SHE WAS SHEER POWER, ABLE TO SEE in many
directions at once, to have all things background monitored and
brought to her notice, if need be. A mere thought brought access to
more data on more subjects than her mind could handle; in some
ways, it was too much for her, yet she could not get enough of it.
While she was the ship, she was a goddess, and it was no fantasy,
no wish fulfillment—it was real.
But she was also a small, fragile thing lying there in a command
chair on the bridge, wearing a huge padded helmet from which
specialized cables extended into the front panel. Star Eagle
understood that the small form there was her primary reality, the
one that made the rest possible, so he limited the duration of her
stays in his mighty realm, while giving her absolute freedom while
she was there.
She sped along the hundreds of thousands of kilometers of
communications and monitoring circuitry and enjoyed it as her own
private sort of peep show. Of particular interest was the large,
rectangular module in Cargo Bay Four that had been constructed by
Maintenance and endowed with full life-support and comfort
facilities. Hawks referred to it as the Leper Colony, although he
alone aboard knew what a leper was. They had built it for Clayben
and Nagy, and then sent Sabatini down there as well, if only to get
him out from underfoot.
Since Star Eagle had designed and constructed the module, it was
hardly private, in spite of assurances to the occupants that their
space was secure. Every move, every spoken word, every pulse beat
was monitored and recorded, and it was all carefully scrutinized by
Raven and Warlock, who knew just what to look for.
Clayben looked about fifty, with thin white hair, blue eyes, and
a ruddy complexion. He appeared fat and chubby-faced, but he was in
remarkably good shape and worked to keep it. He had a deep,
pleasant, throaty baritone that always sounded confident and
secure, the voice of a family physician or top salesman. He
certainly had one of the best minds of his or any other generation,
the sort of mind that could work on a dozen problems at once and
master virtually any discipline it wished. That was both his
greatness and his curse. He had run a torture chamber, yet never
once had he thought of it that way. To him, the entire universe and
all the creatures in it were merely props, put there for his
convenience. His was total egocentrism, but, unlike most such
conceited people, he really was superior to most other
human beings. The only other he recognized and truly feared was
Master System, and it would never have occurred to him that he and
the great hidden computer were mortal enemies—primarily
because they were so much alike.
The best way to describe Arnold Nagy physically was to think of
a wide-angle photograph of a man in which the sides were
compressed, making him a distorted stick figure. His head was very
long and narrow, and it sat on a long neck attached to a body that
was also very tall, very angular, and very thin. His tremendous
hawklike nose and lantern jaw, narrow eyes, and very small mouth
only accented his peculiar appearance. He was very dark complected,
with deep-brown eyes and long jet-black hair, and it was impossible
to guess his age.
This was the man who had been trusted with Melchior’s
security by both Clayben and Master System—he was formidable
and dangerous. So far he seemed to speak and understand about every
language he’d come across. He had long and often involved
discussions with Sabatini in the latter’s native Italian, and
he even had the dialect and the slang right. One could not use
Mandarin, for example, to comment privately where he might
overhear, and Cloud Dancer couldn’t even be certain Nagy
didn’t know Kyiakutt. Clearly Nagy was a natural linguist.
Languages could be learned by mindprinter, to a point, as many of
them had learned English and were still perfecting it by listening
to those who spoke it naturally, but dialects and slang were not so
easy to impart.
“Boring.” Nagy sighed, settling down in a
chair. “Sitting watch on the patient monitors was a thrill a
minute compared to this.”
“Patience, Arnold,” Clayben responded.
“Doubtless by now they’ve gone over the ship almost
molecule by molecule, and they’re sorting out all their data
and trying to break the encryption on the data-bank records. Our
active time will come. Great goals require great patience. Would
you rather put on a pressure suit and go up and say hello to Reba
Koll? She’s going to have to eat someone, you know,
sooner or later, and there aren’t many likely candidates
around.”
Nagy looked suddenly uncomfortable. “Sacrificial goat no
matter what, huh, Doc? Is that why you wanted me transferred from
the Star? For this?”
“No, Arnold, I did not. The last thing I imagined was
being in a secondary role on this ship with that thing
aboard and running free. I actually intended us to get to the
freebooters and establish a new working base somewhere from which
to build an organization and obtain the rings. It would be very
difficult to find them on our own, but not impossible. They are
quite distinctive. Someone, someplace, must have noticed them.
Then, when it became clear that these people might get this ship
started, it was worth the risk of improvising and following. I had
no idea that such people could get something of this size and
complexity running so smoothly at all, let alone this quickly. I
would be willing to work with most of these people, but I shall
never be comfortable while that creature is loose. I should have
destroyed it ten years ago, when I had the chance. It is my
greatest mistake.”
He sighed and patted Nagy on his shoulder. “Don’t
worry, my boy. They need you. They need us. We just have
to watch our backs, contribute, and bide our time. If, somehow,
that creature can be controlled when it is free of constraint, we
are where we want to be, aren’t we?”
Sabatini had entered the compartment and had just stood there,
listening to all this. “Yeah, well, that’s all well and
good for you two, but I’m dead meat to them. I lost my ship,
I lost my pilot, and the inmates are running the asylum. I just
want out. Failing that, I could die happy if I could just
push them Chink bitches out some air lock like they did
me.”
Nagy turned to stare at Sabatini. “You know, Captain,
I’d listen to the Doc here and stop all that talk. Cooperate,
go along with them, make yourself useful, even friendly—and
survive. They can’t carry much excess baggage even if they do
have a ship as big as a small city. Watch you don’t get
dumped.”
That was enough spying for now. Analysis—Reba
Koll. The response was almost instantaneous. Insufficient
information. Input provided by subject and Clayben consistent with
possibilities inherent in transmuter and psychogenetic technology.
No more. Scans do not show her in any way different than would be
expected for a human female her age.
The analysis of Clayben’s ship was more productive. As
China had guessed, it was almost a miniature state-of-the-art
laboratory, as well as a zone of comfort and an interstellar
spacecraft. It was a larger and more elaborate variation of the
Melchior fighter design, and it contained full and rather
impressive armaments, not sufficient to do more than minor damage
to the Thunder if it penetrated the fighter screen at all,
but sufficient to do a lot of damage to lesser craft.
Also aboard was a reference computer system of unfamiliar
design, possibly developed by Clayben personally. The information
in it could be gleaned by a normal type of computer interface, but
it was stored in a highly compressed and coded system. The
decryption method was unclear; it might be hardware or special
codes or a combination of the two, but it was quite sophisticated.
The ship did not contain a practical transmuter, although it had
one that it used for its interstellar drive fuel and maintenance;
it did, however, have a single-unit, fully functioning mindprinter,
attached to a psychochemical unit. While they were tied into and
run by the encrypted data computer system rather than the
ship’s computer, the design and operation was
straightforward. Star Eagle was working on duplicating the system
and creating his own, tying it into his own banks for operation.
Such a system might be very handy indeed.
Unfortunately, the smaller ship was still too large for the
Thunder’s transmuters to duplicate, but it could be
flown, at least. The pilot had a cold, neuter persona, but would
obey anyone who had the control codes to activate it.
China and Star Eagle continued to explore, spy, probe, and
hypothesize as the Thunder sped on through the
nothingness.
“There,” Star Eagle told them. “The second
planet out.” Not much was clear from the images on the
screens; they were computer graphics and not true pictures in any
event, and showed a huge sun and some small, bright dots that
represented planets.
“Won’t it be too hot that close to the sun?”
Chow Mai asked worriedly.
“Perhaps,” the pilot responded. “No way to
know for certain until we take a close look at it.” It was
the third one in the region they had checked out. The first had
been far too cold; the second had an atmosphere that would prevent
them from living any more freely than in the Thunder.
“The distance from the sun is important, but only
within a very broad range. Planets two, three, and four, here, and
possibly five are all in that range, but even my long-range
scanners indicate that only two has an atmosphere dense enough to
have potential: It is also the only one showing any readings
indicating early terraforming.”
They were not blind, even in this poorly charted region. Master
System had been here long before them. The area was better termed
“unused” than “unexplored.” For one reason
or another, the worlds here that Master System had attempted to
change had either taken too long to develop or developed wrong.
Although those worlds had been abandoned when more suitable planets
elsewhere were developed, the processes put in motion were not
halted. No one had ever found a paradise in this sector, but a
number of the worlds, given many centuries to develop and mature,
were at least usable and useful. And the sheer size of the sector
ensured against accidental discovery of the Thunder by
either freebooters or Master System.
“I’m getting promising readings,” Star Eagle
reported. “A very thick ozone layer and a high water content.
We will have to see what the surface temperatures are like, though;
it’s impossible to guess anything except the fact that this
will be a very humid place and certainly warmer on the average than
Earth. Let’s see.”
One of the robot fighters had launched itself from the
Thunder hours before and was now, under the firm control
of Star Eagle, approaching the planet. This fighter had been
modified by Maintenance for much more than defense and was capable
of a soft landing if need be.
“Initial readings aren’t optimistic,” Star
Eagle told them. “The world has an axial tilt of less than
eight degrees, which means little seasonal variation, and the
equatorial surface temperature appears close to sixty-five degrees
Celsius. Tremendous, vast water bodies, with very odd landmasses.
No continents as such, just islands, none incredibly large so far.
The average water depth must be very deep to account for this. Lots
of islands, all with rugged topography, but not much else. Some of
the volcanoes are active although there is no sign of massive
eruption to the atmosphere. I would guess that these are not the
major explosion type, but rather the slow, steady erupters with
dense lava.”
“What’s that mean?” Warlock asked, in an
uncharacteristically chatty manner.
“It means that there won’t be constant dust and soot
in the air that would cause things to be too hot or block so much
sun that it’d be freezing cold,” Hawks told her.
“But it also means you have a chance of having liquid rock
wash into your house almost anywhere, and probably frequent
earthquakes. Not very appetizing.”
“Interestingly, the most comfortable surface temperature
would be in the polar regions,” Star Eagle said, “but
there’s not a lot of promise there in surface area. The best
compromise would be about thirty degrees north or south. Lots of
island masses in clusters there, and a surface temperature
estimated at perhaps thirty to forty degrees. I am sending the
remote ship down to that latitude north for a ground scan. If I
find something promising I will let you know.”
