SHE WAS SHEER POWER, ABLE TO SEE in many directions at once, to have all things background monitored and brought to her notice, if need be. A mere thought brought access to more data on more subjects than her mind could handle; in some ways, it was too much for her, yet she could not get enough of it. While she was the ship, she was a goddess, and it was no fantasy, no wish fulfillment—it was real.
But she was also a small, fragile thing lying there in a command chair on the bridge, wearing a huge padded helmet from which specialized cables extended into the front panel. Star Eagle understood that the small form there was her primary reality, the one that made the rest possible, so he limited the duration of her stays in his mighty realm, while giving her absolute freedom while she was there.
She sped along the hundreds of thousands of kilometers of communications and monitoring circuitry and enjoyed it as her own private sort of peep show. Of particular interest was the large, rectangular module in Cargo Bay Four that had been constructed by Maintenance and endowed with full life-support and comfort facilities. Hawks referred to it as the Leper Colony, although he alone aboard knew what a leper was. They had built it for Clayben and Nagy, and then sent Sabatini down there as well, if only to get him out from underfoot.
Since Star Eagle had designed and constructed the module, it was hardly private, in spite of assurances to the occupants that their space was secure. Every move, every spoken word, every pulse beat was monitored and recorded, and it was all carefully scrutinized by Raven and Warlock, who knew just what to look for.
Clayben looked about fifty, with thin white hair, blue eyes, and a ruddy complexion. He appeared fat and chubby-faced, but he was in remarkably good shape and worked to keep it. He had a deep, pleasant, throaty baritone that always sounded confident and secure, the voice of a family physician or top salesman. He certainly had one of the best minds of his or any other generation, the sort of mind that could work on a dozen problems at once and master virtually any discipline it wished. That was both his greatness and his curse. He had run a torture chamber, yet never once had he thought of it that way. To him, the entire universe and all the creatures in it were merely props, put there for his convenience. His was total egocentrism, but, unlike most such conceited people, he really was superior to most other human beings. The only other he recognized and truly feared was Master System, and it would never have occurred to him that he and the great hidden computer were mortal enemies—primarily because they were so much alike.
The best way to describe Arnold Nagy physically was to think of a wide-angle photograph of a man in which the sides were compressed, making him a distorted stick figure. His head was very long and narrow, and it sat on a long neck attached to a body that was also very tall, very angular, and very thin. His tremendous hawklike nose and lantern jaw, narrow eyes, and very small mouth only accented his peculiar appearance. He was very dark complected, with deep-brown eyes and long jet-black hair, and it was impossible to guess his age.
This was the man who had been trusted with Melchior’s security by both Clayben and Master System—he was formidable and dangerous. So far he seemed to speak and understand about every language he’d come across. He had long and often involved discussions with Sabatini in the latter’s native Italian, and he even had the dialect and the slang right. One could not use Mandarin, for example, to comment privately where he might overhear, and Cloud Dancer couldn’t even be certain Nagy didn’t know Kyiakutt. Clearly Nagy was a natural linguist. Languages could be learned by mindprinter, to a point, as many of them had learned English and were still perfecting it by listening to those who spoke it naturally, but dialects and slang were not so easy to impart.
“Boring.” Nagy sighed, settling down in a chair. “Sitting watch on the patient monitors was a thrill a minute compared to this.”
“Patience, Arnold,” Clayben responded. “Doubtless by now they’ve gone over the ship almost molecule by molecule, and they’re sorting out all their data and trying to break the encryption on the data-bank records. Our active time will come. Great goals require great patience. Would you rather put on a pressure suit and go up and say hello to Reba Koll? She’s going to have to eat someone, you know, sooner or later, and there aren’t many likely candidates around.”
Nagy looked suddenly uncomfortable. “Sacrificial goat no matter what, huh, Doc? Is that why you wanted me transferred from the Star? For this?”
“No, Arnold, I did not. The last thing I imagined was being in a secondary role on this ship with that thing aboard and running free. I actually intended us to get to the freebooters and establish a new working base somewhere from which to build an organization and obtain the rings. It would be very difficult to find them on our own, but not impossible. They are quite distinctive. Someone, someplace, must have noticed them. Then, when it became clear that these people might get this ship started, it was worth the risk of improvising and following. I had no idea that such people could get something of this size and complexity running so smoothly at all, let alone this quickly. I would be willing to work with most of these people, but I shall never be comfortable while that creature is loose. I should have destroyed it ten years ago, when I had the chance. It is my greatest mistake.”
He sighed and patted Nagy on his shoulder. “Don’t worry, my boy. They need you. They need us. We just have to watch our backs, contribute, and bide our time. If, somehow, that creature can be controlled when it is free of constraint, we are where we want to be, aren’t we?”
Sabatini had entered the compartment and had just stood there, listening to all this. “Yeah, well, that’s all well and good for you two, but I’m dead meat to them. I lost my ship, I lost my pilot, and the inmates are running the asylum. I just want out. Failing that, I could die happy if I could just push them Chink bitches out some air lock like they did me.”
