Code Of The Lifemaker

by Hogan, James

  "It fits with the way they think," Massey agreed.

  Zambendorf walked slowly between the two tiers of bunks and turned when he

  reached the far wall. "So what does all this mean?" he asked. "What's behind it

  all? Have you any theories about that?"

  "Well, I don't know that it's anything especially new," Massey replied. "But the

  first step toward reducing a nation to colonial status in order to exploit it

  has always been to dehumanize its inhabitants in the eyes of your own people

  and—"

  The call tone from Zambendorf's personal communicator interrupted. "Excuse me,"

  he said, taking the unit from his pocket and activating it. The miniature screen

  showed the features of Otto Abaquaan, calling from the team's quarters. "Yes,

  Otto?" Zambendorf acknowledged. His choice of phrase indicated to Abaquaan that

  Zambendorf had company.

  "Have you got a moment?" Abaquaan asked.

  "Go ahead."

  "Um, do you know where Joe is? Need to talk to him."

  "I'm afraid not."

  "Got any idea where he went?"

  "Sorry."

  "Oh, hell. Too bad, huh? Send him back if you see him. We need to talk to him.

  Is that okay?"

  "I will if I see him."

  "Okay."

  Zambendorf frowned for a second. Abaquaan wasn't interested in locating Joe

  Fellburg. His utterances had been structured according to a magician's code in

  which the mood of each phrase—interrogative or indicative—along with its initial

  letter, conveyed an alphabetical character. What Zambendorf had read from it was

  CMLT URGNT, which he interpreted as "Camelot. Urgent." Abaquaan was telling him

  that something had come in over the line from Arthur, and it couldn't wait.

  Massey and Price were looking at each other suspiciously. They were magicians

  too.

  Zambendorf stared from one to the other and bit his lip uncertainly. Were Massey

  and he on the same side now? Now that Massey had taken Zambendorf into his

  confidence, did he owe it to Massey to do likewise? His instincts were to cement

  the alliance, but a lifetime's experience urged caution.

  And he saw that the same question was written across Massey's face. Their

  differences were trivial compared to the things they now knew they shared.

  Zambendorf had to give some tangible sign that he felt the same way. Zambendorf

  looked down at the screen of the communicator in his hand. "I'm with Gerry

  Massey and Vernon Price," he said. "A lot has happened that would make too long

  a story to go into now. But you can speak plainly, Otto. The team has just

  acquired two more members."

  The surprise on Abaquaan's face lasted for just a fraction of a second. He was

  used to adapting to new situations quickly without having to ask questions.

  "We've had a call from Arthur and Galileo," he said. "It's bad news—real bad

  news."

  Massey gasped disbelievingly. "Arthur—the Taloid? But how? Where did you—"

  "Oh, we also have a private communication line that you don't know about,"

  Zambendorf told him. He looked back at Abaquaan. "What's happened, Otto?"

  "Those fundamentalist fanatics out in the hills—the ones that Arthur's soldiers

  are always having trouble with," Abaquaan said.

  "The Druids. Yes, what about them?"

  "They wiped out a whole Genoese patrol and then massacred a larger force that

  was sent after them," Abaquaan said. "Putting it mildly, Arthur's pretty upset."

  Zambendorf looked puzzled. "That's terrible, Otto, and of course I sympathize .

  - . but why is it such serious news? How does it affect us?"

  "Because of how they did it," Abaquaan replied. "They did it with Terran

  weapons. Someone has started shipping Terran weapons down to Henry and the

  Paduans, and the Paduans are passing them on to the Druids to stir up trouble in

  Genoa. Arthur says he's had enough of promises and words. He wants something he

  can defend himself with. If we can't deliver, he'll take the deal that Giraud's

  bunch has been pushing."

  27

  THE FEATURELESS RED-BROWN BALL OF TITAN GREW LARGER AND flattened out into what

  looked like a solid desert surface from the twelve-man flyer Hornet skimming

  above the aerosol layer, where it had leveled out after its descent from orbit.

  Zambendorf, clad in a helmetless EV suit, was sitting in the rear cabin,

  brooding silently to himself over the latest events, while opposite him Vernon

  Price gazed spellbound through one of the side ports at the rainbow-banded orb

  of Saturn beyond Titan's rim, seemingly floating half-submerged in the immense

  plane of its ring system viewed almost edge-on.

  Sgt. Michael O'Flynn had reacted with a singular display of imperturbability and

  composure when Zambendorf asked for his advice on the best way to go about

  stealing a vehicle to get down to the surface. "Now, they're not exactly the

  kind of thing you'd expect people to just walk away from and leave lying around

  for anyone to help themselves to," O'Flynn had said. "And besides, even if you

  did get your hands on one, there's nothing you could do with it. A surface

  lander needs a minimum crew of four, all highly trained, and it couldn't take

  off without a preflight preparation routine by a regular ground team."

  "I'm not talking about a full-blown orbital shuttle, for God's sake," Zambendorf

  had replied. "But what about a medium-haul personnel flyer—one of the small

  ones? Couldn't you pull one of those out of service and list it as being

  withdrawn for maintenance or something?"

