considers just your existence in my sights to be sufficient grounds
to blow you to hell.”
“That is not Captain Koll. Koll’s dead, been dead
almost two years now. That is an inhuman, terrifying monstrosity, a
horror. It’s the thing that killed Koll and assumed her
identity. I should know. I created the damned thing.”
“Stand by,” Hawks said. That uneasy chill he felt
only when danger lurked close at hand was creeping into him. He
turned and looked at Koll. “Isn’t it about time you
explained this, or should I ask him?”
“He told you true,” she admitted unhesitatingly.
“At least about the fact I ain’t Koll and that
I’m not human and that he’s responsible for it. I kinda
object to the horror and monstrosity parts, though. I ain’t
such a bad sort. I only kill at all ’cause he made it so I
have to. I got choices, though. I got a conscience. I don’t
kill none who don’t deserve it unless it’s them or me.
You gotta believe that.”
Hawks felt his throat going dry, and he licked his lips
nervously. “We were depending on you to take us someplace
safe. If you’re not Koll, then even if the rest of what you
say is true, how am I to trust you?”
“’Cause I got all of Koll’s memories, you
idiot! I’m a damned near perfect imitation—absolutely
perfect when I wanna be!”
“Doctor? You want to explain all this?”
There was a pause on the radio. “It was a grand
experiment,” Clayben said finally. “Melchior, all of
it, was devoted to just one ultimate goal: Beating the system.
Cheating it. Eventually, hopefully, destroying it. I was taking up
the work of my predecessors, that’s all. We—our
computers and our experts in security and biology—thought we
had a part of the answer. A weapon, as it were, in human form. A
being who could beat the system at will. Become anyone it wished.
Sail through security ports, passing every test—memory,
retinal prints, even blood and tissue samples. Gain the full
knowledge of whomever it imitated and therefore have full access to
anyplace human beings could go. The first of a race, an army, that
would collapse the whole control system. We used the transmuter for
the final prototype. It worked, but it worked too well.
The—thing—saw no difference between humans and
computers. It hated us all. It killed half the station before we
found a way to incapacitate it and stabilize it. We could have
killed it—absolute incineration or transmutation to gas or
energy would have done it—but we could not. It was so close.
It almost worked. We kept it—stabilized. In human
form. With the chemical compounds we used, it would remain stable
for two, three years. Then it would have to have another template,
another form. We used prisoners for whom we had no other
use.”
“Like Koll.”
“Like Koll. But the next time it—feeds—and
changes, there won’t be any compound. No chemicals. It will
be free to do it at will. It will kill all of you and absorb your
knowledge, your memories. It wants the rings for itself. God will
be an insane monster!”
Hawks stared at the frail-looking Reba Koll.
“Bullshit,” she said. “I don’t know what
sane is, but I sure as hell ain’t hankerin’ to eat the
lot of you. It’s true what he says—right at the start I
was nothin’ much but an animal, a killer, but the
more people I become, the more memories I got, the more ways I had
to behave, the more human, I guess, I got. I got all them
memories, all that knowledge up here in my head and all
over my body, I guess. I don’t even know how it works. The
only thing I don’t have is who I was to start with. Only
he knows that. You think I liked killin’ Koll, or
the others? I didn’t pick ’em—he did.
Just to keep me alive so he could study and figure out how to make
a ton more of me he could control. His own Vals, in spades. I want
the rings, sure, but not alone. Nobody should have that power
alone, not even me. You need me to get ’em, Chief. I can go
down to them worlds no matter how much they’re monsters
there, and I can become one of ’em and know all the rules
right off, and I can waltz right in and take them rings off the
fingers or whatever them leaders have. You can’t.”
“I doubt if it will be that easy, even for you,”
Clayben replied. “But you see why this is as close as I can
approach. You haven’t the power to keep her from me, Hawks,
and I would fight to the death before I would allow
that.”
Hawks stared at Reba Koll. He had expected to have to make some
very tough decisions as the leader but he hadn’t expected
something like this at all, and certainly not right off.
“All right, Captain, or whatever you are. You really have
the biggest problem. I can’t stop you from killing us all,
but you can’t take this ship and run it and you know it.
It’s Star Eagle’s ship. But whether you are friend or
foe, and whether I have to die, along with others here, making
certain our mission fails at the start, depends on you. It’s
Clayben—or a shot at the rings. China?”
“The gods who might be, if any, know that I have only
hatred and contempt for this man, yet if it is the choice of the
rings or him, I will kneel to him and lick his behind before I
would throw away the rings.”
“This ain’t fair!” Koll grumped. “I
spent ten years dreamin’ of nothin’ but gettin’
that bastard in a position where I could torture him to death real
slow. I wouldn’t eat him. I wouldn’t want to
be him, and I wouldn’t never be in the
position of understanding him. Now you got him and you’re
tellin’ me to kiss and make up.”
Hawks was beginning to see the larger picture in all this. He
just wished he knew who was drawing it. “It’s why
you’re here, Koll, or whatever you are. It’s the reason
you’re here and not back on Melchior with Master System in
control of it and you. You say you can take anyone. I have no
reason to doubt you on that, but can you become a Val? A
computer?”
“Of course not, idiot!”
“Master System wouldn’t care how many people you
killed. It would study you and analyze you and then melt you down
for the final analysis, and it would be perfectly willing to
incinerate all life forms on Melchior if it thought it needed to
dispose of you. You’re not here by accident. Your name was on
Raven’s list. You’re here because you can do what you
say—go down and get very close to those who have the rings
without penalty. But it’s still a group effort. You think it
over. You’re no use to me if you have no self-control.”
Hawks turned back to the communications set.
“Clayben, I don’t like you very much, and I
don’t trust you at all, but I’m willing to deal you in
if you have something to offer me. I can really use that ship of
yours, but I don’t require it. Nobody here will shed
a tear if I order you blown to bits. You are a problem and a luxury
for me. Tell me why I can afford you.”
“My knowledge, my skill, my experience,” the
scientist replied. “You have computer people and security
people there but not one good experimental scientist. I have aboard
this ship the backup copies of all the essentials of two decades
plus of research done on Melchior. The data is unique and
priceless. It is also coded only to me. Then there is the ship, as
you mentioned, and Mr. Nagy’s not inconsiderable background
and contacts. He’s been out here before. He knows the
freebooters—who can be trusted and who can’t. I
don’t think you can afford to pass us up, sir, or I
wouldn’t have chased you.”
Hawks turned to the others. “Mute the communications link
for a moment, Star Eagle.”
“Muted. We are here far too long, Hawks. We should
move.”
“The risk might be worth it. It isn’t the worst
we’ve taken and it won’t be the worst we take in the
future. Now, listen, all of you. I want to hear it from everyone.
Clayben’s right. He has the data we need, and Nagy the
contacts. They have a ship we could use that we don’t have to
convert from Master System control. Can we trust men like this? No.
Their record speaks for itself. They aren’t so much demonic
as they are uncaring about human beings or anything except
themselves. They’ll be trouble. Raven?”
“Bring ’em on, Chief. We’ll take care of them
if they get out of line. I kinda think they’ll be real
cooperative, real team players, until push comes to shove. Besides,
it’s a great way to get the ship. If they get nasty later we
can always eliminate them.”
Warlock snickered. “We are of Security, Hawks. This is our
job and we are good at it. We can handle them.”
“Chows?”
“They are no worse than any of the others we have always
faced. If they can do us some good, then it is about time they
served someone else,” Chow Dai said. Her twin nodded.
“Cloud Dancer?”
“Whatever you decide I will accept,” she replied.
“I am not certain that such evil men can ever be turned to a
good purpose, but if we lose to them we deserve it.”
“Star Eagle?”
“By all means let them come aboard. My core defenses are
extensive and there is nothing they can do aboard the
Thunder without my knowledge. In order for Clayben to use
his data he will have to interface with my data banks. Anything he
decrypts I will also learn.”
