Dark Star

by Alan Dean Foster

  "Why not?" the bomb asked innocently.

  "What do you mean, why not?" He had had about enough of this bomb. It was deliberately not cooperating. Playing with him. Probably laughing at him, too.

  If only it didn't have the last laugh.

  "Because . . . because you'd kill us all. And that's silly. There's no reason for it. It's different for you, bomb. You look forward to a short happy life and then going out in real style. We look forward to a long life and going out with a whimper. Damn it, bomb, listen to reason!"

  "I always listen to reason," the bomb replied easily. "And right now reason tells me that I am programmed to detonate in approximately nine minutes and that detonation will occur at the programmed time."

  Oh, what was the use? No matter how he argued, no matter what course of action he suggested or how logical he tried to be, the bomb always responded inexorably, "I am programmed to detonate in . . . detonation will occur at the programmed time."

  How could you argue with a stubborn machine with a one-track mind? There had to be a way—surely it must be equipped with mental as well as mechanical failsafes! Surely its builders had foreseen every possibility!

  "Look," he said hopefully into the mike, "wouldn't you consider an alternate course of action? I'm not saying you don't ever not have to detonate . . . of course you're going to detonate. I want you to detonate. Boiler wants you to detonate . . . don't you, Boiler?"

  Boiler nodded his head vigorously.

  "Even Talby wants you to detonate. But it doesn't have to be right away, does it? Think of the advantages of waiting . . . of just sitting around for a while so we can disarm you. All that time you could spend contemplating your eventual magnificent demise. You know, they say planning for a trip is half the fun. Just for a couple of hours, bomb, until we can fix your grapple and get you all nice and properly detached from the ship. Then we'd fix you up again as good as new. How about it, bomb? Huh? C'mon, how 'bout it?"

  "No," the bomb said petulantly.

  "Geez, it sounds like you," snorted Boiler.

  Pinback ventured a look promising the corporal sudden death—which, under the circumstances, was not unlikely—and then turned his attention back to the mike.

  "Look, bomb, be reasonable. You don't really wanna die, do you? I mean, I know that's what you're programmed for, but survival is the strongest instinct of all, and deep down inside, you've thought about it, haven't you? We can fix it so you never die. Then we could have nice long chats like this all the time."

  "Death has no meaning for me, except as an end unto itself," the bomb intoned meaningfully. "Death is my reason for existence. I am born unto destruction. I am Vishnu, Destroyer of Worlds . . . not that I let this influence my pleasant disposition, mind."

  "Oh, Christ," muttered Boiler, "a Hindu bomb."

  "Listen, bomb," Pinback pleaded, "pretty bomb, logical bomb, lovely reasonable thermostellar triggering device . . ."

  "Flattery will get you nowhere," the bomb insisted.

  "If you won't do it because it's the right thing to do, if you won't do it because it's the reasoning thing to do, if you won't do it to save the ship or the mission," he asked intensely, "would you do it just as a favor to me? A personal favour . . . mind to mind?"

  "Well-l-l . . ." For a second, only a second, the bomb seemed to hesitate. "I might . . . if I knew who you were."

  "Who am I? Who am I?" A Niagra of emotions flooded Pinback's brain, a cascade of conflicting questions he'd tried so hard to suppress, to keep under control, especially when around the others.

  And now this . . . thing, this machine, this insolent mechanical servant of man, dared to put forth the ultimate insult.

  "I am Sergeant Pinback, that's who I am, and I outrank you, bomb. Do as you're told and get back into the bomb bay and disarm yourself or . . . or I'll see you court-martialed when we get back to Earth!"

  "Well, if you're going to get huffy about it, forget the whole thing," the bomb said, thoroughly miffed.

  "Oh geez," whispered Boiler, looking upward. Pinback sat back in his seat, shaking, trembling, cradling the headset mike in unsteady fingers. From behind him, Boiler whispered on, low and dangerous now.

  "You'd better hope that bomb does detonate, Pinback, because if it doesn't kill you, I will."

  "Well then, you talk to it, bigmouth!" shouted Pinback back, whirling on the bigger man. "Let's see if you can make it understand!"

