He looked at the gas canisters vivid in the plane lights. They looked sound. He saw that they were also armored and that all the cables to them were as well. He looked around through the ship’s windows in dismay.
This place was as armored inside as outside!
What an unpleasant view. Structural rib frames, very deep. Floor plates for loading only, having gaps on both sides of the walkway. Cross-braces. Toward the tail there were a series of holes like a beehive—ah, additional gas canister spaces; the thing was only about a third full. But enough, enough to wipe out any place it was going.
How much time did he have? He looked at his watch and it was shattered. There were no clocks in these battle planes; the clocks were all down in the console cabinets and had no faces anyway. Only lapsed time dials on the dash. He realized he wouldn’t know when radio silence ended. He tried to compute by sunrise but he didn’t know where he was beyond a few hours short of Scotland. Abruptly he realized he was maundering. Still a bit dazed?
He put the air mask on and made sure it was snug in case a gas canister had cracked in the crash, which he doubted. He checked to see whether Terl’s blast gun was still there. Yes, fallen on the floor. He might need it to try to cut cables. He put it in his belt and got out of the plane.
The thunder of these motors was deafening. Arctic wind curled in at the door. The night lay like a black pit below them.
He examined the gas canisters. No, the plane hadn’t even touched them. Nothing could touch them, from the looks of it. They were covered with the crud of extreme age. He found a half-obliterated date, a Psychlo date. These things dated from the original attack! Spares? Not used in that attack? No, another date. They had been refilled about twenty-five years later. The hope that they were expended died. They were live, all right.
Where were the controls of this thing? Ah, way up forward. Best look at those. There just might be a chance that he could change settings and, in extremis, simply pull the wires loose.
He walked up along the plates. His plane’s lights were bright, even up front.
There was the setting box. A “preset,” and there was the console one set the preset plates in. Fat lot of good the console was. Like a stamping machine. He looked at the preset box. One usually fed preset plates into the side and latched the box. Here, too. But this one?
It was armored.
It had a keyhole. He looked around, but there was no key left behind.
Cables? All armored. And they even went into the preset box with an armored connection.
Crud was all around. Lord, this thing was old! It was only clean around the preset box. He supposed they had cleaned it up to set it.
A vague feeling of unease troubled him. Completely aside from his intentness on stopping this drone, there was something odd in this place. He looked down toward the plane. The deep recesses between the frames were in complete darkness.
Zzt, unseen in a recess not six feet away, crouched back in desperation. His wits were racing. What did he know about Tolneps? Shortly after he had graduated from Mechanics College on Psychlo, he had done a duty tour on Archiniabes where the company had mines. It was in this universe. The system star was the double star he sometimes saw in winter on this planet; the smaller star of the “dumbbell” had a weight so dense that a half cubic inch of it here would weigh one ton. A minesite had been wiped out utterly by a Tolnep raid. They came from somewhere near the star cluster he often saw here. They had mastered time control and could hold it frozen and their ships made long piratical voyages. The company had analyzed several of their dead bodies. What did he remember about them? What weakness? He could think only of strengths. Their bite was deadly poison. They had a body density comparable to iron. They were immune to Psychlo gas. They couldn’t be killed with an ordinary blast gun. Weaknesses, weaknesses, weaknesses? If he didn’t recall them he would never get out of this alive. Never.
This one was walking back down past him now. He shrank against the ship skin. It didn’t see him here in the darkness.
Then he remembered. Their eyesight! That was why they always wore face masks. They saw in infrared only and had to have a filter plate. They went totally blind when subjected to shorter wavelength light and they could be killed only with ultraviolet weapons. They were intensely allergic to cold and had a body heat of around two hundred degrees, or was it three hundred? No matter, he was on to it. It was eyesight. Without its faceplate that creature would be blind.