Hawks sighed. “It’s up to you, then, Koll. Think of
it this way. For once Clayben will be under our authority rather
than we under his. He might try something, but if he does
I’ll give him to you, no strings attached. The moment he
betrays any one of us, he is yours.”
She seemed to have already made up her mind. “All
right—but keep him away from the bridge. Quarantine him. On
the ground he’ll be on my turf, as it were, and I think I can
handle him if he can handle me. But not here. Not on the
Thunder.”
“Communications open,” Hawks ordered. “All
right, Doctor, you’re invited aboard by unanimous consent,
although our one real dissenter here insists that you be kept
isolated from the bridge while on this ship. If that is agreeable,
approach at moderate speed and prepare for instructions from our
pilot. We will punch as soon as we have you securely aboard, so
remain in your ship with full life support until we tell you
otherwise.”
“Understand. Acknowledge. You won’t regret
this.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. But you might,” Hawks muttered
under his breath.
It took almost an hour to get the Star into an outer
hold, but Star Eagle knew his job and was now fully master of the
big ship’s systems.
The pilot didn’t hesitate once all was ready, though. The
Thunder’s great engines roared into life, raising
the massive sonic storm, and within minutes they punched.
The sensation was still very unpleasant, but this time there
were no hallucinations and only relief that they were out of
there.
“You handled that right well, Chief,” Raven
commented.
“Perhaps. Perhaps I’m handling this on gut instinct,
Crow. Instinct and educated hunches. But they’ll be a time
bomb once aboard and you know it. I want no quarter given. The
slightest wrong move and, well, they are expendable.”
“No!” China said sharply. “Use your head,
Hawks. We need them—but on our side. That man has
played whatever games he wanted with people at his mercy using
mindprinters and transmuters. We have transmuters and when
we are finished cannibalizing the old ship we will have a
mindprinter.”
“But that one’s too limited to be of real
use,” he pointed out.
“Perhaps, but I will wager that Clayben had that ship of
his outfitted as a fully equipped fast escape ship from the
planning stages on. The fact that all data from the Melchior master
computers was automatically transmitted to it in encoded form shows
that. I’ll wager that aboard that thing he has a small
transmuter and a state-of-the-art mindprinter. Possibly even a
psychogenetics minilab. That ship, I will wager, is a one- or
two-person Melchior in miniature. By the time Star Eagle’s
maintenance robots and probes get through with it, I think
we’ll be able to do to the doctor whatever we
wish—before he does it to us.”
STAR EAGLE HAD BEEN AS ACCOMMODATING AS
possible under the circumstances. The ship had a host of
maintenance robots, most of which were quite specialized and of no
practical use to the current crew, but a few could be turned into
convenience mechanisms in a pinch. One, a spindly thing with a
clamp and tray, was most useful: It was able to bring some blankets
and other such luxuries from the remains of the old ship, as well
as some more important items. An old casing with a medium-sized
hole in the top became a portable toilet; it was smelly and not
really built for human comfort and convenience, but it worked for
now—if their little robot took it out at least every twelve
hours or so to clean and sanitize it.
Water was no problem; the huge holding tanks on the ship
contained all that was needed and could create more out of
by-products if need be, all distilled pure. Food was much more
critical; Star Eagle had to improvise with what was handy, and the
result was a large cube of sickly green with the consistency of
cake icing and a taste that was a cross between dead grass and
library paste. It went down, however, did not upset, and provided
the minimum necessary to sustain them. Later they could have more
amenities; now they had to move, which meant that Star Eagle had to
learn how to drive the ship. The information was there, but it was
far more complicated than what a computer programmed and designed
to run an interplanetary freighter was used to. The sheer bulk of
data was the problem. All, even Star Eagle, knew their clock was
ticking, however. Even now Master System would be closing in on
them with heavily armed ships that knew exactly what they were up
against.
The big ship was hardly defenseless; it had an enormous range of
real and potential weapons at its disposal, suggesting that in the
old days Master System was not at all confident of what it would
find out in the farther reaches of space even though it knew where
it was going and had scouted the routes. Had there been resistance?
Had there been opposing interstellar civilizations? There was no
way to know.
It took more than three days to power up the systems and check
them out as best the computer could. Communication with the
computer pilot was still awkward, however. It could flash a message
on the bridge screens to let the humans know that it wanted to
talk, but only the helmet radios allowed good two-way conversation.
Still, it was now confident that it could at least get them out of
there—but to where?
“Initially it doesn’t matter,” Hawks told it.
“Just—away. Far away, and off the beaten track, as it
were.”
“The fact that the existing star charts are nine centuries
old doesn’t matter much,” Reba Koll assured them.
“There is some shift, but not a lot and nothing that
can’t easily be allowed for.” She worked with Star
Eagle, who had figured out how to put star charts and grids up on
the bridge screens without much trouble.
“I ain’t got time to explain how this drive
works,” she told them, “if, of course, I knew how it
did anyways. Best idea I can give you is if you take this here
piece of cloth and make it hump up—curve. That’s how space
is, really. Shortest distance ain’t across the top but
straight through. You punch a hole here and you come out there.
Course there’s lotsa other shit involved. There’s black
holes and gravity curvatures and all the rest. Don’t look at
me that way—I only fly ’em, I don’t hav’ta
understand ’em. Net result is you tell it you wanta go
there and if figures the route and trajectory and gets you
there in days or weeks instead of years or centuries like it would
the usual way. You let the pilot do the figures and time the jumps
and energy and speed. Now, I suggested some routes to Star Eagle,
but he’s got reservations.”
“The region she suggests is not well charted,” the
pilot explained. “Oh, the stars are charted well enough, but
there’s no detail. It was not part of the pattern of
resettlement. Also, to get there we will have to make a large
number of punches and this will intersect for the first half of the
journey with the routings to and from the remote colonies. We must
cross known shipping lanes.”
“Bah! That’s no worry!” Koll snorted.
“The odds of actually hitting within sensor range of any ship
is practically nil, but even if we did we could deal with those
freighters and supply ships. There’s little or no armament on
them. What’s to fight when you’re in Master
System’s territory?”
“I was thinking more of monitors and navigational
stations,” Star Eagle responded. “They could chart us
without us even knowing about it. We could be traced. This
interstellar punching is all straight-line routing. To change
direction, course, or speed you have to come out, readjust, then
punch in again. The amount of energy expended on the punch
determines how far you go before you come out again. Just measure
the energy level at the punch and note the course, direction, and
speed, and it wouldn’t take a computer to figure the
destination.”
“You’re not devious enough, pilot!” Koll told
it. “I’ll explain misdirection to you. A series of
small punches whenever we’re in a dangerous area. Each small
punch increases the number of possible courses, directions, and
speeds. Not even Master System has the resources to track down that
many variables.”
“That will take time, though,” the computer pointed
out. “There will be frequent recharges necessary. If we took
a more or less direct route to the region you suggest it would take
twenty-seven standard days. To do as you suggest would take three
to five times as long.”
“But we’d get there,” she noted. “And
we’d get there unknown and undetected. Maybe we’ll even
have this stinkhole livable by then. Plot your course with the
minimum number of exponential variables to get us there and get any
possible snoopers hopelessly lost and confused. If we don’t
get away clean, what difference did all this make?”
They took a vote—Sabatini excepted—and all agreed to
her plan.
“My energy is sufficient,” Star Eagle told them.
“Let’s do it.”
The vibrations, which had been growing throughout their tenure
on the big vessel, grew much stronger now, more intense. The
throbbing and pulsing sensation that at first had been difficult to
get used to but had become merely background noise was in the
background no longer.
“Everybody just lie on the floor as comfortably as you can
and grab hold of something solid—a chair or something like
that,” Koll instructed. “Once we’re completely up
to speed and out we’ll be able to regain some
movement.”
Forty thousand kilometers away and on station, Arnold Nagy
jumped in his seat and then sat up straight. “She’s
moving, Doc! They’re underway!”
“Strap in!” Clayben shouted back from below.
