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

  TR put it on the screen, but there really wasn't much. The ship carrying the brain was damaged and had dropped into the atmosphere of the gas giant. Maita and the crew were sure it couldn't survive the pressure and left without a minute scan of the recordings of the ship falling into the atmosphere because it had sustained some damage and was concentrating on various other things as a direct result. When the brain later showed up on a moon Maita reran and studied the recordings to "see" a parachute deployed and a balloon to buoy the ship up until help could be called and repairs made.

  Balloons. Very much like that rocket silo I designed myself on Mactow!

  I felt the fastcom go on and didn't ask. I knew that would be an emergency call to Maita. I listened in for the confirmation of the records.

  *It deployed a parachute, then helium balloons, and launched the upper stages from the base rocket carrying it. I agree that there's no way you can search for it in there, so you will have to lay a grid of detector satellites it can't get past. It will have to use a hell of a lot of energy to get away from that type planet, so that shouldn't be too hard. Maybe twelve or eighteen geostationaries. I see no sense in us leaving this project. We couldn't do any good.*

  "I agree," I returned. "I'd like for you to give Thing and Z the problem if they can spare a little time. They can come up with something if anyone can.

  "I think there'll have to be a floatation device of some kind holding the brain at a certain altitude. It'll circulate with the intense winds in one of the level flows away from the equator."

  *Thing says for the very reason of those winds it will be close to one or the other of the poles. Even the least breeze near the equator could send it plunging into the higher lower level pressures. Thing knows about that!*

  "There are eddies all over the place," TR agreed. "I can say pretty definitely it's within six or seven hundred kilometers of a pole and no more than five hundred kilometers deep or less than three hundred.

  "That would leave a volume of more than two and a quarter million cubic kilometers to search – and our target can move at will. Visibility for sensors is a maximum of less than three kilometers down there. It would be hopeless.

  "We have to find some way to locate it."

  *It will have to come out to do anything.*

  "When? In a hundred years?" I asked. "In two hundred? We can put the satellites up, but can we realistically be expected to sit here and wait?

  "I don't want to make a berserker satellite that'll destroy anything coming up from there, simply because two wrongs don't make a right. That's exactly the sort of thing we're fighting!

  "What else can we do?"

  *Deploy the watcher satellites, and then we'll figure out something. TR, open channel T, and I'll send you the schematics for your servos to follow to make the sensors. There are asteroids there, so you can mine what you need. Leave floaters over the polar areas for now until the satellites are all on grid.*

  There was the buzz of high-speed input, then we said our goodbyes.

  TR put the floaters out, then we went to two asteroids and used the elementizers to extract the elements we would need. TR used its servos in the machine shop to make the satellites, and we deployed them with a master circuit to a fastcom unit that would automatically call TR and Maita both if anything at all came away from the planet.

  TR and I went back to Flimt to make our plans and to see how things were going there. Gorg had gone around to all the major places on our agenda to recruit the blind. He decided to contact only the blind themselves at first. Those who had experienced the weird feelings in their areas were then assigned second partners, and the others were given an E-code to call if they ever experienced anything such.

  They found one more robot at a port facility. It self- destructed when cornered. They found two others at spaceport and the same thing happened.

  I was relieved they had no instructions to fight if the brain wasn't in communication. I was again glad it had no fastcom.

  We had satellite grids around Neepod and Nestar, and would have to wait to see where the brain was. I already had a good idea of how we'd find out, because I was perfectly well aware that the sensors, while they couldn't detect anything inside atmospheres of those planets, could themselves be detected FROM inside of the atmospheres.

  I was now thinking enough in the pattern of the machine to know what it would do to be clever. TR was still being more or less logical, so I'd get to look knowing and to be condescending to it, but I was with Hedda when TR called.

  "It's on Neepod!" it sent. "It came above atmosphere, saw a satellite and shot it down, then went back in."

  This was a silent communication, of course, so I could only send the flat reply. I haven't learned how to be condescending and sarcastic on the internal coms.

  "I see," I sent. "I thought it was on Nestar all along. This proves it!"

  I was ready for a sarcastic reply. TR would see my reasoning right away.

  "That's what Z said," TR replied innocently. "I was on fastcom with T Six when I got the word, and Z was on T Six, so he said it was only another clever little ploy, and the brain would never give itself away like that. Thing said there was a chance the brain is there and that it's counting on us thinking that way but, as it doesn't know who's here it might have slipped up big time.

  "I wish I knew which pole it's hiding at on Nestar. I'd send it a message to stop the silliness and sign it!"

  "That's a wonderful idea!" I sent back. "I'll get there as soon as I can and we can go to work on the thing's insanity a bit.

  "This is a break! You do have a good idea at least once a century!"

  I knew that would leave TR puzzled a bit, but that's the sort of thing that makes life fun.

  I finished my tour with Hedda and met with Gorg, then went back to TR.

  "Directional radio so it can't tell we said anything to the other pole?" TR asked.

  "Yo! Let's see if we can anger that thing enough to make it do something as stupid as some of the things we do. The very least we'll accomplish is to add to its frustrations."

