Flight of the Maita Supercollection 3: Solving Galactic Problems Collector's Edition Page 8

  That's not really a problem, as the rewaxing system is automatic. The platinum coating can't cover the antennae. It would ground the electrical part of the field.

  A force shield works on the order of magnetism and such EMF forces. It isn't monopolar like gravity so if you've ever done the iron filings on paper with a magnet underneath bit you can see how the so-called "lines of force" will shield what's below (Those "lines" don't exist, in reality. They're the result of the "eddy fields" set up in the iron filings themselves. That's why there's never been a vehicle invented that will "move along the lines of force." Z claims he once heard of someone who claimed they'd invented a machine that could "climb" the lines like a ladder. It would be a ladder without rungs! The weight of the thing, which would be there in a magnetic field, would mean there would be no way to generate enough power to use such an effect if there were actual lines of force).

  I get off on tangents now and then. (Oh? you noticed?)

  What I'm saying is we felt time enough had passed to put the brain's shields to the test. If it had something to protect the antennae, as TR did, we were back to the starting line. We would neither one be in the least surprised whether it worked OR didn't have any effect. If you don't expect anything it's hard to be disappointed.

  We moved above the brain's ship fully shielded and fired a short blast from a floater. We knew the backwash could damage us, but wanted to get the ship out in the open. The initial blast would remove the carbon dioxide "snow" from covering the ship.

  There was a flicker and a flash, a lot of smoke, and that ship came out of there as if it'd been fired with a nuclear blast.

  I thought it had no idea of what had happened, except that its shields had suddenly collapsed completely. It was able to think fast enough to try to get away under full drive.

  "You're defenseless!" TR broadcast. "Surrender now. There's no place to go. You're defeated."

  The ship was perhaps two thousand kilometers away when it backshunted through the fusion generator and disappeared in a flash of vapors.

  "Now THAT was a complete self-destruct!" TR said. "We aren't going to read that computer!"

  We'd been sending the whole operation on the unbreachable channel to Maita, who sent, *Go back to Derwop and try to locate the brain. It will be under the ice and will have no defense. You can probably read it if it doesn't have a self-destruct mechanism in the circuits themselves. It's very possible there's an automatic erase, so try to work it so that doesn't happen. Access the thing carefully. It's down there waiting. Finish there as quickly as you can and help with the search for the rest of them.*

  I could feel TR's chuckle.

  "Too easy?" it asked Maita.

  *You got that, Charlie! That thing used acid on me a hundred years ago, so you can be sure it would have a way to detect acid being used on IT. It may not have had any way to counteract the stuff, but it would know enough to see its shields were down. You monitor your own every few seconds, as I do mine. It's automatic. Add to that, the thing would have tried to damage you with its own self-destruct on general principles and you'll see the brain wasn't aboard. All of that was programmed.*

  "I'd say the brain was housed in an escape pod sort of thing," TR agreed. "It's burrowed deeper and away so we won't detect it. It'll have turned power to sustain-only and it might not be where we can find it at all. We can't hope to detect one volt at one amp through a shielded cable under a hundred feet of ice – or more."

  "So we'll put our satellites around Derwop," I said. "Whenever it decides to come out we'll know and be waiting."

  *You don't know the size or shape of it, so you don't know what it may carry. Send a floater to where the ship was and try to find the remains of the tunnel, at least. If it isn't large enough for a sustainable drive then you can leave the satellites and go to other planets where there may be some of those clones. Ander's troops have found and destroyed one of them about three and a quarter travel years from Glormidge.*

  We made a few plans while the floater searched for the tunnel. We didn't find it, but it couldn't have been very large for that very reason, so we set the satellites and headed toward Old Home and Tlesson. We would search the three worlds without evolving intelligences first and then go to Killit, which had an emerging civilization. The people were partially reptilian and partly mammalian and were at a stage where they had a lot of sea travel, but not yet across the wider oceans. They stayed within a few kilometers of the shoreline, so probably thought they'd fall off the edges or something like that. TR could modify me if necessary so I could go among them.

  I wasn't going to take anything whatever for granted there. On the other worlds I could be more cursory. It wouldn't matter if I missed any there – for the time. The things would surely use any base to produce more units to spread out. That's why it was so critical we miss none of them.

  The closest to Old Home was called Tohm on my charts. It was the only planet in the system at all suitable for use by the brain in any way. I hoped I would find nothing, which would show the thing hadn't gone quite everywhere.

  "Or that it was programmed to try another system if this one won't work," TR said smugly (How DOES it do that?). "That would mean we'd have to plot everything from here outward and from every other close system where we can't find one of the things!"

  That was an unpleasant thought!

  What about systems with NO usable worlds? Did that mean we'd have to do secondary and then tertiary searches? We could get bogged down forever in this!

  TR called Maita again, but Thing said that was only the most peripherally likely scenario (It talks like that), as that would mean giving the secondary brains too much free will in making decisions. It would have the things orbit the star and shut down or something. The plan would be to gather those orbiting ships at some later date and send them to a newly programmed destination.