Nagy turned to stare at Sabatini. “You know, Captain, I’d listen to the Doc here and stop all that talk. Cooperate, go along with them, make yourself useful, even friendly—and survive. They can’t carry much excess baggage even if they do have a ship as big as a small city. Watch you don’t get dumped.”
That was enough spying for now. Analysis—Reba Koll. The response was almost instantaneous. Insufficient information. Input provided by subject and Clayben consistent with possibilities inherent in transmuter and psychogenetic technology. No more. Scans do not show her in any way different than would be expected for a human female her age.
The analysis of Clayben’s ship was more productive. As China had guessed, it was almost a miniature state-of-the-art laboratory, as well as a zone of comfort and an interstellar spacecraft. It was a larger and more elaborate variation of the Melchior fighter design, and it contained full and rather impressive armaments, not sufficient to do more than minor damage to the Thunder if it penetrated the fighter screen at all, but sufficient to do a lot of damage to lesser craft.
Also aboard was a reference computer system of unfamiliar design, possibly developed by Clayben personally. The information in it could be gleaned by a normal type of computer interface, but it was stored in a highly compressed and coded system. The decryption method was unclear; it might be hardware or special codes or a combination of the two, but it was quite sophisticated. The ship did not contain a practical transmuter, although it had one that it used for its interstellar drive fuel and maintenance; it did, however, have a single-unit, fully functioning mindprinter, attached to a psychochemical unit. While they were tied into and run by the encrypted data computer system rather than the ship’s computer, the design and operation was straightforward. Star Eagle was working on duplicating the system and creating his own, tying it into his own banks for operation. Such a system might be very handy indeed.
Unfortunately, the smaller ship was still too large for the Thunder’s transmuters to duplicate, but it could be flown, at least. The pilot had a cold, neuter persona, but would obey anyone who had the control codes to activate it.
China and Star Eagle continued to explore, spy, probe, and hypothesize as the Thunder sped on through the nothingness.
“There,” Star Eagle told them. “The second planet out.” Not much was clear from the images on the screens; they were computer graphics and not true pictures in any event, and showed a huge sun and some small, bright dots that represented planets.
“Won’t it be too hot that close to the sun?” Chow Mai asked worriedly.
“Perhaps,” the pilot responded. “No way to know for certain until we take a close look at it.” It was the third one in the region they had checked out. The first had been far too cold; the second had an atmosphere that would prevent them from living any more freely than in the Thunder. “The distance from the sun is important, but only within a very broad range. Planets two, three, and four, here, and possibly five are all in that range, but even my long-range scanners indicate that only two has an atmosphere dense enough to have potential: It is also the only one showing any readings indicating early terraforming.”
They were not blind, even in this poorly charted region. Master System had been here long before them. The area was better termed “unused” than “unexplored.” For one reason or another, the worlds here that Master System had attempted to change had either taken too long to develop or developed wrong. Although those worlds had been abandoned when more suitable planets elsewhere were developed, the processes put in motion were not halted. No one had ever found a paradise in this sector, but a number of the worlds, given many centuries to develop and mature, were at least usable and useful. And the sheer size of the sector ensured against accidental discovery of the Thunder by either freebooters or Master System.
“I’m getting promising readings,” Star Eagle reported. “A very thick ozone layer and a high water content. We will have to see what the surface temperatures are like, though; it’s impossible to guess anything except the fact that this will be a very humid place and certainly warmer on the average than Earth. Let’s see.”
One of the robot fighters had launched itself from the Thunder hours before and was now, under the firm control of Star Eagle, approaching the planet. This fighter had been modified by Maintenance for much more than defense and was capable of a soft landing if need be.
“Initial readings aren’t optimistic,” Star Eagle told them. “The world has an axial tilt of less than eight degrees, which means little seasonal variation, and the equatorial surface temperature appears close to sixty-five degrees Celsius. Tremendous, vast water bodies, with very odd landmasses. No continents as such, just islands, none incredibly large so far. The average water depth must be very deep to account for this. Lots of islands, all with rugged topography, but not much else. Some of the volcanoes are active although there is no sign of massive eruption to the atmosphere. I would guess that these are not the major explosion type, but rather the slow, steady erupters with dense lava.”
“What’s that mean?” Warlock asked, in an uncharacteristically chatty manner.
“It means that there won’t be constant dust and soot in the air that would cause things to be too hot or block so much sun that it’d be freezing cold,” Hawks told her. “But it also means you have a chance of having liquid rock wash into your house almost anywhere, and probably frequent earthquakes. Not very appetizing.”
“Interestingly, the most comfortable surface temperature would be in the polar regions,” Star Eagle said, “but there’s not a lot of promise there in surface area. The best compromise would be about thirty degrees north or south. Lots of island masses in clusters there, and a surface temperature estimated at perhaps thirty to forty degrees. I am sending the remote ship down to that latitude north for a ground scan. If I find something promising I will let you know.”
