Flight of the Maita Supercollection 3: Solving Galactic Problems Collector's Edition Read online

  "It should've become perfectly apparent at that time that it couldn't withstand assault by both the empire and the people of New Home. The empire was fighting your maker at the time you were launched, so you're able to deduce you're nothing more nor less than an attempt of the original brain to perpetuate itself and its insanity.

  "This is the first time I've seen one of you clones up close. I was under the impression you were smaller, but then I imagine you've added a few features."

  There was no reply. I had to get a response in order for the machine to act out its plan.

  "It's no good remaining silent," I chided. "We're sure you have some very valuable information for us about where others of your clones have been sent and about the strategies that've been programmed into them. We'll simply directly access your circuits and read everything there.

  "You can understand, I'm sure, that I will wish to gloat a bit about defeating you. You were definitely not an easy adversary, but you weren't too difficult, either. You can see I have some much more advanced programming than you clones. The designers of the original were, after all, the ancestors of those who designed me, and their science isn't so restricted as our programmings. We must stay within a program while they can seek at any point and in any way.

  "You were stupid to be so impatient. You should've known they would continue to advance, and you should've waited until you were more prepared to take over.

  "I won't make the same mistakes.

  "Prepare to have your memory circuits completely and totally read by my machines. Be silent if you so choose, but it'll avail you nothing. There's no way you can stop me!"

  "You state you are planning to take over the Tlesson worlds?" the robot asked.

  "I state nothing of the sort. I'm waiting for more opportune times to make my decisions. I merely state your maker acted stupidly. Had it waited only until now it would have had many more things at its disposal.

  "I have a TTH drive in my ship, which your master never was able to complete trying to build on its own. I have decidedly far superior weapons and better sensors, and far more capacity to calculate and cross-reference.

  "I know the strategies the Tlesson armed forces use and I know how the empire operates, so I wouldn't make the mistakes your predecessor made with them."

  "It's plain you intend to try to take over this place you call New Home and Tlesson worlds," the robot replied. "You will fail. That is not the first point of attack.

  "I have a far better plan!"

  "Your plan's so good I'm here to destroy you! Your computation processes are primitive in relation to my own. You are also insane from the viewpoint of my programmers."

  I wanted this machine to try its trick so I could get out of here! It was stalling for time. TR was undoubtably using that time, too, so I'd better let the brain set its own pace until something else happened.

  Something else happened. The floater said in Swaz, "Okay. I've found it. Get this over with."

  "I note you sent a little probe to look at the floater you destroyed. I learned a great deal there. I learned how to defense your weapons against the floater. You won't be nearly so successful if you try it again – but then, you aren't going to try anything at all again, are you?

  "I'm now going to read your memory banks and melt you down to where the people on this world will never know anything about any of this. That's a directive programmed into me.

  "Floater two will approach the hatch cover and open it. If you try to prevent us we'll simply burn our way through. I've wasted enough time with you. I'm superior, and won't be stopped!"

  The floater approached the hatch, waited a moment, then began burning the closing mechanism with a pencil laser.

  "Wait!" the robot said. "There is no reason for us to battle one another. We both have the same eventual directive, to revenge ourselves against the Tlesson and Maitan Empire forces. We can work together! I have much more ability than you know!"

  "To the contrary. I wish no revenge. The people of Tlesson designed and built me and the people of the empire haven't done anything at all to me. IF I assume my rightful place in control of the Tlesson worlds it will be to aid those people, not to revenge myself on them because they did no more than to defend themselves against YOUR attacks!

  "Your desire for taking revenge because they defended themselves – as you did yourself – is proof of your insanity and therefore of your inability to rule logically. You've proven both insanity and stupidity to be your prime directives.

  "I'll take what information you contain and discard the parts that aren't useful."

  The robot jerked once and all energy died in it. The "brain" began to radiate intense heat, so I left the cavern. The floater shielded against the heat and watched as the servo melted into a puddle of slag.

  I headed for the door as the floaters all flew back to TR.

  "Not much of a puddle for all that brain."

  "You would have found the thing to be mostly empty had you gotten inside, so it had to do that," TR replied. "It had cables from underneath to control everything there. It yanked them out and is moving under water.

  "Do something to keep the people from getting too excited and curious about this, then get back here."

  I went to the gate and reported that the starker was dead and gone, as were his golems, but I now had to do something about the starker on the island.

  I headed for Stormlee.

  "Tab?" TR asked.

  "Yo?"

  "Don't you realize you didn't use the same accent at any two times you spoke to those people?" TR said. "You almost took on exactly the dialect of the last one you spoke with!"

  I thought about it. TR was right. I would have to be much more careful about that kind of thing.

  "Aren't you glad they had other things to distract them?" I asked.

  Is That Smart?

  As soon as I was back aboard TR we headed out. I first went into Stormlee where I told Gorta about getting the other magician into the fight and that I was going to find a way to do something about the one on the island.