  Boiler gave a curt shake of his head. "You can't reason with a dumb machine. You can't talk sense to it anymore than you can to Talby."

  "That's a thought," said Pinback. "What about having Talby talk to it?"

  Boiler shook his head again. "Fat chance. He'd talk with it about the view Outside until the thing went off. Probably consider annihilation an interesting sensation to experience, worthy of careful study . . . even if you can only do it once . . . No, we'd better hope Doolittle gets something out of what's left of Powell."

  "Commander, sir," Doolittle was saying tiredly at that very moment, "are you still there?"

  "Oh, yes, Doolittle," Powell's voice echoed back. "I . . . I was thinking."

  "We're really running out of time, sir." he checked his wrist again. "I mean, really, sir. I don't mean to break in on your contemplation, but . . ."

  "Oh, yes," Powell mumbled thoughtfully. "Well, if you can't get it to drop normally, and the aesthemic clutch doesn't work, and the explosive bolts have failed, and it still insists on detonating, then you'll just have to talk to it."

  "Sir?" said a puzzled Doolittle.

  "You'll have to talk to the bomb."

  "I tried talking to it, sir. I've been talking to it. Pinback's talking to it right now."

  "No, no, Doolittle. Not Pinback," Powell husked. "You talk to it. Teach it . . . phenomenology, Doolittle."

  "I beg your pardon, sir?"

  "Phenomenology."

  "But what good will that do, sir? I'm not even sure what you mean by—Sir? Sir?"

  He turned knobs, boosted power, went 180 degrees with the fine tuning, but Powell—for a while, at least—had sunk back into whatever unimaginable realms of semisentient existence he lived in, and Doolittle was unable to coax him back.

  Turning all the controls on the box to zero, he carefully unhooked it from the plug running to Powell's labyrinth and pickups and electrodes, placed it neatly back in its compartment in the wall.

  Then he closed and relatched the hatch cover to the cryo storage compartment, put the gloves back on their hook, blew on his hands, and sat down to think.

  After a while a near-hysterical voice sounded over a nearby speaker as he made his way up to the main airlock. Pinback's voice.

  "Doolittle . . . what are you doing back there, Doolittle? Six minutes to detonation! Doolittle!"

  Doolittle heard him but he paid no attention. He'd never liked listening to Pinback and he was much too busy to waste time listening to him now. He was constructing a mental plan of action and needed all his brainpower for it.

  He smiled. He'd been right all along. Just get in touch with Powell, and the commander would find a solution. Even dead, he was the most valuable man on the ship.

  It still might not work—there were no fail-safes built into this method—but it was the only way left. Powell had recognized that, and made Doolittle see it. Six minutes. He had to hurry.

  The main airlock was located near the top of the ship, just behind the astronomer's station. Talby might see him go out. A nagging thought crept into his battle plan—hadn't Talby tried to call him about something just before the abortive drop run had started?

  Couldn't be important, or Talby would have told him personally. He had no time to speculate now.

  The lock held five ranked starsuits in a locker—duplicates of those in the emergency airlock. There were duplicates of everything vital on the Dark Star—except living quarters and toilet paper, he mused.

  Not that it would matter, once they fixed this crazy bomb. Then they'd be going home—an
d his reports would blister the ears of some of the ship's designers and outfitters.

  Of course, they would all be thirty years older, now . . .

  The suit went on easily enough—no malfunctions in it, at least—and he made his way into the depressurization chamber at the top of the lock. A quick flip of several switches and his outside aural receptors picked up a soft, hissing sound.

  The light depressurization complete, a warning light winked on and the door in the roof of the chamber slid back. He touched a yellow button on the belt of the suit. Special cells in the backpack cancelled out the artificial gravity of the ship.

  Weightless now, he activated his suit jets and floated gently out the open hatch. As he left the ship he glanced forward at the dome, but all he saw was the back of the curving seat-lounge. Talby might have been there, but he couldn't tell.

  "Doolittle, Doolittle!" Pinback was yelling into the mike. Now what? Had Doolittle gone off the deep end under the pressure? Had he maybe gone down into the freezer to join Commander Powell in trouble-free, chill isolation?

