Flight of the Maita Supercollection 3: Solving Galactic Problems Collector's Edition

by Moulton, CD

  The time limit was coming up on Thing's game and the betting at the card table was getting very intense. Z was down a hundred thousand credits and was then being encouraged to try to get it all back. He said he had to discuss something with Tec. He went with Thing and the floater onto the little patio.

  "They're set up for the big one. I'll tell them you said I could bet anything I wanted. I can't figure what they plan to do," Z said. "I HAVE to be a step ahead of them!"

  [ Take the card on the floater tray. It is controlled by the floater. I think I know pretty much what they intend to try. They've practiced it a lot so far, and it has worked every time. They give you a really great hand, except for one card. This one will become that card and they'll keep coming back for you to call because each time you stay in they can raise the bet. If you wonder what the signal was when you first took your seat, Cloffit has a concealed computer calling her plays. She can't believe I'm beating the machine, but when she tried it on her own I beat her even worse. I'm arming the floater. It could get nasty in there when they realize we've beaten them for so much. ]

  They went back inside, where Z put an unlimited chip voucher on the table. "It's just one night with a time limit, so I don't have any limit on me. This'll give me a chance to get even!

  "Let's see, it's Narmel's deal, isn't it? We have to hurry. I could see the dawnlight starting!"

  "Let's make this an unlimited hand," Tenn agreed. "I'll have to get home. We can let this be the last one."

  They all agreed. Narmel announced, "I'll give With here a chance to get even quick! I'll open for ... five hundred thousand?"

  Z gulped audibly, but said, "I'm in!"

  They all put their chits in the pile and got the deal. Z had a straight royal suite run in stars – except for a deuce of moons. They each added a hundred thousand to the pile except Gar Waht Be, who shook his head and dropped out. He went to stand behind Cloffit to watch the end of the game there and was heard to gasp all the way to the table. Everyone looked at him and Z quickly substituted the card from Thing. He discarded the deuce and drew a six of asteroids. Narmel grinned and said he had this one beat, but good! He doubled the pot.

  Tenn dropped out, Marmum stayed in and drew two. Z stayed and raised a million. He was almost jumping for joy as Narmel grinned and saw the raise – and raised another million! Marmum dropped out and looked like he was going to cry when he looked at the pile.

  Z saw the raise, hesitated, then raised ten thousand, discarded the six, and pretended to take another card. His eyes popped open and he laid back in his chair gasping. Narmel matched the pot and called.

  "Straight royal suite – in stars!" Z screamed. "The unbeatable hand! I got the unbeatable hand! I won! I won! I won! I got a royal straight suite in stars! I won!"

  Narmel grabbed his hand and stared at the cards as Thing came over to sit almost on the table to see for itself. It let the floater take the ten of stars from the discard pile to substitute the ten of planets.

  "But I discarded the ten!" Gar cried. "How could you get a straight royal suite in stars?"

  Narmel grabbed at the discard pile and gave Z a very hard look as he turned over all the cards on the table. Z had the only ten of stars on the table.

  "What are you doing?!" Z yelled. "The card's right here! You dealt it, yourself! It was the first card I got! There's no way Gar discarded any ten of stars this hand! No way! I had it from the first! The last card I drew was the nova of stars! That's why I kept playing out the hand. I could win from either end unless Narmel had a royal straight suite in something else. Stars takes ties!"

  He threw his hand on the edge of the floater, which quickly substituted the real ten for the phony. Narmel grabbed the cards, but the real one was back. He studied each card carefully.

  "I want to know what's going on here!" Z snapped indignantly. "Something smells very rotten! You dealt them, yourself! How can you doubt I have the hand? It's right in front of you all the time. You have it in your own hand right now. What's going on here?"

  [ It would appear that you were dealt the wrong hand. I can't understand Narmel's attitude unless he knew exactly that he dealt you something else – in which case you have been playing with a crook, and not a very good one. He screwed up his own deal! ]

  "Now, now!" Marmum said, sweating profusely. "Let's not make a lot of silly accusations! Narmel thought he had a stronger hand than he did. He lost a lot of money. It happens, doesn't it, Narmel? Be a good sport. You can't win all the time!"