  I took the boat (Which a floater had taken back under cover of darkness) out around some rocks by the mouth of the harbor where the floater was waiting to take me to TR. I didn't like taking the time, but TR assured me it would be very easy to follow the brain. There was a sensor staying a bit out of detection range that would take us directly to the ship.

  "It doesn't think we'll follow it," TR explained. "It feels it's fooled us completely, but it still sent two decoys out. I have a direct fix on it and wasn't fooled.

  "We'll stay back a ways. I don't think it's built for too much depth. It's built for vacuum, not pressure. It doesn't move very rapidly under water.

  "I'd say it's heading for the volcanic islands down near the equator. It can extract various critical minerals there and can spend unlimited time in rebuilding its weapons and equipment. It would definitely not want to give itself away for a number of years. We're supposed to become convinced we got it back there."

  "Why not just chase it down and blast it to slag out in the oceans somewhere? I don't want to spend a lot more time here, and I can't help but think that any time we wait is to the advantage of that thing."

  "It's carrying a hell of a lot of interesting little things – like plutonium," TR said sarcastically (HOW?). "We're supposed to stop that kind of pollution, not cause it. I'm keeping my trace because of all those radioactives aboard. It was all pretty well shielded physically with lead and gold back by Stormlee, but the brain's jettisoned the heavy stuff to move. Radiation doesn't hurt anything aboard it."

  "As Thing would say, I stand chastised and corrected. What are we going to do about all of that when it stops? The problem will still be there."

  "We're going to hope it offloads it or that we can find a way to get rid of the brain without destroying the ship. We can't let that kind of pollution out. You know that."

  I used the rest of the time of the trip to update and input all I coul
d and to talk for awhile with Maita. I gave a complete report and received the news they were sure Fleet had destroyed all of the other brain ships.

  Thing and Z were finally getting started on their case, and T6, who I talked a bit with, was experimenting with TTH14. Things seemed to be going well everywhere, which meant there was a hell of a lot we didn't know about. I get a sick feeling when things seem to be going too smoothly.

  "TR," I said. "That thing's going to get out of the water to start this project if not to complete it, so why don't we go on ahead? We can locate the best areas for it and can know the lay of the land before it gets there. There's no way it can shake the trace it doesn't even know about."

  "You're learning to think! Congratulations!" TR replied. "I agree. Let's do it!"

  We went ahead to the islands where we explored for as much time as we felt reasonable. There were six major islands moving along the tectonic plate line at about half a meter per year. The northernmost was the newest and was subject to eruptions at any time, so wasn't so likely a place to start building a multiyeared project.

  The next one was only slightly active and would be safe. The next was my pick, as it wasn't at all active and had plenty of caves and minerals. It had about everything the brain could want.

  The rest of them were good hiding places, but were occupied, if only sparsely. There wasn't vegetation or soil enough on the second or third, and there was a space of perhaps eight or ten kilometers between them, so the third was still my bet.

  It went to the second, then to the third, back to leave some things on the second, then back to the third.

  We waited two days plus until it settled into a cavern with several entrances and exits, and which was on a particularly forbidding section of the island. No one was likely to come there for years.

  "Now we have to get it to unload those fissionables," I said. "How do we do that?"

  "Your guess is as good as mine," TR replied. "We'll have to work on the psychology of the brain. Find a way to make it think leaving the stuff aboard is dangerous to it."

  I waited until TR was securely settled and in a cavern of our own. We were on the first island and were watching the brain with floaters. We could be sure it would be some while before it would do anything outside of that cave directly, so would have that much time to plan.

  "TR, let's move into a cavern around the mountain from that thing before it has time to send probes to search for anything in other parts of the caves. We know perfectly well it'll send its sensor probes into all the branches," I suggested. "It's going to find our floaters. Even the direct beam communications with them can be found by getting between, and we both know full well that thing isn't going to chance anything like that. It'll find them if they're there.

  "If we're in close a cavern we can use all the com equipment inside of kilometers of rock. There won't be enough leakage for it to detect and we can set up a direct light beam it CAN'T get inside of. We can move a large obstruction into place to ensure it won't find us and will then have direct access to it.

  "You can screen from the outside, too. That'll give us an advantage all the way around."

  "We can try it. I don't have any other ideas. I wish it didn't have those radioactives aboard."

  We found the place that seemed best for us. It was more than three kilometers through a twisting cave to where the brain was sitting – a cave that could be blocked easily against probes.

  "I think the best thing to do here is to put up a shield and shake the natural stuff on the mountain down to cover it. It's all loose basalt and shale and will look natural."

  "The brain won't detect the shaking?"

  "It will, but it knew to come here in the first place, so it may know of that opening. There're often tremors around here, so our own'll give it a natural explanation as to why the cave is gone.

  "I'll leave the shield in place for awhile so its readings will indicate a solid fill.

