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

  "We have to discover a motive for any of this or we can't get far. All I can find is that all of them saw or heard something at various times. If they somehow...."

  "Boss?"

  "Yo?"

  "I was right about the robots?"

  I shook my head, then nodded, then said, "It's looking like a very strong possibility at the moment. I think we'd better make a listing of everything we might need to know, access it from the memory banks, and call Maita if there's anything we can't find.

  "I don't want to call Maita now. Not with Rimalt dying and T Six about to undergo that emotional trauma. This is a bad time for a lot of reasons. We both know Maita would come right out. That thing almost destroyed it on more than one occasion. It was thought to be destroyed once before and showed up again. We know its prime directive is self-protection and it's what Z called a berserker machine. It was built to make war and to destroy and it got away from its makers. The programming was deadly dangerous, and what might happen did.

  "I know damned well Maita gets called if we run up against anything that even looks slightly like we may not be able to handle it and have everything we do or think recorded on our files at Perfect Three and leave a message to look there if we fail to report in regularly."

  "It's a machine, Boss. It can handle all the things they did to it before – except the antimatter, and I can't go after that with all these innocent people around. I'm already putting everything direct to the agency as we do it, and Maita would automatically look in those files even if I hadn't already left an alert based on missing a regular report."

  "It will, in fact, have perfect defenses against anything and everything they did before. I want to know everything that was done for the simple reason we CAN'T do any of it. We'd be putting ourselves firmly in a trap if we did.

  "It will most certainly expect more of the same. It's programming is probably to look for things to happen in a repeating series.

  "First, let's try to stop these assassinations."

  "There's a little something from the old records that might prove important. It used tight light beams to communicate with its servos. It'll certainly be using servos to do all of this. It built robots before that mimicked the people around them. Thing spotted them with its empathic power.

  "How will we spot them?"

  "We'll work something out for that. Floaters with energy sensors were used when they made the robots react in ... flat pulse rates – not like the emotional state it was projecting.

  "It's sure to have learned. I want to talk with ... the probes! Let me read any of the probes of anyone who was present at an assassination!"

  There were two. I found what I wanted.

  "You see? Hedda identified the assassin before the murder! Luft stood right beside the assassin after that one and identified it! Neither knew. Both were robots who were made in the image of Flimts."

  "You mean the ones that gave them the creeps?" TR asked. "How do you figure?"

  "What's the most important thing you do in making a believable disguise for me? What's the hardest thing for you to duplicate, but the one thing that's of vital importance? What's the one thing that, say, a blind man will be able to find us with immediately?"

  "Odor! They didn't have the subliminal smells of Flimts! No racial odor!

  "You suggested one way to find the robot servos already. Blind people. We have a way to start!"

  "Teams. A blind person and one who can see. The blind says when the person is or isn't a Flimt and the other one identifies it for the police.

  "We know the people I talked with are all right. No machine could fool the probe."

  "You do!" TR shot back. "Don't get smug on me now! That will always come back to smack you in the puss!"

  "But the one we're after has never been on the probe itself, so it flatly CAN'T! Maita designed me with a specific circuit to fool the probe, which it also built.

  "I have to talk with Gorg and Hedda right away. They both have experiences even if they don't know it."

  TR called and asked the two to please come to the ship while I prepared what I was going to say to them. They came together a few minutes later, and I invited them in to sit in the com/med room.

  "I called you back because the machines have shown something of what's happening here," I began, then shocked them with, "You both identified who and what the assassins are. That's what I meant when I said the probe could find things you didn't know were in your minds. This is something you never suspected in your wildest fantasies, I guarantee. It's worse than a nightmare for me, too.

  "You, Hedda, identified one assassin before the murder took place, and you, Gorg, stood beside the other."

  "The one who I felt was some kind of dangerous pervert or something?" Gorg asked.

  I nodded.

  "Then it WAS the one I thought was creepy?" Hedda asked.

  "Yes. What I say to you here mustn't get out of this room if we're to stop this and expose the real culprit.

  "Don't doubt that. If there's any tiny hint as to what we're doing we'll fail. What we're up against can learn and change so fast we can't have time to react.

  "The reason you reacted as you did was because the person – or thing – that caused the reaction looked, moved, talked, and acted like a Flimt, but didn't smell like a Flimt. It didn't smell like anything you could identify through former contact. That's what your subconscious minds told you. You interpreted that as feeling they were 'creeps' or `perverts.' You didn't know why you felt that way. It was because of something that was NOT there, not because something was.

  "I have every reason to believe they were robots, and the plan is to destroy the worlds in your group out here.

  "The emperor has experience with these robots. He thought they were all destroyed. It seems they aren't easy to be rid of.

  "We must have a way to locate where these robots are. There aren't many – probably not more than one on any base except Flimt itself, and very few here. It simply isn't possible for those robots to be made so carefully and correctly in mass production.

  "There will be other ways to find them, but we'll have to act immediately – before more are manufactured.

  "How many people are there in this city who were blind from birth?"

