The Stellar Death Plan (Masters of Space Book 1)

by Robert E. Vardeman

  Cameron made a dismissing gesture with his hand. “An oversight, I am sure. The bureaucratic nightmare on GT 4 will drown us all in trivia and misplaced orders one day.”

  “You are here under my command?”

  A slight sneer rippled along Cameron’s lips. “But of course! How can it be any other way? You, after all, are a director and I am only a lowly paid employee.”

  “How did you circumvent the alarm system?”

  “My knowledge is extensive when it comes to robot devices. The alarm system can be thought of as disembodied sensors for a robot. I merely approached it in that fashion and, not wanting to disturb you while you were so hard at work, entered and waited to be noticed.”

  Humbolt reached out tentatively for the stun rod. Cameron made no move to prevent it. Humbolt almost jerked it back across the desk. Cameron paid no attention to the furtive movement. Humbolt felt as if the assassin had dismissed him completely as a threat; primping and smoothing his costume ranked higher.

  “Why are you here?”

  Cameron looked up, long eyelashes almost fluttering. The glint of sunlight coming through a skylight caught an emerald mounted in a front tooth and reflected away, almost blinding Humbolt.

  “You must learn to be more diplomatic in your queries,” Cameron chided. “It seldom pays to rush forward without knowing the exact nature of the terrain.”

  “I have work to do. Why did Villalobos send you to Deepdig?”

  “Dr. Villalobos is my immediate superior,” Cameron said, “but she did not send me. Chairman Fremont did.”

  Humbolt forced himself to stay silent. Anything he said now would be wrong. He couldn’t show weakness, indecision, any hint of vacillation. If Fremont distrusted him and sent a watchdog to report the slightest mistake, it might be necessary to arrange an accident for the spy. How he would do that conveniently escaped Humbolt at the moment. Cameron’s reputation hardly seemed credible, but Humbolt faced him and sensed more than the fop in him.

  Without realizing he did so, Humbolt rubbed his injured wrist.

  “Come along, Mr. Humbolt. I have a small demonstration prepared just for your benefit.” The way Cameron spoke turned the request into a knife-edged order.

  “I have work to do. Kinsolving is a problem that must be — ”

  “Supervisor Kinsolving is my problem now, Mr. Humbolt. Chairman Fremont has decided that the psychological profile on the man indicates that we lavish attention on him exceeding that of which you are capable.”

  Humbolt felt the storm clouds of anger mounting.

  “It has been deemed best that you not dirty your hands with such minor matters. Allow me to do my task, then leave. Keeping the Lorr pacified and Deepdig open to IM exploitation is paramount. The Plan must be served.”

  “The Plan will be served,” Humbolt said bitterly. Cameron stood and walked on silent feet to the door. Humbolt didn’t see how the man did it but the door slid back without Cameron touching the opener. Humbolt tucked the stun rod into its holster and hurried after Cameron. The assassin walked with a deceptively easy step, his long legs covering more ground than Humbolt could comfortably match without almost doubling his own stride.

  “Where are we going?” Humbolt still had a mental picture of Fremont raging against Humbolt and how the Lorr had taken control of the situation — and Fremont ordering the elimination of those he considered responsible.

  “Not far. There. See the Bizzie?”

  Humbolt nodded.

  “Don’t worry. The agent-general won’t miss this one. It is a … derelict.”

  The alien hunkered down, glaring at them with those haunting, pupilless eyes. Fingers like tentacles wove intricate patterns Humbolt interpreted as obscene gestures.

  Cameron barked something in the Lorr tongue that made the Bizarre jump to his feet and run like the wind.

  “The study of Bizzie languages has been a minor hobby for some time,” Cameron explained. “It is always proper to study your enemy, to learn all you can of him before destroying him.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Robots,” Cameron went on, paying no attention to Humbolt. “Robots are not a hobby with me. They are my life. They can achieve perfection in their limited universe. It is that perfection which draws me the most strongly. For instance, the Bizzie has been promised his life if he can escape.”

