one of them and on board, she can take ’em over. The trick will be even getting
that far. There’s protection on those babies, isn’t there?
All the ships themselves are in vacuum condition for storage, and minimal
maintenance power is being fed through light collectors aimed at Jupiter. They
don’t need much in shutdown. They themselves don’t have any armament to speak
of, but they carry a dozen small automated fighter craft that will react to any
threat. They’re fast, they work as one, and they have more than enough speed and
muscle to take care of an old scow like the inmates are flying. The moment they
don’t give the correct hailing control codes, those fighters will be activated.
Just as important, Master System will be notified.
Screw Master System. Even at the speed of light it’ll be a while before Master
System can get anything approaching real power there. The fighters will have to
do it, if they activate. The trouble is, what if they somehow have the control
codes?
You think that’s possible?
How can I rule anything out after what’s happened? Run this through the
computer. Project a course that will take them in to the mothball fleet from
here without Master System’s alert or detection. Give me the estimated speed and
arrival date and time. Then figure how long we would need to get there with a
straight-line trajectory. Also give me any Master System ships capable of
intercept.
It took only a few seconds. Assuming they take close-in risks to traffic
control to gain time, the worst case is that they would arrive in forty-six days
from now. We could make it straight there in forty—if we had the ships. Master
System shows no ships that could make it any faster. It’s the mothball fighters
or nothing.
Like hell. What can we get our hands on quickly?
Depends on how you define quickly. The Star of Islam is due in four days, but
it’s as old a tub as our quarry and carries only two standard guns, forward top
and underside aft. Other than that we have the Getaway craft sitting on the
asteroid Clebus, but they’re still three days away because of the current
orbital paths.
They’re well armed, though, and really nasty, Nagy noted. Small, fast,
maneuverable. Three days… All right, get ’em over here. We’ll attach them to
the exterior of the Star of Islam. That’ll give us a match for them plus four
heavily armed craft. We’ll come in behind them and wait. If the fighters don’t
react or don’t do the job, we’ll move in and sandwich them, and that’ll be the
end of that.
I’ll need Doctor Clayben’s direct order to release the escape ships. Once
they’re here, Master System will know they exist and why.
He’ll give it. He’s got his own problems now, and this will solve them. I’ll go
along to make sure it all goes right.
It still seems futile for them, the aide noted. Those universe ships are
fourteen kilometers long! I mean, how the hell can you hide in one of those?
After you do all the stuff I just told you, compute the amount of empty space
in the two spiral arms of the Community. Then get me everything there is to know
on these ships. Everything.
Won’t be much. They’re classified forbidden knowledge. We aren’t even supposed
to know that they’re out there.
Do what you can. And I suppose we’ll have to notify Master System of the break
or there’ll be a lot of questions and maybe a couple of Vals poking around
Melchior. He thought a minute. Don’t tell ’em about China or the Amerind
women. They aren’t supposed to have been here at all, and if they even guess
that this guy Hawks was ever here, they’ll blow up all of Melchior. Give ’em the
two security traitors and Roll and the Chows, and give the rest as experimental
subjects no longer registerable. If they want mindprints, we’ll fake ’em. Got
it?
Okay. I’m on it right now.
I hope I am, Arnold Nagy grumbled to himself.
Star Eagle was useful for research information as well as for piloting. The new
equipment in the ship was designed not only to make it easier for its owners to
fool Master System or bypass its safeguards but also to do a variety of illegal
things should they be needed. Even Sabatini wasn’t aware of all the ship’s
tricks, nor was he supposed to be. What he didn’t know, he couldn’t abuse or
betray.
To accommodate these changes, Star Eagle’s memory had been vastly expanded from
its specialized task, and he—it was impossible to think of the pilot as an it —
could draw on vast hidden data banks which included most of the core historical
and technological information a big shot might require. It was not known why
this all had been added, but Star Eagle had suspicions.
There is talk that Master System is involved in a great war somewhere far out
there. With whom or what it is fighting is unknown to us, but it is very clear
that the battle is tough and stalemated and is being fought entirely by
computerized equipment on both sides. This has allowed directors, not only on
Earth but in many other places, to have unprecedented freedom and mobility. It’s
become far easier to cheat or beat the system and get away with it. There are
persistent rumors that Master System believes things are getting dangerously out
of hand, and it doesn’t have its own forces to spare because of the fight. Many
of the independent computer units, particularly the big complex on Melchior,
believe that Master System will eventually end the current human administration
system and replace it, killing off all those with high-level knowledge and
abilities and introducing some new element that would suppress for thousands of
years any sparks of innovation or creativity and reduce humans to primitive
conditions. It is further rumored that Earth might be the test for this new
element.
