Flight of the Maita Supercollection 3: Solving Galactic Problems Collector's Edition Page 16

  I was going to file the idea of using some kind of slow acid on it for later consideration, though. That's one option that should remain open if other things stacked up in a way to be utilized.

  I made one quick repeat recording of the entire place, paying very close attention to what might seem minor details, then went back to TR. A minor detail had more than once been the difference between success and failure in my little projects.

  A small floater passed me on my way back to TR with a liquid container on it, so I asked TR about it as I entered.

  "It's weak hydrochloric acid with a tad of nitrous and some sulfurous," TR replied. "You were thinking about acids back there and I got an idea.

  "Ion drive grids are mostly magnesium for the weight to mass ratios. There won't be any detectors directly by or behind those engines, so maybe I can cause corrosion on the difusion repressor tunnels. We can then be damned sure the thing will never leave this planet. The mixture will seem to be a natural byproduct of the drive."

  "What form of drive does it use on the planet? It certainly doesn't use the difusion drive, and the ionic drive is almost useless anywhere near a gravity well. It's hard enough to overcome mass inertia, much less weight!"

  "Electronic capacitance induction in the atmosphere where it can react on the mass of the air. Probably uses a hydrogen/oxygen jet underwater through a difusion nozzle.

  "I'm counting on that being how it got to these islands. It has the power to break down the water to all the fuel it could want, and the process is capable of releasing a lot of chlorine gas, sulfur oxides, nitrogen in oxides, and a few other caustics. If that chlorine gas were to contact the hydrogen gas it would form HCL. If the sulfur dittoed it would form the sulfurous acid and so on. The brain could reasonably be expected to deduce the hydrochloric acid that's going to ruin its ionic drive grids and maybe damage the difusion tunnels came from that quite natural process and can chastise itself for not determining some of the water it passed through contained manganous particles to catalyze those reactions.

  "It can rebuild both things easily enough, though not without doing some mining somewhere else. There aren't any particularly light elements in a free enough form anywhere near here."

  "Has anything happened with the plutonium yet?"

  "There've been a couple of very small bursts of unexpectedly intense radiation. It probably noted them and is ignoring it. That sort of thing happens when you're carrying large quantities of plutonium. Its value is that it's not very stable – and isn't predictable, either, in a local sense. There's been no evidence it can detect the gravity amplification, so I'll do strange things here and there until it gets nervous about it. If we can make it come to the conclusion the smartest thing it can do is to separate itself from that stuff and hopefully make smaller separate caches of it we can handle this whole job pretty quick.

  "I'm putting a few little items in place just in case. If I get a chance to act suddenly and without consulting you first I'm damned well going to do it!"

  I nodded and went into the shop area to build an old-fashioned explosive projectile device, but changed my mind partway through and made it a compressed gas device. That way there wouldn't be so loud an explosion. I was planning to use it to remove some sensors near caves I wasn't going to be anywhere close to, if and when the time came.

  I feel it's better to prepare a lot of things I never use than to need some simple device and not have it ready at a critical juncture. As I said before, I was in a position where my best choice of action was simply to react, but in a manner that thing hadn't predicted. Use clever against clever.

  I then had TR review all the data we had about the Killit and how they would affect sensors.

  "Build in a pattern of sensory stimuli to indicate I'm old, have bad lungs and a bad heart," I instructed. "Slightly erratic pulse and maybe a slight kidney or liver disease."

  "What in the hell for!" TR demanded in exasperation (HOW?). "You're not making any sense!"

  "If I'm detected I want to appear to be someone no machine would be. That thing would produce only someone in perfect health as a matter of efficiency. It would follow that pattern, one of logic, so it'll assume we'd do the same.

  "We'll simply be clever. I'll be some bumbling old fool in bad health who's stumbled onto the place – something no enemy would ever be!"

  "I see. I'll modify you to fit the appearance. That thing may've been that observant back at Stormlee.

  "Would you like for me to remove one other little item?"

  "What?"

  "That radium on your ear. It sort of makes the rest of your disguise look silly if you're going to advertise with the brain's own ID feature."

  I pay a lot of attention to hidden details, but I still sometimes miss the obvious.

  Old Man of the Sea

  I stepped out into the cave and closed the plug behind me. I was an old man who walked hunched over and with a bit of a limp. More of a shuffle than a walk really, though I could instantly revert to my regular ways. I would stay in character with this so I could use most of my circuits to do what I had to do.

  I was mostly going to observe. TR was going to start to do more interesting things with the gravity floater to increase the brain's insecurity. There would now be a slowly growing problem with the plutonium. It was going to start producing heat as well as sporadic increases in radiation.

  "The brain's started to become a little nervous about those fissionables," TR reported. "It has more than enough math to know too much instability's unacceptable to safety. It sent servos to check all around under the ship, but I moved the floater until they were gone. I can hide it very close, it seems. I gave enough of a little extra punch to the heat process so the readings would stay high when the sensors were under the ship. It'll actually get even higher for awhile.