“Punch in the codes and maintain distance and monitoring! We
don’t want to lose them!”
The great ship came to life on the outside, as well. Red and
green lights flashed on along the length and breadth of the ship,
and in the rear huge engines flared into brilliance.
Quite slowly at first, but very clearly, the big ship turned and
began to pull away from its siblings in orbit around Jupiter. On
the bridge, loose objects floated toward the back wall and the
vibration grew intense, joined now by yet another strange
sound.
“Thunder,” Cloud Dancer whispered. “It sounds
like the approach of a great storm across the prairie. This is
truly a mighty ship. Does it have a name?”
“None that means anything anymore, I suspect,” her
husband replied.
“Then it should be the Thunder,” she said.
“That is the awe that it inspires, and that is its sound and
being, its soul.”
“What about it, everyone? Star Eagle? Shall this ship
henceforth be the Thunder?”
“It is an appropriate and mighty name,” China
responded.
“And easy to remember,” Chow Dai added.
The computer was agreeable. “Then we are the
Thunder. I think it is a good name.”
“I think I’m gonna puke,” Carlo Sabatini
said.
For something so huge, the ship’s acceleration rate was
startling. Within two hours it had cleared the grip of mighty
Jupiter and was heading in a great arc that would take it first
away, then back toward the mighty giant at tremendous speed. It
would use this combination of speed and the gravity of the mighty
planet to build up massive acceleration very quickly.
As the speed grew, the more pronounced the sounds of thunder
became, as if just outside and all around them raged a great
storm.
For those on the bridge, the long hours of getting underway and
the limitations it placed on them was simultaneously exciting,
somewhat frightening, and extremely boring. Finally, however, the
rate smoothed out, and they could move about easily again. But some
of the vibration and noise remained, giving them a constant feeling
of motion, even though inside the ship all was calm and still.
“We’re being followed,” Star Eagle reported.
“A single ship. Small. Unfamiliar design. I have searched all
database patterns and can find nothing close to it. Great power. It
might well be interstellar capable.”
Reba Roll frowned. “Master System? A Val?”
“It is somewhat like their ships, but it is not one of
them. Besides, my sensors show a life-support system activated
aboard it. Not certain, but it is probably a rogue ship, like
us.”
China thought that over. “It’s possible that
Melchior had something in reserve. Those fighters it tried to use
against us were pretty impressive overall and also of a unique
design. They were using a sister ship of our old ship to give
chase. Star of Islam, I believe. Could the Star
have carried it?”
“Not inside,” the pilot told her, “but
piggybacked on the exterior it would be no problem at all. It
contains weapons systems that might be close to what their fighters
had, but those fighters were not manned. Any action
recommended?”
China talked it over with Reba Koll and the others.
“No,” she finally replied. “If we hail it,
they’ll know we know about them and possibly make it harder
for us to keep track of them. If we slow to bring them in range of
our weapons it will also cause great delay in us getting out of
here, which is the first priority. Are you certain there is only
one? No more?”
“Yes. One.”
“Then let it follow. If it gets within weapons range, hail
it and order it to stand down and be boarded or destroy it. If it
attacks, defend. Otherwise, do nothing until we are well away from
this stellar system. Even if they are of Melchior they are in an
illegal ship engaged in prohibited activity. My guess is that they
did not think we could do what we have done, but now that we have
they want what we want but for themselves. We will deal with them
when we can.”
“Acknowledged. I am now receiving faint stop orders on
both superspace and subspace command frequencies. Master System
knows about the Thunder.”
“To be expected,” Raven commented.
“We’re hotter than a burial fire right now.
What’s the odds of us being intercepted by any force that
could do us any real harm?”
“Very slim. Negligible. They might get a ship in before I
can make the punch but nothing that could handle these systems.
They really don’t make weapons ships like that. A Val ship
would have the most firepower, and that would be little more than
that of the fighters Melchior sent against us. The security
computer informs me that this ship is able to take virtually any
known system of its own day, and they were far more heavily armed
then than now. Our worst enemy would be another ship like this one,
and it is unlikely that such would be set against us. Too easy to
avoid. Security believes it most likely that Master System will
order ships constructed specifically to exploit our weaknesses and
take us out, but that will take considerable time. If we can get
lost the first time, and if we are careful, it is unlikely even
they will find us when they can surprise us and take us.”
“Then they won’t try to take us aboard,” Raven
surmised. “We’re no real threat or problem cooped up in
this monster. If they can’t trace us now, they’ll put
out all the alarms and wait for us to move.”
Hawks sighed. “Yeah. If we know where three of
the rings are, good old Master System knows where all of them are,
I bet, and has a pretty good eye out for them. Unlike those
bastards from Melchior back there, it doesn’t really have to
chase us. It just has to wait, and we must come to them.”
“Infinite patience is one of the hallmarks of
computers,” China noted darkly.
Hawks scratched his chin. “Don’t get too downcast.
Maybe it is impossible. So is what we have done so
far.”
A few hours later the pilot reported, “I have attained
sufficient speed for a punch and we are sufficiently clear of
Jupiter’s gravitational pull that I can compensate for it.
There should not be any untoward effects, but I cannot predict for
certain, never having done it before.”
“Won’t be nothin’,” Reba Koll assured
them. “Might sound like the whole ship’s breakin’
apart, but don’t let that worry you none. Once it’s
done, it’ll be still and quiet as death until we come out the
other side. You might get some funny feelings inside or even some
hallucinations, but they’ll only last a real short while, and
it’s a good idea to sit or lie down ’cause most
everybody gets a little dizzy, but it all passes pretty fast and
each time you do it the effects will be less and less. Just relax
and don’t let it scare you.”
They waited, nervous in spite of Koll’s assurances, and
the punch came.
First there was tremendous vibration that continued to build
with a supporting roaring sound until it seemed to engulf them. At
that moment the lights blinked and the sound seemed to fade as if
swallowed up in some huge drain; the vibration, too, settled down
to a level far lower than that produced by the regular space drive.
There was a wave of dizziness, and some nausea, and each one of
them found his or her attention fixed on something—an object,
a reflection, even another person—unable to tear away that
gaze. Even China, who could see nothing, appeared to be staring at
something specific in her world of darkness.
Hawks stared involuntarily at the blind girl and she seemed to
shimmer, taking on a wraithlike appearance of stunning beauty. She
seemed to float up and come toward him, then change again into a
horrible, skeletal monster, jaws open, coming for him—
He screamed, and suddenly everything was back to normal. He
found himself sweating and shaken, breathing hard, and it took a
few moments for him to get hold of himself and look around and
reaffirm reality. The others had varying degrees of reaction, but
all of them clearly had seen something, something uniquely
their own. Sabatini looked scared to death, and the Chows were
shivering. Sooner or later, Hawks decided, he would find out what
each had seen, but for now he just noted the differences. Of them
all, Raven and Warlock looked the least affected and the least
concerned.
The thunder was quiet now; there was nothing but a very low
steady vibration through the deck and walls, quite distant. None of
them, except perhaps Koll, understood what had just happened, but
Hawks grasped at least the basics. Somehow, they were no longer in
the universe at all. Somehow, now, they were in another medium,
somewhere else, traveling across a ripple in space-time by
the shortest available route.
It was a frightening, awesome concept, yet it meant one thing
above all.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Raven commented aloud
to no one in particular. “We actually got away.”
Spanning hundreds, perhaps thousands, of light-years by the
punch method was incredible, but it still took time.
Some of that time was spent in attaining a more livable,
civilized environment. Star Eagle now had a reasonable command of
the ship’s systems and how they worked. The maintenance
computer subsystem was employed creating and then using an army of
spindly robots that were able to turn chambers in the bow of the
Thunder into reasonably private rooms. Much of the old
ship was dismantled, its essential parts modified and duplicated by
the Thunder’s transmuters. A square meter of
passenger-lounge carpeting was sufficient for the transmuters to
create a carpeted floor for the new rooms and for the bridge. The
old ship’s toilets were modified and duplicated, as well, and
tied into new piping using the vast support system of the
Thunder. The old ship’s transmuter-driven automated
galley was reinstalled with some modifications, allowing the old
menus to be used. The bridge chairs were replaced with copies of
the more practical and comfortable passenger lounge chairs. Since
the Thunder wasted nothing and recycled everything, even a
shower chamber was possible, although in the zero gravity it had to
be a more or less sealed system and strictly a one-at-a-time
affair.