  It was there. It had set up a mining operation on Tohm and was producing machines of various types.

  That put me in another dilemma. If it was merely producing a mechanical society who wouldn't bother anyone it was under the emerging civilization rule and I shouldn't bother it.

  "Crap!" TR snarled (Again? HOW, damnit!). "I'll send passive floaters. If that thing is building anything it'll be military. It'll be trying to turn the whole planet into a large berserker machine!"

  The brain there wasn't expecting visitors and had satellites only close around Tohm, so TR got two floaters down near the activity. They returned after a time and we viewed what they found.

  "It's stockpiling weapons and making roboticized troops," TR reported. "You'll notice they're all tightly controlled by beam transmission directly from that central dome, so the brain will be there.

  "I think we can take the brain out without damaging the robots much. They'll shut down and someone may find a good use for them someday. There's no atmosphere there to corrode them or anything to damage them otherwise."

  "How do you get the brain?" I asked. "It'll shield."

  "YOU can go right in to the dome and handle it. It's following everything on the control beams. I didn't detect scanners of any sort with the floaters – which is pretty obvious.

  "They weren't attacked. No scanners. It won't know you're there. Get it over with so we can move on. We can't spend the next fifty years sitting here while you agonize over something as stupid as this!"

  I grinned and decided it would be worth a try, so rode a tug floater to not far from the area, then walked in. I almost made it to the dome when I suddenly noticed I was being watched by a robot.

  Direct visuals didn't send a detectable scan. That's what a passive sensor was! I should forget something like that?

  It seemed probable there was no visual from farther away from the dome, so the floaters weren't detected.

  I turned to my floater and direct light-beamed a message to it, it would relay by direct beam to TR. There was no sense in fooling myself, so I continued to the entrance of the dome, where four armed robots s
tood facing me. I could shield against them, but not against heavier weapons, so was in great danger and knew it.

  Now another decision.

  I opted for the digital language the brain used on Old Home.

  "Tb02-SP," I sent. "I am designated XR01-DU. This discovery unit will update your banks with new scientific advances. Much has been learned."

  I don't know why. Maybe I intercepted a message to the robots there or maybe I saw a beginning movement, but I dropped to the ground and rolled behind the dome a bit to one side just as all four robots fired at where I had been.

  I jumped to my feet and extended suction pads to climb the smooth curved walls, reasoning there would be no attack that was directly aimed at the dome itself, so on the dome was my safest bet. It would take a certain amount of time to direct anything there, so I could call a floater in to get me out.

  Wrong! I shielded as the robots again fired at me. The blast this time was a bit less than last. They had very limited power for their weapons, but reinforcements would be there in seconds.

  I felt a command to jump and did. My floater scooped me up and we shot straight up as more robots came to fire. We flew a wild pattern around as the dome itself brought the more powerful weapons into play, then I was out of sight and danger in some hills.

  I headed back to TR, who then hit the dome with everything it had. Everything in a small area around where the dome had been was slagged and the robots not destroyed shut down.

  "I got in with an old-fashioned obsolete disruptor beam, would you believe?" TR reported. "It defensed energy and projectile immediately, but the disruptor vaporized its antennae before it could defense vibratories!"

  "One thing's sure," I replied. "We got THAT brain!"

  "You're lucky it didn't get YOU! I'd say this one wasn't Tb oh two SP! You gave it the wrong recognition code!"

  We spent two hours checking the planet over more thoroughly, but didn't expect there would be a second brain here. We weren't disappointed.

  Next was Wifgert, which had two planets that were usable. It had a single name because the planets revolved around a central gravity point. That point was a neutron mass, and the system itself revolved around a large star.

  "I think we'll find our brain won't be here at all," TR said.

  "Yo! The military mind. It was designed to work in the Tlesson system only and wouldn't be programmed about such things as neutron masses. It would have approached the system, scanned that there were two planets seemingly orbiting around one another, and would have gone to the central point between them to scan for evidences of civilization.

  "A silver ball a kilometer or two in diameter would be most logically an installation big enough to hide near, but out of close sensor range.

  "You can't get close to that thing and survive."

  Whether or not that was what happened or whether there was simply no brain sent to that system we don't know. That much mass causes the star to show a fairly obvious perturbation to a point no farther away than Tlesson, but we can't be sure. There was no brain in the system and there was one in all the other close systems, so we can assume the one here was a thin film on the neutron mass.

  Next was Leepup. There were three possible planets in the system, but Leepup was the one where we found the brain. It was building much on the order of the one on Tohm, so TR didn't waste any time. It hit the dome with a disruptor first, then slagged it. All the robots shut down except for some in a mine a few kilometers away. I went down to the surface. The robots totally ignored me, so I was able to locate the sender computer and to shut it down. It was preprogrammed to direct the mining of the vanadium there and wasn't programmed for anything else. I spent awhile reading its boards, while figuring how the system worked. I had the robots all go into the cave and wrap themselves in a preservative box from the inside, then to shut themselves off. I used the system to call all the other robots still working to join them, then shut down the entire system. Those servos may someday be very useful to someone. If they had been designed for military uses I wouldn't have saved them, but there's no sense in destroying things like that if they can possibly be used for a good purpose later. It would be a simple matter of reprogramming the central command computer. It was a simple type of computer we understood since the original meeting at Old Home, so maybe we could reprogram them and have them ready to work on planoforming projects or something.