The others looked at Hawks quizzically. “Hot,” he
told them. “Days hotter than the worst summer days of America
or China and nights as hot as hot summer days in Europe, with very
little difference over a year. We could live there, though, if the
air has the kind of makeup to block the worst and most damaging
rays of the sun. Even so, those of us with the darkest skin will
have the best protection. It won’t do anything for comfort,
though.”
“Atmosphere is quite good,” the pilot reported.
“The trace gases are quite different and the water vapor is
extremely high, but the oxygen-nitrogen balance is very close to
nominal. The difference can be attributed almost certainly to the
level of volcanic activity. Still, you can tell by how close it is
that this is induced rather than natural. There might be some
odors, but you could breathe the air unaided without
harm.”
“What about vegetation?” Hawks asked. “Any
sign of life down there?”
“Considerable, although it’s not possible to tell
its full nature from here. Many of the islands appear to be almost
junglelike, and I get some minor animal readings, as well, possibly
insects or birds or something like that. The seas also contain much
life, although I doubt that there are any deep-water creatures. The
plant layer is thick enough that it probably blocks most or all
light farther down. There is definitely animal life on or near the
surface, though. Not an enormous amount, but it’s
there.”
Hawks frowned. “Should it be? Would this have gotten far
enough to be seeded with fish or something?”
“Mostly mammalian, by the spectrography. It’s
possible. It’s possible this one got far enough along to be a
full test.”
“If it got that far, then why wasn’t it used?”
China asked, fascinated.
“Probably because of the slow development of the pattern
and the heavy growth of algae or funguslike plants on the
water,” Star Eagle guessed. “I suspect it was a
prototype rather than a finished product. Ah! A cluster of islands
that includes one very large one with a volcano at each end and
perhaps forty kilometers of flat land twenty or thirty meters at
most above sea level. The flats are ancient lava flows that ran
together. Both volcanoes appear dormant; there is no sign of very
recent lava flows into the flats, at any rate.”
A huge map appeared on the bridge screens showing a somewhat
crescent-shaped island with two enormous high peaks, one at each
end. The center area was relatively flat but uneven, thin in the
middle—perhaps only a kilometer across—and thicker as
it approached each of its two parents, perhaps as much as ten or
twelve kilometers at those points. One of those jagged parent peaks
was over two thousand meters high, the other slightly lower than
that. Both had enormous craters inside that were hundreds of meters
deep. There were several other single-peaked islands nearby, but
none showed a promising landing site.
The small fighter set down on a rise in the flats region and
went right to work taking samples and testing. Air temperature:
Thirty-six degrees C. Humidity: Ninety-seven percent. The rock was
basically basalt, its chemistry containing nothing odd or unusual.
Radioactivity was fairly low, considering the vulcanism. The
outcrop showed extreme weathering, indicating the passage of
frequent storms and high winds, a pattern confirmed by the early
orbital survey. The ultraviolet reaching the surface was within the
range of human tolerance, but might pose a long-term hazard to
lighter-skinned people who allowed themselves to become overexposed. There were airborne spores and micro-organisms; the ship
captured some in its filter and found them to be variations of
Earth organisms. While this indicated that Master System had
adapted readily available materials to create its balance, it also
indicated that this was a very early experiment, with no assurance
that such organisms would be harmless to Earth-humans.
“I should not like to come this far only to be wiped out
by some virus.” Hawks sighed. “But we must also face
facts. Anyplace we are likely to find that can support us will have
these risks. These are, after all, the prototypes, the throwaways,
the leftovers. Any world in this sector that might be better and
more comfortable and safer certainly is used by the freebooters. In
fact, that is the one thing that worries me about this world. It is
no paradise, but it is good enough. Why aren’t there
freebooters here? Koll, if you knew about this, then so must
they.”
“Most likely,” she agreed. “I can’t
answer that. Maybe it is an out-of-control disease. Why
don’t we send Clayben down there to live awhile and do
research and tell us?”
That brought a chuckle from almost everyone, but Hawks shook his
head. “How long do we wait? A day? A week? A month? Star
Eagle, what are the odds of us surviving normally down there as of
right now? I understand all the variables—an educated
guess.”
“I could be dangerously wrong, but I would suspect that
there is nothing down there more hazardous than you would find on
Earth, and a good likelihood that there is less, since there would
have been mutation and adaptation as well as the initial alteration
made by Master System. As to why it has not already been used,
though, the most probable reason I can think of is that the native
life forms, whatever they are, might be dangerous. If other
alternatives were available, and many other worlds were, why would
the freebooters go to that extreme? But I would not go down
unarmed, and I would create an effective defensive perimeter and
watch system. There is also the possibility that the region is
occasionally patrolled. Measures will have to be taken to maintain
the Thunder well away from here and ready for an instant
getaway, coming in only as necessary.”
Hawks thought about that. “That would mean
Lightning, as well,” he said, referring to
Clayben’s ship by their new name for it. “The camp
would, in effect, be landlocked there. I’m not sure I like
that.”
“Of necessity, no matter where we settle. If a patrol came
in close enough that it punched within a day or so of the planet,
it would be impossible to pack everyone aboard and take off without
being sensed, tracked, and quite possibly destroyed. We will
establish a subordinate computer net down there and an effective
communications system. There will be a substantial time lag, but I
will be able to monitor you, and we can still contact one another.
In a tight pinch, Lightning can be dispatched to take on
and flank a patrol ship, but I would suspect that the best defense
is to simply ignore it and it will go away.”
“But wouldn’t any patrol craft spot us down
there?” China asked, worried. She didn’t like the idea
of being separated from Star Eagle for that long.
“Unless you become a population of thousands, I would
suspect not. It will be looking for indications of a spaceship and
communications and transmuter-powered equipment. It’s not
going to do a survey, only a patrol. You would show up in such a
patrol in the same way as those life forms down there now, nothing
more, nothing less, so long as you cut power. It is not going to
spend a year on the suspicion that someone minus ship might just be
hiding out down there.”
Hawks nodded. “All right, then. I’ll still feel
better if a couple of people go ahead to scout out the place first.
We’ll need someone with good reflexes and skills with a gun.
Any volunteers?”
“I’ll go,” Raven said. “Warlock can
handle things here. And I think maybe it should be Clayben who goes
with me. I’ll handle the firepower and he can handle the
science. If we get in over our heads, then, Manka, you and Nagy
come after us with all the firepower you got.”
Isaac Clayben was not exactly thrilled with the assignment, but
he could not argue that he was not best qualified for the job. It
also got him off that damned ship for the first time in countless
dull weeks, and that was almost worth it.
The modified fighter had established a small one-at-a-time
transmuter station, which Star Eagle used once the
Thunder was in a stable geosynchronous orbit over the
chosen position. It was agreed that, as a first step, Raven and
Clayben both would use the fairly comfortable pressure suits in
spite of the planet’s clean bill of health.
Neither Clayben nor Raven had ever before traveled by
transmuter. In spite of his worldly cynicism and modern knowledge,
the Crow had some deep reservations about this mode of travel that
had nothing to do with its safety. For the life of him, he
couldn’t see how this differed from being killed and having a
duplicate manufactured elsewhere.
“It is possible to look at it that way,” Star Eagle
admitted, “although the energy matrix created here is
isolated, unique, and self-contained. What I convert is what I
transmit and all I use to reconstruct below. In other words, you
actually physically go, just in a different form. In a sense, I
almost wish it were the way you imagine. Then it wouldn’t
matter what was transmuted; since everything would be a duplicate,
I could change anything and anyone an infinite number of times at
will. But I am not transmitting a formula. I am transmitting
you.”
Somehow that made Raven feel better.
The Thunder’s transmuters—it carried one in
each of the four cargo bays—were huge, but the receiver
below, modification of a maintenance transmuter, was strictly a
one-person affair. Raven, as security, had to go first.
The transmuter was a circular disk that looked almost as if it
were made of a solid piece of red brick, and a second disk above
coated with some very shiny, black reflective material. Raven
looked at it, hesitated, then took a deep breath, stepped onto the
circle, and walked to the center. He had his pressure suit on,
helmet and all, since the energy expense was too great to justify
pressurizing an entire cargo bay.
He stared nervously back at the others—most of the group
had come down to see the volunteers off, with the exception of
China, who was currently interfaced with Star Eagle, Silent Woman,
who had no understanding or interest, and Reba Koll, who stayed
away out of a sense of caution. There was no sensation, nothing. He
felt something vibrate, and inside his suit he heard what could
only be described as click! Suddenly he was alone in the
dark someplace, and he felt as heavy as lead, so heavy that he
almost buckled under his own weight. It disturbed him. What the
hell?
A hatch opened automatically in front of him and he looked out
on a strange landscape. He drew his pistol and walked away and into
it, frowning. “That’s it?” he said,
mostly to himself. “Click and you’re someplace
else?”
“I had no idea it was that efficient.” Star
Eagle’s unusual tenor came to him over his suit radio, as
clear as if he were still aboard the ship. “That is very good
to know. Any problems?”
Raven was still a little shaken by his experience, but he was a
pro. He looked around. He was standing on black rock with some
whitish streaks in it; here and there it was interrupted by a small
patch of growth in cracks or a moss-like plant in small dabs where
the rock seemed to have been roughened. The surface was very
uneven, but he had no trouble with his footing. About ten meters
away the real growth started—a dense forest. The sky was
mostly cloudy, but the exposed parts were blue—a slightly
different blue than he was used to, but not enough to cause real
alarm or disorientation.
“Better tell Doc to bring an umbrella. I think it might
rain.”
Less than a minute later, the hatch opened again behind him, and
the orange-suited figure of Isaac Clayben emerged holding a
carrying case of some sort. He walked slowly, somewhat bent over,
dragging his case as if it weighed a ton. “That—that is
simply amazing,” said the scientist, who wasn’t amazed
by very much. “With a sufficient number of those things each
in line of sight you could have a near-instantaneous transport
system covering the whole world.”
“I wouldn’t like to try a system that big,
Doc,” Raven replied. “Sooner or later one of ’em
would hav’ta go wrong.”
“I have more equipment coming. We’ll wait for it,
then I’ll need some help setting up.” He looked around.
“It’s actually quite attractive. I have lived the past
twenty years cooped up inside a giant rock or in the bowels of
spaceships. I had almost forgotten what it’s like to have a
sky, and greenery, clouds, and weather. It’s
almost—disorienting. I didn’t expect this. I’m
feeling somewhat phobic about wide open spaces.”
Raven shrugged. “Better get used to it. You’re
supposed to be the superior one, above all these weaknesses we
mortals suffer, Doc. I think the rest of your stuff’s here.
