* * *
A few hours later he was ready; they had been intensely pleasurable hours, not at all wasted, but now to business.
“Obie?”
“Yes, Ben?”
“Are your external sensors still operable along the main shaft?” Although the computer was blind Topside, it could see the Underside area around the shaft leading to the big dish that still locked on the Well of Souls.
“Operational, Ben.”
He nodded. “Okay. Any life forms Underside?”
“None that I can detect, Ben—although I don’t seem to be able to detect the Yugash too well unless it’s in visual range. My sensors weren’t designed for energy creatures.”
He understood that. “But we’re all immune to its takeover, right?” The computer assured him they were. Yulin continued. “All right, then.” He turned to the two women, unable to overcome his delight at their beauty.
“Girls, you know what to do now.” They nodded in unison. He turned back to Obie. “Defense mode off, Obie. Defense mode will be off automatically on their return unless they are under coercion. Return to defense mode when they clear the door into the control center. Clear?”
“Clear, Ben.”
“And Obie—don’t forget. Not a word of this to anybody.”
“You know I can’t now,” the computer responded grumpily. “Defense mode off.”
The two women walked to the door, it opened, and they passed quickly out. It slid shut behind them.
Yulin returned to Obie. “You’ve been talking to Gil Zinder all along, haven’t you?” he accused.
“Yes, Ben, I cannot tell a lie,” Obie replied. “I thought you’d want to talk to him sooner or later.”
“Maybe not,” he said thoughtfully. “Obie, did the two of you work on the problem of freeing you from the Well?”
“Yes, Ben.”
“Did you solve it?”
“Yes, Ben.”
Aha! So much for problems, they vanished like magic, he thought smugly.
“Procedure?” he asked in anxious anticipation.
As Obie told him, he realized the logic of it and cursed himself for not having seen it himself. The solution was so simple it might have been overlooked for decades—of course, he was still rusty, he reminded himself. But there was a feeling of power in him beyond anything he’d ever known, and the confidence that he not only could do anything, he would do everything.
He would make no mistakes, he assured himself. Everything was to be thought out and carefully considered.
But he had already made one, and he didn’t know it.
Topside
The group was disappointed and gloomy. The products of diverse cultures and backgrounds, veterans of many campaigns—some in more than one form—most had fought, clawed, and schemed to be among those to reach the enigmatic New Pompeii. Six creatures of great potential and no little intellect, all totally impotent to solve their problem.
“We could always go home,” Renard suggested. They looked at him impatiently, a little patronizingly. He shrugged. “It’s an option, that’s all,” he added defensively.
“No, it is not an option,” Wooley responded. “We know what is in there. A big machine. We can even talk to it. A machine that can talk to the Well, tell it what to do. If Yulin wishes to, he can do anything he wants to the Well.”
“Perhaps he will leave it,” the Bozog said hopefully.
Vistaru sighed. “That’s even worse, and you know it. Well, maybe not so much to you or the Ghiskind, but Yulin’s not going to rush off to some strange system or race. He’s going to go home—to his original home. And he’s going to have the big dish to do whatever he wants to with entire planetary populations. The rest of us—Renard, Mavra, Wooley, and myself—came from those people. We can’t let him remake a civilization if we can prevent that, and we must do all in our power to prevent that.”
“Not to mention that Yulin’s a Dasheen,” Mavra pointed out. “Three guesses how women would fare in his new order. But—we have to be committed, I think. I sense that at least in Wooley and Vistaru. Bozog, if you want to take the ship and return, I’ll give you all the programming instructions you need. Renard could take you if he wanted, although your tentacles would do for what little control manipulation would need to be done.”
The Bozog shifted its bulk. “You know that is impossible,” it responded. “We knew it, too, before we took off. There is no return possible with that ship. None of us is capable of another perfect dead-stick landing, not even friend Mavra here, had she tentacles or arms. It was a one-in-ten-thousand shot that they made it originally. The odds are far worse now. No, we can crash into the Well World, but not land, not ever.”
This surprised them. That aspect had never crossed their minds, although it should have. “Then why did you come?” Wooley asked.
“For myself,” the Bozog said slowly, trying to choose its words, “because it was possible. Because it is a feat and experience beyond duplication. To be here, on another world! To see the Well World from afar! This, in itself, is worth a dozen lives.”
Renard shrugged. “What about you, Ghiskind? You could survive a crash, I’ll bet.”
The Yugash flowed into the Bozog. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. But, if so, which of you will be the pilot willing to surrender its own life for mine? No, I, too, knew it was a one-way trip, unless the Obie computer can send us back.”
“I think that’s unlikely,” Mavra put in. “I don’t think any of us will ever see the inside of that control room. He’s too well defended.”
“If only there was some way to destroy it,” Wooley said in frustration. “A bomb, perhaps!”
“Maybe we can crash the ship into the big dish,” the Bozog suggested.
Mavra shook her head. “No, Obie’s pretty firm on that. Defenses are automatic since that was the weak point Trelig had to address. Fly into that beam and you’re gone.” Still, the idea of destroying Obie—which she rebelled against because, despite all, she liked and respected the thing—struck a chord. Schematics and plans flowed again, only this time with purpose.