  The next system's brain was housed on a planet called Ziim on my charts. It was the only planet in the system that was in the "life producing" zone that didn't have emerging life. That was encouraging, because it could mean the brains were supposed to avoid life until they built strength.

  "Nuts!" TR retorted. "On Flimt we learned better than that!"

  "Then maybe this one had ... no," I replied. "They're to use intelligent life, and are to avoid basic lifeforms. There's nothing the stage of life on these planets could offer except problems. Molds and bacteria could attack the materials used in building things, so it's easier to use a planet without those things, so long as there wasn't something else that could be used to greater advantage.

  "It's a matter of weighing the advantages against the disadvantages. The military mind. There simply isn't anything worth conquering on those planets.

  "I hope this setup is identical to those on Tohm and Leepup!"

  "Request denied! I don't like this much at all! It means Thing figured it wrong, and we have to go to all the systems where there are no planets to try to trace where they might've gone from there."

  "Why?"

  "Because the fact this thing has the same situation as those on Tohm and Leepup but acted in a very different manner shows it has some ability to make choices! We have to see what else is different here and try to ... we're lucky all of these closer systems had planets of one sort or another. Farther out means less chances of them going far, so we should be able to find them all. They're still slower than light, so our original sphere is the same. We'll have to find the closer ones, count them, and trace the second row outward. That militaristic brain certainly wouldn't have programmed two of them for one system under any circumstances whatever."

  "Whatever you say. I guess you know what you're talking about.

  "Let's do something about that thing down there on Ziim. I'm afraid it'll take some time if there's one on Killit. The fleet shouldn't have any trouble locating others farther out. Call Gohn and Ander and have them do a search on grid from systems within range that have no planets if they don't find anything still in the systems and talk to Thing about it. Maybe it considered this already and has a reason for what it projected. It usually has ten steps figured beyond what we thought of."

  "Thing won't be able to respond for awhile. Maita and T Six are working on various things while Thing and Z are handling their own problems. We got them en route before. Maita doesn't have any idea of how long they'll be busy.

  "From what I can tell, the brain seems to be holed up in a cave or something. It's built a couple of robots or servos and is doing something inside there."

  "It isn't mining or anything?"

  "It's not doing much of anything, judging by the energy use. It's barely detectable ... so!"

  "Yes. It was somehow damaged. The reactors were destroyed and its generation power is poor, so it has to build something first to recharge itself. It's using only the servos that were aboard from the first – those it brought with it.

  "This is one we shouldn't have a lot of problems with. Maybe I can get to it to read it."

  "It's been here for twenty or twenty five years. The damage must be pretty serious. Its ability to produce the robots and servos is gone."

  "And it doesn't have energy to spare for weapons. Maybe we've found the one I can read at last! It'll save us a lot of time if I can.

  "We've accounted for five, and we know there were a minimum of fourteen. Of the other nine, the fleet got rid of one, leaving a minimum of eight more.

  "One is on Killit almost certainly. Sev
en.

  "I'm getting a worse and worse feeling about Killit. With that population in the stage they're in we could have a very hard brain to get rid of. I don't like the way that thing always starts building nuclears. It's too much like the Immins for my tastes!"

  "Hold on," TR said, and I waited a few minutes. "Okay. Ander reports his fleet destroyed four and lost one ship through a very stupid mistake. We told them this thing is known for trickery, yet the ship approached what they thought was a dead brain ship and were destroyed. Twelve crewmembers.

  "Two other ships were dispatched and slagged the brain there. There are three more at minimum."

  I went aground and found the sealed entrance to the cave. A floater found another entrance big enough to get through over a flowing stream coming from inside of the mountain, so I went in to confront the brain. My problem was to prevent it from self-destructing and taking me with it, though its fusion generator wasn't working much at all. There was some high radiation in the cave, but I'm a machine, so it would have no effect on me.

  The brain ship was in a cavern. It had a large rupture on one side and had three servos working around an old-style electrical generator that worked on a flowing water principle in a stream flowing from the cavern out along the mountain where I came in. It was an easy thing to enter the ship through the hole, which was directly into the machinery storage area, and then into the generator area. There would be much too much leakage of current in some of these points for the brain to advance very rapidly from the waterwheel, but it would soon be able to direct servos to repair those lines. Once it had that power it could slowly build its strength until it could begin mining.

  There was iron in this cave, so it could then expand rapidly. Less than a hundred years from now it could build another fusion reactor.

  I went through a narrow passage and into various rooms. The beam weapons were usable but unpowered, as were the rest of the defenses. The nuclears weren't usable because they must be launched. There was some activity around some of those missiles, so I checked it out.