“Maybe so, but . . . what’s behind that?” Hammell pointed to the wall that took up the space in front of the control console.
Roberts frowned. “At first, I thought it was some kind of a storeroom. But I’ve never been able to find any way into it.”
Hammell said, “That looks like the edge of a sliding door, in front of the control console.”
“When you’re at the controls during an attack, that door slides shut. If the ship out here is holed, you can still function.”
Morrissey looked around. “What’s under the deck here?”
Roberts bent, and heaved back a section. Underneath was a tangle of tubes, cables, and freely-curving pipes, of various sizes and colors, smoothly branching and reconnecting, some sinking out of sight beneath the others, and the whole works set into a pinkish jellylike insulation or sealant of some kind. As they watched, a translucent pipe about the size of a man’s forearm began to dilate. In a series of waves of contraction and dilation, ball-like lumps of something with a golden glint traveled along, to vanish under the next section of deck.
Roberts lowered the panel, and glanced at Morrissey. “Any more questions?”
Morrissey scratched his head, but said nothing.
Hammell looked around in puzzlement. “This seems to be pretty advanced.” He stepped forward and glanced up through an opening overhead.
“Is there another deck up there?”
“No. That’s the upper fusion turret.”
“What’s that . . . ah . . . thing like a wheel, with a handle?”
“The handwheel for elevating the gun.”
Hammell blinked. “You aim the gun by hand?”
“There’s a multiple control system. The gun can be operated by the battle computer or the symbiotic computer, with no one on board. Or, you can operate it yourself from the control console. But if you have to, you can also do it completely by hand.”
“Which has precedence, the manual control, or the automatic?”
“So far as the guns are concerned, I think the manual. Where the flying of the ship is concerned, the computers can lock you out anytime. It’s not that the manual controls are disconnected, or don’t work, but that they take a setting and you can’t move them. If a man were strong enough, I don’t know what would happen.”
Morrissey said, “What about the communicator?”
“Same thing as the flying controls, except that if you’re around, at least you know what’s going on. You can hear what the symbiotic computer is saying. The computer can take off in the ship, and unless you happen to hear the slide and click of the levers and switches, you won’t know what happened.”
Hammell looked around, and squinted at the bulkhead, or reinforced section of hull, or whatever it was, in front of the control console.
“I’ll bet that symbiotic computer is in there. It’s the logical place. You’re on one side of the controls. It’s on the other.”
Morrissey shook his head. “Too vulnerable. The same hit might knock out pilot and computer both.”
“Where is it then?”
Morrissey pointed at the deck.
Hammell shook his head. “There’s a symmetry about having it on the other side of the control console. If it’s heavily enough protected, that business about the same hit wouldn’t count. And it would make it easier to—”
Just then, Roberts heard the communicator say, ” . . . Preparations had best be complete to receive His Royal and Imperial Highness, the Duke Vaughan, at the Barons Council Hall within the quarter hour. Your own head will answer for it if aught traceable to you goes wrong. His Highness is in no sweet mood after what happened here a few hours ago . . .”
“O.K.,” said Roberts. “Here we go.”
Hammell and Morrissey, tied up in their argument, looked surprised.
“Wait a minute,” said Hammell, “what are we going to do?”
Roberts pulled his battle armor out on its sling. “The only place we can straighten the mess out—or even find out what’s going on—is in the city. So, we have to go to the city.”
“Yes, but what do we do there?”
“We’ve got to simplify the situation. There are too many factions. It’s like trying to go somewhere with half a dozen different pilots, each backing his own flight plan. We’ve got to simplify it. The only way I can see is for us to get control of the major factions ourselves.”
Hammell shook his head. “That would have been fine—before Glinderen showed up. He’s the Chief of Planet.”
Roberts frowned. “I don’t think Glinderen, or anyone else who approaches this planet on a routine basis, can ever hope to straighten things out. I don’t see any way to unite these factions unless we do it.”
Morrissey said, “Suppose we do unite the factions? Suppose we throw out Glinderen? Suppose we end this fighting? Suppose we scare off Maury and his fleet of commerce raiders? Suppose we even get halfway started on the job of straightening out this place? Then what? P. W. Glinderen merely goes off-planet, and signals his report to PDA Sector Headquarters; PDA Sector HQ then notifies Space Force Sector HQ and the Colonization Council; Space Force Sector HQ says it’s overburdened and calls for reinforcements; that call gets to Space Force GHQ at the same time as an urgent recommendation from the Colonization Council; Space Force GHQ sends out the orders for a reserve fleet to come in here; meanwhile Glinderen brushes his teeth, takes a shower, slides in between the cool sheets, and sleeps the sleep of the just; down here, so far as any court in the known universe is concerned, we are planetary pirates. One fine day, the Space Force sets down, and we either give up or get blasted into molten slag. Glinderen comes back down here, and methodically undoes everything we’ve done, and puts it back together his way. Where’s the gain?”
Hammell nodded. “That’s what I mean.”
Roberts silently got into his armor, then glanced at the instrument panel.
“Here’s an example of what I mean. While we’ve been talking, the ship has taken off. We’re almost there.”
Morrissey said urgently, “Look, Glinderen has us on the horns of a dilemma. If we don’t give up, the Space Force kills us. If we do give up, he imprisons us. I don’t want to get gored. But if I have to, I’ll pick the shorter horn.”
Roberts checked fusion gun and sword. “You say the Space Force can finish us off. That’s provided Glinderen notifies them. What if he gets no chance to do it? That horn breaks off.”
Morrissey blinked, and, frowning, started getting into his armor; but Hammell looked worried.
“Let’s not get out of a false charge of piracy by carrying out actual piracy. Glinderen is lawfully in charge here.”
A sliding sound from the direction of the control console, and a quiet alteration in the tone of the gravitors, told them that they were starting down.
Roberts said quietly, “You’re overlooking something.”
Hammell said, with considerable strain in his voice, “I don’t know what. Glinderen’s authority is real. I don’t like to do it, but this has gone far enough. I’ll have to go to Glinderen, and—”
The voice of the symbiotic computer said, “We are now landing at Paradise City.” The voice added, with the rasp of a drill instructor, “If the recruit standing with one hand on his armor will kindly put it on, this operation will proceed. If not, we will carry out disciplinary action now, and the recruit will spend the next five days aft cleaning out the maintenance tunnels.”
Roberts said, “That’s what you’ve overlooked. This is an Interstellar Patrol ship. The Interstellar Patrol is famous for its justice and incorruptibility. The symbiotic computer wouldn’t even let the ship be sold until it was satisfied the buyer had the right moral standards. Would it let us do this if we were doing wrong?”
Even as he spoke, Roberts saw the flaw in his argument.
But Hammell, with an expression of profound relief, got into the battle armor.
The Barons Council Hall, near which the patrol ship landed, was floodlit and surrounded by roboid police and heavily-armed members of the Citizens Defense Force. More roboid police rolled up to form a double line, with narrow lane between, from the ship to the Council Hall.
The patrol ship promptly blew up the nearest roboid police, and blasted to bits those that tried to take their place.
Roberts, coming out the hatch, decided that what looked fishy to the patrol ship looked fishy to him. He drew his sword.
As Hammell and Morrissey came out, he called: “Be on your guard. This has a look I like not.”
The two men, in glittering armor, whipped out their fusion guns.
The roboid police eased a trifle further apart.
Roberts, studying the Citizens Defense Force, observed that no one was faced out, to guard the site. They were all faced in.