  "I don't know how you did that, but I'll get even!" Narmel spat and walked out.

  [ Great exploding galaxies! That was as much as an admittance he was cheating! Marmum, I promise you absolutely that With would never institute cheating under any circumstances. If a game is not fair, I give you my personal guarantee it wasn't With who made it that way! You can see from the fact I took all but twenty seven points in the Strategy game I can earn all the money we could ever want. There would be no reason for With to cheat. Cloffit is a very good player, but she plays by the same logic as a machine. She could do very well playing against a machine. She would always play to even points or very close, but I play to position, so I am always two to three moves ahead of her. She should practice with a living instructor. That's what happens when you let a machine teach you. You play the same way the machine does. It is an easy logical sequence to counter. ]

  "I play like a machine?" Cloffit asked. "How can you say that? I don't think so at all!"

  [ Evidently, you have been using a machine to practice. You have let the logic of the machine dominate your play for so long you now play the way a machine would. I thought you saw that at one point, because you played secondary strategic positioning for a few moves. I was beginning to worry, because that would have brought you up very fast after another thirty or forty moves, but your habit took you right back to the strategy the machine plays. Every move you made except those few was the exact move a machine would have made. A machine plays to a fixed formula, so can be defeated by playing to the same formula and substituting the variables. ]

  "I could have won if I'd kept playing secondary?" she asked.

  Marmum was getting more and more agitated as she talked about Strategy when he had just lost literally millions at cards.

  [ You would have at least given me a hard fight for the money. What do we do about Narmel's cheating at the cards, With? Do you think the loss of the money will teach him his lesson or should we now expose him to others? You know how mammals think. Has he learned that one little slip and all his cheating will only cost him what he wouldn't have bet if he were honest? ]

  "Oh, he'll never learn anything," Z answered. "It seems most dishonest people are born to be dishonest. They live their entire lives dishonestly and can't change the pattern anymore than the machine thing in your games can change. I'll give all the winnings to Hospital. We'll let Marmum handle the rest of it. I'm sure he'll arrange that others aren't taken in by the cheating.

  "Let's deposit this voucher and head back to Port City.

  "I'm sorry this happened at your home, Marmum. I know you're embarrassed that you were used, but I know it's not your fault. You have no duty to screen everyone who wants a friendly game of cards in your house! Believe me, we don't blame you for anything anyone else did."

  [ That's true. We blame only Narmel for those things only Narmel did. I will donate what I have won with the game to the school system here. I hear it is the best in the empire for a normal school. I know how expensive it must be to offer such excellence to everyone. Perhaps we will someday meet again. ]

  They made their exits gracefully and went on Thing's floater back into town. Z wasn't about to trust Marmum's private car and driver.

  [ Do you have any idea how damned sanctimonious you can sound? ] Thing asked, on the way back.

  "What do you mean?"

  [ Poor dishonest Narmel and I'll give the money to charity and no one blames you because you're the crook who set this whole scheme u
p! That's what I mean! You can be as disgusting as they are! ]

  "Really? And I’ll give mine to the poor underfunded schools isn't as sanctimonious?" Z replied sarcastically. "Oh, we must do this again!"

  They teased each other all the way, put the monies exactly where they told Marmum they would ("Might as well rub a little salt in the wound."), and went back to the shuttle to Port City. They had a good breakfast aboard, then headed to the hotel. The room was as they left it this time. They slept awhile, had a late lunch, then went for a stroll around the port to see the sights. They used the fastcom at the facility to talk with Maita, who reported Tab and TR were in a cave on some primitive planet and there was no communication. T6 was coming along well – if it could be found. It had taken off in TTH14 and disappeared. Maita wasn't the slightest bit worried, so they wouldn't worry either. TTH14 was very tricky and T6 knew how to locate things even far from fastcom relay range. T6 would return to Sentah as soon as it found its way back.