The others looked at Hawks quizzically. “Hot,” he told them. “Days hotter than the worst summer days of America or China and nights as hot as hot summer days in Europe, with very little difference over a year. We could live there, though, if the air has the kind of makeup to block the worst and most damaging rays of the sun. Even so, those of us with the darkest skin will have the best protection. It won’t do anything for comfort, though.”
“Atmosphere is quite good,” the pilot reported. “The trace gases are quite different and the water vapor is extremely high, but the oxygen-nitrogen balance is very close to nominal. The difference can be attributed almost certainly to the level of volcanic activity. Still, you can tell by how close it is that this is induced rather than natural. There might be some odors, but you could breathe the air unaided without harm.”
“What about vegetation?” Hawks asked. “Any sign of life down there?”
“Considerable, although it’s not possible to tell its full nature from here. Many of the islands appear to be almost junglelike, and I get some minor animal readings, as well, possibly insects or birds or something like that. The seas also contain much life, although I doubt that there are any deep-water creatures. The plant layer is thick enough that it probably blocks most or all light farther down. There is definitely animal life on or near the surface, though. Not an enormous amount, but it’s there.”
Hawks frowned. “Should it be? Would this have gotten far enough to be seeded with fish or something?”
“Mostly mammalian, by the spectrography. It’s possible. It’s possible this one got far enough along to be a full test.”
“If it got that far, then why wasn’t it used?” China asked, fascinated.
“Probably because of the slow development of the pattern and the heavy growth of algae or funguslike plants on the water,” Star Eagle guessed. “I suspect it was a prototype rather than a finished product. Ah! A cluster of islands that includes one very large one with a volcano at each end and perhaps forty kilometers of flat land twenty or thirty meters at most above sea level. The flats are ancient lava flows that ran together. Both volcanoes appear dormant; there is no sign of very recent lava flows into the flats, at any rate.”
A huge map appeared on the bridge screens showing a somewhat crescent-shaped island with two enormous high peaks, one at each end. The center area was relatively flat but uneven, thin in the middle—perhaps only a kilometer across—and thicker as it approached each of its two parents, perhaps as much as ten or twelve kilometers at those points. One of those jagged parent peaks was over two thousand meters high, the other slightly lower than that. Both had enormous craters inside that were hundreds of meters deep. There were several other single-peaked islands nearby, but none showed a promising landing site.
The small fighter set down on a rise in the flats region and went right to work taking samples and testing. Air temperature: Thirty-six degrees C. Humidity: Ninety-seven percent. The rock was basically basalt, its chemistry containing nothing odd or unusual. Radioactivity was fairly low, considering the vulcanism. The outcrop showed extreme weathering, indicating the passage of frequent storms and high winds, a pattern confirmed by the early orbital survey. The ultraviolet reaching the surface was within the range of human tolerance, but might pose a long-term hazard to lighter-skinned people who allowed themselves to become overexposed. There were airborne spores and micro-organisms; the ship captured some in its filter and found them to be variations of Earth organisms. While this indicated that Master System had adapted readily available materials to create its balance, it also indicated that this was a very early experiment, with no assurance that such organisms would be harmless to Earth-humans.
“I should not like to come this far only to be wiped out by some virus.” Hawks sighed. “But we must also face facts. Anyplace we are likely to find that can support us will have these risks. These are, after all, the prototypes, the throwaways, the leftovers. Any world in this sector that might be better and more comfortable and safer certainly is used by the freebooters. In fact, that is the one thing that worries me about this world. It is no paradise, but it is good enough. Why aren’t there freebooters here? Koll, if you knew about this, then so must they.”
“Most likely,” she agreed. “I can’t answer that. Maybe it is an out-of-control disease. Why don’t we send Clayben down there to live awhile and do research and tell us?”
That brought a chuckle from almost everyone, but Hawks shook his head. “How long do we wait? A day? A week? A month? Star Eagle, what are the odds of us surviving normally down there as of right now? I understand all the variables—an educated guess.”
“I could be dangerously wrong, but I would suspect that there is nothing down there more hazardous than you would find on Earth, and a good likelihood that there is less, since there would have been mutation and adaptation as well as the initial alteration made by Master System. As to why it has not already been used, though, the most probable reason I can think of is that the native life forms, whatever they are, might be dangerous. If other alternatives were available, and many other worlds were, why would the freebooters go to that extreme? But I would not go down unarmed, and I would create an effective defensive perimeter and watch system. There is also the possibility that the region is occasionally patrolled. Measures will have to be taken to maintain the Thunder well away from here and ready for an instant getaway, coming in only as necessary.”
Hawks thought about that. “That would mean Lightning, as well,” he said, referring to Clayben’s ship by their new name for it. “The camp would, in effect, be landlocked there. I’m not sure I like that.”
“Of necessity, no matter where we settle. If a patrol came in close enough that it punched within a day or so of the planet, it would be impossible to pack everyone aboard and take off without being sensed, tracked, and quite possibly destroyed. We will establish a subordinate computer net down there and an effective communications system. There will be a substantial time lag, but I will be able to monitor you, and we can still contact one another. In a tight pinch, Lightning can be dispatched to take on and flank a patrol ship, but I would suspect that the best defense is to simply ignore it and it will go away.”