Zzt planned carefully. The instant he got a chance, he would knock off the faceplate, leap forward, and claw the thing’s eyes out, somehow avoiding the poison teeth. Zzt’s paw slid down to the side of his boot and he got out his trusty big wrench. He could throw it like a projectile. Don’t hit the body, hit the side of the mask!
Zzt then drew from his breast pocket the small round mirror with its long handle that he used to look in the back of connections or the underside of bearings. He carefully extended the mirror around the edge of the frame, praying to the crap nebula the thing wouldn’t notice it. He began to watch the creature.
Jonnie found it very hard to walk in the rolling drone. The floor plates were not meant for walking and had gaps on both sides.
He went clear to the back end of the drone, quite a walk in itself. He looked at the strange honeycomb. It was bottle racks for additional load. He crawled in the entry port. Maybe some cables or something overlooked would be in there. He could barely get through the port and wondered how a Psychlo could, until he realized it was just for canister loading of the racks. Clumsy. Just racks. Bad design. The ports were toward the center and it was only blank bulkhead on either side. Nothing else here.
He went back toward the forward end. He stopped just beyond the ship. He thought very hard. He could see nothing that could be pulled apart, nothing that could be blasted apart. He could even blow up his ship in here and nothing would happen.
No controls. The drone was not made to be flown but just set and launched. Not even the remote Terl had shown him would do anything now.
Rolling like a huge ungainly drunk, the thing continued on its way with death in its jaws. Insensate, invulnerable.
He wasn’t seeing so well again. Blood had started flowing when he crawled into the hole back there and he’d knocked his mask. He lifted his hands to the mask, turning sideways to lessen the blast from the door. He was reaching for the edge of his jacket to wipe it off.
With the impact of a bullet the mask was hit!
It flew from his hand.
Something had almost broken his left thumb.
There was motion about thirty feet away.
Mountain training and a hunter’s life had left nothing wanting in Jonnie’s reactions.
The action of dropping to one knee, drawing, and firing the blast gun did not take more than a third of a second.
He fired at the mass that had begun to come at him. The shots drove it back with sheer force.
Again and again he fired.
The thing, whatever it was, moved back into the cover of the rib frames near the preset.
There was something or someone in here with him. He had walked right past it twice when he went to the preset box.
9
Jonnie protested a little at not heeding his instincts earlier. He had felt some presence. That was the worst part of wearing air masks. It denied one’s sense of smell. And he could smell it now. Despite the cold air and the rust motes Jonnie could smell a Psychlo.
He rose cautiously, holding the gun, and backed toward his plane to get a bit more distant. A Psychlo was pretty strong stuff not only to smell but to deal with in any wrestling match. He recalled having to wait for Thor before he could approach within arm’s length of Terl. Psychlos could crush one with ease. Which Psychlo was this? Did he know him?
Zzt, pressed up against the skin, was trying to keep from vomiting with contempt and disgust. Only what it would do to his breathe-mask prevented him.
It wasn’t the blast gun shots. Yes
, those that hit had bruised him and thrown him back, and a few feet closer, they might have disabled him.
It was his own reaction to change. Here he had been in abject funk and all the while it was only the animal. Terl’s animal!
A surge of hatred and fury followed his nausea. He almost emerged from the recess and plowed straight in. But a blast gun stung. And the dumb twit didn’t even have it on penetration, only on blast. Typical.
That this animal had subjected him to such terror he could not forgive. Why, he had nearly killed it once on the tractor with a remote. He really should have killed it. He should have taken a blast rifle out that day. Who would have noticed in all that fire?
Nothing but the animal! A puny, soft, undersized, slug-white, stupid animal had scared him like that! He quivered with rage. His nausea faded.
Desire for information overrode his kill lust at this moment. Maybe this was some new plot of Terl’s. Damn Terl!
Zzt got himself under control enough to speak. “Did Terl send you?”
Jonnie tried to place the voice. Hard to do the way they talked through a face mask. The masks had sound amplification patches on their sides but voices got muffled, low as they were. He could ask; Psychlos were very arrogant.