Destruct. Destruct mechanisms.
The idea wouldn’t gel. A corner of her mind remembered Obie’s comment that, though he couldn’t absorb the Well’s input, he could do a few limited things by concentrating on a single, specific task. Well, Obie was to her what the Well was to Obie. She tried it, concentrating on destruct mechanisms.
And there it was.
Not a single one, but many, all over. Antor Trelig wanted to be certain that no one would ever be able to displace him as master of Obie or New Pompeii.
Excitedly, she told them about it. “Some are old—probably the original destruct mechanism for the whole planetoid. Others are new, in small pockets designed to blow vital parts of Obie in case Trelig was displaced.”
“Can we blow any of it?” Wooley asked.
Mavra sighed. “Let’s ask Obie—if he’ll tell us. He might not take kindly to assisting in his own murder.”
* * *
The elevator wall dissolved and the two women engaged their camouflage mechanisms. They blended well with the background. Though when moving, they could be made out with difficulty, they were generally undetectable to anyone not fully alert. The Well Worlders’ camp still lay nearby the top of the exit so the two crawled through the grass, and only someone actually looking for them would have noticed anything amiss.
In the clear now, they made their way to the primitive little colony of survivors of the destruction of New Pompeii.
Though Ben Yulin had instructed Obie not to tell anyone what he was doing about the Underside operations and plans, he had neglected to prohibit Obie from talking with others and thus only limited Obie’s informability.
“Hello, Obie, this is Mavra Chang,” she called into the ship’s radio.
“I’m here, Mavra,” the pleasant tenor of the computer replied.
She considered carefully what she was going to say. If in fact Obie could not cooperate in this, he might well have the power to stop it. At least he could warn Yulin.
“Obie, when we all came here, it was either to join with you in a partnership or to die. You know that.”
“I had concluded that you knew the only avenue home was through me.”
She nodded. “All right, then. It turned out bad. Wrong. Ben Yulin’s in there, and we can guess what kind of person he is. We’re all agreed, even the Bozog and the Ghiskind, that we’re willing to die rather than let him get control of the big dish. You understand that?”
He seemed to sense her direction. “I accept that, Mavra. Come to the point. I feel as you do, if that helps any.”
It did. “Obie, in those plans you fed to me were the self-destruct mechanisms for New Pompeii. I’ve just picked them out of my mind.”
“I’m surprised it took you all this time,” responded the computer. “I am programmed not to participate in my own destruction, so I could not bring them to your attention, but I knew you’d find them sooner or later.”
His casual attitude and acceptance made it easier.
“All right, then. Obie, how is the main destruct system for New Pompeii’s power supply activated?” she asked. “Can you tell me that?”
“Phrased that way, yes,” Obie replied. “However, it’s a bust. It was coded to Trelig, almost literally built into him. If he were to die, so would the planetoid. But when he was transformed through the Well, the mechanism was removed. In effect, there is now no way to detonate the main power supply without a technical crew and a lot of work.”
She was disappointed. “Can any of the secondary systems still be activated?”
“All such systems are controlled from the control room itself. They are voice-actuated, and I’m afraid Ben wouldn’t allow something like that, nor could I give the codes to anyone not in the control room.”
“Could any one of them be triggered by external action?”
“Some.”
“Is there one that could be triggered by, say, the application of a strong electrical voltage to a specific message circuit?”
“There is at least one such,” Obie replied. “It is in the area between the voluntary and involuntary circuitry, and it can be reached from the main bridge. However, it is 62.35 meters down, and 7.61 meters inside the circuitry. The panel opening is less than a meter wide at that point, and the access tunnel twists up and around.”
Mavra concentrated. Diagrams sped by in her mind. She had it. She was learning that the more she used the implanted memory, the easier it became to find what she needed. Unfortunately, she had no overall picture. She knew the specific circuits, and she knew the general area, but she couldn’t be sure which opening led to that circuitry, or exactly which connector to jolt.
“Thank you, Obie,” she said sincerely. “We’ll take it from here.”
There was no reply.
She returned to the others with Renard, who’d sat there listening.
“There’s no way I could get into an opening that size, or even down there,” he pointed out. “Vistaru could fly down, and might fit, but she couldn’t handle the voltages, and her wings and stinger would be in the way, even if you knew just which circuit to tell her to reach. We’re probably dealing with a single microscopic line.”
She nodded. “No, you couldn’t. But the Ghiskind can certainly reach it. It could probably follow the circuitry all the way to the bomb.”
“So?” he responded. “What good is that? It can’t carry anything, nor generate a voltage.”
“But the Bozog could,” she pointed out. “I saw some traveling up walls at the launch site. Thousands of tiny, sticky feet. It’s low enough, and can ooze around curves like it managed in the elevator. And it can carry a wire—if we can find a hundred meters or more of thin copper wire.”
“Of course! Then all I’d have to do is touch the wire with a full charge after the Bozog carries it and the Ghiskind directs its placement!”
She nodded again. “But first we have to see if we have enough wire around. And, second, we have to lick the other problem—without Obie’s help, I’m afraid.”
