Bug Park by James P. Hogan

“It’s all right, I don’t need a ride,” he said, mustering an offended look. “I’ll get myself back. Just call me a cab, will you?”

“As you wish, Mr. Corfe.” Des didn’t seem inclined to argue either. He passed the request to the local officers, who put out a call.

“There’s a Brown-and-White on its way,” one of them reported. “It’ll meet us at the 520 intersection in ten minutes.”

To protect and serve. You have a nice day too, officers, Corfe thought sourly to himself.

Ironside reached the house, stalked by a baffled and bemused tabby cat from the next house along the lakeside. It had occurred to Kevin that he might be able to communicate to Harriet to get a message to somebody, but her car was not there. Okay, then, he decided, back to Plan A.

There was a flap in the bottom of the workshop-lab door for Batcat to get in and out—although why it was needed Kevin had never really understood, because cats could get from one side of a wall to the other by osmosis. Kevin let himself in and, improvising a handy strip of timber as a ramp, crawled up it to undo the door latch from the inside.

Next, he hauled two aluminum strips down from a rack and positioned them as rails sloping up from the floor to the top of the bench where he had left the KJ-3—the model plane that he and Taki had added “manual” controls to. He climbed via one of the rails to the bench top and began his preparations by checking the plane’s tank and topping it up from a can of fuel on the shelf above. Next, he cut several feet of nylon cord from one of a row of reels dispensing wire and other sundries, mounted on the wall at the back of the bench.

He attached the ends of the cord to the tail of the KJ-3, pushed the plane across the bench to the rails that he had positioned, and carefully paid out the line to lower it nose-first to the floor. He followed it down, detached the cord, and wheeled the aircraft out through the doorway to the rear yard. So far, so good, he thought.

By now, he could feel Ironside getting low on charge. Should he play safe but lose time by stopping now to replenish? There wasn’t much more to do here, and when he finished, Ironside’s part in his plan would be over. There was no way the KJ-3 would lift Ironside’s weight. He decided to press on and risk it.

Going back inside, he climbed via a box to a stool, and from there up onto the other bench to get to where the mecs were kept. He selected Lancelot, one of the small battlemecs, to fly the plane. But that on its own wouldn’t be enough. He needed to take a more substantial one along too, but not too heavy for the plane to carry. He settled on Dreadnought, an intermediate four times bigger than Lancelot but only a quarter the height of Ironside. And he had no choice but to hope that his judgment was good: Seconds after he released Dreadnought from its restraining clip, Ironside ground to a halt, its charge exhausted. Kevin now had to get the other two mecs outside to the plane. Two separate trips weren’t necessary. Coupling through to Dreadnought, he picked up the inert form of Lancelot, tucked it under his arm, and hopped and jumped back down to the floor and out the door.

The next part was going to call for a little neurocoupled channel-juggling. He carried the small mec over to the plane and pushed it into the cabin. Then he switched channels to “become” Lancelot, clambered behind the controls, pulled the rubber band that he and Taki had rigged as a seat harness securely over himself. A mec the size of Lancelot was necessary as the pilot: Dreadnought wouldn’t have fitted in the seat or been able to work the controls, which were built to a smaller scale. But Lancelot had no way of starting the motor, which needed an external flip of the propeller. That was why Dreadnought was needed too.

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