“Who are you?” said Jonnie.
“You went through all that at the tractor and you don’t even remember who I am! Stupid dimwit. Answer me! Did Terl send you?”
Zzt! The times Terl had muttered and rumbled on about Zzt! Jonnie had his own score to settle with him.
He couldn’t resist it. “I came to bust up the machinery,” said Jonnie.
Another Psychlo might have laughed. Not Zzt. “That goes without doubt, animal! Answer me or I’ll—”
“You’ll what?” said Jonnie. “Step out and get killed? This blaster is set on penetration now.” Jonnie was slowly pacing backward to the battle plane. He edged around it. He got up on its step and opened the door and got out the assault rifle with radiation bullets. He cocked it and, when he had it ready to fire, put the blast gun back in his belt and began to walk up the corridor again.
Zzt had gone silent.
Jonnie tried to step sideways far enough to angle a shot into a recess as soon as Zzt spoke again. Then he paused. Zzt was the master mechanic of the compound, the transport chief in fact. He would know far more about this drone than anyone else.
“How’d you get yourself trapped aboard here?” said Jonnie.
“Terl!” It was practically a scream. “The ———” and there followed a string of Psychlo profanity that went on for minutes.
Jonnie waited it out. When it finally subsided into mere rumblings, Jonnie said, “So you want to get off. Just tell me how to land this and you can get off.”
There followed a new string of Psychlo obscenities, so violent that Jonnie began to be convinced. Finally, “There isn’t any way to change it or land it—” A pause, almost hopefully then, “Did Terl give you the keys to the preset?”
“No. Can’t it be blasted open?”
Apathy. “No.”
“Can’t you tear out the cables?”
“That would just crash this thing, and you can’t do that either. They’re armored with molecular lamination metal. He didn’t give you the keys.” It was a groan. Then savage: “You dimwit! Why didn’t you get the keys from him before you came out here?”
“He was a bit tied up,” said Jonnie. Then, “You better tell me what not to do so I just don’t stop its motors.”
“There aren’t any nots either,” said Zzt. He was feeling sick again from the rolling of the drone.
Jonnie pulled far over to the side. He was wondering whether he could send some ricochets from the frame into the recess. He couldn’t get over far enough. The frames were pointed-edged for strength and the edges angled out.
So Zzt was no help. Jonnie backed away toward the plane. He was going back for the copilot air mask. The Arctic chill was freezing his face. He glanced at the remains of the one knocked out of his hand. His thumb still ached.
Zzt had thrown a wrench. It was still imbedded in the side of the mask. If that had hit him in the head—
A wrench? Wait. What could one do with a wrench?
Jonnie picked up the wrench. Typically Psychlo, it was heavy as lead. It could open up to take a twelve-inch-diameter nut, a small nut in Psychlo machinery. Quite a weapon.
The second he started to straighten up from retrieving the wrench, Zzt tried to charge.
The gun was off target. Jonnie squeezed the trigger and shots flamed up the passageway. Zzt dove back. He wasn’t hit or he would have gone into a pale green explosion from radiation bullets.
Jonnie eased back to the plane and got the other air mask, checked its valves, and put it on. It worked okay.
Zzt was scrambling around on the floor, trying to find his mirror. It had become wedged in a loose plate. A loose plate?
Zzt used the mirror to check where the animal was. Then he got to work with his talons and a small metal ruler he always carried to pry up the fifty-pound plate. It was hard going, but what a projectile it would make!
The lethal drone roared on toward Scotland.
10
Jonnie held the wrench in his hand. He hefted it thoughtfully. Certainly, in setting up this drone to fire, mechanics would have to get into something. And they’d have to service something if it were ever to be fired again.
Locked, armored preset box. Yes, but that was just a control box. He had seen nothing else that took a key.