Let’s get it and get cracking. Jeez! I feel tired as
hell. I’m havin’ trouble just walkin’.”
“I, too. I’m in worse shape than you, I suspect. I
haven’t been under more than six-tenths of a gee since before
Melchior. I—I’m dizzy. I’m going to have to sit
down for a moment.” He settled down on the rock and sighed.
“Stupid of me. I never really considered this. I was too busy
worrying about the transport.”
Raven sat, too. He felt like he’d been working for two
straight days at hard labor and he had only walked four meters away
from the modified fighter sitting there on its leg struts on the
rock just behind them. “Well, maybe we ain’t gonna do a
whole hell of a lot real fast, Doc, but we can do something while
sitting. Who wants the honor of being the first to breathe the new
air?”
“Be my guest,” Clayben responded.
Raven sighed, adjusted his suit control to “maintenance
mode,” then touched the fastener plates and cautiously
removed his helmet. He took a breath, then relaxed and hooked the
helmet on his neck strap. “Whew! Like gettin’
hit by a soakin’ wet wool blanket! Boy, is this hot!
Crazy feeling. The suit’s still got some air conditioning and
insulation, but my face is hot as hell. I’m sweating like a
stuck pig.”
“The air—smells—all right?”
“As a matter of fact, it doesn’t. There’s an
undercurrent of something—a mixture of things—that
smells a little putrid. Not enough to make you sick or anything. I
guess I can get used to it. Figure it’s from being on mostly
oxygen?”
Clayben wearily unfastened his helmet and took it off, then took
a deep breath and wrinkled his nose. “I see what you mean.
No, it’s not that. That is clearly salt water over
there—you cannot imagine how long it has been since
I’ve smelled that smell—and it’s mixing with the
smells of the jungle.” He sighed. “Well, all I want to
do is sleep for a week, but I think we’d better get things
set up here and take our preliminary measurements. Then I think we
should encamp and sleep in shifts until our bodies adjust to this
gravity before exploring very much—if mine ever does
adjust.”
“I think they are birds, but they never come
close enough to really tell.” Raven was clad now in an
improvised loincloth, which consisted of two towels draped, one
front and one rear, over his gunbelt.
“We must go into the jungle at some point,” Clayben
said. He was wearing a pair of shorts, a pullover T-shirt, and
rubber-soled shoes. He was still terribly uncomfortable and very
slow, and beginning to wonder if he’d spent too much time in
low gravity to ever get used to full weight again, but he was still
fascinated and excited about being on a new and remote world. Even
during the night, agonized by muscle cramps, he still found it
impossible not to stare up through holes in the clouds to a star
field that was much denser than the one he’d known. “We
will need more than these spore and insect samples, fascinating as
they are. From my analysis, I suspect that those birds—or
whatever they are—are not quite what we expect at
all.”
Terraforming was an incredibly complex science and one that
Master System had had to learn from scratch. Mars had been far
easier than planets like this one; there the process had involved
mostly adding or transmuting to water, planting dense growth, and
letting things take their course. But even there a complex chain of
interdependent species of plants and animals had had to be modified
and stabilized so that the ecosystem would remain in balance.
Not a single one of the flying and crawling insects they’d
managed to trap here was familiar, but they seemed to fill the same
not-always-obvious roles that their Earth ancestors had back on the
home world. Unfortunately, some of them bit, and of those some had
defensive or offensive toxins causing itching, but none of the
bites suffered by Clayben and Raven had been more than minor
nuisances.
The heat and humidity were still hard to take, and the gravity
was murder, but at least they had grown used to the alien smells in
the air and hardly noticed them anymore. Raven was certainly
delighted about one thing: Finally he could smoke his cigars again
without worry. His endless supply of half-smoked cigars had baffled
Hawks until the latter had heard about and understood enough about
the transmuters. Raven had a way of making the things duplicate his
cigars, but the only model he’d had was the last half of one
brought from Earth. He had a huge supply made from that half a
cigar—and all were duplicates of it. He hoped that the others
would never discover that he was using the food transmuters to make
cigars, or that they wouldn’t mind if they did find
out.
By the end of the second day, Raven felt well enough to do some
exploring, but it was clear that Clayben simply wasn’t up to
it. He might, in time, adapt to a gravitational pull that was
actually very slightly less than the Earth on which he’d been
born, but that was by no means certain and definitely not imminent.
Unwilling to trust Clayben alone with the fighter and all his gear,
Raven called for reinforcements. “I want Warlock and Nagy
down here as quickly as possible,” he told them. “We
need to get moving.”
The newcomers, who arrived with fresh supplies, seemed to do a
lot better with the sudden weight than the first two had. Nagy
explained that in light of the problems, Star Eagle had induced a
spin that gave some measure of gravity to the ship. Warlock and
Nagy still felt some strain, but after a good night’s sleep
in the makeshift tent, they seemed to be in as good shape as Raven
was.
It was a bright, sunny day. They had actually watched rainstorms
in the distance over the water, but so far none of the clouds had
given the interior more than a few drops. Raven opened up a
security case and surprised Nagy by giving the spindly man a
pistol.
“You might need it to save one or both of our
necks,” the Crow told him. “You’ll need a good
knife, too. I had Star Eagle duplicate my best.” He handed
him a huge flat blade and a gunbelt that had a notch for the
knife.
Nagy looked at the dense jungle. “I think a broadsword
might be better, considering that stuff.” He hefted the
knife, put it in the belt, then drew and aimed the pistol at the
trees. “I—uh—guess this is some kind of
test.”
Manka Warlock’s stern expression did not change. “No
test,” she said. “If Raven doesn’t come back,
first I kill the doctor here and then I come for you.”
Nagy shrugged and gave a “Who, me?” sort of
look, then turned back to Raven. “Now’s as good a time
as any, I guess. I’m not too thrilled about this, but it has
to be done if we’re gonna stick around this
hothouse.”
Raven checked a small communicator that had been removed from
one of the pressure suits and slipped into a special casing.
“Thunder, are you reading me?”
“Perfectly,” Star Eagle’s voice responded.
“I have you on intercom as well. Doctor?”
“No problems.” Clayben looked at the others.
“Bring me back some specimens. Plants, insects, sea water,
even one of those birds or whatever they are. And Arnold? Be
certain you both return.”
Nagy shrugged again. “Which way, O intrepid
explorer?”
“That way,” Raven said, pointing with his knife at a
spot almost exactly between the two huge cloud-shrouded volcanic
peaks. “It’s the shortest route to the sea if the map
we saw was right.”
They made their way carefully down to where the foliage met the
rocky outcrop of ancient lava. “I don’t expect that
there will be any really dangerous plants and animals in
there,” the Crow said, “but you never know what a
computer might throw into a prototype. Still, its mission was to
preserve people, not get rid of them.”
It was rough going almost from the start. The lava did not stop
as it met the greenery, but there it had been more severely
weathered, partly broken up, and overgrown with moss and vines.
Much of the growth masked cracks and fissures in the ground that
seemed designed to twist ankles and trip the unwary. The men used
their knives as best they could and were thankful that they’d
decided to wear the thick, heavy boots from their pressure
suits.
When they finally hit much older rock covered with humus the
footing became soft and spongy. Their passage seemed to disturb the
insect population; the air was thick with tiny flying things and a
few very large, angry buzzing ones. “If Clayben wants his
damned insect collection let him come and get ’em,”
Raven shouted angrily, swatting the air.
After a while they came to a short but fairly steep drop,
perhaps two meters, at which point the thick vegetation stopped and
they found themselves on smooth, flat, and pretty solid gray-black
sand cut with chasms. There was a great deal of driftwood on the
beach, as well. Now, for the first time, they could see as well as
hear the pounding waves and look out upon the ocean.
“First time I ever seen a bloody red ocean,” Raven
commented.
Nagy walked toward the edge of the water perhaps fifty or sixty
meters away, then knelt and looked at the water. “Not blood
and not red. Not the ocean, anyway. It’s a thin layer of some
kind of plant or animal stuff. Plant, I’d say. Some kind of
modified plankton, maybe. Stuff must cover a lot of ocean. Ten to
one the only reason it doesn’t cover all of it is the wind
and storms. Only small tides here, what with no big
moon.”
Raven stared at him. “You a scientist?”
“Naw, I’m like you. I pick up stuff. You never know
when something’s gonna come up useful.”
Raven stared at him. In occupation—and somewhat in
personality—he and Nagy were twins, yet the Crow was far
cruder in his approach, and Nagy far more intellectual. Raven
suspected that in the jungle or in the bush, Nagy would be dead
meat, but that in any sort of civilization Nagy might be even more
dangerous than Clayben.
“Nagy—I know why I’m here, but why are
you?”
“Maybe we ought to trade information,” the tall,
thin man replied. “Fact is, I was about to ask you the same
question. For me it’s simple—survival. We went to the
same training schools. Survival is the first priority of an
effective operative. I blew Melchior—thanks to you. The
administrators don’t like that. The escape brought Master
System down on us, as I knew it had to, which is why I personally
directed the chase. I didn’t want to be there when the Vals
crashed in the locks. The board, now, it can lay all the illegal
stuff on Clayben and me. I was in a meat grinder. The way to get
out is to run out—and the stars were the only place to run.
So when Clayben pulled up in that souped-up custom interstellar job
and took me off the Star, I was only too willing. Now,
that’s simple enough. It’s you I don’t
get. What was it? The lure of power? Those rings can get anybody
sick with the god disease.”
“No,” Raven said quietly. “I didn’t fail
and I didn’t turn traitor and I didn’t run out.
I’m just doing my job.”
“Huh? Blowing Melchior? Springing this crazy assortment?
Lugging everybody here? Stirring up Master System to what must be
the closest thing to a frenzy a machine can experience? Who the
hell can you be working for that would want that? Or
deserved the kind of price we’re all paying?”
“You want the truth?”
“Shoot. What difference can it make now?”
“I don’t know. Chen—the one chief
administrator on Earth with a ring of his own—I think
he knows. But as high as he is, he’s just an
employee, too, and in many ways he’s in a more dangerous spot
than I am. It was understood that I wouldn’t know anything
beyond Chen because, if I was captured, that was as far as even
Master System could go. You can’t tell what you don’t
know, and I suspect that Chen has a way out just as Clayben did if
the heat gets too great.”