  "But those are just surface flyers. They don't make descents from orbit."

  "They could here, at a pinch," Zambendorf had insisted. "With Titan's low

  gravity you could use one as a miniature lander ... if you were to ignore

  certain sections of NASO flight regulations and allowed the International Space

  Transportation Regulatory Commission's safety margins for wing loading and

  thermal stress to slip a little."

  "Hmm . . . you seem to know what you're talking about, I see. Now, where would

  somebody like you have found out about things like that, I'm sitting here asking

  meself."

  "Never mind. The question is, can you do it, Mike?"

  "Well, maybe I can, and then again, maybe I can't ... But supposing for the

  moment that I could, it would have to be for the hardware only, you understand.

  I'm not in the headhunting business. You'd have to find your own pilot."

  "I think I can take care of that."

  O'Flynn had sounded surprised. "Oh, who . . . and with what qualifications?"

  "Former combat maneuver instructor with the Air Force Suborbital Bomb Wing; two

  years specializing in high-altitude attack and evasion tactics. Is that good

  enough?"

  "Begorrah, you're kidding! Someone on your team?"

  "Yes."

  "Let me see now ... it would have to be Joe, the big black fella. Is that who it

  is?"

  "No."

  "Who, then?"

  "Don't worry about it," Zambendorf replied, his eyes twinkling. "Anyway, you

  wouldn't believe me if I told you. You'd be surprised at some of the talent

  we've got between us in our little outfit."

  It had taken little imagination to see that supplying Terran weapons to the

 
inherently belligerent Paduans would completely destabilize the situation

  between Padua and its neighboring states, and before very much longer the more

  distant ones too. Other Taloid nations would seek similar weapons to secure

  themselves against the threat of Paduan aggression—as indeed Genoa desired to do

  already—and then others would feel threatened as those that hadn't reequipped

  their forces found themselves being intimidated by the ones that had. Eventually

  all the Taloid states would be forced to follow suit, and in the process they

  would be progressively reduced to a condition of vassal-dependency on Earth,

  which would thus be able to negotiate separately with each on terms of its own

  choosing. It was an old, familiar pattern, which earlier centuries on Earth had

  seen repeated many times over.

  Massey had composed a message summarizing the main points and had it transmitted

  to Conlon via his private NASO channel. Eight hours later a reply stated that

  Conlon had confronted some of the senior NASO officials with the allegations,

  but their version of the facts, as advised from GSEC's political liaison office

  in Washington, was very different. It said, in effect, that Padua was a peaceful

  nation whose leaders aspired toward Western democratic ideals, and that the

  limited aid being given by the mission had been requested by the Paduan

  authorities to combat incursions upon their territory from Genoa—an illegally

  imposed rebel regime—and to relieve Paduan religious minorities who were being

  persecuted within the Genoese borders. The decision to grant the request was

  seen as a goodwill gesture that would help establish cordial and cooperative

  future relationships. The situation back on Earth was still confused,

  apparently, and would take a long time to resolve itself, especially in view of

  the long turnaround of communications to Saturn. Zambendorf had not been

  prepared to wait. "We're not going to get any sense out of them for days," he

  had told Massey. "You'd better stay on the line here and keep in touch as things

  develop. I'm going down to Titan to talk to Arthur."

  "What do you think you're going to do, even if you manage to find some way of

  getting down there?" Massey had asked.

  "I have no idea, Gerry, but there's no way I'm going to sit up here with this

  kind of thing going on."

  Zambendorf's thoughts were interrupted by Clarissa Eidstadt's summons over the

  intercom from the forward compartment. "Karl, can you get up here a minute?

  We've got problems."

  Price turned away from the port and watched uneasily as Zambendorf stood up,

  stepped carefully round the team's recently completed second transmogrifier box,

  and moved forward to the open doorway at the front of the cabin. Clarissa

  glanced back at him from the captain's seat, while in the copilot's position

  Otto Abaquaan was flipping switches frantically in front of an array of data

  displays and readouts that were obviously unfamiliar to him. "It's no good,"

  Abaquaan said, shaking his head. "I can't get the midrange to scale, and the

  monitor recall has aborted. This isn't making any sense."

  "What's wrong?" Zambendorf asked.

  "We're losing it," Clarissa said. There was a problem in fixing the flyer's

  position from the electronic navigation grid transmitted from the satellites

  that the Orion had deployed shortly after arriving at Titan. Clarissa had warned

  that it might happen without an experienced copilot-navigator to calibrate the

  on-board reference system to the shifting satellite pattern as the flyer

  descended. "We know we're somewhere near where we need to go down through the

  muck, but we don't have a fine-tuned fix."

  "No go?" Zambendorf asked, looking at Abaquaan.

  Abaquaan spread his hands. "Sorry, Karl. I thought I had it down okay when we

  went through the routine up on the ship, but I guess it needs more practice."

  "It was worth a try," Clarissa murmured.