  “You can’t kill him!” protested Humbolt. “If the agent-general learns about this — ”

  “The Lorr will never find this one. See how he dodges and runs.” Cameron’s voice became cold and tinted with a hatred that made Humbolt take an involuntary step away. “Those boneless legs will soon cease their rush away. No human could match the Bizzie’s speed or endurance. But my friend is not human.”

  A soft hum filled the air. Humbolt spun and saw a small robot floating on a repulsor field a meter to his left. Small ceramic plates turned on mobile bases and a whip antenna fluttered behind the tubular body like a dog’s tail.

  “Surface acoustic wave sensors,” said Cameron. “Those plates. They pick up the Bizzie’s scent a thousand times better than the keenest bloodhound. Even without the other sensing devices — mostly of my own design — the SAWS could follow a single Bizzie — or human — through the most crowded city on the most crowded planet.”

  “And?” prompted Humbolt, fascinated in spite of himself. Cameron silently handed over a pair of goggles. Humbolt donned them and blinked at the unexpected view. Focusing at the end of his nose gave the countryside as seen by the robot. Focusing farther gave him normal vision. A sudden rush staggered him.

  “It requires practice,” Cameron said, mocking him. “Watch carefully.”

  Humbolt brought his eyes in close and saw everything that the robot hunter did. In less than a minute it had weaved in and out of rocks and scrubby trees and gone across a stream to find the alien. The Lorr died horribly within five seconds of the robotic attack.

  Cameron removed the goggles from Humbolt’s head and tucked them away in the voluminous folds of his blouse. “Remarkable, isn’t it?”

  “What’s the purpose of showing me this?”

  Surprise crossed Cameron’s face. “Why, I thought you would enjoy seeing a Bizzie destroyed. One less for the Plan.”

  “That’s all?”

  Cameron laughed. “That’s all. Now I must attend to business. Chairman Fremont has requested my immediate presence back on GT 4 — bringing back the sad news that Supervisor Kinsolving has died an accidental death.”

  Cameron said nothing more. He left in a haze of pastel silks and flashing black-clad legs. Humbolt watched until the killer vanished in the serene countryside. Humbolt pitied Barton Kinsolving. The man was a good engineer and might have been an asset for IM if his profile had only shown a greater acceptance for the divine destiny of mankind.

  The Plan would be served. No matter who died, the Plan would be served.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Everywhere he turned, Barton Kinsolving ran into a Lorr agent-captain. They insisted on prying into every nook and cranny of the mine until no work was being done. Kinsolving resigned himself to letting the aliens do their job. He didn’t like it, but he knew that the sooner they satisfied themselves, the sooner they would leave.

  Kinsolving went into his office and sank into the wheezing pneumatic chair. He moved around uncomfortably, aware that the chair failed to match his contours in several places. Like everything else, the chair refused to do its job properly. He sighed and tried to get it all straight in his mind.

  Kinsolving wasn’t sure that he did a good job. Since the disaster with the robominer and the flooding of the lower levels, nothing had gone as it should.

  Ala Markken. Kinsolving went numb inside thinking of her. How he loved her. How he had loved her. Kinsolving worried over the confusion he felt. Just because he had found that she’d stolen a considerable amount of ore from Interstellar Materials didn’t make him love her any less, but she had tried to kill him. The man fou
nd that almost impossible to believe, yet the facts were obvious.

  Ala had been in charge when the robot miner had lasered into the underground river. This Kinsolving pushed aside. It might have been an accident or Ala might have done it deliberately to hide the massive ore thefts. With waters raging almost two kilometers under the surface, anything seemed believable. Kinsolving smiled wanly. The Lorr agent-general might have even believed that a considerable amount of ore had been lost.

  Kinsolving’s smile tightened. The ore on level nineteen had been lifted. And the same heavy-lifter had been dropped down the elevator shaft in an attempt to crush him.

  Ala Markken. She had done it. His lover had tried to kill him.

  “You. Human one. Where are the assay reports?” came a harsh demand.

