The three of them began to run at top speed through the smoke.
Wilma Deering brought her sleek Starfighter to the Draconia, jockeying it through alleyways and openings hardly wider than its metal wingspan. There was only one way that that miraculous landing could have been made. No computer-controlled ship could have done it, no preprogrammed procedure could have brought the Starfighter to its perilous berth aboard Draconia. The only way it could have been done was the way it had been done: Wilma Deering had switched off her Auto-Flite computer and piloted the Starfighter to its landing, flying, to use an old aviator’s expression, by the seat of her pants.
The instant that the craft ground to a halt, Wilma had thrown open its hatch and was calling to the others. “Twiki! Theopolis!”
The little drone scuttered to the side of the Starfighter and scrambled to safety inside the cockpit.
Buck Rogers stood beside the craft, looking straight into Wilma Deering’s eyes. Neither of them spoke for a long moment, then Wilma, with a sob, blurted, “Buck, I was wrong. I was all wrong about you.”
“Who’s complaining,” Rogers answered. “We can talk about it later.” He put one hand on the Starfighter’s wing and vaulted into the spacecraft behind its beautiful pilot.
“Hang on!” Wilma urged. She gunned the engine and the Starfighter surged from the launch deck of the giant hulk. The fighter craft zoomed away from the Draconia, accelerating as it moved. Suddenly the sky behind the Starfighter was filled with a flash of terrible light, and a shockwave crashed into the Starfighter, sending it tumbling through space before Wilma could manage to regain control and stabilize the orbit of the craft.
Over one shoulder she could see the Draconia. Like a single huge bomb the size of a middle-sized city it was erupting in a chain reaction of smoke and flame and flashes of explosives. Before Wilma’s very eyes—and those of all the pilots of the Intercept Squadron as well as Buck, Theopolis and Twiki—the Draconia disintegrated into a mass of hot, smouldering rubble.
“There goes the Trojan horse of space,” Buck Rogers muttered.
“This is Blue Leader,” Wilma snapped across the radio communicator. “Target utterly destroyed. Intercept Squadron, return to Earth base at once.”
Buck slid his arm gently around Wilma’s shoulders, feeling for the moment like a teenage boy headed home from a date with his favorite sweetheart.
Wilma smiled, pressed her cheek for a moment against Buck Rogers’ shoulder, then sat upright again and concentrated on swinging her Star-fighter back into its place at the point of the squadron.
The formation of sleek spacecraft arrowed downward to the Earth, headed for a heroes’ welcome by Dr. Huer and the rest of the Earth Directorate.
EPILOGUE
The festivities had ended, the celebration was over. Earth returned to the business at hand: the rebuilding of its wrecked civilization, the restoration of its ruined ecology, the reclamation of lands and seas poisoned by centuries of greedy exploitation and decades of deadly war.
Within the Inner City the Council of Computers was meeting in full, formal session within the Palace of Mirrors. The Draconian throne had been removed from its place on the dais of honor and broken up for firewood and silver and gold and precious gems. In its place there was a circle of benches, each bearing a crimson pillow, each pillow bearing the shiny-surfaced box of a computer-brain, each brain ceremoniously flashing its array of colored lights.
Buck, Wilma, and Dr. Huer clustered on the scroll-bench, while the glistening hall was virtually filled with diplomats and ordinary citizens wearing their most splendid outfits. The drone Twiki, his bearings replaced and gaskets refurbished after the astounding—and nearly suicidal-exertion of saving Buck Rogers, trotted ceremoniously up to Dr. Huer. As usual, the quad was carrying Dr. Theopolis carefully around his neck.
“Dr. Theopolis will state the charges,” Huer intoned ceremoniously.
“When we were in the communications center aboard the Draconia,” Theopolis intoned smoothly, “we discovered a direct tie-line. It ran from the Draconian command post to a direct radio-link to the traitor who was smuggling out our secret Starfighter evasion tactic tapes to the pirates. The pirates whom we now realize were actually the Draconians themselves!
“This traitor was also highly instrumental in pushing through the infamous false treaty with Draconia, that came within a hair’s breadth of costing earth her precious freedom and delivering her into Draconian vassalage under the iron heel of Kane and the Princess Ardala.”
Dr. Huer considered the terrible charges long and seriously. At last he asked, “Is the traitor present in this assembly?”
Theopolis said, “He is, sir.”
“Please point him out, Dr. Theopolis,” Huer requested.
Moving with ceremonial deliberation—and perhaps still feeling the after-effects of his near destruction aboard the dying enemy starship—Twiki crossed to the ring of cushioned computer-brains.
“Members of the Council,” Theopolis intoned solemnly, “I am saddened to say, it was one of our own kind. Yes, one of us who have been entrusted with the wellbeing of the Inner City and all of earth and her peoples. A computer was programmed by the treacherous Kane before he defected from Earth to serve the Princess Ardala and the Draconian Realm.
“One of us, my colleagues, was programmed to appear normal—but to oppose our true best interests and to give away our most vital secrets.”
Twiki raised a gleaming metallic arm and pointed at one of the computer brains.
“The traitor,” Theopolis announced solemnly, “is none other than my own dear colleague, Dr. Apol.”
A gasp went up throughout the hall.
When order was restored, Dr. Huer intoned ceremoniously, “The Council will pronounce sentence upon the traitor.”
Drone-pages resembling Twiki advanced from behind each of the computer-brains and turned their cushions so they were all facing toward the guilty Dr. Apol.
“Now, let’s not be hasty,” Apol stammered. “I had no choice in this, you know. My actions were imposed on me. That nasty Kane twisted my circuits so that I thought I was doing right when I was doing wrong. He corrupted my wiring, altered my perceptions, decoded my programming, falsified my memory bank.”
His voice slowed down as the other computers glared at him. Their flashing lights seemed to radiate a force that was slowly sapping Apol’s energy and his will to continue.
“Comrades,” Apol resumed, “I am one of you. I am a fellow computer. What do we care about these puny humans? Let them have their treaties and their wars. We are the heirs of intelligence.”
The others increased the intensity of their radiations. Apol’s voice slowed, slurred, faltered. “Fellow computers. Brothers. Have mercy on your own kind. Your own kind. Own kind. Kind. Kind. Kind.”
He continued repeating the final word like an idiot, slowly growing slower and more slurred in his speech. He seemed to gather his last powers for a final appeal. “I’ll make it up to you. Please. I didn’t mean. I’m coming. I’m…” The voice groaned to a stop. A puff of black smoke rose from Apol’s chassis. A drone lifted the charred remnants and dropped them in a bucket, then scuttered out of sight carrying them with him.
There was silence in the hall, then Dr. Huer rose and said, “It is over. Justice is done. The traitor is destroyed.”
He glanced around the splendid assemblage beneath. “And now, it is my proud honor to proclaim the hero of the hour. Captain Buck Rogers—please step forward.”
Although Buck alone had been summoned by Dr. Huer, he took Wilma’s hand with one of his, Twiki’s with the other. Together they all stepped forward, Dr. Theopolis’ lights flashing from his place on Twiki’s chest.
“Tell us what reward you wish,” Huer said to Buck. “Name it and you shall have it.”
“I have it already,” Buck replied, turning to clasp Wilma Deering to him.
“Then let the ball begin,” Dr. Huer called.
A hidden orches
tra struck up the strains of an ancient jazz melody. The elite corps of the Inner City began to receive lessons in ancient boogie dancing from Buck Rogers and Wilma Deering, as the grandest orchestra of the year 2491 belted out the raucous notes of “Chicago, Chicago, that toddlin town!”
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