The sensation was still very unpleasant, but this time there were no hallucinations and only relief that they were out of there.
“You handled that right well, Chief,” Raven commented.
“Perhaps. Perhaps I’m handling this on gut instinct, Crow. Instinct and educated hunches. But they’ll be a time bomb once aboard and you know it. I want no quarter given. The slightest wrong move and, well, they are expendable.”
“No!” China said sharply. “Use your head, Hawks. We need them—but on our side. That man has played whatever games he wanted with people at his mercy using mindprinters and transmuters. We have transmuters and when we are finished cannibalizing the old ship we will have a mindprinter.”
“But that one’s too limited to be of real use,” he pointed out.
“Perhaps, but I will wager that Clayben had that ship of his outfitted as a fully equipped fast escape ship from the planning stages on. The fact that all data from the Melchior master computers was automatically transmitted to it in encoded form shows that. I’ll wager that aboard that thing he has a small transmuter and a state-of-the-art mindprinter. Possibly even a psychogenetics minilab. That ship, I will wager, is a one—or two—person Melchior in miniature. By the time Star Eagle’s maintenance robots and probes get through with it, I think we’ll be able to do to the doctor whatever we wish—before he does it to us.”
3. AN ISLAND IN THE WILDERNESS
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 transmitter 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 volcanism. 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 over exposed. 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.”
Pirates of the Thunder Page 8