  Kinsolving looked up, eyes misted with the impact of Ala’s deliberate actions. “What?”

  “It is required that we obtain assay reports for each level, for each vein of ore. They are not in your files.”

  Kinsolving stared at the Lorr, then heaved himself to his feet. He went to a slave-station computer the alien could use and banged in the access code. The information flashed on the screen. “This is it. We put it in the same database as the personnel records. Much the same format, saves space and time and — ”

  “Your alibis are of no importance to me.” The Lorr swiveled on his crazy-hinged knees and stalked out.

  Kinsolving’s anger mounted, then faded. Officious, rude bureaucrats were the least of his worries. In his graduate school’s required xeno culture and psychology class he had been taught that the aliens resented mankind’s venturing to the stars, but that this attitude could be overcome. Not easily, not quickly, but their confidence and cooperation could be won. Sometimes he wondered.

  “To hell with them,” he said. Why should the Lorr be different from human auditors? He had the same problems when IM sent out their fleet of nameless, gnomelike accountants.

  Kinsolving frowned. IM audited the mine records once every planetary year. Ala had been on-planet for four years. How had she hidden the discrepancy between lifting from the mine and lifting from the planet’s surface? Kinsolving pulled the master console closer to his desk and began examining the records to find some clue. Several times he found a block on the records; the Lorr shut him off.

  But the evidence of how Ala had stolen so much ore — and where she had sent it — remained a mystery.

  Idly, Kinsolving punched up the woman’s personnel record. Her lovely oval face stared at him from the screen. Almost savagely, he punched the Cancel button. Without knowing it, Kinsolving requested his own files and found his own likeness staring out at him.

  As mine supervisor, Kinsolving had access to all personnel records but he had never taken the time to examine his own. He did his job, he got good raises and promotions and that was enough for him. He took pride in his work and what difference did it make what had been entered on his company files?

  He examined them now. And he was not certain he agreed with the IM psychologist’s appraisal. Then Kinsolving chuckled.

  “Stubborn to a fault, recalcitrant, complete self-assurance, that’s me,” he decided. He frowned when he found a special flag at the end of the record. Working for a few minutes to access the corresponding tag file resulted in repeated Entry Denied warnings flashing on the screen. Kinsolving hunched forward and worked in earnest to break into this area of the database.

  He was the supervisor. He should be able to see all the records. An hour of futile effort hadn’t diminished his curiosity or determination, but Kinsolving slowly came to the realization that the tag had been put on his file back on Gamma Tertius 4 and no corresponding entry existed in the mine’s database.

  None of the other personnel records carried a similar flag, and this made Kinsolving all the more determined to find what IM thought of him — and wanted kept from prying eyes.

  He glanced up when one of his few remaining workers poked his head inside the office door.

  “Mr. Kinsolving?”

  “What is it, Mac?”

  “Don’t know for sure. Getting odd readings from deep in the mine. Level nineteen. I ran a foptic probe and didn’t find anything.”

  Kinsolving knew the limits of the fiber optic probes mounted on robotic surveyors. Not every frequency of visible light was transmitted since their primary use was detecting underground hot spots and areas of cold where water might run — rivers such as the one Ala Markken had ordered the robo-miner to drill into.

  “How odd?” Kinsolving asked. “Anything to endanger the equipment?”

  “Could be,” the man said. Kinsolving knew he’d have to pry every bit of information from McClanahan. He was the most junior of those remaining and felt inadequate for the job he assumed.

  Kinsolving didn’t want to tell the man that he was inadequate, that his training and temperament were not suited to direct an entire shift. But Deepdig number two ran shorthanded because of Ala and the others. Even if valuable automated equipment hadn’t been lost, Kinsolving would have been hard-pressed to keep the mine operating at nominal capacity.

  “Gas indications? More damp readings?” Kinsolving asked.

  “Weirder than that. I know those indicators. You want to take a look at the board?”