Of equal importance were the interfaces that had to be designed
and installed between the passengers and the pilot and master of
the Thunder, a central amplifier and communications system
that might eventually extend to the whole of the ship; a way of
specifying human-supplied designs for the transmuters to work with,
to create things like furnishings for the new cabins and some basic
clothing. The women chose robes with soft linings and rope ties;
the men got flimsy versions of Sabatini’s usual shirt and
pants. Only Manka Warlock broke the pattern by insisting on the
shirt and pants for herself.
China and Reba Koll worked on installing the interface helmets
on the bridge. China was anxious to see if they would work here as
on the old, smaller ship. The idea of interfacing with Star Eagle
and becoming one with this ship excited her.
Some tubular lighting was arranged, but it was still kept low
and indirect. In normal space there was no power problem, but
during a punch the ship was the only reality; there was nothing at
all outside, according to the pilot. Nothing. That meant that all
transmuting—all power consumption—was accomplished
using materials within the ship, and particularly with all the
modifications and construction going on it was a drain. There was a
consensus not to start cannibalizing the ship for luxuries until
they knew their limits and understood their new environment.
They also began exploring the ship.
There were over twenty thousand pods in the transport bay. There
had been a hundred ships like this one, and an Earth population of
possibly six billion, when the grand project had begun. That meant
that each ship had made hundreds of round trips over the two or
more centuries of interstellar colonization. The time frame was not
clear in the records, but the evidence here was clear enough. The
Thunder was a veteran indeed. Slave ship, Hawks couldn’t help thinking.
“How many worlds are charted as being part of the
settlement?” he asked Star Eagle.
“Four hundred and forty-seven,” was the reply.
“But it might not be complete. The region spans over forty
thousand light-years.”
He tried doing some quick math in his head. That was only about
thirteen or fourteen million a world!
“The initial populations were not large,” the
computer agreed. “Nor was Mars, the prototype, if you
remember. There are almost two hundred million Martians now, and
they have a relatively slow birth rate. You forget that Earth was
limited in its reproductive rates and carefully regulated, but that
this does not necessarily hold true for these worlds. It is
entirely possible that we could find planets with billions on
them—or planets with few, if any, survivors. How would we
know?”
“Four hundred forty-seven,” Raven commented.
“Minimum. Good thing we know where three of the rings
are.”
“Ever the optimist,” Hawks retorted. “We know
the worlds where they are, but nothing about those worlds
and nothing about how many possible leaders could have them. And
that leaves us with just four hundred and forty-four other worlds
in which to find the last ring. Perhaps our grandchildren or
great-grandchildren might find it.”
“Don’t you worry, Chief. We’ll find it. We
didn’t come this far to fail in that. Stealin’
it, and the others, will be the tough job.”
“Please pardon the intrusion,” Chow Dai put in,
“but might I be permitted to ask why, if this Master System
knows that we know, it will not just collect or hide all four,
perhaps all five, from us before we can even try for
them?”
It was a good question. “There’s no easy answer to
that,” Hawks told her. “It remains a possibility, but I
think not for several reasons. First, those rings are the only
avenue to us. It knows we’re going after them, and so it will
be waiting for us. Second, there’s something very odd going
on here. There’s more than just us in this. Maybe you should
ask Raven about that.”
The Crow’s eyebrows went up. “Don’t know what
you mean, Chief. I told you the straight stuff. Chen’s the
only one I know behind all this. Word of honor.”
Hawks privately doubted that Raven’s honor was worth very
much, but he knew it was fruitless to press the point. It was even
possible that the former security man was telling the truth. Why
would Chen select this crew—particularly this
group—and think they had a snowball’s chance in hell of
succeeding? He’d asked himself that a thousand times and had
no answer, yet Chen was a wily, even brilliant man. Did Chen, and
perhaps Raven, know something that might explain it, and might also
explain how they had been able in the first place to pull this off
under a system that had some cracks but no chasms? They had walked
through the Grand Canyon of cracks in Master System’s rule,
and they should not have been able to do so.
In many ways, the Thunder proved something of a
disappointment in that beyond its transport bays and incredible
lengths of corridors and catwalks there was little else with any
use for humans. In spite of the mysteries of the bridge and its
interfaces, the ship had never been built with humans in mind for
anything except cargo. Much of the romance engendered by the mere
sight and thought of such a ship was gone in the sterile metals and
plastics of the reality. Star Eagle could show them more than they
could see themselves on the screens of the
bridge—another anomaly. If the ship was run by a remote
computer brain directly connected to service and security subbrains
and to the mobile machines they controlled, why were there viewing
screens on the bridge?
The star drive was actually forward and well shielded against
any type of prying. It appeared that “punch” was indeed
as good a word as any for what it did; it appeared to focus
forward, open up some sort of hole in space-time, and allow the
ship through, encased somewhat in an energy field to protect it
from whatever forces were out there now. The massive rear drives
were strictly for in-system movement and docking, and were not used
in interstellar flight at all.
The top of the ship, as oriented from the bridge, consisted of
massive tanks of gases, fuels, and all else needed both to sustain
the human cargo and to provide whatever was necessary to the
ship’s systems. If the Thunder had a weak point,
this was it, but the tanks were armored to an amazing degree and
atop them were complexes of defensive weapons. If a potential
attacker somehow got past the fourteen small automated fighters
that provided the ship’s primary defense, there would still
be no easy taking of the main ship.
Below were the four massive cargo bays, in one of which sat the
remains of the interplanetary ship that had brought them from
Melchior. Each of the bays had extensive equipment for moving and
reaching almost any point in the cavities, and independent
medium-sized transmuters.
“One thing I haven’t figured out,” Raven said,
“is how they got all those people in here and back out again.
There’s no docking piers for support ships.”
“This ship could never land anywhere,” China
explained. “The transmuter is the heart of Master
System’s whole scheme. It is the heart of everything that
also makes the rest possible. Some are used simply to manufacture
spare parts, repairs, and to recycle everything that can no longer
be used. The corps of robots Star Eagle is using were nothing but
plans in the ship’s data banks, fed to transmuters along with
something of necessary mass—exhaust gases, waste products, debris,
garbage. The mass is transformed into energy and then reformed as
whatever solid matter the ship might need. There are transmuters in
the bow which can literally scoop up space debris—rock, dust,
gases—and feed them into the storage tanks above us in
compressed form. When we’re inside a punch, as now, the ship
uses this stored material to keep itself and everything else going.
These were very low when we moved out, but in the transit of
Jupiter the ship picked up enough to fill those holding
tanks.”
“Yeah, but—people?”
“In the same way that the things can change one form of
matter or energy into another, it can also maintain a specific
object. All of it is catalogued when it is picked up, so if
necessary it could be reformed as itself. We could put you
in a transmuter, reduce you to energy, then beam that energy to a
receiving transmuter along with that pattern. You would then be
converted back into yourself. The process would take only as long
as light required to travel the distance.”
“Space travel without spaceships,” Hawks commented.
“Incredible.”
“But very limited. First, there must be a matching
transmuter at the destination. Second, the signal must be very
powerful to retain its full consistency from station to station,
which limits its range. Third, it is strictly line of sight, and
conditions must be perfect. In the old days, initial setup ships
must have been sent to all the new worlds and transmuter receiving
stations established at various points on each planet’s
surface. Then, when the passengers came along, they could be beamed
serially—one at a time—to the receiving stations. What
you send from here is precisely what you get down there. There is a
mobile transmuter system in the main cargo area that seems almost
like a gun; it is designed to move along guides on the catwalks and
line up to each cargo cavity. It is connected to the external
system, so we know that the people were put to sleep on Earth, then
beamed up to here and inserted sequentially into the holding
modules. Upon arrival at the new world, the process was reversed.