Nagy stared at him and frowned. “But there is
nobody higher than the administrators. They get their orders direct
from Master System. It would have to be a hell of a computer brain
to be in that chain somewhere, and it’d have to be an
independent one, not one Master System could control or reprogram.
There must be more computer brains than people but it just
ain’t possible.”
“It’s possible. I don’t know how. Even if the
survival and discovery of the rings information was in fact
accidental, very little that went on after it was. I’m not
even a hundred-percent certain that the accident that caused the
courier from Warlock to Chen to crash in Hawks’s backyard
while he was on leave—very conveniently—was accidental.
Put that together with the near-simultaneous discovery by the
Chinese of a tech cult with complete plans for a
Thunder-class ship and how to operate and interface with
it and you have real questions about coincidence. Maybe it is.
Maybe after nine hundred years everything just came together. I
don’t believe it, though. Maybe in nine hundred million
years, but I’m not a real strong believer in this much fate.
Me, I’m an add-on. Warlock needed me to track down Hawks in
unfamiliar territory, and once I was in, I was in. So then
this Song Ching, who just happens to be the district
administrator’s daughter and knows all the security codes and
overrides, gets initial access to all the starship plans and
information—hell, she was there on the raid, and
since when is a relative that high up allowed that close to
action?—gets all the time she needs to crack the ship
interfaces and then gets a ton of pressure on her to get her to
escape.”
“Go on. I’m beginning to see how you
think.”
“So our China girl escapes and just happens to
get on an interplanetary freighter that’s just been refitted
and whose core has just been modified and reprogrammed for
independent action. Now, you and I know how easy that is in space,
but who could do it on Earth, under the very nose of and
monitored by Master System? Somebody did. That pig Sabatini took
his liberties, but she wound up on Melchior. Thanks to Chen, so did
Hawks and both Warlock and me—but none of his own people. And
I’m there with a detailed list of just who to spring, and
how, and on what ship. Not only that, but I have three out of four
locations for the missing rings. How the hell could Chen get
them?”
Nagy thought about it. “Maybe a freebooter commission. Big
reward for the location of any rings.”
“We’ll check, but would he chance it? Would
you? They’d wonder why he wanted the rings and then
they’d start after them, and before you knew it they’d
be holding up both him and Master System just like we hope to do.
Uh uh. When I was at Chen’s, he didn’t know where the
other rings were—I’d stake my life on it. Then, when I
got the message in his code on Melchior, there they were. I
don’t think he sent the code or the whole list to be sprung.
I think somebody else did.”
“Yeah, but why Hawks? I mean, even you said you thought
the crash was accidental.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Chen seemed to think that Hawks was the
key to the whole business. He’s no real fighter, although
brave enough. He’s an intellectual. A historian. A man
specializing in the last century of pre-Master civilization. He
didn’t know about the rings, but he knows a hell of a lot of
history of that period. My orders, even direct from Chen, were to
protect him at all costs. Nobody’s that important by
accident—not when you add up all the other coincidences. No,
I’m on the job, just following orders. I don’t know
who, but I figure I’ll find that out when we got the hard
part done—if we can. Hawks is right about one
thing—Master System is crippled when it comes to preventing
us from getting the rings. Crippled, but not helpless. The odds are
still pretty well against us.”
Nagy scratched his ample chin and thought. “Well, two
possibilities come to mind. I’m beginning to agree that
coincidence has been stretched to the breaking point here, so that
leaves the ‘who’ of it. One thought is that we’re
being thrown out here by Master System itself as some kind of final
test of its security.”
“I thought of that, but it doesn’t wash. The rings
are the only thing that can do it in. There’s no way a
logical beast like that could afford to let that kind of
information out just for a test, particularly out of the Solar
System. Once out, it could never get back—and sooner or later
somebody would follow up on it and succeed. It’s only chance
was to shut this information down fast before it got out. No, by
any logical standard, it just doesn’t make sense. If nothing
else, the mere news that something exists that can hurt or even
kill Master System would be enough to spur people on. It knows
that. It knows us all too well.”
Nagy nodded. “That brings me to the second thought
I’ve had. You know Master System has been claiming for some
time that there’s a war on. That it’s fighting even,
holding its own, but no better. Nobody knows who it’s warring
with, but that’s one hell of an enemy if it can fight Master
System to a standstill. Maybe—just maybe—that’s
what this is all about. If you were out there, stalemated against
our system, you’d find some way to get information, contacts,
whatever. You’d learn. And if you stumbled on the fact that
somewhere out here is a weapon that can blow Master System’s
brain out, you’d try for it.”
The idea hadn’t occurred to Raven and it fascinated him.
“But—if that’s true, then why us? Why not go
after them yourself?”
Nagy shrugged. “As to why it’s us, I couldn’t
guess. I can’t figure Master System, so why should I be able
to figure out somebody or something really alien? As to why get
somebody else to go for them, there might be a real basic and
simple answer. You said it yourself—in the core of Master
System there is an imperative. We, as human beings, have a
right to try for the rings. We have that edge, for
whatever it’s worth, and it might be very slim but it is an
edge. An edge that wouldn’t apply to nonhumans, by which I
mean people not descended from Earth stock. Maybe they calculated
everything and figured humans had the edge.”
“Then that means that if we ever get them, we’ll
have more than just Master System and Chen and the rest of the
power lovers to cope with. Nagy, suppose they don’t come for
them when and if we have them? Suppose they just ease the way so we
get in and shut Master System down?”
Nagy smiled grimly. “Then they win, don’t
they?” He sighed. “Why don’t we cross that bridge
if we ever come to it? Damn it, we aren’t even set up
yet.” He looked out across the crimson sea. “A few
other islands over there. Sooner or later we’re gonna need a
boat to tour the neighborhood.” He looked around the beach.
“It’s somewhat sheltered here—you can see how the
big waves break well out there, so there’s underwater lava or
a reef or something here. I’d say we build right
here—back there and against the jungle. Burn out a good-sized
trail and keep it open—the jungle will try to take it back
all the time.” He looked over at the tallest peak.
“Somebody’s gonna have to get up there sooner or later,
too. Establish a high refuge if we get any real nasty
storms.” He sighed, his mind racing at top speed. “If
these are anything like Earth volcanoes, they make great topsoil.
Burn away selected areas of jungle to get fields protected from the
worst weather, and you could probably grow most anything here.
I—”
There was a sudden loud splash behind him and he whirled, pistol
out of his holster with amazing speed, his body automatically
taking a defensive crouch. Raven’s reaction was a bit slower,
but in the same style. The Crow frowned, seeing nothing.
“Something falling in? Or something leaping?”
“I don’t know. They said the initial survey showed
some large life forms in the water. Lots of them, in big groups,
all over the place. Maybe that was just one of them. We’ll
have to find out what the hell’s there before my boat can
sail.”
Raven reached in his pack and took out a pair of simple
binoculars, part of the kit that he always carried. He holstered
his weapon and looked through the lenses, surveying the surface of
the water.
“Black shapes in the water. Fairly good size,” he
told Nagy. “I can’t see very much of them and none of
’em are long enough to get much more than a blurry shape, but
there’s sure some big suckers out there. I don’t know.
They kinda look like the big otters we got along the Missouri and
Mississippi, only even bigger.” He lifted the binoculars so
he was looking only at the surface. The closest island, about four
kilometers distant, was now also in his sights. Something suddenly
nagged at him, and he took his eye off the water and looked
squarely at the island itself. “Nagy—I think you might
want to take a look at this. I think we better call it in,
too.”
“Huh? What?” Nagy, too, had holstered his weapon and
now he took the binoculars.
“That next island. To the right, there, maybe a couple of
degrees, where the beach looks thin. Right above it.”
Arnold Nagy stared. Then, after a moment, he saw what the Crow
was talking about, and he felt a chill.
“That line of trees is in perfect rows,” he
muttered. “After centuries even if they were planted that way
they wouldn’t still be there. They’re planted, all
right, and maintained, but not by Master System.”
“Freebooters?” Raven wondered.
He sighed. “Maybe, but I doubt it. Not their kind of
layout. No ships, no fast getaway. Shipwreck, maybe, but that would
be stretching coincidence beyond any reasonable bounds. Thousands
of islands. Uh uh. Best bet is that the freebooters have a real
good reason for steering clear of here. Best bet is there’s
places like that all over this planet. I think this was a much more
advanced prototype than we figured.”
“You mean—it’s inhabited?”
“Looks like. I wonder by whom?”
“Or what?” Raven replied.
They reported to the ship.
“I’m not sure I like the look of this,” Hawks
commented. “Perhaps—perhaps we ought to rethink this
idea of a planetary camp for now. There is enough room
here.”
“No,” Star Eagle objected. “There is no such
thing as the perfect world for you except the one of your birth.
This ship is not fit for long-term habitation by a growing
population, and while I intend extensive modifications, these might
take a great deal of time and would necessitate everyone being off
the ship. It is also not good for the child to come. While
near-weightlessness is fine when the child is in the womb, it
should not be born in this environment and not know gravity from
the start.”
Hawks began to wonder if Star Eagle wasn’t more concerned
about China than about their own needs, but he also knew he
couldn’t press the issue. In a very real sense the pilot was
a free agent, and because he alone controlled access to the vast
data banks and the interstellar drives, he had a vote that weighed
far heavier than theirs. Hawks had to wonder, though, about the
relationship between the small pregnant girl who might give birth
in days or weeks and this machine intelligence with whom she
mentally mated. Did—could—Star Eagle feel as humans
felt? And, in this case, was he being protective—or running
scared by forcing her away? There was no way to tell.
Hawks sighed. “Very well, but the initial camp must be
well inland, near the transmuter. Whatever is down there is mostly
of the sea, and it would be unwise to be too close to their domain.
Can some sort of security perimeter be established around the camp?
We are too few to have constant guards and would be easily
overwhelmed.”
“It is possible. I believe Maintenance can manufacture
something that will do, but everyone should go armed at all times.
If these are humans in any sense of the word, contact must be
established and a treaty made, if at all possible.”
“If they are humans, they might not be inclined to talk
treaty first,” Hawks responded. “We will not know their
tribal ways until we press, or until they come to us. If they are
too territorial, it might mean a fight.”
Reba Koll’s voice crackled. “If we can’t beat
them, how the hell could we ever take on Master
System?”
Hawks sighed and wished he could get rid of the feeling that he
was in the role of the cavalry marching against the peoples of
early America. He slapped his thighs. “All right—we
move!”