Then you are a preserver, a way to keep the knowledge alive, China Nightingale
responded.
I think I am more than that. I am crammed with information on interstellar
vessels and with much of the knowledge and charts of the privateer and
freebooter society. 1 believe you are using me for the very purpose for which I
was modified, although they did not think that someone else would use it. I
think I am a getaway craft for the Presidium.
It is much as Lazlo Chen himself told me, Hawks said. I find it suspiciously
convenient, however, that this very ship with all this much-needed knowledge
should be the one we take refuge upon.
It might not be more than a coincidence, Star Eagle responded. I have some
evidence that at least a dozen other ships, including all those who stop at
Melchior and Earth ports, have undergone this modification. There are families
and high underlings to consider, remember, and our task would only be to get
them to the universe ships. Those ships were designed to carry more than a
hundred thousand people in their time in a single trip. Carry them, support
them, and reprocess them if necessary.
Hawks was curious at this. He was a historian, yet this was new to him.
Reprocess?
Yes. Use extensive machinery to convert masses of humans into what was required
to survive and maintain a culture on a world not designed for them. The process
itself is called analytical artificial evolution, or AAE for short. 1 do not
know how it works or what it does. That information would be in the memories of
the universe ships’ pilots. I know the theory behind it, though. Master System
was in a hurry when it decided to disperse humanity. As each world was
discovered and evaluated as having survival potential, it was brought as close
to life range as it could be within a short period of time, then was analyzed
and compared to human psychology and physiology. A theoretical evolutionary path
was worked out as if beings had evolved and developed into sentience on each
world, and what they would have to be like to survive and adapt. The humans were
then physically converted somehow into this model and psychologically altered to
accept it as the norm. A trial colony was then put down. If it survived and grew
at all over a period of a decade, the planet was developed for mass
colonization. If the trial failed, adjustments continued to be made until it
either succeeded or was abandoned.
The area it developed is so vast, it is beyond true comprehension, China
noted. Did they find any that already had sentient life of any kind?
Yes. Not many, I’m afraid, but a few. There were the remains of some that had
died out, but the few that were there were in lower stages of civilization.
Master System co-opted them and kept them at that level, imposing the same sort
of system as elsewhere. They obeyed or were taught deadly lessons in power. They
are still there. Some provided useful models for human adaptations elsewhere,
too.
They considered that. I am getting to be something of an expert on how humans
can be altered, China noted. And Captain Koll in there has a very real tail
caused by their alterations.
Yes. Melchior is trying to develop some of the practices and procedures on
their own, knowing that it is possible and was done. They have had some limited
successes, but nothing on that scale. Since I have many of their data banks, I
know of their own processes.
Very convenient, Hawks noted dryly.
I have a schematic of your basic systems imprinted on my mind, China told the
pilot. I should like to go forward to the bridge if it is safe.
Quite safe, although it is a zero-gravity zone. Come ahead. I will guide you. I
have quite a bit up there, mostly useless, including some basic mindprinter
interfaces.
None of them had ever been forward in a spaceship before. In almost all ships,
that area was kept unpressurized and in a vacuum so that none from the aft area
could ever enter it except in an emergency. A long, narrow corridor led to a
hatch, through which one floated up to enter the bridge itself.
Hawks was quite surprised by the bridge. Two large leather chairs faced a bank
of screens, gauges, and controls of incredible complexity, then four more were
stationed along the sides and in the rear. It looked like a control room for
people, not a ship designed from the start to be totally automated.
All ships have a bridge like this or even more elaborate than this, Star Eagle
told them, although the manual overrides are locked out of the system. No one
knows why Master System keeps it this way, but it does. Every ship is like that
except specialty ships—even the orbital tugs. None of us, after all, can
question Master System or ask questions it doesn’t want asked. Each station,
however, has a name. The one on the left is the pilot’s seat, the one on the
right the copilot, the right side is communications, the left side is
navigation, and the two rear stations are engineering and life support. It is
true that the original circuitry for all those things runs to those stations,
although there is no interconnect. I am convinced that no team of humans could
run this ship; it was always designed for specified computers under a master
control system, which is me. Humans simply can’t react fast enough in an
emergency.