  "It's not your fault there wasn't more time, Otto," Zambendorf said and turned

  to Clarissa. "How serious is it? Can you take care of it?"

  "Sure, but not while I'm flying this thing too. The easiest thing to do would be

  to put down someplace and reinitiate the full sequence on the ground, without

  the added complication of having to compensate for being on a moving platform.

  Once we're locked into the grid at a fixed point, I can update the inertial

  system so that it will supply the drift onsets automatically."

  "How long would you need?"

  "To get everything right and double-checked, aw . . . say, an hour. But we need

  to land now, while we still know we're roughly in the right place. If we leave

  it much longer, we could wind up coming through the blanket anywhere over Titan,

  in the dark, without a ground datum. Then the way to Genoa would be anybody's

  guess."

  "You'd better take us down, then," Zambendorf agreed.

  "Okay. Go back, sit down, and buckle up."

  Zambendorf ducked back into the rear cabin and lowered himself into the seat

  opposite Price. "We're going down."

  "Trouble?"

  "An unscheduled stop to synch the on-board nav system with the satellite grid."

  The red-brown desert outside began rising to meet them, and as it came nearer it

  was transformed slowly from smooth, rounded hummocks into jagged peaks of muddy

  cloud, bottomless canyons of darkness falling away between. Cliffs and

  precipices of vapor reared up ahead, then were towering above on either side and

  flashing past at greater and greater speed . . . and then the stars vanished

  from the overhead ports as the flyer plunged into darkness. Zambendorf felt the

  seat pressing against him as Clarissa flattened the craft against Titan's

  thickening atmosphere to shed velocity. The structure vibrated and pounded in

  protest as the stresses climbed above the limits it had been built to endure.

  "Wing sensors reading nine-twelve, to ten-three, with orange-two on six,"

  Abaquaan's voice shouted through the open door up front. "Belly and underwing

  skin temperatures rising fast."

  "Forward retros, five degrees out and down sixteen both, ramp to three thousand

  and sustain," Clarissa snapped. Zambendorf was thrown forward against his seat

  harness; loud juddering noises came from somewhere under the floor. Across the

  aisle, Price was tightlipped and saying nothing.

  "In at ten, ramp factor five," Abaquaan's voice reported. "Coming up to eleven

  over glide."

  "Gimme plus-three on dive—easy."

  "Dive brake increased three degrees."

  "Are we going to make it?" Zambendorf called out.

  "What a question!" Clarissa shouted back. "You have to learn not to put up with

  any nonsense from these machines. If those guys up there can get a flying

  eggbeater all the way to Titan, I can sure-as-hell get this thing the rest of

  the way to the surface."

  Then they were losing height rapidly again, and the flyer banked as Clarissa put

  it into a long, sustained turn that would slow them down without altering their

  general position. They were now well below the aerosol layer, and the view

  outside was black in every direction, with a few ghostly streaks of methane

  cloud showing faint white
below. "See if you can get a ground radar profile,"

  Clarissa said to Abaquaan. "I don't want to go too low in that mess on visual.

  Try and find us somewhere high and flat—a plateau or something." Abaquaan

  fiddled with a console to one side of him, muttered a few profanities beneath

  his breath, and tried something else. "Set the HG centerline to blue zero,"

  Clarissa said, glancing sideways. "Then use the coarse control to lock the

  scanbase and select your profile analysis from the menu on S-three."

  "What? ... Oh yeah, okay . . . Got it." Abaquaan took in the information that

  appeared on one of his screens. "Looks like we're at altitude thirty-five

  thousand meters, ground speed three-zero-eight-five kilometers per hour,

  reducing at twenty-eight meters per second. Mountainous terrain with highest

  peaks approximately eight hundred meters above mean surface level."

  "Any flat summits?" Clarissa asked.

  "The higher ones all seem pretty grim. There are some below five hundred that

  look better."

  "Gimme a slave of your scope on screen two."

  "You've got it."

  The flyer's circling became tighter as it continued to slow and lose altitude.

  "Okay, prime a couple of seventy-FV-three flares and set them for

  proximity-triggered airbursts at fifty meters. Then activate the underbelly

  searchlight and give me a vertical optical scan on screen one," Clarissa

  instructed after studying the display for a few seconds. "I'm going to have a

  look at that big flat-topped guy between the two thinner ones. See which one I

  mean?"

  "I see it," Abaquaan said, looking at his own screen. "Flares primed for

  proximity bursts at five-zero and five-zero meters; belly light activated;

  vertical optical scan selected and routed to pilot's screen one."

  The flyer slowed to hover motionless in the gloom, and a few seconds later two

  brilliant white lights blossomed a short distance below it revealing the squat

  hilltop that its radar fingers had probed invisibly. The summit was reasonably

  smooth, free of cracks and fissures, and uncluttered by boulders or loose

  debris. The searchlight came on to pick out a landing spot and hold it in steady

  illumination, and then the flyer began to sink slowly downward once more to

  complete the final few hundred feet of its descent.

  "What manner of omen is this?" Groork whispered fearfully to himself as he sat