  [ I think we'll take a standard flight to Tltle. You can have records ready for us there. I think there's a good chance that's the base for our crooks. ]

  "I agree, though I hadn't thought about it. Narmel was supposedly from Tltle, although the other vacation worlds were mentioned. The whole thing might work from there. We'll go stir up some problems for dear Narmel right there at home!"

  They communicated for awhile longer, tuned out after agreeing they'd contact Maita to tell T6 where to come, then went to the reservations desk and booked passage to Tltle. They went back to the hotel to get their baggage and gear for the flight, which would leave in four hours, and to clean up. They would arrive on Tltle on the following "day" in the early afternoon.

  Ship days were Maitan Empire Galactic Standard, of course. They would be on Tltle in nineteen hours from takeoff.

  They packed their belongings, checked out, made reservations with the Dream Hotel on Tltle, and headed for the port.

  The assassination attempt came while they were waiting for their flight.

  Deadly Adversary

  Thing's floater hovered overhead with the rim iris expanded to carry the luggage, such as it was, and had the mass shield on low to keep the things from falling off.

  While floaters were rare and far too expensive for most people there were other airborne devices for people to use, so there were perhaps twenty people in the terminal above the ground level traffic. Z was under and to one side of Thing as they approached the check-in.

  The problem the Zurn who shot at them had was that Z knew the methods of organized crime lords on Terra a few decades before he was taken from Earth by the Pweetoos and, though Thing thought he was being melodramatic and extreme, it went along with him in programming the floater, instructing it to detect the few who carried energy weapons by the emanations of their power packs and was watching them all through its sensors. When it suddenly threw full shields for Thing and knocked Z to the floor before diving full at the Zurn it took them all completely by surprise.

  Thing was a very fast thinker, and the shields weren't anti-vibratory so, though it could see nothing through the shield, it announced through the speakers as the Zurn snapped a shot at where Z had been standing, [ Do not move! If you try that again, I will burn you to a cinder where you stand! ]

  Z had rolled to the side as he hit the floor. The shot hit a Varstern woman full and hit a Feach woman close to her on the hip.

  Z sprang to his feet and charged head first into the powerful reptilian being, knocking it off its feet. He brought his booted heel hard onto the hand holding the heat laser and scooped up the gun as it skittered away.

  "Control!" Z said loudly to the floater. "Call security! Call medical! Damage report!"

  The floater's call system replied as it dropped the shield, "Security and medical paged and en route. No damage to this unit or to its passenger or property. The Varstern female has no life signs. The Feach female has sustained heat damage of serious, but not fatal, degree. Immediately inject Varstern female with solution R four nine twenty one J, and cover area of burn with salve S forty four.

  "Here is medical and security. VWPA contacted and en route. Identification of progenitor underway. Apply respiratory aid A twenty one hyphen R to Varsten female immediately and continue until med-emergency team arrives.

  "This unit will keep progenitor under close guard until proper authorities are on hand."

  Thing swung from the floater with a dermal injector gun, which it pressed against the woman's shoulder. It handed the tube of salve to the medical officer who ran up, as Z said the floater had already prescribed.

  The floater instructed the officer how to revive the woman on instructions from the medical computers on the floater. A Feach (Which Z had described as "a nine foot tyrannosaurus rex" at times) and a Vendan (Which Z had described as looking like a Wooky from the classic Earth movie, "Star Wars") had the Zurn held between them. The Zurn was a powerful being, but was certainly no match for the Feach and was slightly more than a match for the Vendan. He had better sense than to resist. The mood of his captors was such he could be literally torn in half if he gave them any excuse whatever, and he knew it.

  The peoples of the empire are almost totally non-violent. That doesn't mean they aren't CAPABLE of great violence when aroused by such an act. Had the Zurn shot directly at Z and harmed no one else they would probably have identified the Zurn for the port security police and not done anything else. The fact the Zurn was so uncaring he would allow the shot to hit an innocent bystander aroused everyone around to a seething fury. Such things simply weren't done among civilized beings.