  "It's a good thing I'm using the staggered remote relays for the transmissions inside of the cavern. It's tried interceptor servos all around, but I can place the relays in configurations that preclude direct contact. The brain doesn't really believe there's any outside influence, so we're still in a pretty good position.

  "I think you should go out there to observe where they move the plutonium. I'm sure I can convince that thing it wouldn't be very smart to keep it aboard. Not if it's going to get more and more unstable and erratic!"

  I moved along the tunnel to the entrance to the cavern where the brain's ship was sitting, then avoided the sweep sensors as I moved to one side. There wouldn't be any logical reason to check outside of the caves yet.

  I adjusted the relay unit on the com floater for direct communication with TR.

  "There seems to be a bit of movement to the side of the ship," I reported. "Servos are coming in from the outside with something pretty heavy in carts, and they're melting it down and casting it. There isn't a lot of heat, so it isn't iron or anything like that."

  "It's lead and gold being cast into hollow containers. I'd say they're going to move the plutonium and want to shield it from outside sensors. I may have inadvertently caused the brain to wonder if maybe the radiation from that stuff would be detectable from a long way off, so it'll cut the detectables down enough to where they can't get out of the mountain.

  "I'm going to hurry them up just a bit. I don't want to bring any larger floaters into any area where they can be seen by any of that thing's sensors, so use a little augmentation to your telescopic sight. See what's happening to the ionic grids and to the difusion drive. Something should be visible by now."

  I lifted the recording binoculars from the floater sitting beside me and checked the grids, then the drive tubes. It could be done with internals, but I didn't want to use more data space than necessary.

  "The grids are in sad shape, but I don't think the brain even knows about it," I reported. "Maybe it doesn't do regular checks. There are stains in the tubes, but I can't see what they indicate from this angle. That's another thing it doesn't check regularly, either, I'd say.

  "Pret
ty sloppy."

  "Don't kid yourself!" TR snapped back (Damn it! HOW?). "It'll check them on some kind of schedule. It checks everything.

  "So much time after they worked successfully ... it probably did a scan of them as soon as everything was cooled down and will do another every ten days or so. That would mean in three more days, though we have no idea what the schedule might be.

  "I had the servo floater put a little moisture with a trace of manganese in it in a place where it'll be checked if the brain's looking for anything. I'm also feeding tiny traces of it into the oceans where the brain may want to take samples to see if it's a natural phenomenon.

  "It is, but not at the concentrations we need.

  "I'll want to see what it does when it discovers the damage."

  There was suddenly a flurry of activity around the door to the ship and I watched the gravity floater dodge up to sit almost directly on the top of it over the hatch door. Four servos came out to inspect under the ship and four others fanned out to check the cavern.

  I climbed down into the narrow space between some boulders and shielded any sensor evidence. One servo came within four meters of me, but was only scanning for heat, sound, or moved objects. I was out of detector range.

  I waited more than two hours, then again looked out.

  The servos were bringing out the slugs of plutonium and were dropping them into the tubes of gold and lead, placing the covers on them, then piling them on the carts in neat rows. They placed a small tag on each tube.

  "I got a little heat started in the stuff, gave it a bit of a jolt so the heat increasion would sustain itself for awhile, then hid the floater," TR reported. "The brain's getting very nervous about it and has begun offloading it."

  "It can't have that much plutonium! What in the world would it want with all of that? It's taken off more than any one whole planet would have any use for. It takes a lot of time and resources to produce it!

  "What in hell is that thing thinking?"

  "It's only taken off about a third of it. It has plenty more."

  "But what in the hell is it for? That's enough to sterilize this planet twice over already! Why produce so much?"

  "The military mind at work. There's no logic to how it thinks. The fact a weapon's overproduced a mere eight times isn't enough. It has to have sixteen times as much as it could possibly hope to ever use, then thirty two times as much. The very existence of the stuff makes the brain feel it's in power."

  "But it doesn't make any sense! It could be using the time and effort to produce something useful!"

  "When did the military mind ever make any sense? Besides, it's always to the enemy's advantage when such stupid overproduction is a part of the plans of these things.

  "Like you said, it's time and energy that COULD be used to ITS advantage instead of to ours. It simply squanders its resources for some system of numbers that any scientist or mathematician would laugh to death.

  "Let's hope it doesn't change!"

  "You got that one right! We'll have to see where it stores the stuff and we'll have to know when it's all off of the ship."

  "I'll have the floaters watching that, and it won't offload all of it, but it'll offload enough so only an area around here close will be damaged if it sets it off. It'll feel naked if it doesn't have a lot of weapons directly on board. A typical Military way of thinking.

  "You still have the problem of finding a way to get to the brain. I'd like to prevent even the release of what it'll keep aboard. My aim is zero contamination.

  "Sounds idealistic as hell, don't it?"

  "Doesn't. I share the sentiment, but don't need the dramatics.

  "I have something of an idea starting. I'll come back as soon as I think it's safe. That thing'll have visuals on all of the caves, I'm sure."

  "It's servos are limited, so it'll have to withdraw that sort of thing when it begins moving the plutonium into its storage points. I don't think it'll leave it around that cavern. Maybe it'll put it in the lead mines for extra shielding of natural radiations."