They probably never even knew about all this. They went to sleep on
Earth and woke up on a strange world.”
“But not necessarily the way they left,” Raven
noted. “I saw a Martian once. They came from human stock but
there’s no way they’re human like us.”
China nodded. “That was the primary function of the
missing fourth module in the core. It was preprogrammed with
certain necessary biological information. The cargo bay mobile
transmuter made a new pass after all were aboard and the ship was
underway. Each human occupant was once more dissolved to energy and
then reformed as something else—a human able to live and
survive on the target world. Otherwise, it would have taken
thousands of years to change those worlds into places fit for human
habitation. The transmuting of individual humans must be extremely
precise and exacting, requiring a second core module and probably
supporting data banks to get it right. Many human beings certainly
died each time a new form was attempted before the computers got it
right. Then they sent a small colony to the new world to see if
they could and would survive there. Only then did mass
transmutations and movements of large numbers of people begin. It
was the only logical way such a plan could be carried out, but the
cost in lives must have been quite high.”
“Even when they got there,” Hawks put in, a bit awed
and more than a little frightened by all this, “this would
change the body, but not the mind, a mind used to thinking in human
terms, to seeing things according to human standards, even
themselves. They had to learn to be alien creatures. Many
would be unable to do so. Many more would go mad.”
“That’s true,” she agreed. “Although I
suspect that the mindprinters were used to minimize it. Take data
and information from the early colonists who survived and adapted,
and feed it to the newcomers when they come down. The mindprinter
taught most of us the English we are using, and made some of this
possible. It could teach the basics.”
Hawks had a sudden, uneasy thought. “You say it takes a
receiving station to work as a transport mechanism? Then how will
we get to wherever it is Koll is taking us? How will we get down
there? And, when we go after the rings, how will we get to the
target planet? Assuming the stations on the planets are still
operational, we can’t use them. It would be like a thief
walking up to the front door, knocking, and announcing himself to
the intended victim.”
“Getting to the surface of a world not in the system
should be possible,” she told him. “Star Eagle assures
me he can duplicate the necessary receiving station and get it down
using one of the fighters, although I suspect it’s more
complex than that. Getting into the other worlds will be much
tougher. For one thing, the Thunder is going to be rather
obvious in a stellar system controlled by Master System. We will
have to work on that.”
“Bah!” Raven snorted. “We are like children in
this! The technology is so beyond us that we are no less ignorant
than Cloud Dancer! We might as well be villagers faced with great
magic!”
“So?” China responded. “What difference does
that make? Back at the Center where you lived and worked, did you
really understand why and how the light came on when you touched
the wall switch? Did you understand the process by which your food
arrived, or did you just take it for granted and eat it? The same
for the heating and the air conditioning and all the rest. I can
fly a skimmer, but I have only a vague idea of how it works. I can
use powerful computers, yet I do not truly understand how they
think and the intricacies of their work. One does not have to know
how something works to use it. Many people have been killed by guns
wielded by gunmen who have not the slightest idea of the physics
involved. Even Star Eagle does not understand some of that which he
is doing. He was never intended to run a ship of this type and
complexity. He does, however, have access to the operating
instructions and can run them.”
“Point taken,” Hawks replied. “All right, so
we savages can manage this thing. I think the time has come to have
a council meeting and decide just what the hell we are really going
to do.”
They sat in a circle on the bridge, relaxed but interested, not
all of them understanding what this more formal meeting was
for.
“I called this meeting, but that may be a temporary
usurpation of authority,” Hawks began. “Among my
people, this would be a tribal council convened to create rules,
objectives, and policies for all. We come from different places and
different backgrounds. We think in different tongues, and some of
us have less in common with one another than even we might think.
However, we come here with a common bond. We are all fugitives. We
all live under a death sentence or even worse. We also share a
secret, of sorts. We know that there is a way to beat Master
System. We know that there is a way to totally destroy the
dictatorship of the machine. We are all here, together, with no
others to share our bond, and we are, in a sense, stuck with each
other, like it or not. We are all escaping now, but not to a
specific place or a specific set of objectives. Before we can
discuss the future and set those objectives, we must have someone
in charge, not as dictator or chief but as chairman, as it were, of
a collective.”
“You’re doin’ fine, Chief,” Raven said.
“I’m content to let you chair the meetings and bang the
drums. Some of us know about the different parts of humanity and
some of us know a lot about machines but you’re the one
person here with the education to see the big picture. Any
objections?”
There were some nervous glances from side to side, but nobody
seemed to be unhappy with that.
“Very well, I assume the leadership, but when a majority
of you is dissatisfied with it, I will step down. I will appoint
our China, here, second in command and with full authority. I think
the two of us are better at planning than in direct action. Very
well. We then proceed to the first really important item on the
agenda. Captain Koll, just where are we heading?”
“In the bush, sir. A region two punches off any known
interstellar routes. It was crudely scouted in the old days by
Master System and there were some early experiments on some planets
there, but none proved out. There are several stellar systems there
that show some promise and might possibly sustain a land base with
the support of the Thunder. We can’t be expected to
live in this can indefinitely. It’s not healthy and
it’s a sitting duck. If we’re tied to it absolutely
we’ll just have to accept a life of constantly being on the
run, or heading this thing out and just punching until we’re
so far away even we couldn’t find our way back. If
we’re gonna stay close enough to Master System to do some
damage, then we can’t ever have all our eggs in one basket.
Somebody’s gotta survive, with the information on the rings
and the story of all this.”
“I find the ship more than adequate,” China
responded. “It can be modified to support many more of us,
and it gives us mobility. We do not seem a likely group for
survival on a hostile world.”
There were several nods, but Hawks understood what Koll was
saying.
“This is not and cannot be a passive vessel,” he
told them. “We are going to have to get what we cannot make
for ourselves. The interstellar shipping system is totally
automated and runs that way. Right now it is vulnerable, perhaps
wide open to us. We need smaller, more practical interstellar
vessels. We need backups to our systems. We will also need
information channels, and that will mean direct contact with
freebooters and the like, those who live outside the system. We
will need to pillage and plunder, as it were, and also to
reconnoiter our target systems without advertising our presence to
Master System. Everyone, even the freebooters themselves, might be
our enemy. The captain is correct. If we are to be pirates, we must
have a place to study and bury our loot. We will eventually require
more people, perhaps as allies. And, finally, these confines are no
place to raise children, and we will have children, won’t we,
China?”
She nodded somberly. “Yes. Star Eagle was checking out the
transmuter system and eventually required a human.
It—tickles. All over. Nothing more. You are not even aware
that it is done until it is over. In so doing, he also had to make
a molecule-by-molecule memory map of me in order to reconstruct me.
I was aware that a transmuter was used upon me by Clayben’s
staff on Melchior. I was not aware until now of the extent.”
Her voice was dry, hollow, as if that tough exterior was about to
fragment into a million pieces.
Star Eagle broke in. “She has been thoroughly
transmuted,” the computer pilot reported, “although the
changes are not so obvious. I had hoped to be able to restore her
to some semblance of normalcy with my devices, but that is
impossible. Perhaps Master System could restore her, but I cannot.
There is a certain—instability—inherent in a full
transmutation. I knew that just from the small transmuters on the
old ship. There are some minor losses each time something is
actually changed—no loss if absolutely reconstructed. That
was why a separate core was needed to transmute the human cargo of
this ship. There is literally no tolerance for errors. The losses
she suffered at the hands of Melchior are negligible, but to do it
again would compound those losses. Reassembly might well kill or
cripple her. There is some indication that this is actually built
into the system when dealing with complex organic life forms.
Master System wanted to make certain that none of those it created
could change themselves back. It wanted permanency, and it designed
it into the system.”