SHE WAS SHEER POWER, ABLE TO SEE in many
directions at once, to have all things background monitored and
brought to her notice, if need be. A mere thought brought access to
more data on more subjects than her mind could handle; in some
ways, it was too much for her, yet she could not get enough of it.
While she was the ship, she was a goddess, and it was no fantasy,
no wish fulfillment—it was real.
But she was also a small, fragile thing lying there in a command
chair on the bridge, wearing a huge padded helmet from which
specialized cables extended into the front panel. Star Eagle
understood that the small form there was her primary reality, the
one that made the rest possible, so he limited the duration of her
stays in his mighty realm, while giving her absolute freedom while
she was there.
She sped along the hundreds of thousands of kilometers of
communications and monitoring circuitry and enjoyed it as her own
private sort of peep show. Of particular interest was the large,
rectangular module in Cargo Bay Four that had been constructed by
Maintenance and endowed with full life-support and comfort
facilities. Hawks referred to it as the Leper Colony, although he
alone aboard knew what a leper was. They had built it for Clayben
and Nagy, and then sent Sabatini down there as well, if only to get
him out from underfoot.
Since Star Eagle had designed and constructed the module, it was
hardly private, in spite of assurances to the occupants that their
space was secure. Every move, every spoken word, every pulse beat
was monitored and recorded, and it was all carefully scrutinized by
Raven and Warlock, who knew just what to look for.
Clayben looked about fifty, with thin white hair, blue eyes, and
a ruddy complexion. He appeared fat and chubby-faced, but he was in
remarkably good shape and worked to keep it. He had a deep,
pleasant, throaty baritone that always sounded confident and
secure, the voice of a family physician or top salesman. He
certainly had one of the best minds of his or any other generation,
the sort of mind that could work on a dozen problems at once and
master virtually any discipline it wished. That was both his
greatness and his curse. He had run a torture chamber, yet never
once had he thought of it that way. To him, the entire universe and
all the creatures in it were merely props, put there for his
convenience. His was total egocentrism, but, unlike most such
conceited people, he really was superior to most other
human beings. The only other he recognized and truly feared was
Master System, and it would never have occurred to him that he and
the great hidden computer were mortal enemies—primarily
because they were so much alike.
The best way to describe Arnold Nagy physically was to think of
a wide-angle photograph of a man in which the sides were
compressed, making him a distorted stick figure. His head was very
long and narrow, and it sat on a long neck attached to a body that
was also very tall, very angular, and very thin. His tremendous
hawklike nose and lantern jaw, narrow eyes, and very small mouth
only accented his peculiar appearance. He was very dark complected,
with deep-brown eyes and long jet-black hair, and it was impossible
to guess his age.
This was the man who had been trusted with Melchior’s
security by both Clayben and Master System—he was formidable
and dangerous. So far he seemed to speak and understand about every
language he’d come across. He had long and often involved
discussions with Sabatini in the latter’s native Italian, and
he even had the dialect and the slang right. One could not use
Mandarin, for example, to comment privately where he might
overhear, and Cloud Dancer couldn’t even be certain Nagy
didn’t know Kyiakutt. Clearly Nagy was a natural linguist.
Languages could be learned by mindprinter, to a point, as many of
them had learned English and were still perfecting it by listening
to those who spoke it naturally, but dialects and slang were not so
easy to impart.
“Boring.” Nagy sighed, settling down in a
chair. “Sitting watch on the patient monitors was a thrill a
minute compared to this.”
“Patience, Arnold,” Clayben responded.
“Doubtless by now they’ve gone over the ship almost
molecule by molecule, and they’re sorting out all their data
and trying to break the encryption on the data-bank records. Our
active time will come. Great goals require great patience. Would
you rather put on a pressure suit and go up and say hello to Reba
Koll? She’s going to have to eat someone, you know,
sooner or later, and there aren’t many likely candidates
around.”
Nagy looked suddenly uncomfortable. “Sacrificial goat no
matter what, huh, Doc? Is that why you wanted me transferred from
the Star? For this?”
“No, Arnold, I did not. The last thing I imagined was
being in a secondary role on this ship with that thing
aboard and running free. I actually intended us to get to the
freebooters and establish a new working base somewhere from which
to build an organization and obtain the rings. It would be very
difficult to find them on our own, but not impossible. They are
quite distinctive. Someone, someplace, must have noticed them.
Then, when it became clear that these people might get this ship
started, it was worth the risk of improvising and following. I had
no idea that such people could get something of this size and
complexity running so smoothly at all, let alone this quickly. I
would be willing to work with most of these people, but I shall
never be comfortable while that creature is loose. I should have
destroyed it ten years ago, when I had the chance. It is my
greatest mistake.”
He sighed and patted Nagy on his shoulder. “Don’t
worry, my boy. They need you. They need us. We just have
to watch our backs, contribute, and bide our time. If, somehow,
that creature can be controlled when it is free of constraint, we
are where we want to be, aren’t we?”
Sabatini had entered the compartment and had just stood there,
listening to all this. “Yeah, well, that’s all well and
good for you two, but I’m dead meat to them. I lost my ship,
I lost my pilot, and the inmates are running the asylum. I just
want out. Failing that, I could die happy if I could just
push them Chink bitches out some air lock like they did
me.”
Nagy turned to stare at Sabatini. “You know, Captain,
I’d listen to the Doc here and stop all that talk. Cooperate,
go along with them, make yourself useful, even friendly—and
survive. They can’t carry much excess baggage even if they do
have a ship as big as a small city. Watch you don’t get
dumped.”
That was enough spying for now. Analysis—Reba
Koll. The response was almost instantaneous. Insufficient
information. Input provided by subject and Clayben consistent with
possibilities inherent in transmuter and psychogenetic technology.
No more. Scans do not show her in any way different than would be
expected for a human female her age.
The analysis of Clayben’s ship was more productive. As
China had guessed, it was almost a miniature state-of-the-art
laboratory, as well as a zone of comfort and an interstellar
spacecraft. It was a larger and more elaborate variation of the
Melchior fighter design, and it contained full and rather
impressive armaments, not sufficient to do more than minor damage
to the Thunder if it penetrated the fighter screen at all,
but sufficient to do a lot of damage to lesser craft.
Also aboard was a reference computer system of unfamiliar
design, possibly developed by Clayben personally. The information
in it could be gleaned by a normal type of computer interface, but
it was stored in a highly compressed and coded system. The
decryption method was unclear; it might be hardware or special
codes or a combination of the two, but it was quite sophisticated.
The ship did not contain a practical transmuter, although it had
one that it used for its interstellar drive fuel and maintenance;
it did, however, have a single-unit, fully functioning mindprinter,
attached to a psychochemical unit. While they were tied into and
run by the encrypted data computer system rather than the
ship’s computer, the design and operation was
straightforward. Star Eagle was working on duplicating the system
and creating his own, tying it into his own banks for operation.
Such a system might be very handy indeed.
Unfortunately, the smaller ship was still too large for the
Thunder’s transmuters to duplicate, but it could be
flown, at least. The pilot had a cold, neuter persona, but would
obey anyone who had the control codes to activate it.
China and Star Eagle continued to explore, spy, probe, and
hypothesize as the Thunder sped on through the
nothingness.
“There,” Star Eagle told them. “The second
planet out.” Not much was clear from the images on the
screens; they were computer graphics and not true pictures in any
event, and showed a huge sun and some small, bright dots that
represented planets.
“Won’t it be too hot that close to the sun?”
Chow Mai asked worriedly.
“Perhaps,” the pilot responded. “No way to
know for certain until we take a close look at it.” It was
the third one in the region they had checked out. The first had
been far too cold; the second had an atmosphere that would prevent
them from living any more freely than in the Thunder.
“The distance from the sun is important, but only
within a very broad range. Planets two, three, and four, here, and
possibly five are all in that range, but even my long-range
scanners indicate that only two has an atmosphere dense enough to
have potential: It is also the only one showing any readings
indicating early terraforming.”
They were not blind, even in this poorly charted region. Master
System had been here long before them. The area was better termed
“unused” than “unexplored.” For one reason
or another, the worlds here that Master System had attempted to
change had either taken too long to develop or developed wrong.
Although those worlds had been abandoned when more suitable planets
elsewhere were developed, the processes put in motion were not
halted. No one had ever found a paradise in this sector, but a
number of the worlds, given many centuries to develop and mature,
were at least usable and useful. And the sheer size of the sector
ensured against accidental discovery of the Thunder by
either freebooters or Master System.
“I’m getting promising readings,” Star Eagle
reported. “A very thick ozone layer and a high water content.
We will have to see what the surface temperatures are like, though;
it’s impossible to guess anything except the fact that this
will be a very humid place and certainly warmer on the average than
Earth. Let’s see.”
One of the robot fighters had launched itself from the
Thunder hours before and was now, under the firm control
of Star Eagle, approaching the planet. This fighter had been
modified by Maintenance for much more than defense and was capable
of a soft landing if need be.
“Initial readings aren’t optimistic,” Star
Eagle told them. “The world has an axial tilt of less than
eight degrees, which means little seasonal variation, and the
equatorial surface temperature appears close to sixty-five degrees
Celsius. Tremendous, vast water bodies, with very odd landmasses.
No continents as such, just islands, none incredibly large so far.
The average water depth must be very deep to account for this. Lots
of islands, all with rugged topography, but not much else. Some of
the volcanoes are active although there is no sign of massive
eruption to the atmosphere. I would guess that these are not the
major explosion type, but rather the slow, steady erupters with
dense lava.”
“What’s that mean?” Warlock asked, in an
uncharacteristically chatty manner.
“It means that there won’t be constant dust and soot
in the air that would cause things to be too hot or block so much
sun that it’d be freezing cold,” Hawks told her.
“But it also means you have a chance of having liquid rock
wash into your house almost anywhere, and probably frequent
earthquakes. Not very appetizing.”
“Interestingly, the most comfortable surface temperature
would be in the polar regions,” Star Eagle said, “but
there’s not a lot of promise there in surface area. The best
compromise would be about thirty degrees north or south. Lots of
island masses in clusters there, and a surface temperature
estimated at perhaps thirty to forty degrees. I am sending the
remote ship down to that latitude north for a ground scan. If I
find something promising I will let you know.”