  It was more worried than it was letting me know if it didn't make a snappy comeback to my pickiness over language.

  It was nearly six hours later when the servos began taking the carts filled with cylinders of plutonium outside. I saw a sensor servo move from out of my line of sight toward the entrance where it would surely be needed. If I had gone out earlier I would've almost walked into the thing. It was obviously placed while I was hiding under the boulders.

  I made my way back to TR, went aboard and to the shop area where I took a good crossbow, some shafts, and a knife in a sheath. I strapped the knife onto my waist, slung the bow over a shoulder, then put a number of things on a floater, which I disguised as a large wicker basket.

  "TR, make me one of those one-man skiffs these people use," I said. "An old man is going to come here from the next island to find something or other.

  "What would they be looking for here?"

  "This time of year?" TR replied. "Maybe bird or lizard eggs in all these caves and holes. Shellfish in the water's edge. Crabs, but they can get all they want of them where they are.

  "They look for certain jewels around the volcanoes. I can give you some poor emeralds and maybe a sapphire or two.

  "How about peridot? There are quite a few around. Zircons on the other side of the island in a sand spit."

  "A bit of all of it, but not much of any one thing. I'll need a reason to explore a bit."

  "You'll also need a reason for them to not simply kill you to eliminate their problem!" TR replied cynically (I won't say it). "What about that?"

  "I think the brain'll have to see what I'm up to, so I'll be a representative hunter for a tribe on the next island. They expect me back in two days or so, then they'll send a war party to see why I'm not on schedule. If the war party isn't back on time the women will contact the people on the other islands, who'll contact the people on the mainland."

  "These people don't have any such thing as a representative and wouldn't give a damn if an old man returned or not!" TR spat. "What a stupid idea!

  "What's with the war party crap? They don't have war parties!"

  "Ahh! You know that and I know that and all the people here know that, but the machine DOES NOT know that! It simply can't understand how organics think.

  "I can be as sneaky as it can.

  "I think it'll take great care not to draw any attention to this place and will watch, but not interfere."

  I grinned and went out to wait until TR made an authentic boat for me. It would be totally synthetic, of course, but wouldn't be detectable as such by the brain.

  I wished I felt as confident as I was acting, but one can't have everything!

  When the boat was ready I went aboard and began moving around the shore of the island near the cliff base. I felt a scanner beam touch me, move away a bit, and come back. I ignored it and went ashore, looked around the area, scraped the rocks with my knife, "discovered" a small garnet, returned to the boat, and moved along.

  Scanners followed my every move now. There would be frantic activity around the brain at this point. It must produce a robot of a Killit if it didn't have one, though it could probably do that in short order by placing a servo brain into a body produced to formula.

  I found a lizard eggbed between some rocks and put half the eggs in a basket and back on the boat. The Killit people have more sense than to take all of anything. Unlike many cultures at their stage of development, they have reasoned some of the eggs have to hatch and grow or there will soon be no more eggs.

  I managed to take about four hours to reach the little spit near the cavern entrance where I would "find" the brain's ship or where I would be prevented from finding it. I pulled the little boat up onto the pumice, carefully tied the sail down, tied the oars into place, and took the wicker basket out along with a large cloth.

  I put the cloth across the prepared poles, brought out some driftwood and started a small fire, took some
of the lizard eggs, wrapped them in seaweed, and placed them into a clay pot which I put against the fire.

  I took an iron kettle and hung it over the fire, dropped in some roots and herbs, some fresh water, and then scrubbed some shellfish carefully and dropped them in as soon as the water was boiling.

  I took a small cask of wine from the boat and drank a little sparingly, then waited for my meal to get done.

  There was a visual miniservo perched on a nearby rock watching my every move very carefully. It was joined after a time by a servo with scanners, which told the brain I was a normal elderly Killit with some moderately serious though not immediately fatal health problems.

  I would have to give the thing time to make the robot and to test it so, as it was late enough in the afternoon, I made it obvious this was to be my camp for the night.

  I went to an isolated spot I used as a toilet, then went into the water and bathed (The Killit are a clean people), rinsed with a bit of the fresh water in my jar, then lay in a beam of rapidly fading sunlight to dry. I then laid out all my "treasures" of the day's hunting and separated them into piles.

  I took a large piece of prepared skin and carefully marked a rough map on it, then put marks where I'd "found" each of the things in the piles. I rolled the map as soon as the ink was dry, then placed it back in the wicker basket.

  I drank a little more wine and laid under the cloth cover to "sleep" the night away. I kept all the passive sensors fully on, of course, and kept the sensor rhythms going to simulate dreams and sleep movements.

  During the night several servos came close to scan me and to check everything. One removed everything from the basket, checked and recorded everything about it, and replaced it exactly as only a machine could do. It made a cursory examination of the basket itself, but the floater was concealed in the base pad, which was filled with solid light wood (To the sensors), as were most such baskets that were to be carried in boats so they would float if dumped into the water for any reason.