“But wouldn’t any patrol craft spot us down there?” China asked, worried. She didn’t like the idea of being separated from Star Eagle for that long.
“Unless you become a population of thousands, I would suspect not. It will be looking for indications of a spaceship and communications and transmuter-powered equipment. It’s not going to do a survey, only a patrol. You would show up in such a patrol in the same way as those life forms down there now, nothing more, nothing less, so long as you cut power. It is not going to spend a year on the suspicion that someone minus ship might just be hiding out down there.”
Hawks nodded. “All right, then. I’ll still feel better if a couple of people go ahead to scout out the place first. We’ll need someone with good reflexes and skills with a gun. Any volunteers?”
“I’ll go,” Raven said. “Warlock can handle things here. And I think maybe it should be Clayben who goes with me. I’ll handle the firepower and he can handle the science. If we get in over our heads, then, Manka, you and Nagy come after us with all the firepower you got.”
Isaac Clayben was not exactly thrilled with the assignment, but he could not argue that he was not best qualified for the job. It also got him off that damned ship for the first time in countless dull weeks, and that was almost worth it.
The modified fighter had established a small one-at-a-time transmuter station, which Star Eagle used once the Thunder was in a stable geosynchronous orbit over the chosen position. It was agreed that, as a first step, Raven and Clayben both would use the fairly comfortable pressure suits in spite of the planet’s clean bill of health.
Neither Clayben nor Raven had ever before traveled by transmuter. In spite of his worldly cynicism and modern knowledge, the Crow had some deep reservations about this mode of travel that had nothing to do with its safety. For the life of him, he couldn’t see how this differed from being killed and having a duplicate manufactured elsewhere.
“It is possible to look at it that way,” Star Eagle admitted, “although the energy matrix created here is isolated, unique, and self-contained. What I convert is what I transmit and all I use to reconstruct below. In other words, you actually physically go, just in a different form. In a sense, I almost wish it were the way you imagine. Then it wouldn’t matter what was transmuted; since everything would be a duplicate, I could change anything and anyone an infinite number of times at will. But I am not transmitting a formula. I am transmitting you.”
Somehow that made Raven feel better.
The Thunder’s transmuters—it carried one in each of the four cargo bays—were huge, but the receiver below, modification of a maintenance transmuter, was strictly a one-person affair. Raven, as security, had to go first.
The transmuter was a circular disk that looked almost as if it were made of a solid piece of red brick, and a second disk above coated with some very shiny, black reflective material. Raven looked at it, hesitated, then took a deep breath, stepped onto the circle, and walked to the center. He had his pressure suit on, helmet and all, since the energy expense was too great to justify pressurizing an entire cargo bay.
He stared nervously back at the others—most of the group had come down to see the volunteers off, with the exception of China, who was currently interfaced with Star Eagle, Silent Woman, who had no understanding or interest, and Reba Koll, who stayed away out of a sense of caution. There was no sensation, nothing. He felt something vibrate, and inside his suit he heard what could only be described as click! Suddenly he was alone in the dark someplace, and he felt as heavy as lead, so heavy that he almost buckled under his own weight. It disturbed him. What the hell?
A hatch opened automatically in front of him and he looked out on a strange landscape. He drew his pistol and walked away and into it, frowning. “That’s it?” he said, mostly to himself. “Click and you’re someplace else?”
“I had no idea it was that efficient.” Star Eagle’s unusual tenor came to him over his suit radio, as clear as if he were still aboard the ship. “That is very good to know. Any problems?”
Raven was still a little shaken by his experience, but he was a pro. He looked around. He was standing on black rock with some whitish streaks in it; here and there it was interrupted by a small patch of growth in cracks or a moss-like plant in small dabs where the rock seemed to have been roughened. The surface was very uneven, but he had no trouble with his footing. About ten meters away the real growth started—a dense forest. The sky was mostly cloudy, but the exposed parts were blue—a slightly different blue than he was used to, but not enough to cause real alarm or disorientation.
“Better tell Doc to bring an umbrella. I think it might rain.”
Less than a minute later, the hatch opened again behind him, and the orange-suited figure of Isaac Clayben emerged holding a carrying case of some sort. He walked slowly, somewhat bent over, dragging his case as if it weighed a ton. “That—that is simply amazing,” said the scientist, who wasn’t amazed by very much. “With a sufficient number of those things each in line of sight you could have a near-instantaneous transport system covering the whole world.”
“I wouldn’t like to try a system that big, Doc,” Raven replied. “Sooner or later one of ’em would hav’ta go wrong.”
“I have more equipment coming. We’ll wait for it, then I’ll need some help setting up.” He looked around. “It’s actually quite attractive. I have lived the past twenty years cooped up inside a giant rock or in the bowels of spaceships. I had almost forgotten what it’s like to have a sky, and greenery, clouds, and weather. It’s almost—disorienting. I didn’t expect this. I’m feeling somewhat phobic about wide open spaces.”