  The only thing that saved the Varstern woman's life was the fact the floater carried the medical supplies and was programmed in the proper methods of their use for most of the empire's beings. In less than three more minutes the death would've been irreversible.

  This was a major break, in a way. The Varstern woman had been clinically dead, so the Zurn would be convicted of wanton murder. The ability of modern medical arts to return such cases to life didn't alter the fact he killed the woman in a wantonly careless manner. In the eyes of the law, she was dead. The Zurn killed her. The Zurn acted irresponsibly and without proper care or concern for others. This was wanton murder. It was a capital crime. It ended right there. The fact that forty seven seconds later the Varstern woman was returned to life didn't alter the fact she had been dead or that the Zurn had been the agent of her death.

  A capital crime perpetrator could be put on the probe without consent. This was a break of major proportions if he knew anything, though Z seriously doubted he did. That wasn't the way these organized crime figures worked three hundred years ago on Earth and it wasn't likely it was the way they worked here.

  Thing went to the counter with the luggage and asked that they hold it there. They would be delayed from this flight, but would transfer to the next. The clerk robot who witnessed the preceding events wouldn't need further proof the delay was unavoidable from their personal standpoints. Their seats could be given to a standby passenger.

  The Feach kept its grip on the Zurn until they placed him in the seat of the accused. He then gave first testimony to the judge machine and left. The next witness was Thing's floater by request of the other witnesses. A machine is an incorruptible witness. All that was necessary was that the others confirmed what it said. They must testify the machine's testimony wasn't changed from their angle of observation, nor had they seen, heard, smelled, tasted, nor felt anything that would change the testimony.

  The floater communicated to the judge that they were agents of the emperor and requested a judgement of death, which could be changed if the probe showed there were mitigating circumstances.

  That was done in full secrecy, of course. They didn't want any bystanders to know they were anything other than two regular if extremely wealthy tourists who were simply on vacation.

  The judge brought a sentence of death within the hour, then extended the probe.

  Only
Thing who was aboard Z's shoulder at the time and Z noted the floater was still attached to the judge when the probe was placed. When the probe was removed the judge announced the probe showed the Zurn had been acting partly on the volition of another person or persons, thus the sentence was commuted to exile on the planet Zurn, where rehabilitative methods could be attempted. If no progress was shown by probe in one MGS year, the sentence was to be carried out as originally stated.

  The floater had recorded the entire results of the probe – which didn't violate any of Maita's rules, because the floater was a machine. The rights of privacy didn't apply to use of machines only.

  The violation (Maita's rules were constantly violated by the crew whenever the question was the rights of one individual against the safety of a large number of other people) would come when Z and Thing studied those recordings.

  There was one hour and ten minutes before the next flight to Tltle, so Thing and Z went to the fastcom to use the unbreachable channel to Maita to report what happened to that point, and the floater reported the full probe results, which weren't as much as they had hoped. The Zurn hadn't known who the bosses were, but the one who gave the orders to assassinate Z and Thing was shown to be the Cordth, Keal. She would be sentenced for her part, but her part wasn't capital, so she wouldn't be placed on the probe.

  Z called Marmum to report what had happened and to act totally confused as to why she would do any such thing. Marmum acted as though he was thoroughly shocked about the whole thing and said it must have something to do with Narmel's threats to get even with them for winning. He said he couldn't believe anyone would go to such extremes, that someone who, like Narmel, had vast sums of money, would actually cheat at cards was beyond comprehension! It was all so confusing! To even carry that to an attempt on the life of someone because they won at cards was totally beyond his comprehension! It was so confusing!

  Z sympathized with Marmum, saying he knew how embarrassing it must be that someone who had actually shared his home with him could be so dishonest – but one couldn't protect himself from such. You would think such a wealthy and successful businessman would have to be honest to stay in business! No businessman in the empire would ever trust him again if his complicity was to become known!