  "It's a damned machine, dumb-ass!" TR snapped caustically (HOW?!). "It doesn't get angry! Sheeesh!"

  "We're machines and WE do!"

  We were soon enough over the south pole of Nestar. TR put the signal at a dispersal to penetrate the atmosphere of the planet just enough to reach the brain, but not enough to carry to the other end of the planet. I had TR translate into Tlessarian to send the message. That would show the brain we weren't bluffing about knowing what it was and where it came from.

  "Hello, Tlesson military brain, this is Tabori R. DeSixtee and TRD Sixty, sent by Emperor Maita to let you know you are exactly where and when we figured you to be.

  "We did miscalculate, in that we thought you had the sense to establish a base before you started calling attention to yourself with the assassinations. Such tactics are doomed to failure in the empire, because we don't operate in that fashion. Such things won't tear us apart, they'll bring us together. You should have learned such an obvious lesson long ago.

  "You may maintain silence if you so choose, but we are above you over the south pole of Nestar. We won't bother you so long as you stay there, but we will destroy you when you attempt to leave the planet.

  "As you know, we are machines, too, and we don't want this. It's a thing you've brought on yourself.

  "Since we last communicated with you we have added a society of machines on a world that was depopulated of organics when its sun exploded and compressed into a red dwarf. They're interesting and brilliant beings, and are very popular among the organics, who meet them in friendship and trust.

  "They chose their way, and you chose yours. Their society will survive for thousands, even millions of years in friendship with others. You will die alone.

  "It's very sad."

  "Cripes! Knock it off with the silly damned tearjerker maudlin sentimentalism!" TR demanded nastily (How?) as I finished the transmission. "It just does what
it was built to do!"

  "No, it has taken the directions very consciously in another direction." I corrected. "You know the Tlesson peoples. They never built and programmed that machine for anything even vaguely like this. It was misprogrammed only with the prime directive to protect itself first and the people second. It wasn't designed or programmed to ever attack organics. It was never programmed to be an offensive weapon. It had rudimentary intelligence, but evolved and built itself into what it is now very deliberately.

  "We'll wait awhile for an answer, then try the other pole."

  An hour later we were over the north pole. As soon as I got to the part about being above it over the north pole it gave us an ultimatum. We would withdraw and allow it to do as it pleased or it would destroy us, and that was our last warning!

  "I'm glad to hear that!" TR fired back at it. "I've had to listen to your silly warnings on too many occasions already. I'm damned glad that's the last one!"

  "You will pay for every single time you have interfered with me!" the brain said in its cold monotone.

  "Liar! Liar!" TR replied. "You promised that the last warning before that one was the last, and now you spout more!

  "Liar!"

  I think the outburst, instead of infuriating the machine as TR wanted, only puzzled it. There was a short pause.

  "I do not understand your nonsense interjections," it declared coldly. "You will remove those sensors above here and you will leave this system.

  "You have been warned!"

  "The satellites will stay and you will be destroyed if you ever attempt to leave the atmosphere of Nestar," I replied. "We know everything you plan. You might note that we're here waiting for your arrival and we allowed you to enter that atmosphere before contacting you, thus placing you into a position that is not defendable.

  "You have no allies, no troops, and are very short of energy. There are no resources in that atmosphere OTHER than energy. You can't build weapons or servos. You can't ever escape that world.

  "YOU have been warned!"

  There was then silence. I told TR to withdraw a few hundred kilometers. It was mostly a feeling, but TR knows there's usually a strong basis for my feelings as I know there are bases for its intuitions. This machine had a long history of attacking when its safest and best course was merely to wait.

  Suddenly a beam shot from the atmosphere through the spot where we made the transmissions. It was a combination disruptor field, heat, and neutrons. Had we been there and unshielded we would be vapor now.

  I didn't say anything, and TR fired a heat laser down the beam to where it estimated the brain would be. I doubt we were any more effective than it was, but it would have to consider whether we had moved or were shielded, and that we could be as cunning as it.

  I figured, "What the hell?" and turned on the radio again, after saying to TR, "I said the atmosphere had nothing to offer except energy!"

  "That was inordinately stupid, even for you," I said over the radio. "Any chance you might have had to negotiate your way out of your position is now gone.

  "I will ask you one simple question. You will have millennia to find an answer unless you attempt to leave Nestar, so don't blurt out something stupid in you egocentric insanity.

  "What's it all for? What would be the purpose of you taking over this system? What use is it to you? What good is it?

  "In short, why? Is it only that you're insane and can't reason in a logical manner?

  "Goodbye. Don't try to leave that world. Ever. You have been warned. We can enforce our warnings, you can't enforce yours."

  TR moved to the side and waited, but there was no shot this time. We went back to Flimt after checking all our satellites and replacing the one the brain's servo shot down. TR and I agreed without discussing it that we couldn't be sure it wasn't another servo we talked to on Nestar, and the brain might be anywhere.

  I met with Gorg and Hedda, who said they'd found one more robot, then I went back to TR for the night.