He looked confused. “Other problem?”
“The Bozog is a living creature. It’s not at all immune to severe electrical jolts, nor—particularly—to those guns the plans in my head tell me are no bluff. The key area is on the far wall of the bridge, Renard. As long as Obie’s in his defense mode, we can’t get the Bozog to it.”
“Oh,” he said softly. Suddenly he froze, and there was a quizzical expression on his blue devil’s face. He cocked it slightly to one side, as if listening for something.
“What’s the matter?” she asked. Though Wooley had the best eyes of the group, Renard had by far the best hearing.
“There’s something moving over there, not far from the elevator,” he whispered. “Fairly large, too.”
She turned her head slightly, carefully, in that direction. Nothing could be seen.
For a while there was no sound, then even she heard it. A soft sound, as if something heavy were being dragged through the grass.
“Let’s head over to the elevator,” she suggested softly. He nodded imperceptibly and they strolled over, casual but alert.
“So that’s it, then,” Mavra said conversationally. “We’re stuck here. Our only chance is to make a deal with Yulin.”
He nodded. “If he’ll make deals. He’s got to come out of there sooner or later, you know. He’ll have to deal with us or trap himself.”
All sounds had stopped. Renard nodded slightly in the direction of the base, where an unconscious human form could be seen. It was naked, dirty, and scarred, and its hair was a long, twisted mess. It lay face up—a young boy, apparently.
Renard looked into the elevator and couldn’t suppress an exclamation. “My God!” he breathed.
Inside were stacked six or seven bodies, all out cold, all as filthy as the boy. All had horse’s tails.
When he turned to yell to the others, something struck him, hard, sending him sprawling. He was up in an instant and rushed back.
Another unseen thing hit Mavra broadside with such strength that it toppled her onto her side.
Renard saw something large and indistinct near her, and reached out to touch it. Voltage flowed.
Apparently it had no effect, for something landed hard on his head, bringing unconsciousness.
Though nearly helpless, Mavra struggled to rise as she saw two eerie forms, like women but green and grassy, step into the elevator and pull the boy in after them. As they started to change to match the elevator interior, the wall solidified.
Renard regained consciousness quickly and got unsteadily to his feet. Mavra managed finally to pull herself to her feet.
“Who the hell was that?” he gasped.
“The savages—Belden’s people,” she replied. “Probably all of them, I’d say. Snatched right in front of us.”
“But why?” he asked, still holding his head. “And who was it? Yulin? There were definitely at least two.”
She nodded. “Two, and both female. I saw them, briefly. They have a way of fading into the background, like two creatures I once knew—but far different. I don’t know who they are—but Yulin’s obviously being creative with Obie. We’ve been suckered under our very noses.”
“I still don’t get it,” Renard persisted. “Why the savages?”
“Here!” she said. “Get up on me. Ride me in. You’re still groggy.”
He was too woozy to resist her suggestion, and mounted her with difficulty. It was the first time a human being had been on her back, of whatever race. It was uncomfortable, but the Agitar was experienced and clung to her professionally. She slowly walked back, taking care not to throw him off.
“Well, Yulin needs or wants people, that’s for sure,” she said. “We know from Obie that he can’t materialize thinking beings out of thin air. The savages were the easiest to get—just hypno them and carry them down. If he runs them through, he has at least nine slaves that we know of, with whatever powers he wants to give them.”
“Whatever they were, one took a full jolt with no effect,” Renard noted glumly. “But why so many?”
“Us,” she replied. “Remember, he is trapped down there until he deals with us. He’s a very clever and devious man. He knows there’s nothing he can offer us, and certainly nothing he can do whereby we would trust him or he would trust us. Would you step under Obie’s dish with Yulin at the controls?”
“Hell, no!”
“So, what does he do? I’m sure he doesn’t want to risk feedback on Topside. The last time that was tried, Obie transported New Pompeii to its present place. So, he has to capture or kill us. For that he needs others—he can’t do it himself and risk leaving the controls. See?”
Renard whistled. “So our time’s even shorter than we thought,” he said nervously. “It’s nine to six now.”
“And you can bet that if he’s got them immune to your electric personality he’s got them guarded against the rest of us,” she pointed out. “I’d say we have to blow that charge quickly or it’s all over.”
“I think—” Renard started, but he was suddenly cut off.
The whole world was cut off.
There was only blackness and the sensation of falling. No sight, no sound or other impressions, nothing. It was as if all but their minds had simply ceased to exist.
It lasted for a long time, then, suddenly, they were back to normalcy again.
Renard had fallen off Mavra’s back and she’d stumbled herself. Now, for the second time they picked themselves up.
“Now what?” Renard groaned.
Mavra got shakily back to her feet and looked up.
“Events are quickly overtaking us,” she said quietly. “Look up. No Well World. Just a distant sun up there, and a more reasonable amount of stars.
“He’s done it, Renard! We’re back! Back in the human sector of space! Back in New Pompeii’s original orbit!”
“Oh, boy!” Renard said sourly. “And I told the breeding farm I was taking a short vacation . . .”