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

  "A child can. I don't think it will, though. It won't be something it'll be looking for."

  "Even on its own ship?"

  "I don't know. Maybe not. You have a plan?"

  "It all depends on whether I can get to the ship and whether I can get to the position where I need to be – under it – without being detected. I want to make it decide to offload that plutonium. If I can get to the right spot I think I can do something there.

  "The stuff's dangerous enough at the best of times if you have any quantity of it. I'm afraid that thing would set it all off if we trapped it here where it knew it was lost. It would be in an effort to take us out with it, and that would contaminate half of this planet. We couldn't hope to clean up that stuff if it's set off in that quantity anywhere, and this is near the sea as well as in the major wind currents of the tropical zone.

  "We can't allow it. If I can not only get the stuff offloaded, but also broken up into various piles in several places, we've half-won the battle.

  "My worry while we're waiting here is that the brain will be building things as fast as it can. All this time's a definite advantage to it and anything but an advantage for us."

  "Not much we can do about that. I can't contact Maita from under here, so I'm programming a signal floater with everything as it happens. It has instructions to go directly to the protector satellite and to fastcom all the information to Maita each third day – and to go immediately if I turn off the direct hookup to it at any time without first giving it other instructions.

  "I have it well-hidden outside with a shielded lead to it. I'll wait awhile longer just to be sure that thing isn't being clever again, then you can do whatever it is you plan. We'll make a systematic plan to remain in communication with laser beam or something.

  "We have one more thing in our favor in all of this: The brain can't begin mining too soon. It doesn't have elementizer grids, so it'll have to refine ores with the old laser heat method, then remelt, alloy, cast, and finish.

  "It has to find copper or silver for circuits. Aluminum will be much too hard to find and to refine here. It won't be able to produce much better than a few stainless steels, and nothing with titanium, platinum, or other really high heat-resistant alloys. It'll all be susceptible to heat lasers. It won't be able to make floaters without aluminum and magnesium and can't hope to refine magnesium worth a damn until it makes a power plant. The plant uses a lot of hard-to-get metals here.

  "It can do everything it has to do, but it can't do it this year. It plans to take whatever time it needs. It's in no hurry and, I suppose, it'll really do a great job on any of its weapons and defenses, but its time is running out – and it doesn't have any hint of THAT!

  "Forget the floaters. It doesn't have them.

  "It'll be up to you to make a plan and to handle things. You seem to have some ideas."

  "I have a lot of ideas. They aren't very defined yet. I have to see exactly what I'm up against.

  "Let's get that doorway ready on this end, then we can finish it when the shield's dropped a lot quicker than if we wait to do it all at once."

  I went with the various servos I needed to build the doorway and spent several hours clearing the rubble from the inside. TR expanded the shield a bit so we could spray a fixing solution on the looser rocks inside of this small cave and across the covered original entrance. It would be solid enough at the outer entrance to hold, but weak enough that TR could blast right through it if it came to any such thing.

  We took a little extra time to lay a sensor grid to broadcast constantly. Any sonic sensors would find pretty much what already was shown if any more probes came. Neither TR nor I thought there would be anymore except for a possible regular check every twenty days or so.

  I laid the gravity grids I'd built on a floater and ran the attachment lines so they would be deployed very rapidly. They could be placed on the ceilings or on the floors or even on the walls, though that wasn't very practical unless you crawled. The normal gravity was there to pull you to the side if you stuck out for your normal height. If you're directly upside down it doesn't affect you greatly, as it's simply a matter of having the grid gravity stronger than the normal pull of the planet.

  We waited until late in the morning outside the following day simply as a psychological ploy. The original programmers had, though they knew perfectly well that light made no difference to the machines, left some sense of darkness being the time when anyone would try to sneak in.

  I went to the doorway to wait until solution was pumped to hold things as they were. A very thin laser was then used to cut a "plug" out, the "plug" was hooked to a servo motor and pulled inward (It was cone-shaped, so it would fit closely when it was reclosed) so I could step into the outer cave.

  I was on my way!

  Clever Tricks

  I stepped into the tunnel, where I stopped to let my sensors study the place at full range and sensitivity. If there were any detectors here, they were passive.

  I sent six very small floaters with sensitive equipment to scan the entire area, centimeter by centimeter, before I moved. TR sent a larger floater to affix and focus light beam relays so we could be in constant communication without being in very much danger of detection.

  This was a purely exploratory trip. I wanted only to discover what was where and what kinds of protections were in place. The brain was paranoid, as all military minds are, so it was as much as certain there would be a number of devices set about.

  This time there was basis for paranoia.

  If possible I wanted to locate where any mining was being done and what was being mined, how it was being handled, and what was to be built with the metals. There were definite limitations as to what was to be found in the area, which would place severe limitations on what could be built.

  TR sent floaters to the island where the brain left things to find it was just minor mining machinery, so we could prevent the brain's getting certain basic things in the future if it proved necessary.