  The question shook them, but Gorg said, "Only a few. We can do something about most of the blindness."

  "I want teams using those blind people, along with a sighted person. I'll teach them how to find the robots among us.

  "The sighted people must take the probe if simply because no machine can fool it. It isn't likely it would make a mech ... oh, yes it is! All of them will have to take the probe, but only to determine they aren't machines. The story will be they're taking the probe to show if they're part of any assassination plans.

  "I'll teach them how to find the robots, but we must have a way to follow the robots without them ever knowing they've been discovered. We can't strike until we have them all or we'll only alert the one behind it. It mustn't get out of this room that we're looking for anything to do with smells. I can't say that enough! If the brain behind this knows we're seeking a scent or absence of one it'll find a way. If it adds the proper scent to the robots we won't have any way to locate them."

  We discussed things for awhile and came up with a plan. I'd already decided TR would have microfloaters to follow any we discovered, and Hedda suggested we have the IDs of the robots, which everyone carried, tagged and followed on their grid system. They'd be aware of no change whatever, because the cards always broadcast everyone's location in case of emergency. Such things were common in non-criminal psychologies.

  It was agreed the blind and "companions" would be brought to TR as soon as reasonably possible. They would be gathered and told as little as possible except their world needed them and no one else would do.

  I hoped this wouldn't be as difficult as I imagined it must be, but I wasn't going to kid myself.

  Seeking Robots

  TR and I took the p
eople aboard one at the time to run a quick probe on each. It was only to determine they weren't machines, so only wasted a few seconds for each one.

  We had sixteen blind people and thirty two sighted ones by the time we were finished. We all met in the com/med room, where I explained what was needed as carefully and completely as I could. The pair, one blind and one sighted, were to mingle in any areas where an assassin would be likely to go in government buildings or other places where a robot may be placed. The blind one was to note when it wasn't really a Flimt they were smelling or when they talked to someone who aroused the suspicions of the partner. It was altogether possible the robots had no smell at all. That would be too easy for the blind to miss unless they were talking directly to them, so it would be arranged that anyone who gave the partner "the creeps" would be talked with. There would be two others assigned to each of these pairs to follow any who were found.

  We took two sets to the larger moon trading station, two sets to the transfer station, one to the satellite, and so forth. Most would stay near the spaceport and in the capital city. Others would be found and recruited in all other cities where there were certain types of facilities.

  I had no real hope of finding the brain robot behind this, but I could stop the assassinations. Once the spotters were all in place a lot could be done, though I carefully stressed that these were robots and were the creation of the military brain. They would be heavily defended and armed. Anyone who played hero would probably end up dead and the whole thing might fail as a direct result.

  As we headed back to Flimt, TR said, "Boss?"

  "Yo, TR?"

  "We've overlooked something that may be awfully important. That thing may be installing a TTH drive moder right now! If that happens we'll never be free of it. If it can go anywhere it wants in the galaxy we can't hope to ever find it. It won't have a traceable fastcom unit.

  "We'll have to find the ship its on and put a tracer direct."

  I thought a moment, then suggested TR use its trace to locate every moder in the system. We would then keep checks on all of them. TR could build a set to handle it after we accounted for every one around.

  We were lucky there were no installation or repair depots in the system, so all ships there would have to go through normal trader customs and dispatch machines. Private ships would also use the customs machines, so we would have complete checks. If there was one in-system and not on the beacon we'd know right where it was.

  Moders can be traced, but you have to know which one you're looking for. If that thing had one not on the machines we'd know to follow it. If it was on a hijacked ship or some other way on a registered ship we'd still know all that were in the system now, when we knew the brain was here. Every single one of them would be traced until this was solved.

  I had an idea then and told TR I wanted full particulars on any ships that arrived from the halfyear ago to a year ago. I extended it to a year and a half ago, because it needed time to build those robots.

  I sorted through all the data and came up with three that fit the particular profile I was looking for. TR didn't interrupt or ask questions, so it had seen what I was doing.

  "NLT six seventy eight PY from Sentah, GGF seven seventy two PY from Entric, and PPF oh forty five P/CT at large," I reported. "You see any others?"

  "Let's eliminate the PY class," TR suggested. "It'll be the private commercial trader and not the private yacht jobs, I'd say. Hijacked outsystem.

  "The trader'd be expected to know and use Maitan, while the private yachts would speak Maitan plus the language of their home planet. It'll be easy enough to trip this one up.

  "I'm going to make a special sensor and fit you with it. It's the same sort of thing I use to find the right smell for your disguises, so you'll be able to do it even better than the blind Flimts. You can detect the right smell for any known race."

  "Good! I'll use Bentan to greet the people on the Sentahn ship. They speak mostly Bentan on Sentah. Entric will be using three languages. Native, Maitan, and Searian from the old hegemony. We'll have to check the background for registration of the private trader to see where it's supposed to originate.

  "You know what this means don't you?"

  "Yeah. I've put a tracer on each of them already. If that brain's aboard one of those ships it has TTH drive now. That's trouble. That thing is sitting right here in this system right now directing those robots.