“I was—am—a genetic experiment,” China
explained. “My father worked to create me. My extreme
beauty—I am not saying that to be egotistical—and my
very high intelligence were part of it. I was part of a larger
project to breed a race of superior intellects, intellects that
might do more than simply cheat on the system. I was but stage one,
however; that race was to be bred, and it was my purpose to be one
of those who would bear the next generation that might be the
rebels. It was to escape this life as a breeding factory that I
fled. I saw my father as unfeeling, as even evil, and I ran into
the hands of Clayben, who was far more unfeeling and evil than my
father ever dreamed of being. Melchior was Clayben’s playpen,
possibly the only place in the known universe where such vast
knowledge and power could be wielded without restraint by human
beings. He examined me, discovered my background, and decided my
father was correct.”
“But you escaped from him, as well,” Chow Dai
noted.
“Not soon enough. They analyzed what my father’s
geneticists and biochemists had done and made improvements on it in
computer models, but as you know such modifications would not be
inheritable if induced, unlike my father’s more direct
approach with laboratory eggs and sperm. They were also aware of
all that I had accomplished in escaping my father, Center, and even
Earth. They wanted my mind and my body—in that, at
least, their ideas were better than my father’s—but
they wanted me secure, particularly if I was to work with their
best computers and data bases. Melchior was originally established
as a research station by Master System to create the Martians. It
has a small but very workable transmuter. They use it for many
experiments. Captain Koll’s tail is a good
example.”
“I’m more familiar with it than you know,
dearie,” Koll said enigmatically.
“At any rate, they modified me. All of me. Incorporated
their genetic changes to be inheritable, building on my
father’s work. Star Eagle can tell you the rest.”
“They wanted to make certain she couldn’t pull a
fast one on them,” the pilot told them. “That was how
they hit on the blindness. She is not merely blind—she does
not even have the processing inputs for visual images. The entire
interconnection system simply isn’t there as it is in you.
This is not a genetic modification; her children will see. There
may be devices that bypass all of that that might just work, but I
have no knowledge of them. She is also what might only be called a
baby factory. Brain and body chemistry is set up for that. Her
natural and normal condition is pregnancy. When she is not pregnant
she will have almost no self-control. She will become increasingly
frenzied until that condition is restored, after which she will
again be as she is now. The combination of genetic work and
Melchior’s modifications is astonishing. She is resistant to
much of what afflicts others. She will age very slowly and heal
very quickly. Her defensive and regenerative powers are enormous
and automatic. She could very easily remain youthful and sexually
functional for sixty or seventy years.”
That got them all. Sixty or seventy years with pregnancy a
natural condition . . .
“Even in my day there was ways to beat that,” Reba
Koll noted. “Fool the body into thinkin’ it’s
pregnant, or, hell, take out the equipment if you can’t shut
it off.”
“Not here. Her body would treat any control method I might
be able to come up with as if it were a disease and destroy it or
render it ineffective. The same would go for psychochemicals.
Surgical alteration would be repaired and healed quickly by the
body and in the interim she would still be possessed of the lust
and frenzy, which is induced by chemicals made in her own body.
They knew she had used mindprinters before to her advantage, along
with psychochemical alterations, and they wanted to be certain she
could not do so again. To remove her reproductive organs would be
far worse. It would drive her horribly and irreparably mad. A
bullet in the brain would be kinder, and quicker. No, they fed her
mindprint into their computers and their computers came up with an
absolute system. I am not certain what Clayben intended—breed
his own super race, perhaps. In the meantime, so long as she was
pregnant, he had the complete services of her mind and
abilities.”
That stunned those who hadn’t already known about it, but
Hawks had a different point to this information. “Understand
this well, then. We need her mind and her skills; therefore, she
will receive what she needs when she requires it. If we are to have
a substantial second generation, then it might fall to them
eventually to get the last of the rings. We require a
colony.”
“There’s darker stuff here, Chief,” Raven put
in. “More than that problem. I been listenin’ to all
this and, as you know, I followed it when we was still researching
the whole thing, and when I first heard about these transmuters I
figured our problem on getting into our target world was solved. We
could change ourselves into what was needed. Now I see that’s
not gonna happen. For one thing, old Star Eagle don’t have
the codes and genetic shit to do it to any of us. For another, even
if he did, it’s a one-way trip. There’s no way
I’m gonna be changed into a monster for good, or, even if it
was something I didn’t mind bein’, wind up bein’
left forever on some world while somebody else sticks them rings in
Master System’s ass.”
“A good point,” Hawks agreed. “I’m
afraid we might have to face the transmuter to accomplish our
goals, at least at the start, but while that sacrifice might have
to be made by some or even all of us, I could not ask anyone to
place him- or herself in the position of having to remain
behind. I am personally prepared to make any sacrifice, including
death or mutilation, to end the tyranny, but only if it means
something. I would not shed an eyelash if it meant that an Isaac
Clayben or a Lazlo Chen, who is much the same sort, would wind up
our masters. I know enough history to understand that achieving a
revolution is not the same as winning it. I am as dedicated to our
revolution as I can be, but I am equally dedicated to not replacing
Master System with a human monster.”
“I’m afraid I shall have to insist on a planetary
base,” Star Eagle interjected. “I will need time to
convert this ship into something more practical, and I will require
independence and mobility.”
“All right, so we’re agreed that far,” Raven
said. “So we go out there and we build a base, more than a
colony. Then what?”
“As I said, piracy. We need mobility. We have the only
active colony ship in the known universe. We need another ship,
preferably more than one. Their data banks alone might tell us of
other targets worth hitting and the schedules we need. We outfit
them. Either Star Eagle converts them to our side or we learn to
fly them without a core. Outfit them. Weapons. Sensors. Our own
communications and codes. Then it will be time for some of us to
make contact with the freebooters. By that time we’ll have
something of a mysterious reputation. We need information. We need
to know about these worlds we’re going to be going to. Who
are the people there? What’s the culture, the language, the
physical and biological problems? Who’s in charge and who
runs what? Which leader wears a large gold ring with a design in
it? Does anyone know of another that we do not? Step by step, a bit
at a time, with infinite patience and dedication.”
“It sounds impossible,” China commented.
“It’s not. Difficult, yes. Dangerous, yes. Certain?
By no means. I would say the odds are against us overwhelmingly.
But impossible it certainly is not. I have thought it through and
thought it through until my head burst, but I think I have it now.
What Raven and Warlock, there, and Chen as well, knew from the
start.” He looked at the Crow and the Jamaican beauty.
“It can’t be impossible, can it? It is
required to be at least possible.”
The Crow grinned. “You got it, Chief. You’re smarter
than I thought. I would have explained it, sooner or later, but why
bother now?”
“I do not understand this,” Cloud Dancer commented.
“Pardon my ignorance, but I must have much of this explained.
The evil lord I understand, and his great power, and the use of the
talismans to break his power,
but—required?”
“Don’t feel bad,” China said. “They just
lost me, too.”
“Think about the story,” Hawks urged them.
“Master System is incredibly powerful, but it is a computer.
A computer designed by humans. All this, all this subjugation of
humanity, the reduction of Earth to primitivism, the diaspora that
scattered and somewhat dehumanized the vast bulk of humanity, all
was simply an interpretation by that computer of its
creators’ command. Think about that. Command. It was
commanded to find a way so that humanity could never
destroy itself completely. It was commanded to find a way
so humanity could never use its terrible weapons of mass
destruction nor spread them. It was a classic deal-with-a-demon
fable. Out of fear, or desperation, or whatever, those people
raised a great demon and they offered it absolute power over them
and their dominions in exchange for safety. They tried as best they
could to build into their wish every safeguard, to close every
loophole, but the demon, being a demon, was far too clever for even
the most brilliant of mere mortals and found the loopholes anyway.
It granted their wish—and took away the souls of their
children and grandchildren unto the last generation and swept away
all their works. But we’re safe—from everything except
the demon.”
