Lucy was a step behind her.
“Please come in.” I laughed.
Tell us what the hell you are talking about, please?” El asked.
“Simple, watch.” I handed El a paper after I wrote 4+4 and 2x3 on.
“Myla, I wrote on that paper, hold up your fingers with the answers please?”
She held up eight fingers then closed her hands and held up six.
“Myla, can you read my mind?” I asked her.
She flipped a hand a bit and nodded.
“I think she means some,” Loka said.
El said, “I am thinking of a number, what is it?”
Myla shook her head and pointed to me again.
“I am not sure, but she can read mine some, not yours. Myla anyone else?”
“Uncle Garth,” she said. “No more.”
“El, who did they physically turn the kids over too? You or Garth?” Lucy asked.
“Well, Garth was there. We were trying to get the choppers reloaded.”
“I think it was why she was staring at me when I woke, she could sense I was about to wake up. I get her thoughts only when I am calm and pretty much unfocused.”
“Well, what is this ruse you mentioned and how will it help?” El asked.
“She thinks they might not come if they think there are only a few of us and that we evacuated to very cold areas.”
“Explain?”
“They haven’t been anywhere but here and Lord P’s estate/lab. Find a really cold spot with a town and pretend everyone is being evacuated to there. Let the MKs see that everything is being emptied and evacuated, then, haul them up in a cage almost as high as you can and let them freeze a bit while they report we all moved to the mountains. Then move them even higher and let the cage fall, with them in it,” I told them.
“Let them just die?” Loka asked.
“Sure, their last thoughts will be freezing and falling and all the food is hiding in the cold. Might stop a flood of them all at once; maybe they will just send a scout group first to verify. The thing is it might get us a little more time.” I looked to Myla and she nodded and smiled.
I think Loka and I slept a few hours that night, maybe not that long. We sat in the mess hall very early, drinking hot coffee. Somehow Myla found us and patted my hand, then left. “I think your thoughts are upsetting her,” Loka said.
“How come she can read me and Garth but no one else?”
“I’m sure if she went below she would find a lot more. Lucy said all minds work at different frequencies and sensitivities. It would be natural that they overlap within the narrow range she says they each produce. Not sure I understand all she says sometimes, but she usually makes sense.” Loka drank more coffee and stared off into the netherworld momentarily.
“Will we be able to get everyone that wants to come off the planet in time?” she asked.
“I did some math: let us pretend exactly five-hundred million want to leave. Lucy said about forty-five per trip. That is eleven million and some change worth of trips. Now, if we could land containers on both sides of the ledge at the same time and say average a total of ninety people per minute, not counting any delays, and we have the ability to land them every single minute of the day and night we can deliver seven thousand seven hundred and some change loads per day or about six-hundred ninety thousand people per day. That comes out to over seven-hundred and twenty days or…”
“Or more than two years in the perfect scenario world, and we don’t have two years,” El said, as she came in and grabbed some coffee.
“Lord P is with Council now, they have been at it all night. He can get the choppers going to us, but it is convincing the people that it is really necessary, that the bugs will really come. He doubts more than a hundred million will actually opt to leave for an unknown world on the say of a strange robot,” she said.
“But they have too!” Loka exclaimed.
“No, no law says anyone can force you to leave your home. So I think what will happen is the factories will all convert to making arms and ammunition for a fight and freely distribute them to the citizenry. It may wake some up and take the threat seriously, might not. By then he says it won’t be his problem because he will be long gone.” She almost grinned.
“On the good side of the coin, the life mate rules have, according to Lucy, kept our planets numbers small compared to those records she has. She estimated the average planet settled for two-thousand years would have four to six billion people where we have only eight-hundred million.” El shrugged. “If that is a good thing.
“Oh, Lucy and you two and some guards are going back to Earth. She can explain how we want it, but that gate will be open indefinitely and I want to be sure it stays safe. She is going to program the ‘bots to start moving the food and ammo she found to here until we pick a new home. It will get very tight for awhile.” She finished her coffee and left.
I suddenly said, “Lysergic acid diethylamide.”
“What?” Loka asked.
“Lysergic acid diethylamide,” I said again.
“What is that?”
“I have no idea.”
Lucy said over the earpiece, “I do. A Serotonin receptor agonist.”
“A what?” I asked.
“It is a drug, a very old one, causes hallucinations,” Lucy said. “Myla?”
“I guess, I never heard of it,” I told her honestly.
“Hmm, okay, will check on it. Meet you at the gate. El has a security force alerted and ready.”
All in all it took Lucy five hours to secure the warehouse again, reprogram the robots and, leaving the gate open, to have them start hauling tons of equipment and food into our small Honor Central.
While we finished that, El had reports and star charts coming in from the gate testing teams. Only three looked promising. Our swamp with primitive life, one with strange plants and animals but it was rejected as being close to other known planets the MKs had already destroyed, and the third was a cold place with a small area for food growth. Minimal known animal life, some birds, rabbit-like creatures, a few rodents, and snakes. No larger ones. Lucy felt there may have been, but they died off as the climate changed.