  I was signaled an all-clear to the first bend, so cautiously moved ahead to see our probes had discovered a small movement sensor the brain had placed in a small recess, but the floater placed a nul screen around it so it would show nothing. It was combination vibratory and infra-red, so a simple Styrofoam shield was excellent and could be made to resemble the natural rocks. There was also a simple trip mechanism suitably fixed so it would show nothing. Those kinds of traps were very simple, but could be the most effective, as they were purely mechanical and passive until activated. You step on what would appear to be the normal flooring of the cave, a flexible piece moves a thousandth of a centimeter, and a burst of radio is sent. It can't be stopped, and the brain is alerted that something is moving at that point in the tunnel. It then dispatches a servo to see if it's only a falling rock or something more sinister.

  The floaters located and disabled the traps automatically by injecting a substance to prevent the flexible part from making contact with the contact point. The appearance of the device wasn't changed in any way.

  I had to check for one very simple device that there was no defense for, really: tiny quartz crystals of very exact sizes. Stepping on them would cause a burst of radio on a very specific wavelength. The good thing was that they were basic radio fixers, so were detectable by sending a very weak, very wide-range wave out such as those temblors emitted and the fact a large number of crystals responded on a single frequency told us they were not natural features. (I mention this because the brain had thought of it and TR detected it.)

  The seeking sensors reported along the beam to TR, who then told me about them. They were then easy to avoid.

  I knew the brain couldn't place anything we couldn't find and thwart, but that first trip along those passages was what Z must mean when he said he had "a constant case of the creeps" in such places. Natural sounds, electrical phenomena, bioluminescence, and everything else was artificially amplified to my sensors in some subtle psychological manner. The dri
pping of ground water sounded like a drumbeat, the rattle of a bit of dislodged gravel from temperature change was like a collision between two S class ships. Even the air movement sounded terribly loud to my sensors.

  The brain was known for clever tricks, so I got tricky, too. The brain wasn't the only one who could be clever.

  There was a spur cave that connected to another cave farther along, so I had the light beam relays set up to go a distance along into it, then circle around and back through an impassible rocky slide that fell when we made the outer plug. It took some time and some difficult focusing techniques and took a lot of extra equipment but, should any relays be found closer to the brain, they would be traced to the cave that went outside, seemingly.

  TR thought it was a good idea, so continued the relays to the outside of the cave mouth and focused the last one upward toward the top of the volcano on the next island, then set up a pulse system to guarantee the pulses wouldn't cross the slide to our own hiding place if there was any change in pattern. The lack of communication would tell TR immediately the relay system was found and it could remove the ones closer to itself quickly. There would be nothing to lead anything to our own cavern.

  That was important and we both knew it. At all costs we must remain undiscovered for time enough to do something about that ship in the cavern. The very least we must accomplish before discovery was to get that plutonium out and away to where we had a chance to avoid its use or its dispersal as a permanent (For practical purposes) pollutant of a large section of this world.

  There was one place in the spur cave where the going was a bit difficult, but a floater found another route. It was a bit longer but wasn't obstructed. I would now be able to use either route, depending on the circumstances.

  There was definitely mining going on, but it wasn't in the caves on this side. I had TR send floaters out to locate what was being mined, where, and so forth. That could all be handled by back-tracing energy utilization, and was information to be filed for later use. All of the information would be recorded so we could study it later if necessary to find some overlooked little point.

  I came to the cavern where the brain was sitting and got my first look at it.

  It was in a needle-type ship about a hundred meters from my position and was pointing outward, so was directed away from my access point at about a thirty degree angle. The "nose" of the ship was away, too, so I could safely assume the concentration of detection devices was toward the outside, though there would most certainly be detectors all over the cavern.

  It was still an advantage of sorts that it was headed in that direction. Direct detectors couldn't very well be placed in or close to those tubes back there.

  I detected sweep scanning devices and could see breaker-beam sensors at all the cave mouths – even some openings that were less than a meter across. No chances were being taken by that military mind, even though there was no reason for it to believe anyone even suspected its existence. A perfect example of its paranoia, and a perfect example that sometimes such measures were productive. For it.

  The little floaters could detect and avoid any form of beam reader, could absorb radar, and could shield electronics and vibrations. Their detectors were mostly passive and their power was well-shielded. It could be detected, but that thing would have to know what it was looking for and approximately where the floater was at a given moment. Passive detectors such as visuals and vibratory sensors couldn't be avoided. They ed by locating energies the object being detected produced.

  The best defense of those types was to not produce infra-red or sound except as a match to the background. That took a lot of circuitry in itself.

  Visible light was another problem. Infra-red and ultra-violet, and even radio and X-rays, are visual waves to me, but "white" light components are what I'm talking about here. Each section of the spectrum has its own assets and its own liabilities.