The others looked at Hawks quizzically. “Hot,” he
told them. “Days hotter than the worst summer days of America
or China and nights as hot as hot summer days in Europe, with very
little difference over a year. We could live there, though, if the
air has the kind of makeup to block the worst and most damaging
rays of the sun. Even so, those of us with the darkest skin will
have the best protection. It won’t do anything for comfort,
though.”
“Atmosphere is quite good,” the pilot reported.
“The trace gases are quite different and the water vapor is
extremely high, but the oxygen-nitrogen balance is very close to
nominal. The difference can be attributed almost certainly to the
level of volcanic activity. Still, you can tell by how close it is
that this is induced rather than natural. There might be some
odors, but you could breathe the air unaided without
harm.”
“What about vegetation?” Hawks asked. “Any
sign of life down there?”
“Considerable, although it’s not possible to tell
its full nature from here. Many of the islands appear to be almost
junglelike, and I get some minor animal readings, as well, possibly
insects or birds or something like that. The seas also contain much
life, although I doubt that there are any deep-water creatures. The
plant layer is thick enough that it probably blocks most or all
light farther down. There is definitely animal life on or near the
surface, though. Not an enormous amount, but it’s
there.”
Hawks frowned. “Should it be? Would this have gotten far
enough to be seeded with fish or something?”
“Mostly mammalian, by the spectrography. It’s
possible. It’s possible this one got far enough along to be a
full test.”
“If it got that far, then why wasn’t it used?”
China asked, fascinated.
“Probably because of the slow development of the pattern
and the heavy growth of algae or funguslike plants on the
water,” Star Eagle guessed. “I suspect it was a
prototype rather than a finished product. Ah! A cluster of islands
that includes one very large one with a volcano at each end and
perhaps forty kilometers of flat land twenty or thirty meters at
most above sea level. The flats are ancient lava flows that ran
together. Both volcanoes appear dormant; there is no sign of very
recent lava flows into the flats, at any rate.”
A huge map appeared on the bridge screens showing a somewhat
crescent-shaped island with two enormous high peaks, one at each
end. The center area was relatively flat but uneven, thin in the
middle—perhaps only a kilometer across—and thicker as
it approached each of its two parents, perhaps as much as ten or
twelve kilometers at those points. One of those jagged parent peaks
was over two thousand meters high, the other slightly lower than
that. Both had enormous craters inside that were hundreds of meters
deep. There were several other single-peaked islands nearby, but
none showed a promising landing site.
The small fighter set down on a rise in the flats region and
went right to work taking samples and testing. Air temperature:
Thirty-six degrees C. Humidity: Ninety-seven percent. The rock was
basically basalt, its chemistry containing nothing odd or unusual.
Radioactivity was fairly low, considering the vulcanism. The
outcrop showed extreme weathering, indicating the passage of
frequent storms and high winds, a pattern confirmed by the early
orbital survey. The ultraviolet reaching the surface was within the
range of human tolerance, but might pose a long-term hazard to
lighter-skinned people who allowed themselves to become overexposed. There were airborne spores and micro-organisms; the ship
captured some in its filter and found them to be variations of
Earth organisms. While this indicated that Master System had
adapted readily available materials to create its balance, it also
indicated that this was a very early experiment, with no assurance
that such organisms would be harmless to Earth-humans.
“I should not like to come this far only to be wiped out
by some virus.” Hawks sighed. “But we must also face
facts. Anyplace we are likely to find that can support us will have
these risks. These are, after all, the prototypes, the throwaways,
the leftovers. Any world in this sector that might be better and
more comfortable and safer certainly is used by the freebooters. In
fact, that is the one thing that worries me about this world. It is
no paradise, but it is good enough. Why aren’t there
freebooters here? Koll, if you knew about this, then so must
they.”
“Most likely,” she agreed. “I can’t
answer that. Maybe it is an out-of-control disease. Why
don’t we send Clayben down there to live awhile and do
research and tell us?”
That brought a chuckle from almost everyone, but Hawks shook his
head. “How long do we wait? A day? A week? A month? Star
Eagle, what are the odds of us surviving normally down there as of
right now? I understand all the variables—an educated
guess.”
“I could be dangerously wrong, but I would suspect that
there is nothing down there more hazardous than you would find on
Earth, and a good likelihood that there is less, since there would
have been mutation and adaptation as well as the initial alteration
made by Master System. As to why it has not already been used,
though, the most probable reason I can think of is that the native
life forms, whatever they are, might be dangerous. If other
alternatives were available, and many other worlds were, why would
the freebooters go to that extreme? But I would not go down
unarmed, and I would create an effective defensive perimeter and
watch system. There is also the possibility that the region is
occasionally patrolled. Measures will have to be taken to maintain
the Thunder well away from here and ready for an instant
getaway, coming in only as necessary.”
Hawks thought about that. “That would mean
Lightning, as well,” he said, referring to
Clayben’s ship by their new name for it. “The camp
would, in effect, be landlocked there. I’m not sure I like
that.”
“Of necessity, no matter where we settle. If a patrol came
in close enough that it punched within a day or so of the planet,
it would be impossible to pack everyone aboard and take off without
being sensed, tracked, and quite possibly destroyed. We will
establish a subordinate computer net down there and an effective
communications system. There will be a substantial time lag, but I
will be able to monitor you, and we can still contact one another.
In a tight pinch, Lightning can be dispatched to take on
and flank a patrol ship, but I would suspect that the best defense
is to simply ignore it and it will go away.”
“But wouldn’t any patrol craft spot us down
there?” China asked, worried. She didn’t like the idea
of being separated from Star Eagle for that long.
“Unless you become a population of thousands, I would
suspect not. It will be looking for indications of a spaceship and
communications and transmuter-powered equipment. It’s not
going to do a survey, only a patrol. You would show up in such a
patrol in the same way as those life forms down there now, nothing
more, nothing less, so long as you cut power. It is not going to
spend a year on the suspicion that someone minus ship might just be
hiding out down there.”
Hawks nodded. “All right, then. I’ll still feel
better if a couple of people go ahead to scout out the place first.
We’ll need someone with good reflexes and skills with a gun.
Any volunteers?”
“I’ll go,” Raven said. “Warlock can
handle things here. And I think maybe it should be Clayben who goes
with me. I’ll handle the firepower and he can handle the
science. If we get in over our heads, then, Manka, you and Nagy
come after us with all the firepower you got.”
Isaac Clayben was not exactly thrilled with the assignment, but
he could not argue that he was not best qualified for the job. It
also got him off that damned ship for the first time in countless
dull weeks, and that was almost worth it.
The modified fighter had established a small one-at-a-time
transmuter station, which Star Eagle used once the
Thunder was in a stable geosynchronous orbit over the
chosen position. It was agreed that, as a first step, Raven and
Clayben both would use the fairly comfortable pressure suits in
spite of the planet’s clean bill of health.
Neither Clayben nor Raven had ever before traveled by
transmuter. In spite of his worldly cynicism and modern knowledge,
the Crow had some deep reservations about this mode of travel that
had nothing to do with its safety. For the life of him, he
couldn’t see how this differed from being killed and having a
duplicate manufactured elsewhere.
“It is possible to look at it that way,” Star Eagle
admitted, “although the energy matrix created here is
isolated, unique, and self-contained. What I convert is what I
transmit and all I use to reconstruct below. In other words, you
actually physically go, just in a different form. In a sense, I
almost wish it were the way you imagine. Then it wouldn’t
matter what was transmuted; since everything would be a duplicate,
I could change anything and anyone an infinite number of times at
will. But I am not transmitting a formula. I am transmitting
you.”
Somehow that made Raven feel better.
The Thunder’s transmuters—it carried one in
each of the four cargo bays—were huge, but the receiver
below, modification of a maintenance transmuter, was strictly a
one-person affair. Raven, as security, had to go first.
The transmuter was a circular disk that looked almost as if it
were made of a solid piece of red brick, and a second disk above
coated with some very shiny, black reflective material. Raven
looked at it, hesitated, then took a deep breath, stepped onto the
circle, and walked to the center. He had his pressure suit on,
helmet and all, since the energy expense was too great to justify
pressurizing an entire cargo bay.
He stared nervously back at the others—most of the group
had come down to see the volunteers off, with the exception of
China, who was currently interfaced with Star Eagle, Silent Woman,
who had no understanding or interest, and Reba Koll, who stayed
away out of a sense of caution. There was no sensation, nothing. He
felt something vibrate, and inside his suit he heard what could
only be described as click! Suddenly he was alone in the
dark someplace, and he felt as heavy as lead, so heavy that he
almost buckled under his own weight. It disturbed him. What the
hell?
A hatch opened automatically in front of him and he looked out
on a strange landscape. He drew his pistol and walked away and into
it, frowning. “That’s it?” he said,
mostly to himself. “Click and you’re someplace
else?”
“I had no idea it was that efficient.” Star
Eagle’s unusual tenor came to him over his suit radio, as
clear as if he were still aboard the ship. “That is very good
to know. Any problems?”
Raven was still a little shaken by his experience, but he was a
pro. He looked around. He was standing on black rock with some
whitish streaks in it; here and there it was interrupted by a small
patch of growth in cracks or a moss-like plant in small dabs where
the rock seemed to have been roughened. The surface was very
uneven, but he had no trouble with his footing. About ten meters
away the real growth started—a dense forest. The sky was
mostly cloudy, but the exposed parts were blue—a slightly
different blue than he was used to, but not enough to cause real
alarm or disorientation.
“Better tell Doc to bring an umbrella. I think it might
rain.”
Less than a minute later, the hatch opened again behind him, and
the orange-suited figure of Isaac Clayben emerged holding a
carrying case of some sort. He walked slowly, somewhat bent over,
dragging his case as if it weighed a ton. “That—that is
simply amazing,” said the scientist, who wasn’t amazed
by very much. “With a sufficient number of those things each
in line of sight you could have a near-instantaneous transport
system covering the whole world.”
“I wouldn’t like to try a system that big,
Doc,” Raven replied. “Sooner or later one of ’em
would hav’ta go wrong.”
“I have more equipment coming. We’ll wait for it,
then I’ll need some help setting up.” He looked around.
“It’s actually quite attractive. I have lived the past
twenty years cooped up inside a giant rock or in the bowels of
spaceships. I had almost forgotten what it’s like to have a
sky, and greenery, clouds, and weather. It’s
almost—disorienting. I didn’t expect this. I’m
feeling somewhat phobic about wide open spaces.”
Raven shrugged. “Better get used to it. You’re
supposed to be the superior one, above all these weaknesses we
mortals suffer, Doc. I think the rest of your stuff’s here.
