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

  *I figured that out. I try not to forget birthdays such as the big three oh oh!*

  "I hate to interrupt all this maudlin drivel," TR said over the speakers (The ships were on EC so they could use the radio pickups to speak with the whole group, though they were tied by a special combination radio/gravitics band to Tab and Kit). "We have a case coming in over the fastcom. As we're detectives I think perhaps we should answer it one way or another."

  [ So answer it already! Do I have to do everything for everyone? Can't you make a simple decision for yourself? ]

  "Up yours!" TR snapped back. "Maybe I'll have Tab tie those ridiculous tentacles in knots for you!"

  The group constantly insulted and bickered among themselves. It was actually affection, though those unfamiliar with the game would think there would soon be mayhem at times.

  [ Careful! I might deprogram all those defective circuits in you! ]

  *Might we find what this case is about or will you two sit around bitching at each other?*

  [ I vote to bitch! ]

  "Me, too!" TR responded. "However, as Maita is so curious – it's a case of shipments of valuable articles being lost on a certain run. No one seems to be able to find what happens to the stuff. The ships aren't attacked in any way and none of the crew knows what's happening. It seems to be almost magic – which I won't argue with! – or something entirely new. The captain of the last one volunteered to go on the probe in hopes she knew something she didn't know she knew, but the probe didn't find anything.

  "These are Kheth ships so neither of you will need disguises. They have Swaz in their crews. I told them we'd be on Khee on Medate thirteen so you can fool around for a couple more days."

  "Since when do you accept the jobs for us?" Kit asked.

  "Don't start, Lizard Lips!" TR shot back. "It's hard enough keeping ahead of Thing!"

  [ On Z's five hundredth birthday you'll be two hundred years further behind me! The day you ever get ahead of ME will be cause for massive celebration over the entire Maitan Empire! ]

  "So you admit it!" TR shot back. "Dumping you off that floater will be a day for celebration over the entire galaxy! You rubber tyrant!"

  *Actually, Thing doesn't have quite the same consistency as rubber. It's a lot more like certain plastic compounds.*

  They snipped until Kit and Tab and their ships left the following afternoon. The others are still at it so far as I know.

  Khee is the world that was center of the old Kheth Federation. It was once so filled with petty bureaucrats and rules it almost toppled that government from internal inertia and friction, but the Kheth petitioned Maita to be allowed into the Maitan Empire – which hardly existed at the time. Maita's servos took over all of the duties of millions of useless paper-shuffling obstructionists and now Khee was known as a progressive world. It was a center of distribution for Zeenan, Mord and Zulian crafts and industrial output, as well as for the art of Parf, the Woost worlds and New Zule and the medical products of Feach and New Zule (The Zulians do everything better than anybody, but that's another story).

  Tab/TR landed at Port City where the flights left and arrived that were being hijacked while Kit/T6 landed at Port Records Center to search through the files and records for anything useful. The two wouldn't let it be known who they were or that they knew each other until they built a basis for investigation. It would be necessary to determine one fact other than that things were missing in an impossible situation.

  It was true, they discovered long ago, that there were quite a lot of unexplainable things in the universe. Magic was as good a name for it as anything so long as magic was defined as things science couldn't explain – yet. Once explained they were no longer magic. Maita and crew learned that lesson very pointedly on Tlorg! (Now You See It – Now You Don't: Book five)

  No one seriously considered this was any such thing, but it wasn't closed as an option.

  *

  Tab left TR and went to the Traders Guild Dispatch Center to meet with Norn, the one who called the agency. Norn was a middle-aged Kheth with a harried look, not so easy among those reptilian peoples. Tab introduced himself and said he would be operating under the name Meik and had papers to put him in any number of jobs aboard a ship if it came to that. He asked for the facts.

  "It seems so impossible," Norn said. "The first one was over a year ago. Just one and you can believe somebody loaded the stuff on a wrong ship or something. It was raw gincha so we weren't too badly hurt by it. The insurance paid for it, but the gincha never showed up anywhere else. That didn't make any sense. We naturally thought there would be a way to trace such things as two hundred metric tons of raw gincha being dumped on the market!

  "I got suspicious and personally checked the loading robots. They don't make mistakes. They do exactly what they're designed to do. I ran the scanner records of each one, six of them, that had loaded the gincha and, believe me, it was put on that ship. It was on that ship when that ship left the pad! Period! That's a fact! The mass detectors even say two hundred tons of organic material WAS on that ship!

  "It wasn't on the ship when it made groundfall on Parnett. It arrived there pretty much right on schedule – maybe an hour and a half late, but there's that kind of variation in the schedule and the ship is always held in low orbit for two hours so arrival times aren't so critical.

  "I couldn't find any way the stuff could have been taken off that ship. I spoke with the crew – two Kheth, two Swaz and a Mome. They even had a Feach passenger and I spoke with him.

  "Nothing! It was a normal and even boring trip. There were no noises, vibrations – you certainly know how much vibration moving large masses in space sets up in a ship! Every little scrape will make the whole damned ship a sounding board!