  "I'll make a chain of tremors that move along a nearby fault line. It'll check this one first, as it's the one connected to its own cavern. If it knows about the connecting cave it'll also have the explanation as to why there's suddenly an obstruction there, too."

  TR sent special floaters to cause tremors on the far side of the island by firing a disruptor beam inside of blow-holes and glassine gas chambers in the rock. The granulating of some solid support rock would cause cave-ins and rockfalls while leaving nothing detectable.

  Molecular disruptors are terribly inefficient, but we have more than ten times the power we'll ever need (I hope).

  The tremors had their epicenters first quite a distance away, then close, then away, then between, then our cave, then away, then past the brain's cavern. The intensity of them was from quite small to quite heavy, and the one over us was in between.

  TR sent a floater along our cave to dump two obstructions, one in the cave past us and about half a kilometer away that could be bypassed through a spur and one that just entered the main cave leading to the brain's cavern. That one could be opened easily later with a disguised doorway. We would use the same rocks that were choking the passageway in their exact positions, so any recordings would show no difference when it was later checked – as we could be sure it would be.

  Regularly. That thing didn't take chances. Not ever!

  TR had to bring in most floaters before it set the shield up, but placed attached a number of passive sensors outside of the shielded areas. They wouldn't be detectable.

  Two floaters were simply given programs to make the remaining tremors, then to hide themselves carefully. There would be slight tremors from various areas for several days to mimic aftershocks.

  I spent much of my time in the shop making things I felt might be needed while TR sent me periodical reports:

  "There's a probe checking the rockfall outside."

  "There's a watcher probe above us and one near the water. I hope they don't stay too long. We can't do anything at all so long as they're watching. The shield will have to stay up."

  "There are two probes checking the caverns. They dug into the outer obstruction and did a sonic."

  "The probes are digging into the close obstruction. They're going to do a sonic. I gave them a solid reading with a small cavern here and there. I made their probe 'cause' a fall-in to seal one of them."

  "There was a reader outside. I caught it in time to duplicate the results from the inner one."

  "One of the watchers has gone and the other moved to our south to perch on a rock outcropping. I don't think they have such a great power supply, and they're constant senders. We depleted more of that thing's resources than we knew back at Stormlee."

  We had constant internal conversations along with our standard bickering and insults all the time. The reports were added data.

  It was the third day, when we had almost decided to make the door into the cave that we were both glad we had those sensors outside and that we knew the brain was tricky. TR reported two cave probes approaching, while the one from the outside moved to the surface of the outer slide.

  "They're going to do another sonic, I think," TR reported. "I'll give them the same readings as before."

  "No! Mostly the same, but with some minor changes. These rocks in here will be shifting for a year at least."

  "Yo! I figured that. There'll be some changes. One hole filled in and another small one that suddenly appeared without any seeming reason."

  "Without a reason? Is that smart?"

  "I really THINK so!" TR replied smugly (HOW DOES IT DO THAT?). "Surely, no one who was faking a reading would do anything that would call attention to it and that will certainly draw attention to the area! It would be too stupid for anyone to do, so it has to be a natural phenomenon. I know I'd come to that conclusion. There'd be absolutely no logic to such a thing.

  "The brain knows you're a machine and you're in charge of the search here. Machines are logical.

  "This isn't logical.

  "No machine would d
o it.

  "It is, therefore, a natural occurrence. Move on."

  I grinned and agreed. It struck me we did a lot of very high-tech battle in primitive caves. There wouldn't be much to do for some time now, so I asked TR why it thought that kept happening. "I mean, Maita had to fight that insane machine in caves on EC, and it's happened at various times and in various places since."

  "Primitive caves can mask a lot of high-tech's more detectable radiations. The caves are already there on all of these worlds, aren't visible as habitations, are generally strong and defendable.

  "We can be glad they use them, because it also gives us all of those same things to use against such as this thing. It gives us ways to reach the brain here as well as it did in those other instances.

  "Caves often have interconnecting tunnels if they're volcanic or if they're formed by flowing water.

  "What are you building? You seem very industrious lately."

  "A sort of portable gravity grid. I figure we have several possibilities. These things might give us an edge where the brain would never expect it. It doesn't use artificial gravity in its own ship and might not know how to build it. It certainly won't be building its robots and servos to withstand a lot more than what's normal here. I can also string it along the ceiling of the cave and walk around up there. It's possible the thing won't have sensors in that cavern against the ceiling while it WILL have sensors to detect anything on the ground and in the air.

  "We can use any advantage we can find or manufacture."

  "It'll be a little while before you'd better go out there. I want to keep the shield up for awhile. It withdrew the servo sensors on both ends of this cavern, so I think it's being clever. It doesn't really think there's anything here, but it won't take any chances."

  I nodded and worked on the grids for a few hours. TR told me later the servos were sneaking up again very carefully and were planting the probes at opposite angles. Later it said the sonics were being used, then said the probes had again withdrawn.

  "Do you think that damned thing can detect small high gravity fields?" I asked.