Flight of the Maita Supercollection 3: Solving Galactic Problems Collector's Edition (19 page)

"You were
stupid to be so impatient. You should've known they would continue
to advance, and you should've waited until you were more prepared
to take over.

"I won't make
the same mistakes.

"Prepare to
have your memory circuits completely and totally read by my
machines. Be silent if you so choose, but it'll avail you nothing.
There's no way you can stop me!"

"You state you
are planning to take over the Tlesson worlds?" the robot asked.

"I state
nothing of the sort. I'm waiting for more opportune times to make
my decisions. I merely state your maker acted stupidly. Had it
waited only until now it would have had many more things at its
disposal.

"I have a TTH
drive in my ship, which your master never was able to complete
trying to build on its own. I have decidedly far superior weapons
and better sensors, and far more capacity to calculate and
cross-reference.

"I know the
strategies the Tlesson armed forces use and I know how the empire
operates, so I wouldn't make the mistakes your predecessor made
with them."

"It's plain you
intend to try to take over this place you call New Home and Tlesson
worlds," the robot replied. "You will fail. That is not the first
point of attack.

"I have a far
better plan!"

"Your plan's so
good I'm here to destroy you! Your computation processes are
primitive in relation to my own. You are also insane from the
viewpoint of my programmers."

I wanted this
machine to try its trick so I could get out of here! It was
stalling for time. TR was undoubtably using that time, too, so I'd
better let the brain set its own pace until something else
happened.

Something else
happened. The floater said in Swaz, "Okay. I've found it. Get this
over with."

"I note you
sent a little probe to look at the floater you destroyed. I learned
a great deal there. I learned how to defense your weapons against
the floater. You won't be nearly so successful if you try it again
– but then, you aren't going to try anything at all again, are
you?

"I'm now going
to read your memory banks and melt you down to where the people on
this world will never know anything about any of this. That's a
directive programmed into me.

"Floater two
will approach the hatch cover and open it. If you try to prevent us
we'll simply burn our way through. I've wasted enough time with
you. I'm superior, and won't be stopped!"

The floater
approached the hatch, waited a moment, then began burning the
closing mechanism with a pencil laser.

"Wait!" the
robot said. "There is no reason for us to battle one another. We
both have the same eventual directive, to revenge ourselves against
the Tlesson and Maitan Empire forces. We can work together! I have
much more ability than you know!"

"To the
contrary. I wish no revenge. The people of Tlesson designed and
built me and the people of the empire haven't done anything at all
to me. IF I assume my rightful place in control of the Tlesson
worlds it will be to aid those people, not to revenge myself on
them because they did no more than to defend themselves against
YOUR attacks!

"Your desire
for taking revenge because they defended themselves – as you did
yourself – is proof of your insanity and therefore of your
inability to rule logically. You've proven both insanity and
stupidity to be your prime directives.

"I'll take what
information you contain and discard the parts that aren't
useful."

The robot
jerked once and all energy died in it. The "brain" began to radiate
intense heat, so I left the cavern. The floater shielded against
the heat and watched as the servo melted into a puddle of slag.

I headed for
the door as the floaters all flew back to TR.

"Not much of a
puddle for all that brain."

"You would have
found the thing to be mostly empty had you gotten inside, so it had
to do that," TR replied. "It had cables from underneath to control
everything there. It yanked them out and is moving under water.

"Do something
to keep the people from getting too excited and curious about this,
then get back here."

I went to the
gate and reported that the starker was dead and gone, as were his
golems, but I now had to do something about the starker on the
island.

I headed for
Stormlee.

"Tab?" TR
asked.

"Yo?"

"Don't you
realize you didn't use the same accent at any two times you spoke
to those people?" TR said. "You almost took on exactly the dialect
of the last one you spoke with!"

I thought about
it. TR was right. I would have to be much more careful about that
kind of thing.

"Aren't you
glad they had other things to distract them?" I asked.

Is That
Smart?

As soon as I
was back aboard TR we headed out. I first went into Stormlee where
I told Gorta about getting the other magician into the fight and
that I was going to find a way to do something about the one on the
island.

I took the boat
(Which a floater had taken back under cover of darkness) out around
some rocks by the mouth of the harbor where the floater was waiting
to take me to TR. I didn't like taking the time, but TR assured me
it would be very easy to follow the brain. There was a sensor
staying a bit out of detection range that would take us directly to
the ship.

"It doesn't
think we'll follow it," TR explained. "It feels it's fooled us
completely, but it still sent two decoys out. I have a direct fix
on it and wasn't fooled.

"We'll stay
back a ways. I don't think it's built for too much depth. It's
built for vacuum, not pressure. It doesn't move very rapidly under
water.

"I'd say it's
heading for the volcanic islands down near the equator. It can
extract various critical minerals there and can spend unlimited
time in rebuilding its weapons and equipment. It would definitely
not want to give itself away for a number of years. We're supposed
to become convinced we got it back there."

"Why not just
chase it down and blast it to slag out in the oceans somewhere? I
don't want to spend a lot more time here, and I can't help but
think that any time we wait is to the advantage of that thing."

"It's carrying
a hell of a lot of interesting little things – like plutonium," TR
said sarcastically (HOW?). "We're supposed to stop that kind of
pollution, not cause it. I'm keeping my trace because of all those
radioactives aboard. It was all pretty well shielded physically
with lead and gold back by Stormlee, but the brain's jettisoned the
heavy stuff to move. Radiation doesn't hurt anything aboard
it."

"As Thing would
say, I stand chastised and corrected. What are we going to do about
all of that when it stops? The problem will still be there."