  I have to assume anyone with any technology in electromagnetic sciences can detect through all the frequencies I can use. The entire EM spectrum can be shielded, but that's more of a giveaway than the partial thing. It leaves a big empty "hole" where the shield is working, making it as easy to detect as a ten kilometer high mountain on a ten thousand kilometer wide flat plain.

  In other words, such a shield is useful in empty space, but calls attention (Loudly!) to one anywhere else.

  There's a null-inertia field that passes everything around you in its same relationship, but that field is done with "magic" (Science that isn't understood) and can't be maintained very well.

  Z and the Zeenan, Tom, and even Thing have used it, but they can't explain how it works, so we've never been able to duplicate it. If we ever do we'll have a near-perfect disguise to use in any conditions.

  I used my telescopic visuals to study the brain's ship in all wavelengths. It had difusion drive tubes as well as what appeared to be ionic plate AR focuses. The ionic drive would only be used to maintain velocity once in open space after the difusion drive brought the ship to maximum. Maximum to the mass/engine expulsion ratio was perhaps four fifths of lightspeed and was efficient as all hell.

  The ship was perhaps twenty two meters long and six thick with the "needle" end being a sharp cone. The atmospheric "wings" were foldouts. There was one hatch along the side about three quarters of the way to the front of the ship. It was a square of perhaps a meter and a half on a side.

  There were repulsor pads, so it had some form of anti-gravity.

  "Low efficiency and non-sustainable," TR reported (It had been sharing my brain circuits so I wouldn't be forced to repeat all of this. We do that at times when the communications are as good as we had here, but most times they weren't. Not even close. It would last only a limited time).

  "It doesn't know how to focus and amplify on the broader based system we use, but then, it doesn't have the drive, either. It uses the repulsors for landings and take-offs only, I'd say. They eat a lot of power.

  "It has the same fusion reactor that produces power on all the brain ships. I can't begin to understand why it doesn't use the principles of fusion to make its weapons instead of fission. It can bypass the fission starter process with its science."

  "It wants to leave a large radioactive wasteland here. It wants to do all it can to make the planet useless to organic life – once it's through using them as forced labor."

  TR would get a small visual sensor as close as it dared to get some good videos from all possible angles. I concentrated on the other entrances. We had checked this cave out earlier and had fairly good maps, as we felt it was a likely spot.

  "We can laser-drill across a few places in there and come out of any of those three caves to your left. We could get into the smaller one on your right from the outside," TR suggested. "Note where the sensors are, and what kind they are.

  "I'm going to send as large a floater as I can to see if we can get the idea of instability in that plutonium aboard started. It'll only be a small thing, but one that looks dangerous and one that's unexpected. Anything to make the brain have an attack of nerves that doesn't seem to have an anchor in there being another being of any sort. Typical natural phenomena."

  "What will you do?"

  "Just increase the gravity in a small spot enough to compress the stuff a little. Isn't that what you had in mind? Compress it, and it acts like its going critical? Compress it more and it DOES go critical, so we have to be careful. I'm not going to be taking chances with that stuff.

  "We'll also see if that thing can detect wave gravitics. If it can we have to think of something else.

  "I don't think it can."

  I studied the other entrances, but planned to use this one.

  The basic thing to concentrate on here would be misdirection. If I were detected any way I wanted to make it appear I came from another point.

  One thing I wanted clear and ready was a variety of escape routes. That brain could use sensors to locate me in any of these caves, so I had to be ready to take evas
ive action. It would be more than merely difficult to hide if the brain knew even of two or three caves I could be in. It had enough resources to search three caves at once (in my estimation).

  It would work rapidly to build more servos. In very few days it could search four, then five. Time was still an important item on our agenda here.

  The best plan was to see it didn't know about my presence at all until it was too late to do anything about it. Don't let it know there's anything TO find and maybe it won't look where I am in the random searches it will surely make.

  Prepare any number of plans for any number of eventualities while bearing in mind there would be little chance any of them would be of practical use if anything happened. This was still one of those projects where it was necessary to base most of our moves simply on reaction.

  I felt at that point it would be to my advantage to allow the brain to out-clever itself by reacting to what it did, but not in the manner it would predict. Pit intelligent against clever and clever always looses.

  How I wished there was some safe way to bring in a large power beam and blow that thing to slag where it sat, but a neutron beam would probably set off the plutonium and may not affect the brain at all. Result: a deadly polluted planet.

  The brain could shield that kind of thing, as we had learned more than a hundred years ago. The brain wouldn't have lost any technology in those years. I could be sure of that!

  Lasers of any number of types could be used, but are easy to shield. They would also produce a lot of plutonium vapor if they did destroy the ship. Result: a deadly polluted planet.

  A disruptor was too inefficient for most purposes, but I could remove the shield antennae and the sensor lenses with one, then use the laser canons to finish the job. If the plutonium weren't removed before I did anything like that, the brain would set it off in an attempt to "take me with it." Result: a deadly polluted planet.

  I didn't have a hope of getting close enough to use acid on the exteriors. If I were that close I could do other things that would make it unnecessary.