Raven shrugged. “Better get used to it. You’re supposed to be the superior one, above all these weaknesses we mortals suffer, Doc. I think the rest of your stuff’s here. Let’s get it and get cracking. Jeez! I feel tired as hell. I’m havin’ trouble just walkin’.”
“I, too. I’m in worse shape than you, I suspect. I haven’t been under more than six-tenths of a gee since before Melchior. I—I’m dizzy. I’m going to have to sit down for a moment.” He settled down on the rock and sighed. “Stupid of me. I never really considered this. I was too busy worrying about the transport.”
Raven sat, too. He felt like he’d been working for two straight days at hard labor and he had only walked four meters away from the modified fighter sitting there on its leg struts on the rock just behind them. “Well, maybe we ain’t gonna do a whole hell of a lot real fast, Doc, but we can do something while sitting. Who wants the honor of being the first to breathe the new air?”
“Be my guest,” Clayben responded.
Raven sighed, adjusted his suit control to “maintenance mode,” then touched the fastener plates and cautiously removed his helmet. He took a breath, then relaxed and hooked the helmet on his neck strap. “Whew! Like gettin’ hit by a soakin’ wet wool blanket! Boy, is this hot! Crazy feeling. The suit’s still got some air conditioning and insulation, but my face is hot as hell. I’m sweating like a stuck pig.”
“The air—smells—all right?”
“As a matter of fact, it doesn’t. There’s an undercurrent of something—a mixture of things—that smells a little putrid. Not enough to make you sick or anything. I guess I can get used to it. Figure it’s from being on mostly oxygen?”
Clayben wearily unfastened his helmet and took it off, then took a deep breath and wrinkled his nose. “I see what you mean. No, it’s not that. That is clearly salt water over there—you cannot imagine how long it has been since I’ve smelled that smell—and it’s mixing with the smells of the jungle.” He sighed. “Well, all I want to do is sleep for a week, but I think we’d better get things set up here and take our preliminary measurements. Then I think we should encamp and sleep in shifts until our bodies adjust to this gravity before exploring very much—if mine ever does adjust.”
“I think they are birds, but they never come close enough to really tell.” Raven was clad now in an improvised loincloth, which consisted of two towels draped, one front and one rear, over his gunbelt.
“We must go into the jungle at some point,” Clayben said. He was wearing a pair of shorts, a pullover T-shirt, and rubber-soled shoes. He was still terribly uncomfortable and very slow, and beginning to wonder if he’d spent too much time in low gravity to ever get used to full weight again, but he was still fascinated and excited about being on a new and remote world. Even during the night, agonized by muscle cramps, he still found it impossible not to stare up through holes in the clouds to a star field that was much denser than the one he’d known. “We will need more than these spore and insect samples, fascinating as they are. From my analysis, I suspect that those birds—or whatever they are—are not quite what we expect at all.”
Terraforming was an incredibly complex science and one that Master System had had to learn from scratch. Mars had been far easier than planets like this one; there the process had involved mostly adding or transmuting to water, planting dense growth, and letting things take their course. But even there a complex chain of interdependent species of plants and animals had had to be modified and stabilized so that the ecosystem would remain in balance.
Not a single one of the flying and crawling insects they’d managed to trap here was familiar, but they seemed to fill the same not-always-obvious roles that their Earth ancestors had back on the home world. Unfortunately, some of them bit, and of those some had defensive or offensive toxins causing itching, but none of the bites suffered by Clayben and Raven had been more than minor nuisances.
The heat and humidity were still hard to take, and the gravity was murder, but at least they had grown used to the alien smells in the air and hardly noticed them anymore. Raven was certainly delighted about one thing: Finally he could smoke his cigars again without worry. His endless supply of half-smoked cigars had baffled Hawks until the latter had heard about and understood enough about the transmuters. Raven had a way of making the things duplicate his cigars, but the only model he’d had was the last half of one brought from Earth. He had a huge supply made from that half a cigar—and all were duplicates of it. He hoped that the others would never discover that he was using the food transmuters to make cigars, or that they wouldn’t mind if they did find out.
By the end of the second day, Raven felt well enough to do some exploring, but it was clear that Clayben simply wasn’t up to it. He might, in time, adapt to a gravitational pull that was actually very slightly less than the Earth on which he’d been born, but that was by no means certain and definitely not imminent. Unwilling to trust Clayben alone with the fighter and all his gear, Raven called for reinforcements. “I want Warlock and Nagy down here as quickly as possible,” he told them. “We need to get moving.”
The newcomers, who arrived with fresh supplies, seemed to do a lot better with the sudden weight than the first two had. Nagy explained that in light of the problems, Star Eagle had induced a spin that gave some measure of gravity to the ship. Warlock and Nagy still felt some strain, but after a good night’s sleep in the makeshift tent, they seemed to be in as good shape as Raven was.
It was a bright, sunny day. They had actually watched rainstorms in the distance over the water, but so far none of the clouds had given the interior more than a few drops. Raven opened up a security case and surprised Nagy by giving the spindly man a pistol.
“You might need it to save one or both of our necks,” the Crow told him. “You’ll need a good knife, too. I had Star Eagle duplicate my best.” He handed him a huge flat blade and a gunbelt that had a notch for the knife.