Let’s get it and get cracking. Jeez! I feel tired as
hell. I’m havin’ trouble just walkin’.”
“I, too. I’m in worse shape than you, I suspect. I
haven’t been under more than six-tenths of a gee since before
Melchior. I—I’m dizzy. I’m going to have to sit
down for a moment.” He settled down on the rock and sighed.
“Stupid of me. I never really considered this. I was too busy
worrying about the transport.”
Raven sat, too. He felt like he’d been working for two
straight days at hard labor and he had only walked four meters away
from the modified fighter sitting there on its leg struts on the
rock just behind them. “Well, maybe we ain’t gonna do a
whole hell of a lot real fast, Doc, but we can do something while
sitting. Who wants the honor of being the first to breathe the new
air?”
“Be my guest,” Clayben responded.
Raven sighed, adjusted his suit control to “maintenance
mode,” then touched the fastener plates and cautiously
removed his helmet. He took a breath, then relaxed and hooked the
helmet on his neck strap. “Whew! Like gettin’
hit by a soakin’ wet wool blanket! Boy, is this hot!
Crazy feeling. The suit’s still got some air conditioning and
insulation, but my face is hot as hell. I’m sweating like a
stuck pig.”
“The air—smells—all right?”
“As a matter of fact, it doesn’t. There’s an
undercurrent of something—a mixture of things—that
smells a little putrid. Not enough to make you sick or anything. I
guess I can get used to it. Figure it’s from being on mostly
oxygen?”
Clayben wearily unfastened his helmet and took it off, then took
a deep breath and wrinkled his nose. “I see what you mean.
No, it’s not that. That is clearly salt water over
there—you cannot imagine how long it has been since
I’ve smelled that smell—and it’s mixing with the
smells of the jungle.” He sighed. “Well, all I want to
do is sleep for a week, but I think we’d better get things
set up here and take our preliminary measurements. Then I think we
should encamp and sleep in shifts until our bodies adjust to this
gravity before exploring very much—if mine ever does
adjust.”
“I think they are birds, but they never come
close enough to really tell.” Raven was clad now in an
improvised loincloth, which consisted of two towels draped, one
front and one rear, over his gunbelt.
“We must go into the jungle at some point,” Clayben
said. He was wearing a pair of shorts, a pullover T-shirt, and
rubber-soled shoes. He was still terribly uncomfortable and very
slow, and beginning to wonder if he’d spent too much time in
low gravity to ever get used to full weight again, but he was still
fascinated and excited about being on a new and remote world. Even
during the night, agonized by muscle cramps, he still found it
impossible not to stare up through holes in the clouds to a star
field that was much denser than the one he’d known. “We
will need more than these spore and insect samples, fascinating as
they are. From my analysis, I suspect that those birds—or
whatever they are—are not quite what we expect at
all.”
Terraforming was an incredibly complex science and one that
Master System had had to learn from scratch. Mars had been far
easier than planets like this one; there the process had involved
mostly adding or transmuting to water, planting dense growth, and
letting things take their course. But even there a complex chain of
interdependent species of plants and animals had had to be modified
and stabilized so that the ecosystem would remain in balance.
Not a single one of the flying and crawling insects they’d
managed to trap here was familiar, but they seemed to fill the same
not-always-obvious roles that their Earth ancestors had back on the
home world. Unfortunately, some of them bit, and of those some had
defensive or offensive toxins causing itching, but none of the
bites suffered by Clayben and Raven had been more than minor
nuisances.
The heat and humidity were still hard to take, and the gravity
was murder, but at least they had grown used to the alien smells in
the air and hardly noticed them anymore. Raven was certainly
delighted about one thing: Finally he could smoke his cigars again
without worry. His endless supply of half-smoked cigars had baffled
Hawks until the latter had heard about and understood enough about
the transmuters. Raven had a way of making the things duplicate his
cigars, but the only model he’d had was the last half of one
brought from Earth. He had a huge supply made from that half a
cigar—and all were duplicates of it. He hoped that the others
would never discover that he was using the food transmuters to make
cigars, or that they wouldn’t mind if they did find
out.
By the end of the second day, Raven felt well enough to do some
exploring, but it was clear that Clayben simply wasn’t up to
it. He might, in time, adapt to a gravitational pull that was
actually very slightly less than the Earth on which he’d been
born, but that was by no means certain and definitely not imminent.
Unwilling to trust Clayben alone with the fighter and all his gear,
Raven called for reinforcements. “I want Warlock and Nagy
down here as quickly as possible,” he told them. “We
need to get moving.”
The newcomers, who arrived with fresh supplies, seemed to do a
lot better with the sudden weight than the first two had. Nagy
explained that in light of the problems, Star Eagle had induced a
spin that gave some measure of gravity to the ship. Warlock and
Nagy still felt some strain, but after a good night’s sleep
in the makeshift tent, they seemed to be in as good shape as Raven
was.
It was a bright, sunny day. They had actually watched rainstorms
in the distance over the water, but so far none of the clouds had
given the interior more than a few drops. Raven opened up a
security case and surprised Nagy by giving the spindly man a
pistol.
“You might need it to save one or both of our
necks,” the Crow told him. “You’ll need a good
knife, too. I had Star Eagle duplicate my best.” He handed
him a huge flat blade and a gunbelt that had a notch for the
knife.
Nagy looked at the dense jungle. “I think a broadsword
might be better, considering that stuff.” He hefted the
knife, put it in the belt, then drew and aimed the pistol at the
trees. “I—uh—guess this is some kind of
test.”
Manka Warlock’s stern expression did not change. “No
test,” she said. “If Raven doesn’t come back,
first I kill the doctor here and then I come for you.”
Nagy shrugged and gave a “Who, me?” sort of
look, then turned back to Raven. “Now’s as good a time
as any, I guess. I’m not too thrilled about this, but it has
to be done if we’re gonna stick around this
hothouse.”
Raven checked a small communicator that had been removed from
one of the pressure suits and slipped into a special casing.
“Thunder, are you reading me?”
“Perfectly,” Star Eagle’s voice responded.
“I have you on intercom as well. Doctor?”
“No problems.” Clayben looked at the others.
“Bring me back some specimens. Plants, insects, sea water,
even one of those birds or whatever they are. And Arnold? Be
certain you both return.”
Nagy shrugged again. “Which way, O intrepid
explorer?”
“That way,” Raven said, pointing with his knife at a
spot almost exactly between the two huge cloud-shrouded volcanic
peaks. “It’s the shortest route to the sea if the map
we saw was right.”
They made their way carefully down to where the foliage met the
rocky outcrop of ancient lava. “I don’t expect that
there will be any really dangerous plants and animals in
there,” the Crow said, “but you never know what a
computer might throw into a prototype. Still, its mission was to
preserve people, not get rid of them.”
It was rough going almost from the start. The lava did not stop
as it met the greenery, but there it had been more severely
weathered, partly broken up, and overgrown with moss and vines.
Much of the growth masked cracks and fissures in the ground that
seemed designed to twist ankles and trip the unwary. The men used
their knives as best they could and were thankful that they’d
decided to wear the thick, heavy boots from their pressure
suits.
When they finally hit much older rock covered with humus the
footing became soft and spongy. Their passage seemed to disturb the
insect population; the air was thick with tiny flying things and a
few very large, angry buzzing ones. “If Clayben wants his
damned insect collection let him come and get ’em,”
Raven shouted angrily, swatting the air.
After a while they came to a short but fairly steep drop,
perhaps two meters, at which point the thick vegetation stopped and
they found themselves on smooth, flat, and pretty solid gray-black
sand cut with chasms. There was a great deal of driftwood on the
beach, as well. Now, for the first time, they could see as well as
hear the pounding waves and look out upon the ocean.
“First time I ever seen a bloody red ocean,” Raven
commented.
Nagy walked toward the edge of the water perhaps fifty or sixty
meters away, then knelt and looked at the water. “Not blood
and not red. Not the ocean, anyway. It’s a thin layer of some
kind of plant or animal stuff. Plant, I’d say. Some kind of
modified plankton, maybe. Stuff must cover a lot of ocean. Ten to
one the only reason it doesn’t cover all of it is the wind
and storms. Only small tides here, what with no big
moon.”
Raven stared at him. “You a scientist?”
“Naw, I’m like you. I pick up stuff. You never know
when something’s gonna come up useful.”
Raven stared at him. In occupation—and somewhat in
personality—he and Nagy were twins, yet the Crow was far
cruder in his approach, and Nagy far more intellectual. Raven
suspected that in the jungle or in the bush, Nagy would be dead
meat, but that in any sort of civilization Nagy might be even more
dangerous than Clayben.
“Nagy—I know why I’m here, but why are
you?”
“Maybe we ought to trade information,” the tall,
thin man replied. “Fact is, I was about to ask you the same
question. For me it’s simple—survival. We went to the
same training schools. Survival is the first priority of an
effective operative. I blew Melchior—thanks to you. The
administrators don’t like that. The escape brought Master
System down on us, as I knew it had to, which is why I personally
directed the chase. I didn’t want to be there when the Vals
crashed in the locks. The board, now, it can lay all the illegal
stuff on Clayben and me. I was in a meat grinder. The way to get
out is to run out—and the stars were the only place to run.
So when Clayben pulled up in that souped-up custom interstellar job
and took me off the Star, I was only too willing. Now,
that’s simple enough. It’s you I don’t
get. What was it? The lure of power? Those rings can get anybody
sick with the god disease.”
“No,” Raven said quietly. “I didn’t fail
and I didn’t turn traitor and I didn’t run out.
I’m just doing my job.”
“Huh? Blowing Melchior? Springing this crazy assortment?
Lugging everybody here? Stirring up Master System to what must be
the closest thing to a frenzy a machine can experience? Who the
hell can you be working for that would want that? Or
deserved the kind of price we’re all paying?”
“You want the truth?”
“Shoot. What difference can it make now?”
“I don’t know. Chen—the one chief
administrator on Earth with a ring of his own—I think
he knows. But as high as he is, he’s just an
employee, too, and in many ways he’s in a more dangerous spot
than I am. It was understood that I wouldn’t know anything
beyond Chen because, if I was captured, that was as far as even
Master System could go. You can’t tell what you don’t
know, and I suspect that Chen has a way out just as Clayben did if
the heat gets too great.”