  "That was the 'Klaj Starship Four' on a standard run with a standard cargo. Next was eight days later, the 'Qat Leader.' That one was carrying computer systems to Klovis. Exactly the same. The stuff was on that ship when it left this port. Period. It wasn't aboard when it grounded on Klovis. I interviewed, with the same results. It was a normal trip. It arrived only twenty minutes off center schedule. Normal is up to two hours late. We were even watching for funny stuff on all loadings because of the other lost shipment, but everything – and I DO mean EVERYTHING – was normal in the loading until that ship left orbit!

  "There was a period of ninety three days when nothing more happened, then 'Qat Carrier Three' arrived without its cargo from Ternz. A full shipload of navigational equipment was simply gone! I interviewed everyone and even went to Ternz where I checked out the robots. The ship was forty minutes off exact center expectations. Normal variation from Ternz is fifty minutes.

  "Fourteen days ago the 'Nimb Giant,' carrying medical supplies from Feach, arrived empty. Exact same thing all the way through. Capt. Land insisted there was some memory suppression technique at work and insisted she be put on the probe. You have the results right there. Nothing! Nothing at all! The trip was standard. The ship arrived seven minutes off schedule center! Seven minutes EARLY! Most ships on that run are more than twenty minutes LATE!

  "Now! Three days ago the 'Klaj Starship One' departed this port for Goombridge Four and arrived there empty. Agricultural equipment. I called your agency because I understand you're the very best and even the emperor has used you.

  "I don't have the least conception of what to do next."

  "I think there's an established technique here so I can figure which ship will be hit next," Tab said. "It will be a Qat ship, more likely a Nimb ship and possibly a new company. I see what kinds of cargo are being grabbed, I think.

  "Can you give me a list of the stuff scheduled by those three companies over the next ninety days? If I can't find what I want there I'll have to go through all of the things listed to be carried on all the ships for that period of time. All we really have is that Khee is on one end of the deal, somehow."

  Norn made a long printer readout for Tab, who glanced over it. He grinned at one certain item
and cautioned, "If you see me anywhere you don't know me. If I don't speak first don't speak. If I do say anything follow the lead strictly. You've never seen or heard of me before. Okay?"

  "It's fine with me!" Norn agreed. "I admit to being totally lost! Anything I can do to find out what the nine hells is going on here I will do!"

  Tab got up and headed for TR. He had to contact Kit and he had to get a job. A special job. On a special ship. The "Nimb Colossus."

  How did they do it?

  * *

  Kit went to the records division, found an unoccupied booth and put up the privacy screen. He quickly plugged into a machine with his variable built-in socket, spent several minutes studying everything available there and stopped to correlate. The record of cargo transfers, the insurance risk stats, the companies involved, cross-reference anything that was pertinent to the case, extrapolate other factors and it will happen right there. That ship will be next.

  But how was it done? And who was doing it?

  It was a sure way to make a lot of people very wealthy if there was some market waiting for all the stuff. It was all very much in demand, from the gincha that grew well only on three planets to the equipment, all of which had ready markets and all of which simply wasn't supplied nearly enough to meet the demands. One thing to keep in mind was the fact that enough had been stolen already for the crooks to afford the very best equipment made. That could suggest some very high technology to fight.

  Kit went back to T6 and lounged back in the pilot's chair to think. He had T6 put the routes of the ships whose cargoes had been hijacked on his "interior holovid screen" to try to find where the hijacking would take place. There was, in the case of the robots, no such screen, but Kit "saw" one anyhow. T6 sent the impulses along Kit's optic sensors.

  So that was exactly where it would happen and where the stuff was taken. It would seem someone else would have thought of this, but then, organics had trouble seeing three dimensional figures, much less four.

  When he thought about it, organics couldn't possibly project interplanal physics as an overlay effect. What it boiled down to (Another of Z's expressions) was that things in the TTH4 plane weren't in the same relative positions in N space. Geometry between the two planes was based on fractal illogical laws relative to either of the planes themselves.

  Well, it would be a ship carrying the software for all of the basic computer and navigational equipment as the likeliest choice and it would be some company that carried along those specific routes on a regular basis. That meant Klaj, Qat, Nimb, or Rut.

  That meant the "Nimb Colossus." The hijacking would take place at a very specific point in TTH4, which would take some doing! How was it possible to "wait" for your quarry in TTH4? TR or T6 could trace the ships there, but how could they intercept?

  That meant an impossible process must be set up to eject the ships into N space. There was no other way the cargo could be moved. There was also absolutely no way the passengers wouldn't be perfectly well aware they were shifted in planes. The feeling of "mental twist" would be magnified tremendously from an outside force that could do that.

  The "Nimb Colossus" would be loading tomorrow so T6 could send a floater to put one of the special tracers on it and Kit would follow very closely. It should prove interesting.

  TR said Tab was unavailable and would be traveling as a special crew member aboard the "Colossus" so it would tag along using the same trace T6 used. They could easily follow the pirates, but it was fairly certain they'd be landing on the restricted planet, Larmooth, with the loot. Both TR and Kit located the planet from different analyses. That made it a fair certainty.