  If so, that would mean that as next highest ranker on board, he would be in charge. And that was almost as frightening a thought as the bomb going off in the bomb bay.

  "Doolittle," he howled into the pickup again, "what the hell are you doing?"

  BoiIer interrupted him, staring at a tell-tale that had suddenly begun flashing on his console. "Dorsal airlock's been activated," he said tightly. "Must be the lieutenant. He's gone outside."

  "But what for?" Pinback wondered, looking helplessly at the corporal. "And why doesn't he answer?"

  "Maybe he got through to Powell . . . maybe. And Powell told him what to do to the bomb. Either that or he's trying to get outside the detonation area."

  Pinback blinked. "That's crazy—where could he go? No, you're right—he's going to disarm the bomb! He's going to save the ship!"

  "Yeah," Boiler muttered doubtfully.

  Like the rest of the starsuit, Doolittle's jet pack was working perfectly. Maybe it was a sign that things were finally breaking their way. A couple of spurts brought him around and then beneath the ship. Then he was approaching the bomb.

  He stopped a couple of meters away from its back end, where the tiny thrusters were located. He had checked the circuits beforehand and his suit's broadcast unit should be operating on open channel, which meant the bomb would pick it up. There was no guarantee it would even listen to him, but if it would talk to Pinback . . .

  Odd how harmless it looked. A long white rectangular box, looking more like a large shipping crate than anything else. He felt he could take it apart with a crowbar and find nothing inside. Certainly nothing capable of setting off a chain reaction in the core of a planet.

  Certainly nothing that even powerful dampers could only hold to a total destruct radius of one kilometer.

  "Hello, bomb," he ventured into the suit mike. "Are you with me?"

  "Of course," the bomb replied brightly, as though they had been talking for hours. Inwardly Doolittle breathed a little freer. At least he was getting through.

  "Uh . . . are you willing to entertain a few speculative philosophical concepts, bomb?"

  "In regard to what?"

  "Oh, nothing terribly profound . . . the reasons for being and not being, the meaning of existence, the why of it all."

  "I am always receptive to suggestions," the bomb said, "so long as they are not particularly garrulous. Especially now."

  Thank God it was still capable of reasoning. Doolittle had been afraid that the bomb had been driven so paranoid by Pinback that it wouldn't listen to anyone. But apparently its brain was more adaptable than that.

  He wished he'd made a deeper study of the bomb-brain mechanism and circuitry, but it was a bit late for that now. He would have to rely on the assumptions inherent in Powell's suggestion—that the bomb could think clearly enough to be affected.

  "Fine. Think about this, then. How do you know you exist?"

  Up on the bridge, Boiler and Pinback exchanged glances. They could hear the conversation clearly, since Doolittle was talking on open channel, and the bomb's replies automatically were carried open. The time left on the destruction sequence, as shown by the overhead chronometers, was 0004:33.4.

  "What is he doing now?" wondered Boiler.

  "I think he's talking to it," Pinback replied.

  "Well, that's what you were doing, wasn't it? What makes him think he'll do any better?"

  "I was talking to it, yeah, but not like this," Pinback told the corporal, making shushing sounds. Doolittle was talking again and he didn't want to miss anything.

  It would have made fascinating casual listening, if onIy their lives didn't hang on the outcome.

  "Well, of course I exist," the bomb replied, after a moment's thought.

  "Ah, but how do you know you exist?" Doolittle was insistent. But if he was bothering the bomb, it didn't show in the secure reply.

  "It is intuitively obvious."

  "Intuition is an absract mental concept and no real proof," Doolittle countered. "What concrete evidence do you have that you exist? Something incontrovertible. Something not founded on speculation."

  "Hmm," hmmmed the bomb. "Let's see . . . Well, I think, therefore I am."

  "That's good," Doolittle admitted, a tiny hysterical laugh building up inside him. Not now, he cried, not now . . . be calm, be composed; be as reasonable as this mad machine.

  "That's very good. But how do you know anything else exists?"

  "My sensory apparatus reveals it to me," the bomb answered confidently.