“But they must still have suspected or they wouldn’t
have created the rings in the first place,” China pointed
out.
“Indeed. I think, perhaps, it was simply part of the
bargain. The demon, as all great legends have it, must
fulfill the wishes as stated. It is compelled to do so. One
safeguard was the rings—the magic talismans, as my wife
referred to them—and what went with them. A guarantee of some
access. The rings must be in human hands—humans with
authority. If any are lost or destroyed, duplicates must be made
and provided to said leaders. The other part of the bargain must be
a guarantee of access. We have a right to go
after the rings, to gather them together, and to make our way with
them to Master System and use them. A right, guaranteed as
part of the bargain—the core program of Master System itself,
a core that could not be altered. Another part of the
bargain.”
China nodded, and even Cloud Dancer, Reba Koll, and the Chows
seemed to get the idea. Sabatini sulked off in a corner in silence,
and Silent Woman was as impassive as ever.
“It could scatter them among the stars, because there were
now humans out there with authority of sorts,” China said in
wonder. “It could try to stamp out all knowledge of the rings
and their purpose and use. But it could not violate the basics. It
just made it damned near impossible for anybody to actually do
it.”
“Perhaps not as impossible as you think,” Raven
responded. “We never really thought it was an accident that
the data on the rings survived all these centuries, or that it was
discovered now. See, there’s a real indication that Master
System is gonna radically change people, even on Earth. Wipe out
civilization and knowledge, push us back to the start, make us
little better than apes with clubs. But, see, that really
would make it impossible. Old Master System slipped up. By
merely making that decision it forced itself into a vulnerable
position. Ten to one it’s pulled back now from doing that,
thanks to us, because otherwise it might make a lot more teams like
us ’cause it has to. But before it fully understood
what it was doing, we got out—and maybe others. We might not
be the only ones who know and got away, you know. We might not even
be the only ones Chen arranged for. There’s that ship that
was following us, for example.”
That was a sobering thought.
“In the light of first things first, what should we do
about that ship?” Hawks asked them.
“Blow ’em out of the skies,” Reba Koll
replied. “You can’t give any quarter in this and expect
to succeed.”
“That would solve the problem,” Hawks
admitted, “but I don’t see any reason right now to do
so. If we must, we must, but I just can’t see any direct
purpose to indiscriminate killing. If it was a Val ship, it’s
be different, but it’s definitely got humans on
board.”
“You got the question wrong, Chief,” Raven
interjected. “It’s why is it following us? It
can’t take us; but it’s taking a big risk that
we’ll take it. If they wanted to join up, they’d have
called us by now. If it was Master System, there wouldn’t be
people on board for any reason. They’d just get in the way.
Figure it’s this Nagy fellow and maybe others from Melchior.
They know about the rings thanks to the mindprints they took from
you, but they don’t know where to look. We could really use
that ship but we have to destroy it or lose it unless they give it
to us. They’re just on our tail ’cause they don’t
know where to go and they’re otherwise as lost as we are. I
say we try to lose ’em. Can you shake them, Star
Eagle?”
“The problem would be in the energy required for quick
punches in and out,” the computer reported. “Yes, I
could lose them. It is not that difficult, but it would leave us
without punch power for quite some time and exposed while
we’re still in the shipping lanes. There is a low, but
definite, probability that we might be sensed or spotted by Master
System.”
Hawks sighed. “All right, then. When we punch out,
we’ll give them one chance and a warning. If nothing else, it
might reveal just who they are and whether they are acting alone.
If we can’t cut a deal and they won’t talk to us, then
we will take some sort of drastic action. Before I will kill or
expose us to needless risk, though, I would like to know who it is
I am killing and why.”
“Ship still back there, Star Eagle?”
“Yes. It
has dropped back but is still within range.”
Hawks sighed.
“Open up communications and patch me through,
then.”
“Channels are open. You are on the three most common
frequencies. I will narrow it when and if they reply. We are
exposed in this position although I sense nothing nearby or in
range. Even so, I would rather not make broad-band broadcasts. The
signals will travel, and it might be one more way of being
traced.”
“This is Jon Nighthawk aboard the Thunder to the
ship in our wake. Respond, please.”
There was no reply.
“This is Hawks aboard the Thunder. I would rather
talk but I cannot risk this sort of broadcast for long, If I
receive no response from you I will have no choice but to determine
you a hostile ship and order fighters to launch and commence action
against you. You have one minute.”
He paused, then said, “Fifty seconds,” and counted
down every ten seconds. He was not bluffing, but if he launched he
would have to recover those fighters, as well, and that would be
needless delay in the middle of a shipping lane.
“Ten . . . nine . . . eight . . . seven . . . ”
“All right, damn it! We’re here,” came a gruff
male voice through the speakers. “I suppose this was
inevitable anyway.”
“You are following us,” Hawks
noted, “not the other way around. You must have thought it
through—that if you were close enough to keep us on your
sensors the reverse was also true.”
“We assumed nothing of the sort. Who would have believed
you could attain mastery of a ship like that in so short a time?
Very well, let’s talk. You’re in trouble, and so are
we.”
“We are not nearly in the same predicament as you are. If
we are all on the same side here, why follow? Why not hail us and
join us?”
There was a pause. “Because it would be my death at the
least if I were to fall into your hands, and a very unpleasant one,
that’s why.”
“I’d know that voice anywhere,” Reba Koll
muttered. “That’s Clayben! Shoot him, damn it! Rip
his guts out!”
Hawks was startled by the outburst, but ignored it. “I can
see your point from the reaction here, Doctor. Captain Koll
considers just your existence in my sights to be sufficient grounds
to blow you to hell.”
“That is not Captain Koll. Koll’s dead, been dead
almost two years now. That is an inhuman, terrifying monstrosity, a
horror. It’s the thing that killed Koll and assumed her
identity. I should know. I created the damned thing.”
“Stand by,” Hawks said. That uneasy chill he felt
only when danger lurked close at hand was creeping into him. He
turned and looked at Koll. “Isn’t it about time you
explained this, or should I ask him?”
“He told you true,” she admitted unhesitatingly.
“At least about the fact I ain’t Koll and that
I’m not human and that he’s responsible for it. I kinda
object to the horror and monstrosity parts, though. I ain’t
such a bad sort. I only kill at all ’cause he made it so I
have to. I got choices, though. I got a conscience. I don’t
kill none who don’t deserve it unless it’s them or me.
You gotta believe that.”
Hawks felt his throat going dry, and he licked his lips
nervously. “We were depending on you to take us someplace
safe. If you’re not Koll, then even if the rest of what you
say is true, how am I to trust you?”
“’Cause I got all of Koll’s memories, you
idiot! I’m a damned near perfect imitation—absolutely
perfect when I wanna be!”
“Doctor? You want to explain all this?”
There was a pause on the radio. “It was a grand
experiment,” Clayben said finally. “Melchior, all of
it, was devoted to just one ultimate goal: Beating the system.
Cheating it. Eventually, hopefully, destroying it. I was taking up
the work of my predecessors, that’s all. We—our
computers and our experts in security and biology—thought we
had a part of the answer. A weapon, as it were, in human form. A
being who could beat the system at will. Become anyone it wished.
Sail through security ports, passing every test—memory,
retinal prints, even blood and tissue samples. Gain the full
knowledge of whomever it imitated and therefore have full access to
anyplace human beings could go. The first of a race, an army, that
would collapse the whole control system. We used the transmuter for
the final prototype. It worked, but it worked too well.
The—thing—saw no difference between humans and
computers. It hated us all. It killed half the station before we
found a way to incapacitate it and stabilize it. We could have
killed it—absolute incineration or transmutation to gas or
energy would have done it—but we could not. It was so close.
It almost worked. We kept it—stabilized. In human
form. With the chemical compounds we used, it would remain stable
for two, three years. Then it would have to have another template,
another form. We used prisoners for whom we had no other
use.”
“Like Koll.”