Nagy looked at the dense jungle. “I think a broadsword might be better, considering that stuff.” He hefted the knife, put it in the belt, then drew and aimed the pistol at the trees. “I—uh—guess this is some kind of test.”
Manka Warlock’s stern expression did not change. “No test,” she said. “If Raven doesn’t come back, first I kill the doctor here and then I come for you.”
Nagy shrugged and gave a “Who, me?” sort of look, then turned back to Raven. “Now’s as good a time as any, I guess. I’m not too thrilled about this, but it has to be done if we’re gonna stick around this hothouse.”
Raven checked a small communicator that had been removed from one of the pressure suits and slipped into a special casing. “Thunder, are you reading me?”
“Perfectly,” Star Eagle’s voice responded. “I have you on intercom as well. Doctor?”
“No problems.” Clayben looked at the others. “Bring me back some specimens. Plants, insects, sea water, even one of those birds or whatever they are. And Arnold? Be certain you both return.”
Nagy shrugged again. “Which way, O intrepid explorer?”
“That way,” Raven said, pointing with his knife at a spot almost exactly between the two huge cloud-shrouded volcanic peaks. “It’s the shortest route to the sea if the map we saw was right.”
They made their way carefully down to where the foliage met the rocky outcrop of ancient lava. “I don’t expect that there will be any really dangerous plants and animals in there,” the Crow said, “but you never know what a computer might throw into a prototype. Still, its mission was to preserve people, not get rid of them.”
It was rough going almost from the start. The lava did not stop as it met the greenery, but there it had been more severely weathered, partly broken up, and overgrown with moss and vines. Much of the growth masked cracks and fissures in the ground that seemed designed to twist ankles and trip the unwary. The men used their knives as best they could and were thankful that they’d decided to wear the thick, heavy boots from their pressure suits.
When they finally hit much older rock covered with humus the footing became soft and spongy. Their passage seemed to disturb the insect population; the air was thick with tiny flying things and a few very large, angry buzzing ones. “If Clayben wants his damned insect collection let him come and get ’em,” Raven shouted angrily, swatting the air.
After a while they came to a short but fairly steep drop, perhaps two meters, at which point the thick vegetation stopped and they found themselves on smooth, flat, and pretty solid gray-black sand cut with chasms. There was a great deal of driftwood on the beach, as well. Now, for the first time, they could see as well as hear the pounding waves and look out upon the ocean.
“First time I ever seen a bloody red ocean,” Raven commented.
Nagy walked toward the edge of the water perhaps fifty or sixty meters away, then knelt and looked at the water. “Not blood and not red. Not the ocean, anyway. It’s a thin layer of some kind of plant or animal stuff. Plant, I’d say. Some kind of modified plankton, maybe. Stuff must cover a lot of ocean. Ten to one the only reason it doesn’t cover all of it is the wind and storms. Only small tides here, what with no big moon.”
Raven stared at him. “You a scientist?”
“Naw, I’m like you. I pick up stuff. You never know when something’s gonna come up useful.”
Raven stared at him. In occupation—and somewhat in personality—he and Nagy were twins, yet the Crow was far cruder in his approach, and Nagy far more intellectual. Raven suspected that in the jungle or in the bush, Nagy would be dead meat, but that in any sort of civilization Nagy might be even more dangerous than Clayben.
“Nagy—I know why I’m here, but why are you?”
“Maybe we ought to trade information,” the tall, thin man replied. “Fact is, I was about to ask you the same question. For me it’s simple—survival. We went to the same training schools. Survival is the first priority of an effective operative. I blew Melchior—thanks to you. The administrators don’t like that. The escape brought Master System down on us, as I knew it had to, which is why I personally directed the chase. I didn’t want to be there when the Vals crashed in the locks. The board, now, it can lay all the illegal stuff on Clayben and me. I was in a meat grinder. The way to get out is to run out—and the stars were the only place to run. So when Clayben pulled up in that souped-up custom interstellar job and took me off the Star, I was only too willing. Now, that’s simple enough. It’s you I don’t get. What was it? The lure of power? Those rings can get anybody sick with the god disease.”
“No,” Raven said quietly. “I didn’t fail and I didn’t turn traitor and I didn’t run out. I’m just doing my job.”
“Huh? Blowing Melchior? Springing this crazy assortment? Lugging everybody here? Stirring up Master System to what must be the closest thing to a frenzy a machine can experience? Who the hell can you be working for that would want that? Or deserved the kind of price we’re all paying?”
“You want the truth?”
“Shoot. What difference can it make now?”
“I don’t know. Chen—the one chief administrator on Earth with a ring of his own—I think he knows. But as high as he is, he’s just an employee, too, and in many ways he’s in a more dangerous spot than I am. It was understood that I wouldn’t know anything beyond Chen because, if I was captured, that was as far as even Master System could go. You can’t tell what you don’t know, and I suspect that Chen has a way out just as Clayben did if the heat gets too great.”