  Kinsolving rose silently and followed McClanahan to the control center. They passed two Lorr on the way. Each group pointedly ignored the other. Kinsolving swung into the command chair and scanned the console. Most of the indicators showed normal readings, but one flashed a slow, deliberate purple.

  “You’re right. This isn’t usual.” Ala Markken might have recognized the signal, but Kinsolving didn’t. He punched up a Help on the screen and read it twice. “Never seen this before,” he told McClanahan. “I’m going down. This shows that we hit a pocket of radon gas, but that’s not possible. Not in this ore structure. And all we have mounted on the robominers are Geiger counters. I don’t see any way we could get this indication.”

  “You mean it’s showing radon gas but we don’t have any equipment to detect it?”

  “That’s it. I’m afraid this might be a malfunction in the detector circuitry.”

  “But I checked that, first thing,” the man protested. “All came out normal within limits.” Kinsolving shrugged. When working almost two kilometers underground, only one level above a flooded network, anything was possible. One piece of equipment failing in this manner might indicate bigger problems brewing in the bowels of the mine.

  More problems were the last thing Kinsolving needed.

  “We don’t have time to pull it from the stoop and get it back up the shaft to examine. Keep the robot working. I’ll assume manual control at the shaft, turn it off and then check it out.”

  “Manual overrides my controls, right?” McClanahan didn’t sound happy about this.

  “Safety measure. You know that. Where’s the tool kit? Good, there it is.” Kinsolving picked up the pack containing spare block circuits and other control components. With luck he could be down in the mine, fix the problem and return before the end of the shift.

  “I can do that, if you want, Mr. Kinsolving,” the man offered.

  Kinsolving considered this offer seriously. He had no lingering traces of claustrophobia in spite of being trapped at the bottom of the mine. He felt comfortable in mine shafts. But more than this, he didn’t want McClanahan shutting down the robo-miner. The only job the young man did worse than running the control console was repair work.

  “Thanks, but I’ll see to it. I’ll take a com-link. Keep in touch. If anything more goes wrong, let me know right away.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Kinsolving hefted the pack containing the repair parts and went to the head of the shaft. He stood and stared at the open cage for a moment, then entered. A deep breath, a slightly shaking hand touching the level eighteen button and he plummeted into the bowels of the planet.

  “You there, Mac?” he asked, toggling his com-link.
>
  “Here, sir. No problems. No more problems, I should say. Atmosphere levels normal, no damp, nothing but the robominer’s radon indication.”

  “I’ll wear a respirator,” Kinsolving told him. “That won’t pose much of a problem communicating.

  “Muffles your voice, that’s all,” McClanahan said.

  Kinsolving fitted the bulky head gear onto his face, hung the com-link at his belt and stepped out on level eighteen. The throb of pumps working on the lowest levels came to him as vibrations through his boot soles. Almost half of all his robot equipment strove to clean out the bottom four levels. He couldn’t afford to have even one robominer on the upper levels out of commission.

  Setting his hand flash, Kinsolving walked briskly along the stoop, the walls brushing either shoulder and occasional ceiling protrusions causing him to duck. By the time he reached the end of the stoop where the robominer’s laser sizzled and popped and worked on the ore vein, Kinsolving scooted along on hands and knees.

  He used the com-link controls to deactivate the robominer. Using his flash, he examined the immediate area. It appeared no different from any other vein found in the mine. He knew trapped pockets of any gas wouldn’t be visible, but he saw no reason to expect the chemically inert radioactive gas in this strata. The 57-71s weren’t usually found in sands containing thorium or pitchblende or even coal. He had studied the geologist’s report and no radium had been found.

  The detector on the robot had to be faulty. There was no other explanation.

  The rock where the laser had been directed cooled enough to allow Kinsolving to slide forward. He touched the back of the robominer’s metallic carapace. No heat. That meant the internal equipment probably functioned properly. Kinsolving opened the repair hatch and shone his light inside. All internal readouts were normal.

  “Mac, you there?” he called, toggling the com-link.

  “Yes, sir. Find something?”

  “When was this unit in the repair shop last?”