  "Ah, yes, right," Doolittle agreed, swinging an arm to encompass the galaxy and nearly throwing himself into an uncontrollable spin. A quick burst of the suit jets realigned him facing the bomb.

  "This is fun," the bomb said with obvious pleasure. It was apparently enjoying itself immensely.

  "Now listen. Listen very carefully," said Doolittle, his voice dropping as if he were about to impart some information of vast significance. "Here's the one big question: "How do you know that the evidence your sensory apparatus reveals to you is correct?"

  Boiler took another glance at the destruction sequence status panel. It read 0003:01.1. Three hundred one point one, Three hundred meters. Anything between 250 and 350 meters, he could hit anything in that range, just give him a decent—

  There was an explosion in his skull and he nearly fell out of his seat.

  "The gun!" he shouted violently.

  "What gun . . . what?" Pinback was looking around wildly without knowing what he was looking for.

  Boiler pulled Pinback erect, shook him by the shoulders as he stared into the paralyzed sergeant's eyes.

  "The support pins on the bomb, the bolts that hold it to the grapple and failed to fire, I can shoot them out. Shoot them out and the bomb will stay there but we can move the ship!"

  "Boiler," said Pinback, staring right back at him, "you're out of your mind. The laser's not one of your favorite target rifles . . . it's not that accurate." Boiler pushed him away and started for the corridor.

  "We can stop the bomb. Stay out of my way."

  Pinback hurriedly moved to block the corporal's path. "Don't . . . don't try it, Boiler. You idiot, you—"

  Boiler started flailing at Pinback, trying to run from the bridge and shake the other man off him at the same time. Pinback followed, grabbing tenaciously at the big man.

  "Idiot yourself," he yelled back at Pinback. "Don't you see? I can shoot the support pins out of the bomb and we can save the ship."

  "Boiler . . you can't, Boiler. Don't do it." The corporal started up the ladder to the storage room holding the laser, Pinback clinging to his legs.

  "Get out of my way or I'll kick your teeth in," Boiler warned, jabbing backward at Pinback's face with his boots. Pinback gobbled at him and Boiler howled back.

  "Get out of my way . . . let go. I've gotta save the damn ship. I've gotta save you, fer crissake!"

  Pinback fell fr
ee, hurriedly got to his feet and followed Boiler up the ladder. In the upper corridor he took a dive and managed to tackle him cleanly. The two men rolled over and over, Boiler fighting to get his arms loose, Pinback hanging on and screaming warnings at him

  "Don't do it, Boiler! You can't use the laser like a toy pistol. And you're a bad shot. You'll hit the bomb, or you'll hit Doolittle. He'll save us if you don't kill him. You idiot, you're crazy!"

  "I'm crazy . . . you damn pansy fool, shooting the bomb won't hurt it even if I do miss! What do you think, the damn thing's full of gunpowder? And I won't hit Doolittle. Besides, what difference would that make? I'd still save the ship. I'd still save us."

  "But Doolittle's going to save us anyway," Pinback countered. "You can't do it, Boiler. You're a—"

  Boiler hit him with a neat right cross and Pinback tumbled off him.

  9

  IT WAS DIFFICULT fighting yourself, Doolittle thought rapidly. Everything inside him protested the insanity of what he was doing.

  Here he was, drifting in free space and arguing for his life and the lives of his companions with a goddamn machine. The real insanity was that the machine wouldn't listen, wouldn't take orders, persisted in arguing back. It was the stuff of nightmares.

  Circumstances dictated that he drop that line of thought. He had no time for personal observations. He had practically no time left for anything. Only time enough to be as cold and relentless in his logic as the bomb.

  He was playing the other side's game, and he couldn't afford a draw.

  "What I'm getting at, bomb," he continued, as calmly as possible, "is that the only experience available to you is your sensory data, and this data is merely a transcribed stream of electrical impulses that stimulate your computing-center circuitry."

  "In other words," the bomb suggested with evident relish, "you are saying that all I know, really know, about the outside world is relayed to me through a series of electronic synapses?"

  "Exactly." Doolittle tried to keep any excitement from showing in his voice. The bomb was following his lead.