Nagy stared at him and frowned. “But there is
nobody higher than the administrators. They get their orders direct
from Master System. It would have to be a hell of a computer brain
to be in that chain somewhere, and it’d have to be an
independent one, not one Master System could control or reprogram.
There must be more computer brains than people but it just
ain’t possible.”
“It’s possible. I don’t know how. Even if the
survival and discovery of the rings information was in fact
accidental, very little that went on after it was. I’m not
even a hundred-percent certain that the accident that caused the
courier from Warlock to Chen to crash in Hawks’s backyard
while he was on leave—very conveniently—was accidental.
Put that together with the near-simultaneous discovery by the
Chinese of a tech cult with complete plans for a
Thunder-class ship and how to operate and interface with
it and you have real questions about coincidence. Maybe it is.
Maybe after nine hundred years everything just came together. I
don’t believe it, though. Maybe in nine hundred million
years, but I’m not a real strong believer in this much fate.
Me, I’m an add-on. Warlock needed me to track down Hawks in
unfamiliar territory, and once I was in, I was in. So then
this Song Ching, who just happens to be the district
administrator’s daughter and knows all the security codes and
overrides, gets initial access to all the starship plans and
information—hell, she was there on the raid, and
since when is a relative that high up allowed that close to
action?—gets all the time she needs to crack the ship
interfaces and then gets a ton of pressure on her to get her to
escape.”
“Go on. I’m beginning to see how you
think.”
“So our China girl escapes and just happens to
get on an interplanetary freighter that’s just been refitted
and whose core has just been modified and reprogrammed for
independent action. Now, you and I know how easy that is in space,
but who could do it on Earth, under the very nose of and
monitored by Master System? Somebody did. That pig Sabatini took
his liberties, but she wound up on Melchior. Thanks to Chen, so did
Hawks and both Warlock and me—but none of his own people. And
I’m there with a detailed list of just who to spring, and
how, and on what ship. Not only that, but I have three out of four
locations for the missing rings. How the hell could Chen get
them?”
Nagy thought about it. “Maybe a freebooter commission. Big
reward for the location of any rings.”
“We’ll check, but would he chance it? Would
you? They’d wonder why he wanted the rings and then
they’d start after them, and before you knew it they’d
be holding up both him and Master System just like we hope to do.
Uh uh. When I was at Chen’s, he didn’t know where the
other rings were—I’d stake my life on it. Then, when I
got the message in his code on Melchior, there they were. I
don’t think he sent the code or the whole list to be sprung.
I think somebody else did.”
“Yeah, but why Hawks? I mean, even you said you thought
the crash was accidental.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Chen seemed to think that Hawks was the
key to the whole business. He’s no real fighter, although
brave enough. He’s an intellectual. A historian. A man
specializing in the last century of pre-Master civilization. He
didn’t know about the rings, but he knows a hell of a lot of
history of that period. My orders, even direct from Chen, were to
protect him at all costs. Nobody’s that important by
accident—not when you add up all the other coincidences. No,
I’m on the job, just following orders. I don’t know
who, but I figure I’ll find that out when we got the hard
part done—if we can. Hawks is right about one
thing—Master System is crippled when it comes to preventing
us from getting the rings. Crippled, but not helpless. The odds are
still pretty well against us.”
Nagy scratched his ample chin and thought. “Well, two
possibilities come to mind. I’m beginning to agree that
coincidence has been stretched to the breaking point here, so that
leaves the ‘who’ of it. One thought is that we’re
being thrown out here by Master System itself as some kind of final
test of its security.”
“I thought of that, but it doesn’t wash. The rings
are the only thing that can do it in. There’s no way a
logical beast like that could afford to let that kind of
information out just for a test, particularly out of the Solar
System. Once out, it could never get back—and sooner or later
somebody would follow up on it and succeed. It’s only chance
was to shut this information down fast before it got out. No, by
any logical standard, it just doesn’t make sense. If nothing
else, the mere news that something exists that can hurt or even
kill Master System would be enough to spur people on. It knows
that. It knows us all too well.”
Nagy nodded. “That brings me to the second thought
I’ve had. You know Master System has been claiming for some
time that there’s a war on. That it’s fighting even,
holding its own, but no better. Nobody knows who it’s warring
with, but that’s one hell of an enemy if it can fight Master
System to a standstill. Maybe—just maybe—that’s
what this is all about. If you were out there, stalemated against
our system, you’d find some way to get information, contacts,
whatever. You’d learn. And if you stumbled on the fact that
somewhere out here is a weapon that can blow Master System’s
brain out, you’d try for it.”
The idea hadn’t occurred to Raven and it fascinated him.
“But—if that’s true, then why us? Why not go
after them yourself?”
Nagy shrugged. “As to why it’s us, I couldn’t
guess. I can’t figure Master System, so why should I be able
to figure out somebody or something really alien? As to why get
somebody else to go for them, there might be a real basic and
simple answer. You said it yourself—in the core of Master
System there is an imperative. We, as human beings, have a
right to try for the rings. We have that edge, for
whatever it’s worth, and it might be very slim but it is an
edge. An edge that wouldn’t apply to nonhumans, by which I
mean people not descended from Earth stock. Maybe they calculated
everything and figured humans had the edge.”
“Then that means that if we ever get them, we’ll
have more than just Master System and Chen and the rest of the
power lovers to cope with. Nagy, suppose they don’t come for
them when and if we have them? Suppose they just ease the way so we
get in and shut Master System down?”
Nagy smiled grimly. “Then they win, don’t
they?” He sighed. “Why don’t we cross that bridge
if we ever come to it? Damn it, we aren’t even set up
yet.” He looked out across the crimson sea. “A few
other islands over there. Sooner or later we’re gonna need a
boat to tour the neighborhood.” He looked around the beach.
“It’s somewhat sheltered here—you can see how the
big waves break well out there, so there’s underwater lava or
a reef or something here. I’d say we build right
here—back there and against the jungle. Burn out a good-sized
trail and keep it open—the jungle will try to take it back
all the time.” He looked over at the tallest peak.
“Somebody’s gonna have to get up there sooner or later,
too. Establish a high refuge if we get any real nasty
storms.” He sighed, his mind racing at top speed. “If
these are anything like Earth volcanoes, they make great topsoil.
Burn away selected areas of jungle to get fields protected from the
worst weather, and you could probably grow most anything here.
I—”
There was a sudden loud splash behind him and he whirled, pistol
out of his holster with amazing speed, his body automatically
taking a defensive crouch. Raven’s reaction was a bit slower,
but in the same style. The Crow frowned, seeing nothing.
“Something falling in? Or something leaping?”
“I don’t know. They said the initial survey showed
some large life forms in the water. Lots of them, in big groups,
all over the place. Maybe that was just one of them. We’ll
have to find out what the hell’s there before my boat can
sail.”
Raven reached in his pack and took out a pair of simple
binoculars, part of the kit that he always carried. He holstered
his weapon and looked through the lenses, surveying the surface of
the water.
“Black shapes in the water. Fairly good size,” he
told Nagy. “I can’t see very much of them and none of
’em are long enough to get much more than a blurry shape, but
there’s sure some big suckers out there. I don’t know.
They kinda look like the big otters we got along the Missouri and
Mississippi, only even bigger.” He lifted the binoculars so
he was looking only at the surface. The closest island, about four
kilometers distant, was now also in his sights. Something suddenly
nagged at him, and he took his eye off the water and looked
squarely at the island itself. “Nagy—I think you might
want to take a look at this. I think we better call it in,
too.”
“Huh? What?” Nagy, too, had holstered his weapon and
now he took the binoculars.
“That next island. To the right, there, maybe a couple of
degrees, where the beach looks thin. Right above it.”
Arnold Nagy stared. Then, after a moment, he saw what the Crow
was talking about, and he felt a chill.
“That line of trees is in perfect rows,” he
muttered. “After centuries even if they were planted that way
they wouldn’t still be there. They’re planted, all
right, and maintained, but not by Master System.”
“Freebooters?” Raven wondered.
He sighed. “Maybe, but I doubt it. Not their kind of
layout. No ships, no fast getaway. Shipwreck, maybe, but that would
be stretching coincidence beyond any reasonable bounds. Thousands
of islands. Uh uh. Best bet is that the freebooters have a real
good reason for steering clear of here. Best bet is there’s
places like that all over this planet. I think this was a much more
advanced prototype than we figured.”
“You mean—it’s inhabited?”
“Looks like. I wonder by whom?”
“Or what?” Raven replied.
They reported to the ship.
“I’m not sure I like the look of this,” Hawks
commented. “Perhaps—perhaps we ought to rethink this
idea of a planetary camp for now. There is enough room
here.”
“No,” Star Eagle objected. “There is no such
thing as the perfect world for you except the one of your birth.
This ship is not fit for long-term habitation by a growing
population, and while I intend extensive modifications, these might
take a great deal of time and would necessitate everyone being off
the ship. It is also not good for the child to come. While
near-weightlessness is fine when the child is in the womb, it
should not be born in this environment and not know gravity from
the start.”
Hawks began to wonder if Star Eagle wasn’t more concerned
about China than about their own needs, but he also knew he
couldn’t press the issue. In a very real sense the pilot was
a free agent, and because he alone controlled access to the vast
data banks and the interstellar drives, he had a vote that weighed
far heavier than theirs. Hawks had to wonder, though, about the
relationship between the small pregnant girl who might give birth
in days or weeks and this machine intelligence with whom she
mentally mated. Did—could—Star Eagle feel as humans
felt? And, in this case, was he being protective—or running
scared by forcing her away? There was no way to tell.
Hawks sighed. “Very well, but the initial camp must be
well inland, near the transmuter. Whatever is down there is mostly
of the sea, and it would be unwise to be too close to their domain.
Can some sort of security perimeter be established around the camp?
We are too few to have constant guards and would be easily
overwhelmed.”
“It is possible. I believe Maintenance can manufacture
something that will do, but everyone should go armed at all times.
If these are humans in any sense of the word, contact must be
established and a treaty made, if at all possible.”
“If they are humans, they might not be inclined to talk
treaty first,” Hawks responded. “We will not know their
tribal ways until we press, or until they come to us. If they are
too territorial, it might mean a fight.”
Reba Koll’s voice crackled. “If we can’t beat
them, how the hell could we ever take on Master
System?”
Hawks sighed and wished he could get rid of the feeling that he
was in the role of the cavalry marching against the peoples of
early America. He slapped his thighs. “All right—we
move!”