Nagy stared at him and frowned. “But there is nobody higher than the administrators. They get their orders direct from Master System. It would have to be a hell of a computer brain to be in that chain somewhere, and it’d have to be an independent one, not one Master System could control or reprogram. There must be more computer brains than people but it just ain’t possible.”
“It’s possible. I don’t know how. Even if the survival and discovery of the rings information was in fact accidental, very little that went on after it was. I’m not even a hundred-percent certain that the accident that caused the courier from Warlock to Chen to crash in Hawks’s backyard while he was on leave—very conveniently—was accidental. Put that together with the near-simultaneous discovery by the Chinese of a tech cult with complete plans for a Thunder-class ship and how to operate and interface with it and you have real questions about coincidence. Maybe it is. Maybe after nine hundred years everything just came together. I don’t believe it, though. Maybe in nine hundred million years, but I’m not a real strong believer in this much fate. Me, I’m an add-on. Warlock needed me to track down Hawks in unfamiliar territory, and once I was in, I was in. So then this Song Ching, who just happens to be the district administrator’s daughter and knows all the security codes and overrides, gets initial access to all the starship plans and information—hell, she was there on the raid, and since when is a relative that high up allowed that close to action?—gets all the time she needs to crack the ship interfaces and then gets a ton of pressure on her to get her to escape.”
“Go on. I’m beginning to see how you think.”
“So our China girl escapes and just happens to get on an interplanetary freighter that’s just been refitted and whose core has just been modified and reprogrammed for independent action. Now, you and I know how easy that is in space, but who could do it on Earth, under the very nose of and monitored by Master System? Somebody did. That pig Sabatini took his liberties, but she wound up on Melchior. Thanks to Chen, so did Hawks and both Warlock and me—but none of his own people. And I’m there with a detailed list of just who to spring, and how, and on what ship. Not only that, but I have three out of four locations for the missing rings. How the hell could Chen get them?”
Nagy thought about it. “Maybe a freebooter commission. Big reward for the location of any rings.”
“We’ll check, but would he chance it? Would you? They’d wonder why he wanted the rings and then they’d start after them, and before you knew it they’d be holding up both him and Master System just like we hope to do. Uh uh. When I was at Chen’s, he didn’t know where the other rings were—I’d stake my life on it. Then, when I got the message in his code on Melchior, there they were. I don’t think he sent the code or the whole list to be sprung. I think somebody else did.”
“Yeah, but why Hawks? I mean, even you said you thought the crash was accidental.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Chen seemed to think that Hawks was the key to the whole business. He’s no real fighter, although brave enough. He’s an intellectual. A historian. A man specializing in the last century of pre-Master civilization. He didn’t know about the rings, but he knows a hell of a lot of history of that period. My orders, even direct from Chen, were to protect him at all costs. Nobody’s that important by accident—not when you add up all the other coincidences. No, I’m on the job, just following orders. I don’t know who, but I figure I’ll find that out when we got the hard part done—if we can. Hawks is right about one thing—Master System is crippled when it comes to preventing us from getting the rings. Crippled, but not helpless. The odds are still pretty well against us.”
Nagy scratched his ample chin and thought. “Well, two possibilities come to mind. I’m beginning to agree that coincidence has been stretched to the breaking point here, so that leaves the ‘who’ of it. One thought is that we’re being thrown out here by Master System itself as some kind of final test of its security.”
“I thought of that, but it doesn’t wash. The rings are the only thing that can do it in. There’s no way a logical beast like that could afford to let that kind of information out just for a test, particularly out of the Solar System. Once out, it could never get back—and sooner or later somebody would follow up on it and succeed. It’s only chance was to shut this information down fast before it got out. No, by any logical standard, it just doesn’t make sense. If nothing else, the mere news that something exists that can hurt or even kill Master System would be enough to spur people on. It knows that. It knows us all too well.”
Nagy nodded. “That brings me to the second thought I’ve had. You know Master System has been claiming for some time that there’s a war on. That it’s fighting even, holding its own, but no better. Nobody knows who it’s warring with, but that’s one hell of an enemy if it can fight Master System to a standstill. Maybe—just maybe—that’s what this is all about. If you were out there, stalemated against our system, you’d find some way to get information, contacts, whatever. You’d learn. And if you stumbled on the fact that somewhere out here is a weapon that can blow Master System’s brain out, you’d try for it.”
The idea hadn’t occurred to Raven and it fascinated him. “But—if that’s true, then why us? Why not go after them yourself?”
Nagy shrugged. “As to why it’s us, I couldn’t guess. I can’t figure Master System, so why should I be able to figure out somebody or something really alien? As to why get somebody else to go for them, there might be a real basic and simple answer. You said it yourself—in the core of Master System there is an imperative. We, as human beings, have a right to try for the rings. We have that edge, for whatever it’s worth, and it might be very slim but it is an edge. An edge that wouldn’t apply to nonhumans, by which I mean people not descended from Earth stock. Maybe they calculated everything and figured humans had the edge.”
“Then that means that if we ever get them, we’ll have more than just Master System and Chen and the rest of the power lovers to cope with. Nagy, suppose they don’t come for them when and if we have them? Suppose they just ease the way so we get in and shut Master System down?”