He was finding it hard to think. It was cold! These ancient Air Force flying suits were supposed to be electrically warmed, but they had not been able to rig any batteries and the originals hadn’t been made for a shelf life of a thousand years. The blood from his cut forehead kept messing up his faceplate quite in addition to the way it kept misting. What was the temperature where they were flying? A power zoom to get up to freezing, that was for sure.
This wrench . . .
He caught a flicker of movement up toward the front of the ship and fired a warning shot.
Two problems. No, three. Zzt, Nup and a Mark 32 on top, and how to disable this drone!
Old Staffor used to say he was “too smart.” A lot of village people had thought that. He wasn’t feeling very smart now.
He knew he should get rid of Zzt. But firing shots in this armored interior was not just dangerous to Zzt. It was dangerous to himself. All these frames sent every shot madly caroming about, and twice now, one had whistled past his own ears and another had hit his plane on rebound.
Suppose Zzt were a puma. How would he go about killing it? Well, one didn’t walk up to a puma; one waited for the puma to spring. No, now suppose Zzt were a bear in a cave. That was a more fitting example. Walk into a cave with a bear in it? Suicide.
He thought of setting a time fuse on a limpet and pitching it up there, getting in his plane, and depending on its armor to protect him. But there was a limit to the way magnetic grips held and he might blow up his own plane into an unusable state. He wished he had a grenade, but all the grenades they had found were duds and they hadn’t worked out how to use them. He even thought of taking one of the fuel or ammunition cartridges—of which he had plenty for the plane—throwing it up there, and shooting into it. It would explode, that was for sure. But one cartridge might not kill Zzt. Psychlos were very tough, very tough indeed. Zzt had once beaten Terl, he had heard, and Zzt truly hated him—in fact, had almost killed him once. No, he was not going to try any stunt of walking up there even with an assault rifle firing. He did not know how deep that recess was or even what recess Zzt was in, and Zzt might very well be armed still.
Nup he had nullified for the moment.
Lord, it was cold.
One thing at a time. His job was not Zzt or Nup. It was to stop this drone. He had better get awfully smart. Fast!
Because of his misting and bloodstained faceplate, he had not spotted the tiny mechanic’s mirror that watched him. He got busy un
tangling the problem of this drone.
Where Psychlos couldn’t use a molecular parting and resealing tool, they used nuts and bolts. And he was sure that this armor wouldn’t yield to a “metal knife,” as they called the tool in Psychlo mechanic’s slang. He had gathered from Zzt that this was molecular lamination, layer after layer of different but binding metals. Good. So somewhere here they had used nuts.
He caught a flick of motion and fired another shot. The bullet ricocheted three times and went whining out the door.
Maybe one of these floor plates . . . He laughed suddenly. Squarely in front of the ship, in a shadow the lights left between the skids, was a floor plate held down by nuts!
He reduced the jaw size of the wrench and got down between the skids. Another small adjustment and he had the size. There were eight nuts. They came off very easily—these had been removed recently. He put the nuts on one of the skid tops that had an inset groove. Heavy, they stayed there despite the roll.
One of the plane skids was on the far edge of the plate. He pounded it with the heel of the wrench and it loosened. He pried the plate up with the lip of the wrench. He intended just to set it aside, but as it came loose, the drone rolled and it went sliding out of his numb hands, through the door and into the screaming wind and emptiness. Who cared?
He got out a torch and shone it down into the blackness.
He was looking at the top of the main motor drive!
The housing was as big as a one-story house. It made him realize that the whole underside of the drone was motors and additional gas canister storage. What tons and tons and tons of lethal gas this carried! The canisters glowed like monster fish in the darkness. But the housing!
Jonnie knew these drives in miniature. They were space translation cubicles, mostly empty but served by an enormous number of points that jutted into them. Each point had its own coordinate message, and these points had to be cleaned.
There must be an inspection and maintenance plate on this housing!
With a wary look up the long passageway, he slid down and braced his feet on the structural support members of the housing. He played the light around.
Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 Page 47