I know why, China said softly. The stations were designed to connect the
officers with the master and subordinate computers directly. That is how the
universe ships must be taken over. Each of these has, or was designed to have, a
direct human mind to computer-mind interface. Human and machine would become
one.
Star Eagle thought about that. A fascinating concept. A human interfacing
directly with me. And me—knowing what it was like to have a human body.
Stay a ship, China told him. Our chemical-based life form would drive you
insane. Still—you said you had a mindprinter interface?
I do, although it has grave limitations. As an analytical and
knowledge-gathering tool it is fine, but I lack the module that would allow
actual reprogramming of the mind. Whoever ordered this did not wish that much
power in the hands of the ship. I will show you.
There was a click, and a door slid back between the communications and life
support stations. Hawks made his way over to it, reached in, and pulled out what
looked very much like a mindprinter probe headset but lacked the printer itself.
Instead, it had a long, thick cable terminating in a massive and complex
connector. There were several of them in there. He brought it over to the blind
Chinese girl, who felt it and tested it.
This is not standard design, she said. It is bulkier, and the probes are
different.
It is what I have as a mindprinter interface, Star Eagle told her.
I think not. I think it is the same principle, yes, but not a mindprinter.
These are the interconnects for the stations. I’m sure of it. Hawks—aren’t there
female plugs for these at each station?
Hawks checked a couple. Seem to be, he agreed.
But they are not tied in to the station computers, the pilot noted. Instead,
they are tied in to the medical and analytical circuitry. To me, yes, but not
directly. They are data read only.
Now, yes, she agreed. But it’s not what they were designed for. I suspect
that much work is going on to learn how to connect these directly once again.
The next modification. She felt along the connector. I wonder if all ships,
even the huge ones, use the same plug interface as a standard.
I do not know, but every one I do know about is the same, and the design on
interplanetary vessels has never altered in my existence.
Good. We have come a long way already, but there is much yet to do. In addition
to avoiding detection, we have only the time of this voyage to solve how to gain
admittance to the big ships and avoid Master System. When will we arrive at the
fleet?
Sixty-one days.
The ship was relatively crowded, but they got used to it, the common threat and
impending action minimizing tensions. Reba Koll, Manka Warlock, and China
remained mostly on the bridge, as the big chairs were fine for sleeping. They
were working out the potential problems of getting into a universe ship and
taking it, and what they would do with it if they could take it, and other
logistical problems that experienced spacers and computer people would
understand best.
Hawks sat in the passenger cabin and watched Raven light half a cigar. Some day
you’ll have to tell me how you do that, he commented.
Huh? the Crow responded. What?
How you come up with an inexhaustible supply of cigars, even out here on a ship
like this, and how they always seems to be half smoked.
Raven chuckled. Well, I’ll tell you half of it. The internal ship’s system
includes an energy-to-matter synthesizer. That’s what makes the meals we eat,
among other things, but it can duplicate anything you tell it to. All I needed
was one cigar.
You like telling half of things, don’t you?
What do you mean ‘by that crack?
Well, isn’t it just a wonderful coincidence that we just lucked out having a
computer genius aboard with the schematics for this ship? And isn’t it just
amazing that this ship is not only a willing and eager rebel but just happens,
by the merest of coincidences, to be programmed with all the information we need
for the getaway?
Raven shrugged. Okay, it was a setup. You might have guessed that from the
start. That China girl wasn’t in the original plans, but considering I had
Melchior’s population to choose from, we knew we’d get somebody who could handle
it. Frankly, I’m uneasy with her for the long haul, but she was the easiest to
snatch and definitely the smartest, and she had intimate knowledge of this ship,
considering she’d taken it once before. The same goes for Koll. Experienced deep
spacer, former captain, knows the underground and the interstellar ropes. She
also has other, ah, qualities that she don’t know that I know, which are vital.
Chen had it pretty well worked out. I had to improvise, I admit, but it came
off—so far. That doesn’t mean it’ll work all the way. Nobody’s ever done what
we’re about to try.
And we still work for Chen in the end.
Hey, Chief! Easy! I don’t work for him, and neither do you. I meant what I
said, and if you think it through, you’ll see that we couldn’t have done this
even this far without him. We use him, he uses us, until we get the rings. Then
all bets are off with him.