The fourth day after they’d come to the tower, Frigate leaped smiling into the room.
“Hey, we’re pretty dumb! The answer is right under our noses! Why don’t you send robots in to insert the module?”
Loga sighed.
“I’d thought of that. It was one of the first things to occur to me. But even though the robots are made of charruzz (the gray metal), the computer’s beamers will slice through them.”
Frigate looked disappointed and a little foolish.
“Yes… but… if you send enough in, they’d knock out the beamers!”
“None of the robots have the functional structure to shoot beamers.”
“Well, couldn’t you convert them? And then program them?”
“It would take me ten days. If I’d started when I first got here, I couldn’t have altered one in time.”
He paused, then said dolefully, “I just checked on the time left before the computer dies. Five days!”
Even though they’d been expecting such an announcement, they were shocked.
Tom Turpin said, “At least we won’t have that to worry about. The souls’ll be gone, and there’s nothing to do about it. But you can give those that’re still alive a lot more time.”
Loga turned some dials and punched a button. Ghuurrkhian numbers glowed on the screen. The others were advanced enough by now to be able to read them.
“Eighteen billion, one hundred and two,” Aphra said.
“I should kill the computer right now,” Loga said. “I’ve waited too long as it is. For all I know, my mother’s soul was collected today.”
“Wait!” Frigate said. “I’ve got an idea! You said you’d reopened your private resurrection chambers when you got here. Can they be fixed up so that we could be resurrected in them, too?”
“Why, yes. They could be. The resurrector catchers operate on a slightly different frequency from that of the computer. I had my wathan and Tringu’s tuned to it. I could do the same for you. But why?”
Frigate started to explain, but Loga, Burton, and Nur comprehended at the same time what he meant to say.
They would go down in force, leaving several behind to do the necessary supervision. They would storm the room, and, though they might be killed over and over, they still could put out all the beamers of the computer.
“How’d you happen to think of that, Pete?” Tom Turpin said.
“I’m a science-fiction writer. I should’ve thought of it when I found out what the situation was.”
“I should’ve thought of it, too,” Loga said. “But we’re all under great emotional pressure.”
“You can duplicate these?” Burton said, holding up the pistollike sphere-ended weapon.
“As many as we’ll need.”
Within two minutes, the entire group was armed with the beamers. The Ethical then had his machine print out diagrams of the route to the valve room from the control room and from his private resurrectors. They studied the diagrams, identifying each corridor and chamber with the corresponding screen displays.
“There are video cameras on every wall in that area, including the valve room. Here’s a picture of it from the files.”
They studied the reproductions issued by the machine until they knew the room by heart. Then Loga commanded that a module be duplicated in the e-m cabinet, and he gave them the simple instructions for pulling out the old module and inserting the new.
Unfortunately, the Ethical was unable to get diagrams showing where the computer’s defenses were located.
“That information must be in the computer’s memory banks.”
Nur said, “Why don’t you ask the computer for it?”
Loga looked surprised, then laughed softly.
A moment later he had information, though it wasn’t what he’d asked for. The computer refused to divulge where its weapons were.
“Well, it was worth a try.”
They got into their chairs and followed the Ethical to a lift shaft. They descended in it far faster than they’d dared operate their chairs until then. When they’d gone a mile, he stopped and then went into a bay and from there into a corridor. After a few minutes Burton, who had an excellent sense of direction, realized that they were heading for the general area of the secret room at the base of the tower. At their speed, they quickly arrived at it.