Lucy looked over the data. “Maybe two hundred-fifty thousand can go there. Wouldn’t want more until you know if it is in a warming or cooling cycle.
“The rest would do okay on the planet you call swamp. It isn’t, just the area near the door. If the indigenous life doesn’t care about being invaded.”
“Do you really care?” El asked.
“Not really, unless your people found it a concern. Many planets, including Earth and Olgreender, have been invaded one way or another. They would just be absorbed over time.”
“Or destroyed,” I said.
“Always a possibility, but those are your options unless the desert planet is where they would rather go to die.”
Put that way, her logic was hard to counter. Do or die, simple as that.
“Dissents? Questions?” Lucy asked.
“Um, do we want to go to both and split our forces?” Col Garth asked.
“I’d say yes, if one or the other is destroyed by MKs and our people can still continue,” El said.
“True, and for awhile we can actually swap and adjust as needed. We can have some core samples made to tell if it is getting colder or not. All our people will be in for a rude awakening—it will be hard work with almost none of the conveniences they have now until an entire culture is rebuilt.” A rare input from Tally, but valid.
~~~
Over the next two months the battles over going or fighting raged as families moved through the Honor Central to build new homes on foreign planets. Almost all chose the swamp, warmer, easier to survive.
Many of the climber families and entire villages of the colder regions opted for the colder planet.
We had almost a hundred-thousand on the cold planet and were in the millions to the swamp. Every second of every day Lord P’s people
flew more and more choppers to haul people. We lost three from crashes in storms and one that simply quit and crashed into the rock wall, far below the ledge, but we kept flying.
Seems less than three-hundred million wanted to leave, the rest wanted to stay and fight. The entire planet was in overdrive to produce anything to fight with, anything at all. Towns were barricaded and walls built and trenches filled with burnables—it would be a grand fight, we could see that, but it would also be a losing one. A few hundred million against the hordes of MKs that took out billions on Earth alone. Still, I think if I had a home and land, I’d want to stay and try as well.
The MKs that were with Lord P saw the planet being abandoned, and all moving to the intolerable cold. I am sure they sent word. I am not sure what they saw, or thought they did after being fed large quantities of LSD for days on end, or what their last thoughts were as the cage was released from fifteen thousand feet up to fall free where it wished, into the icy valleys below.
We had a little over a year from that day before the first ship was detected by Lucy’s new satellite. When it landed near a town, it was destroyed after it was positive they were MKs.
Lord P and most of the other Council decided to stay and die with their people. When he notified Lucy there were MKs, Lucy wished them the best of luck, but as planned, she was closing the gate, possibly forever. It was a sad day as goodbyes were sent back and forth.
After the last of the in air choppers were hauled in, with many more MK ships arriving, Lucy hit the red button on the linkpen and went to the Lab to enter the code that stopped those from functioning at Olgreender’s door. She then went to a computer that went to a panel that eventually went to the warpfield generator and programmed it that the door no-longer should be opened. The last thing we did was move a dozen Earth guardbots to the tunnel and they started blasting the ceiling, sealing the tunnel forever. Our last link to our home world no longer existed.
Many cried for a long time, many were sullen as news was passed to both new colonies that going back was no longer an option.
As robots packed the center full of food, ammo, and equipment, people from both groups removed them. Lucy was in overdrive with her two captives to find something, anything, to use against them. She had us all choose which colony we wished to be associated with.
I actually had visited both sites with Loka and Myla and several others. I wanted to go to the planet with the swamp. Loka left it to me so I started to tell Lucy when Myla kept saying no and pulling me away, toward the cold one. Turns out all the children but two wanted the cold one and since Loka has all but adopted Myla now, I told Lucy I wasn’t sure but probably the cold one.
“Fine, just need everyone to choose.
“Eldon, I wish we had something to use against them but the bastards are near impossible.”
“Well, I am just a dumb climber but might I ask a question?”
“Sure, what?” she asked.
“The needlers, the small slivers. They work well against the MKs until we run out. Don’t you agree?”
“And?”
“Well, if what you said holds true couldn’t we make a slightly bigger version of them and have them like the chain-guns? Maybe use metal slivers rather than those special needles? I was thinking it all could be done with electricity from the reactor thing.”
“And when they run out you’re just as dead, so why bother when standard ammo is as effective?” Her look was curious, like she felt I had an answer, and I did.
“I may be wrong but you said the molecular constructors made metal, they made your body parts, and they run from the same reactor, no?” I asked.
I think if she had gears they would have been whirring. “I’ll be damned.” It took me a second to realize she was gone.
Twenty minutes later Lucy said over the earpieces, “El, I need a dozen electrical and mechanical engineers at the Earth gate as soon as possible, please. Eldon, you or Loka too. Just need one.”
It fell to me then. Loka was taking Myla to the cold planet to start building us a home there. Myla even selected the spot, near a river and just at the edge of the growing area. Loka said they’d just be gone a few weeks.