“Like Koll. But the next time it—feeds—and
changes, there won’t be any compound. No chemicals. It will
be free to do it at will. It will kill all of you and absorb your
knowledge, your memories. It wants the rings for itself. God will
be an insane monster!”
Hawks stared at the frail-looking Reba Koll.
“Bullshit,” she said. “I don’t know what
sane is, but I sure as hell ain’t hankerin’ to eat the
lot of you. It’s true what he says—right at the start I
was nothin’ much but an animal, a killer, but the
more people I become, the more memories I got, the more ways I had
to behave, the more human, I guess, I got. I got all them
memories, all that knowledge up here in my head and all
over my body, I guess. I don’t even know how it works. The
only thing I don’t have is who I was to start with. Only
he knows that. You think I liked killin’ Koll, or
the others? I didn’t pick ’em—he did.
Just to keep me alive so he could study and figure out how to make
a ton more of me he could control. His own Vals, in spades. I want
the rings, sure, but not alone. Nobody should have that power
alone, not even me. You need me to get ’em, Chief. I can go
down to them worlds no matter how much they’re monsters
there, and I can become one of ’em and know all the rules
right off, and I can waltz right in and take them rings off the
fingers or whatever them leaders have. You can’t.”
“I doubt if it will be that easy, even for you,”
Clayben replied. “But you see why this is as close as I can
approach. You haven’t the power to keep her from me, Hawks,
and I would fight to the death before I would allow
that.”
Hawks stared at Reba Koll. He had expected to have to make some
very tough decisions as the leader but he hadn’t expected
something like this at all, and certainly not right off.
“All right, Captain, or whatever you are. You really have
the biggest problem. I can’t stop you from killing us all,
but you can’t take this ship and run it and you know it.
It’s Star Eagle’s ship. But whether you are friend or
foe, and whether I have to die, along with others here, making
certain our mission fails at the start, depends on you. It’s
Clayben—or a shot at the rings. China?”
“The gods who might be, if any, know that I have only
hatred and contempt for this man, yet if it is the choice of the
rings or him, I will kneel to him and lick his behind before I
would throw away the rings.”
“This ain’t fair!” Koll grumped. “I
spent ten years dreamin’ of nothin’ but gettin’
that bastard in a position where I could torture him to death real
slow. I wouldn’t eat him. I wouldn’t want to
be him, and I wouldn’t never be in the
position of understanding him. Now you got him and you’re
tellin’ me to kiss and make up.”
Hawks was beginning to see the larger picture in all this. He
just wished he knew who was drawing it. “It’s why
you’re here, Koll, or whatever you are. It’s the reason
you’re here and not back on Melchior with Master System in
control of it and you. You say you can take anyone. I have no
reason to doubt you on that, but can you become a Val? A
computer?”
“Of course not, idiot!”
“Master System wouldn’t care how many people you
killed. It would study you and analyze you and then melt you down
for the final analysis, and it would be perfectly willing to
incinerate all life forms on Melchior if it thought it needed to
dispose of you. You’re not here by accident. Your name was on
Raven’s list. You’re here because you can do what you
say—go down and get very close to those who have the rings
without penalty. But it’s still a group effort. You think it
over. You’re no use to me if you have no self-control.”
Hawks turned back to the communications set.
“Clayben, I don’t like you very much, and I
don’t trust you at all, but I’m willing to deal you in
if you have something to offer me. I can really use that ship of
yours, but I don’t require it. Nobody here will shed
a tear if I order you blown to bits. You are a problem and a luxury
for me. Tell me why I can afford you.”
“My knowledge, my skill, my experience,” the
scientist replied. “You have computer people and security
people there but not one good experimental scientist. I have aboard
this ship the backup copies of all the essentials of two decades
plus of research done on Melchior. The data is unique and
priceless. It is also coded only to me. Then there is the ship, as
you mentioned, and Mr. Nagy’s not inconsiderable background
and contacts. He’s been out here before. He knows the
freebooters—who can be trusted and who can’t. I
don’t think you can afford to pass us up, sir, or I
wouldn’t have chased you.”
Hawks turned to the others. “Mute the communications link
for a moment, Star Eagle.”
“Muted. We are here far too long, Hawks. We should
move.”
“The risk might be worth it. It isn’t the worst
we’ve taken and it won’t be the worst we take in the
future. Now, listen, all of you. I want to hear it from everyone.
Clayben’s right. He has the data we need, and Nagy the
contacts. They have a ship we could use that we don’t have to
convert from Master System control. Can we trust men like this? No.
Their record speaks for itself. They aren’t so much demonic
as they are uncaring about human beings or anything except
themselves. They’ll be trouble. Raven?”
“Bring ’em on, Chief. We’ll take care of them
if they get out of line. I kinda think they’ll be real
cooperative, real team players, until push comes to shove. Besides,
it’s a great way to get the ship. If they get nasty later we
can always eliminate them.”
Warlock snickered. “We are of Security, Hawks. This is our
job and we are good at it. We can handle them.”
“Chows?”
“They are no worse than any of the others we have always
faced. If they can do us some good, then it is about time they
served someone else,” Chow Dai said. Her twin nodded.
“Cloud Dancer?”
“Whatever you decide I will accept,” she replied.
“I am not certain that such evil men can ever be turned to a
good purpose, but if we lose to them we deserve it.”
“Star Eagle?”
“By all means let them come aboard. My core defenses are
extensive and there is nothing they can do aboard the
Thunder without my knowledge. In order for Clayben to use
his data he will have to interface with my data banks. Anything he
decrypts I will also learn.”
Hawks sighed. “It’s up to you, then, Koll. Think of
it this way. For once Clayben will be under our authority rather
than we under his. He might try something, but if he does
I’ll give him to you, no strings attached. The moment he
betrays any one of us, he is yours.”
She seemed to have already made up her mind. “All
right—but keep him away from the bridge. Quarantine him. On
the ground he’ll be on my turf, as it were, and I think I can
handle him if he can handle me. But not here. Not on the
Thunder.”
“Communications open,” Hawks ordered. “All
right, Doctor, you’re invited aboard by unanimous consent,
although our one real dissenter here insists that you be kept
isolated from the bridge while on this ship. If that is agreeable,
approach at moderate speed and prepare for instructions from our
pilot. We will punch as soon as we have you securely aboard, so
remain in your ship with full life support until we tell you
otherwise.”
“Understand. Acknowledge. You won’t regret
this.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. But you might,” Hawks muttered
under his breath.
It took almost an hour to get the Star into an outer
hold, but Star Eagle knew his job and was now fully master of the
big ship’s systems.
The pilot didn’t hesitate once all was ready, though. The
Thunder’s great engines roared into life, raising
the massive sonic storm, and within minutes they punched.
The sensation was still very unpleasant, but this time there
were no hallucinations and only relief that they were out of
there.
“You handled that right well, Chief,” Raven
commented.
“Perhaps. Perhaps I’m handling this on gut instinct,
Crow. Instinct and educated hunches. But they’ll be a time
bomb once aboard and you know it. I want no quarter given. The
slightest wrong move and, well, they are expendable.”
“No!” China said sharply. “Use your head,
Hawks. We need them—but on our side. That man has
played whatever games he wanted with people at his mercy using
mindprinters and transmuters. We have transmuters and when
we are finished cannibalizing the old ship we will have a
mindprinter.”
“But that one’s too limited to be of real
use,” he pointed out.
“Perhaps, but I will wager that Clayben had that ship of
his outfitted as a fully equipped fast escape ship from the
planning stages on. The fact that all data from the Melchior master
computers was automatically transmitted to it in encoded form shows
that. I’ll wager that aboard that thing he has a small
transmuter and a state-of-the-art mindprinter. Possibly even a
psychogenetics minilab. That ship, I will wager, is a one- or
two-person Melchior in miniature. By the time Star Eagle’s
maintenance robots and probes get through with it, I think
we’ll be able to do to the doctor whatever we
wish—before he does it to us.”