Nagy smiled grimly. “Then they win, don’t they?” He sighed. “Why don’t we cross that bridge if we ever come to it? Damn it, we aren’t even set up yet.” He looked out across the crimson sea. “A few other islands over there. Sooner or later we’re gonna need a boat to tour the neighborhood.” He looked around the beach. “It’s somewhat sheltered here—you can see how the big waves break well out there, so there’s underwater lava or a reef or something here. I’d say we build right here—back there and against the jungle. Burn out a good-sized trail and keep it open—the jungle will try to take it back all the time.” He looked over at the tallest peak. “Somebody’s gonna have to get up there sooner or later, too. Establish a high refuge if we get any real nasty storms.” He sighed, his mind racing at top speed. “If these are anything like Earth volcanoes, they make great topsoil. Burn away selected areas of jungle to get fields protected from the worst weather, and you could probably grow most anything here. I—”
There was a sudden loud splash behind him and he whirled, pistol out of his holster with amazing speed, his body automatically taking a defensive crouch. Raven’s reaction was a bit slower, but in the same style. The Crow frowned, seeing nothing. “Something falling in? Or something leaping?”
“I don’t know. They said the initial survey showed some large life forms in the water. Lots of them, in big groups, all over the place. Maybe that was just one of them. We’ll have to find out what the hell’s there before my boat can sail.”
Raven reached in his pack and took out a pair of simple binoculars, part of the kit that he always carried. He holstered his weapon and looked through the lenses, surveying the surface of the water.
“Black shapes in the water. Fairly good size,” he told Nagy. “I can’t see very much of them and none of ’em are long enough to get much more than a blurry shape, but there’s sure some big suckers out there. I don’t know. They kinda look like the big otters we got along the Missouri and Mississippi, only even bigger.” He lifted the binoculars so he was looking only at the surface. The closest island, about four kilometers distant, was now also in his sights. Something suddenly nagged at him, and he took his eye off the water and looked squarely at the island itself. “Nagy—I think you might want to take a look at this. I think we better call it in, too.”
“Huh? What?” Nagy, too, had holstered his weapon and now he took the binoculars.
“That next island. To the right, there, maybe a couple of degrees, where the beach looks thin. Right above it.”
Arnold Nagy stared. Then, after a moment, he saw what the Crow was talking about, and he felt a chill.
“That line of trees is in perfect rows,” he muttered. “After centuries even if they were planted that way they wouldn’t still be there. They’re planted, all right, and maintained, but not by Master System.”
“Freebooters?” Raven wondered.
He sighed. “Maybe, but I doubt it. Not their kind of layout. No ships, no fast getaway. Shipwreck, maybe, but that would be stretching coincidence beyond any reasonable bounds. Thousands of islands. Uh uh. Best bet is that the freebooters have a real good reason for steering clear of here. Best bet is there’s places like that all over this planet. I think this was a much more advanced prototype than we figured.”
“You mean—it’s inhabited?”
“Looks like. I wonder by whom?”
“Or what?” Raven replied.
They reported to the ship.
“I’m not sure I like the look of this,” Hawks commented. “Perhaps—perhaps we ought to rethink this idea of a planetary camp for now. There is enough room here.”
“No,” Star Eagle objected. “There is no such thing as the perfect world for you except the one of your birth. This ship is not fit for long-term habitation by a growing population, and while I intend extensive modifications, these might take a great deal of time and would necessitate everyone being off the ship. It is also not good for the child to come. While near-weightlessness is fine when the child is in the womb, it should not be born in this environment and not know gravity from the start.”
Hawks began to wonder if Star Eagle wasn’t more concerned about China than about their own needs, but he also knew he couldn’t press the issue. In a very real sense the pilot was a free agent, and because he alone controlled access to the vast data banks and the interstellar drives, he had a vote that weighed far heavier than theirs. Hawks had to wonder, though, about the relationship between the small pregnant girl who might give birth in days or weeks and this machine intelligence with whom she mentally mated. Did—could—Star Eagle feel as humans felt? And, in this case, was he being protective—or running scared by forcing her away? There was no way to tell.
Hawks sighed. “Very well, but the initial camp must be well inland, near the transmuter. Whatever is down there is mostly of the sea, and it would be unwise to be too close to their domain. Can some sort of security perimeter be established around the camp? We are too few to have constant guards and would be easily overwhelmed.”
“It is possible. I believe Maintenance can manufacture something that will do, but everyone should go armed at all times. If these are humans in any sense of the word, contact must be established and a treaty made, if at all possible.”
“If they are humans, they might not be inclined to talk treaty first,” Hawks responded. “We will not know their tribal ways until we press, or until they come to us. If they are too territorial, it might mean a fight.”
Reba Koll’s voice crackled. “If we can’t beat them, how the hell could we ever take on Master System?”
Hawks sighed and wished he could get rid of the feeling that he was in the role of the cavalry marching against the peoples of early America. He slapped his thighs. “All right—we move!”