  "I wonder what kind of program they have if the director's suddenly gone?"

  "Hopefully, we can get all of them identified before it knows what's happening. That's when it'll run – if it doesn't decide to fight here."

  "It couldn't have any larger weapons on any of those ships. I don't detect antimatter. Remember, it almost got me once with artificially produced stuff!"

  "It doesn't have the equipment to produce it. The standard types of ships don't have the shielding to go after it."

  "It had shielding of its own. I sorta doubt it could've installed it on one of those ships, though. It'd have to carry more power than they're designed to hold."

  I grunted as we landed on Flimt close to the Sentahn ship. I checked through what the records said about it, installed Bentan to speak, read through all my experiences on Sentah, and strolled casually over to the ship as I reviewed the local records. I took a round-about path to make it look like I was a normal tourist looking for someone to talk to.

  NLT678-PY: registered to Khlon Dlort J., Sentahn by birth, and owner of a small recreational hotel there, came to Flimt one and a quarter years ago and was still here. He was supposed to be in the process of negotiating for a number of popular gaming devices manufactured on Flimt and taking a vacation until they were ready to take back.

  Those devices were manufactured to specifications on Zeena and on Netdel, both much closer to Sentah. I supposed that Klhlon Dlort J. was hiding from someone for some reason. I would have to find out. That's what a detective does.

  I used a portable caller and was told to come aboard to be greeted by a typical Bentan who was very surprised to see a Swaz on Flimt.

  I explained I was on assignment for the emperor. "This is an important thing, and I don't care what you're really doing here. I rather suspect you're hiding from someone.

  "I'll appreciate it if you'll tell me about it. So long as you aren't endangering others I have nothing to do with it and don't care. This is a lot bigger than any one person's personal privacy or I wouldn't be here."

  He studied me for a few moments, then said, "My great great great grandfather and grandmother on my mother's side were on Sentah during the establishment of the vacation worlds. The Kheth Tranz, the Terran Z, the Zeenan Tom, and the Mentan Thing, were all known to them and were friends. The Terran gave title of the land there to grandfather and to the school to grandmother, so I trust you. I trust anyone with the emperor's credentials.

  "I was involved with some people who were trying to organize a phony scheme to cheat the customers at the casinos there and have been working with the Vacation Worlds Policing Agency. We managed to capture many of the criminals and have imprisoned them. None were capital cases and none have been placed on the probe, so we don't really know who's behind it, but the police sent me here to stay out of sight. Those kind of people will kill me if given any chance. They would never look for me here.

  "There are, so far as we know, several Jornians, a Bentan or two, and possibly some Lars, but we have no idea who the head of the plan is – yet. Until we do and have him or them in custody, I'm to be a tourist waiting on some stuff to take home."

  I nodded. There were those few who would organize a criminal activity around any worlds where casinos and gambling were legal, so I didn't doubt it. I agreed to go to Sentah personally to try to find the leaders when I had the time, then went back to TR.

  TR checked with Maita, who checked with the VWPA, who quickly confirmed it. Maita would send Z and Thing there immediately when their present project was finished.

  I suggeste
d a few avenues of investigation.

  TR took me to another spaceport, where we landed close to our second ship. I placed the Searian language and strolled over to announce myself. I reviewed the facts as I went.

  GGF772-PY: Entric, Hol Nar Tei, rich playboy. Here on a little vacation and wanted privacy to relax.

  He would be hiding out, too. There was nothing for an Entricee playboy on Flimt. He was probably the only one of that reptilian race in the system right now. The world wasn't particularly well suited to his race, being a bit wet and a bit cool.

  He was almost broke and was hiding from creditors. He had no idea of how to earn any credits to pay off the debts, though he wanted to do so and go home. He was basically honest, but was spoiled by the way he was raised – and knew it.

  "I admit to being a worthless drain on the galaxy, but I don't mean anyone any harm," he said. "I just can't seem to live within my means!"

  There was a magnificent painting above us on the salon wall. I knew from a glance that it had to be either Zulian or Parf.

  I asked about it.

  "Oh, it's rather good, isn't it?" he said. "It came with the ship. I bought it in an estate sale years ago.

  "It doesn't go too well with the decor in here, but I think it's much too good to store somewhere in a vault. That kind of art should be seen and enjoyed.

  "I wish I had a real appreciation for art, but you don't have to be an expert to know that is GOOD!"

  "Is it Zulian?"

  "Oh, I think it's from some other place. It's signed up in the right corner and dated. I can't read the writing. Those things are always in some script I can't read, it seems."

  I checked the fine writing. It said: Youf/ Parf/ Mt. Jarl at Sunset/ 142-712.

  "How much do you owe, altogether?" I asked.

  "Much more than I can hope to raise. I can't sell the ship because it's still under mortgage. I keep that up if nothing else. I love this ship."

  "How much?"

  "About one and three quarter million credits."

  "I'll give you two million for that painting. And I'll tell you straight out it's worth more. It's a Parf painting by a famous painter – the son of Tous, who was a friend of the emperor.