I met Garth at the Earth gate. El placed him in charge because of the mechanical background in chopper maintenance and weapon systems he knew. We went to the Earth complex.
Most of the crew I’d seen and met some time or other. Lucy came up to me and said, “Let us test this idea shall we?”
Two full weeks went by as we disassembled a standard 5.56mm mini gun and replaced the barrels with smaller ones, ones that were just big enough to allow five almost microscopically thin slivers of metal to pass through, then when I thought they were done Garth talked to Lucy and they wound up getting totally redone back to the original barrels. Lucy had Garth machine out rods of a solid ceramic material he’d found. When done she had lasers melt holes through them which took forever, then a resizing rod with abrasives glued to it was sent down them to give them a high polish. Finally they were pressed into the original barrels of the mini guns. Lucy said they were far harder than the steel and it would take years for them to show any wear at all. The goal was to be as close to indestructible as possible.
The next task was the conversion from electrically fired chemical rounds to high pressure air to push the slivers out the barrels. Sounds easy but maintaining a close tolerance for minimal air loss without anything actually rubbing was almost impossible. Lucy finally used some constructors to add molecules and lasers to remove them to get the tolerances we needed. The days slipped by as problems were solved one by one and we finally had a working test model. Two molecular constructors were set up in front of a high-speed belt affair and when ready everything was hooked to computers and the reactor power. There was a huge loading box mounted where the original ammo feed tray was. A huge spinning turbo compressor sat at the back and simply forced air into the firing chamber at an ungodly pressure.
We set it all up pointing at one of the collapsed door piles and Lucy said, “We are ready to test. All personnel move into the control center please?”
I found she had them wire it in through the switches, it was now the main door switch.
“Test in three, two, one, test…” She pushed the button and the lights went dim, then we heard a buzz and everything stopped and the lights went out.
A quick reset of the circuit breaker fixed that as we all went to see what the gun did.
The dust was thick but it had worked for a while. Two feet of the rock had simple disintegrated at the door. The designers and Lucy went over high-speed camera footage that barely kept up with what was happening but they all agreed it was too fast and jammed.
Motors were changed, systems adjusted and we tested again, and again, and slowly the bugs were wrung out and speeds further adjusted. We next had to adjust the constructors—they were making too many slivers and the box overflowed until one of the techs figured out a way to make a sensor that shut it off when full. Took two more weeks and the final design was agreed upon, changes made, and the solution tested. We soon had a design about half the original size, sealed against the dust, dirt, and weather, and was calculated to last for two years firing nonstop before the motors burned up or bearings jammed.
“Now the power supplies,” Lucy said.
It boiled down to more of the small F/F reactors like Lucy had used to power her body. She searched all the Earth stores and only found four, but then Garth asked the logical question, “What powers the robots here?”
We went back to Honor Central with tons of equipment and a working design.
After two months of the constructors making parts, and Lucy making more constructors, we finally had two semi-portable needlers. We tried using a single F/F to power them both but it overloaded and shut down so each received one.
I saw Lucy by the old door to Olgreender and asked what was up.
“I have kept track through Lord P of the goings on below. I didn’t want to tel
l anyone, the pain was bad enough when we sealed the door. At first the MKs showed in a few ships, all were destroyed but word got out. More started coming in, more and more.
“About a month ago I received the last communication from him. He said they were out of ammo and the MKs were climbing over his walls. I just came to listen and see if I heard anything. Like you I feel the tragedy. I wanted to see if we might have been in time to send two of the guns to them—we aren’t.”
“I guess that would be my fault then,” I told her.
“How?”
“I thought of the idea when we were back there at Lord P’s and I saw what they did to the guard and the other guy, but felt it wasn’t the place of a climber to think silly ideas when he was surrounded by such brilliant people as Lord P and you and the rest,” I told her honestly.
“Eldon, being smart doesn’t, of itself, create ideas. It only helps after the idea has been formed and divulged. In your way you and Loka are as smart as anyone I have met. Your focus is different, you’re geared to different paths, but all people are geared to their own paths.”
“So it is my fault then? I should have spoken sooner?” I really felt bad now.
“I can’t answer that. At the time I probably would have dismissed it. We hadn’t run into the MKs yet, remember?”
“Guess we’ll never know now,” I told her, as I started back to the mess hall. She followed a bit behind.
As I entered the mess hall I was met by Loka and Myra. She gave me a kiss and Myra looked at me for a while as I sat drinking coffee, then she cried and shook her head and ran off.
I think she saw what I felt about the guns idea. I told Loka and she started at me a bit too. “No husband. I don’t think it would have mattered at the time. We hadn’t even known there was any rush until you figured out how they communicated. No dear, feel sad, but feel happy as well—look how many you saved, how many would have been food.”
“But it was Myla telling me. I didn’t figure out anything.” At that I remembered something else. “Lucy, how do the MKs mate?”
A Planet's Search For History Page 14