"We're going to
hope it offloads it or that we can find a way to get rid of the
brain without destroying the ship. We can't let that kind of
pollution out. You know that."

I used the rest
of the time of the trip to update and input all I could and to talk
for awhile with Maita. I gave a complete report and received the
news they were sure Fleet had destroyed all of the other brain
ships.

Thing and Z
were finally getting started on their case, and T6, who I talked a
bit with, was experimenting with TTH14. Things seemed to be going
well everywhere, which meant there was a hell of a lot we didn't
know about. I get a sick feeling when things seem to be going too
smoothly.

"TR," I said.
"That thing's going to get out of the water to start this project
if not to complete it, so why don't we go on ahead? We can locate
the best areas for it and can know the lay of the land before it
gets there. There's no way it can shake the trace it doesn't even
know about."

"You're
learning to think! Congratulations!" TR replied. "I agree. Let's do
it!"

We went ahead
to the islands where we explored for as much time as we felt
reasonable. There were six major islands moving along the tectonic
plate line at about half a meter per year. The northernmost was the
newest and was subject to eruptions at any time, so wasn't so
likely a place to start building a multiyeared project.

The next one
was only slightly active and would be safe. The next was my pick,
as it wasn't at all active and had plenty of caves and minerals. It
had about everything the brain could want.

The rest of
them were good hiding places, but were occupied, if only sparsely.
There wasn't vegetation or soil enough on the second or third, and
there was a space of perhaps eight or ten kilometers between them,
so the third was still my bet.

It went to the
second, then to the third, back to leave some things on the second,
then back to the third.

We waited two
days plus until it settled into a cavern with several entrances and
exits, and which was on a particularly forbidding section of the
island. No one was likely to come there for years.

"Now we have to
get it to unload those fissionables," I said. "How do we do
that?"

"Your guess is
as good as mine," TR replied. "We'll have to work on the psychology
of the brain. Find a way to make it think leaving the stuff aboard
is dangerous to it."

I waited until
TR was securely settled and in a cavern of our own. We were on the
first island and were watching the brain with floaters. We could be
sure it would be some while before it would do anything outside of
that cave directly, so would have that much time to plan.

"TR, let's move
into a cavern around the mountain from that thing before it has
time to send probes to search for anything in other parts of the
caves. We know perfectly well it'll send its sensor probes into all
the branches," I suggested. "It's going to find our floaters. Even
the direct beam communications with them can be found by getting
between, and we both know full well that thing isn't going to
chance anything like that. It'll find them if they're there.

"If we're in
close a cavern we can use all the com equipment inside of
kilometers of rock. There won't be enough leakage for it to detect
and we can set up a direct light beam it CAN'T get inside of. We
can move a large obstruction into place to ensure it won't find us
and will then have direct access to it.

"You can screen
from the outside, too. That'll give us an advantage all the way
around."

"We can try it.
I don't have any other ideas. I wish it didn't have those
radioactives aboard."

We found the
place that seemed best for us. It was more than three kilometers
through a twisting cave to where the brain was sitting – a cave
that could be blocked easily against probes.

"I think the
best thing to do here is to put up a shield and shake the natural
stuff on the mountain down to cover it. It's all loose basalt and
shale and will look natural."

"The brain
won't detect the shaking?"

"It will, but
it knew to come here in the first place, so it may know of that
opening. There're often tremors around here, so our own'll give it
a natural explanation as to why the cave is gone.

"I'll leave the
shield in place for awhile so its readings will indicate a solid
fill.

"I'll make a
chain of tremors that move along a nearby fault line. It'll check
this one first, as it's the one connected to its own cavern. If it
knows about the connecting cave it'll also have the explanation as
to why there's suddenly an obstruction there, too."

TR sent special
floaters to cause tremors on the far side of the island by firing a
disruptor beam inside of blow-holes and glassine gas chambers in
the rock. The granulating of some solid support rock would cause
cave-ins and rockfalls while leaving nothing detectable.

Molecular
disruptors are terribly inefficient, but we have more than ten
times the power we'll ever need (I hope).

The tremors had
their epicenters first quite a distance away, then close, then
away, then between, then our cave, then away, then past the brain's
cavern. The intensity of them was from quite small to quite heavy,
and the one over us was in between.

TR sent a
floater along our cave to dump two obstructions, one in the cave
past us and about half a kilometer away that could be bypassed
through a spur and one that just entered the main cave leading to
the brain's cavern. That one could be opened easily later with a
disguised doorway. We would use the same rocks that were choking
the passageway in their exact positions, so any recordings would
show no difference when it was later checked – as we could be sure
it would be.

Regularly. That
thing didn't take chances. Not ever!

TR had to bring
in most floaters before it set the shield up, but placed attached a
number of passive sensors outside of the shielded areas. They
wouldn't be detectable.

Two floaters
were simply given programs to make the remaining tremors, then to
hide themselves carefully. There would be slight tremors from
various areas for several days to mimic aftershocks.

I spent much of
my time in the shop making things I felt might be needed while TR
sent me periodical reports:

"There's a
probe checking the rockfall outside."

"There's a
watcher probe above us and one near the water. I hope they don't
stay too long. We can't do anything at all so long as they're
watching. The shield will have to stay up."

"There are two
probes checking the caverns. They dug into the outer obstruction
and did a sonic."

"The probes are
digging into the close obstruction. They're going to do a sonic. I
gave them a solid reading with a small cavern here and there. I
made their probe 'cause' a fall-in to seal one of them."