  It would be interesting to see how it was done and no one would interrupt the pirates. Fleet could be called in to make sure there would be no escape when the time came, but there was more to this than simply stopping the piracies and returning the merchandise. They had to know how it was done to prevent the same kind of thing happening in the future and they had to know who was behind it.

  TR placed the tracer, then announced there was another tracer along the same lines but at a far different frequency already aboard the ship.

  Well, they knew how the ships were located in TTH4! Now all they had to do was find how the information was of any use.

  Kit waited until it was time for the "Colossus" to lift off, then went above atmosphere where he and T6 met with TR. Tab was aboard as stowage expert.

  They stayed closely graviticly linked as they followed the "Colossus" at a good distance. They were very close to the point they had calculated when the attack came.

  So that was how it was done! One of Maita's own inventions and one TR had used against the Tlessarian brain ship! That meant someone from fleet had talked too much or had sold out.

  *

  Tab rechecked the ship, then went to quarters where the four crewmembers and two passengers were sitting around. He sat to talk with them while they traded stories. Tab was watching the internal timer because TR had warned him about where and when the attack would take place. It was past critical time and nothing had happened so it wouldn't be this trip.

  But hadn't he felt a sort of vertigo for the smallest fraction of a second? What would cause a robot to feel vertigo?

  So that was how they did it! Tab raced to the hold to find it emptied of software and computer spare parts and the navigational moder frames while the smaller part of the cargo and the mail were untouched.

  He reported to the captain that they had been relieved of the cargo and they checked the hold again together. The captain nor anyone else aboard the ship could believe it had happened.

  "But when was it possible?" Captain Harst asked in exasperation. "We're in TTH four! It can't be done!"

  "Not in TTH four, it can't," Tab agreed. "We were pulled out of TTH four.

  "Oh, great colliding galaxies! I know how it was done, but I don't know HOW they did it!"

  "This mess must have affected all our minds," Harst replied dryly. "I know what you mean. You know what process they used, but you don't know how they used it."

  "I know the process," Tab said as dryly. "I know all about how it was done, I just don't know how it's possible for them to work when the process is in effect. It will be close to impossible – as close as you can get."

  He got a strange look, but no one asked him anything else.

  They landed and filled out the crime reports. The others had to report that Tab acted in an odd manner after the hijacking and that he was the only one who knew when it was done so he asked for the probe to allay their suspicions. He could control the probe, though no organic could. He was fully exonerated.

  He went aboard TR, who reported Kit was at Larmooth aboard T6 trying to discover a way to contract for some stolen goods. TR explained what had happened: "They used three small ships and put an inertial stasis field around you, then, when you popped into N space, they went aboard and took what they wanted, used the drag on the inertial field to take you back into TTH four and sent you on your way. Simple," TR reported.

  "The only thing that's simple here is you," Tab retorted.

  "If I didn't have the feeling that you're right I'd make an appropriate remark. Explain," TR said.

  "They physically boarded us?" Tab asked. "They came aboard and took what they wanted?"

  "So?" TR asked.

  "While we were in an inertial stasis field? One we never came out of?" Tab replied. "Talk about magic! How could you miss that?"

  "They should've been stassified in there along with you!" TR cried. "Nothing can relmove with-in the field! Not even electrons! How did they DO that?"

  "They've discovered a principle we know nothing about," Tab suggested. "Call Maita and lay this data out. Tell it we're going to go to Kit and we're going to try to find what's behind this! Maita has to find out who let them know about the ... nobody. If they've figured a way to move in that field they had to be able to set up the conic field in the first place. I'm afraid we're working against genius here,
TR. Get Thing involved. It'll love this little puzzle.

  "Head for Larmooth. I'll try to find an excuse for us to know about the place."

  "I'm sure they'll advertise their wares among certain elements of galactic society," TR replied. "We'll be at Larmooth in about twenty minutes. Thing is working in its gardens, but Maita's sending the floater for it."

  They orbited Larmooth until TR found the special beaconsat operating off the normal trader channels. It asked for landing instructions.

  "This is a restricted planet," a voice came back. "There is no permission granted for groundfall here."

  "Hey!" TR responded. "I didn't follow that beaconsat here by accident! Gimme a break!"

  "Who are you?" the voice asked.

  "I'm a Jornian citizen who likes to bargain shop," TR replied as it told Tab to get into the shop fast for a disguise.

  "There are Zurn down there and this guy's voice range is most certainly Jornian! You can be Loahr. It's a common alias among them.

  "What I'm beginning to get irritated by is the way Jornians insist on bringing the Zurn into their crooked little deals! I'll be damned glad when the race grows up a bit! There's genius there. I can see where the stasis thing came from, but enough is enough!"

  Tab was in the shop being changed quickly. TR still had the pattern from a recent involvement with the Jornians so it could be done without reprogramming the servos. TR was able to get permission to land. T6 was sitting close on the pads, but didn't make any attempt to contact them so TR knew something was up and there could be a trace even of the highly sophisticated system they used.

  Shielded light beams couldn't be traced! TR set up a beam it was sure couldn't be detected without something directly between the ships and asked T6 what was the matter.