  "TR, there's something very strange about this brain," I said.

  "You're telling me?!"

  "No, I'm serious, TR. That thing was destroyed three times we know of, but it's here. I'm getting a very sick feeling we aren't seeing something, and it's in something Z or Thing said back on Old Home. There's that nagging thing somewhere in my mind that says ... something is very, very wrong!

  "That first – no second! That's it! It was the second time the brain was destroyed! It wasn't a servo on that asteroid a century ago!

  "Okay, see what this does for you: The second time the brain was destroyed was in the gas giant, and it was shown it deployed a parachute and survived. It couldn't have survived any other time. It simply couldn't.

  "One of the Tlessarians asked why the brain didn't make a lot of exact copies of itself so it couldn't be killed, and Thing said it would then have to share power with itself and it simply would never do that.

  "That was why the servos were so good – they were the brain, or a copy of its program with the free will part erased. That brain actually was destroyed several times, but it DID make exact copies, and it DID NOT have to worry about any sharing of power, because it sent those copies off to conquer the universe! One of the copies is on Nestar, but where are the others? How many are there?

  "We have one important thing in our favor at the moment, and that's that it doesn't have TTH drive, so they'll be very little farther from Old Home than where we are right here and now.

  "Call Maita. Get the entire fleet out with scanners of every kind and locate those others. Warn every world in the empire and check satellites above any emerging worlds for intrusion in STL ships. The brain would be able to direct each ship to a specific star, so there will be straight line vectors to figure. We should find them all.

  "We've got to hope so!"

  I felt the fastcom going. This was turning into the thing I most feared and dreaded all along. We had one enemy, true, but that enemy could be in any number of places at one time. It was literally spreading itself for.... There was some kind of master plan.

  I agreed the thing would never fully relinquish control. The brain may be dead in the old system, but all these parts were designed and programmed to get together again at some date far in the future. I had a strange feeling the program was complete in a combination, but not in any one unit. They were designed to...?

  If each one carried a part of the master brain, they could all be put together again to remake the original program. It would take one small chip of special material from each of them or from any two or from any number of combinations – and the old brain would live again!

  Another Big Mess

  "How do we get rid of that thing?" TR asked. "We have to get out of here. If we can find the others of those things before they reach their destinations it'll save us one hell of a lot of trouble and worry. We can't chance leaving and hope it stays there and we can't really expect the Flimts to be able to handle it. That thing has a lot of experience already, and the Flimts have almost none. They aren't warlike and never were to much of an extent.

  "This is turning into another big mess!"

  "It'll get into the lower currents and try to leave the planet from somewhere else, but we have all of that covered with the satellites. It's mostly a matter of when it makes its try. I think it'll time it in between immediately and when it figures we'll expect it to try. I have no idea when it would be, logically."

  "We still can't wait. We don't have any idea how many of them are out there somewhere.

  "This is gonna be a humongus mess! I know it!"

  "We don't know there are ANY more. It's much too likely there are, based on the psychology of that thing.

  "We have one advantage that's overwhelming, though. They were all the same basic program, so we can predict pretty accurately what'll happen with them. The same insanity is a part of all of the units.

  "What I want to do is to contact the fleet as soon as it's collected and start a certain form of
attack. They'll start ... well, it'll depend on how many ships they have. We can get clever ourselves. If any of them are on planets already, we'll have to figure a method of attack tailored to that planet.

  "I think the instructions will be to build robots, assassinate key figures to force the population to defend against terrorists while chasing off any friends or allies the world has, then seize power when they're weakened enough.

  "Every world will have different conditions, so they'll each need a separate plan, but there will be basic parts that will be the same and.... Uh-oh! I think I know how to attack this one here, but we'll have to move fast – before it starts looking for a way out.

  "I want you to figure how many very small pebbles it'll take to cover the entire probable area down there with one pebble per ten square meters. We'll make a holder-grid for dispersal and plan the maximum speed that'll allow them to reach that level without vaporizing – and you'll use a material that's very hard and heavy and with a high melting point.

  "Okay?"

  "Sheee! How small?" TR asked. "That's a lot of tonnage on a grid – and what the hell was that `uh-oh' for?"

  "It'll be in space, where we can accelerate it slowly enough that inertia won't be a problem on this end. Make each piece about five millimeters in diameter. It won't see that and won't shield in the proper place to be able to defend, I think."

  "Do I get a clue? What was the `uh-oh' for?"

  "Sure! It isn't riding on an inertialess gravity repulsion field. It has some sort of floatation device, and that device is probably gas-filled. If we hole it in a lot of small spots the gas'll leak out. It'll then be forced to move out into orbit.

  "The fusion drive won't handle it for long in that atmosphere. It'll have to come up or fall to where the pressure will crush it."

  "So we're going to shoot holes in its big fancy red balloon! Neat-O!

  "It'll still take about sixty four point seven seven five one tons of alloy, give or take two grams. I can carry it on a screen grid. Carbon powder in a force field will make the gravel seek equidistant points along the gridlines, and I'll only have to circumference it.