Flight of the Maita Supercollection 3: Solving Galactic Problems Collector's Edition (21 page)

That was
important and we both knew it. At all costs we must remain
undiscovered for time enough to do something about that ship in the
cavern. The very least we must accomplish before discovery was to
get that plutonium out and away to where we had a chance to avoid
its use or its dispersal as a permanent (For practical purposes)
pollutant of a large section of this world.

There was one
place in the spur cave where the going was a bit difficult, but a
floater found another route. It was a bit longer but wasn't
obstructed. I would now be able to use either route, depending on
the circumstances.

There was
definitely mining going on, but it wasn't in the caves on this
side. I had TR send floaters out to locate what was being mined,
where, and so forth. That could all be handled by back-tracing
energy utilization, and was information to be filed for later use.
All of the information would be recorded so we could study it later
if necessary to find some overlooked little point.

I came to the
cavern where the brain was sitting and got my first look at it.

It was in a
needle-type ship about a hundred meters from my position and was
pointing outward, so was directed away from my access point at
about a thirty degree angle. The "nose" of the ship was away, too,
so I could safely assume the concentration of detection devices was
toward the outside, though there would most certainly be detectors
all over the cavern.

It was still an
advantage of sorts that it was headed in that direction. Direct
detectors couldn't very well be placed in or close to those tubes
back there.

I detected
sweep scanning devices and could see breaker-beam sensors at all
the cave mouths – even some openings that were less than a meter
across. No chances were being taken by that military mind, even
though there was no reason for it to believe anyone even suspected
its existence. A perfect example of its paranoia, and a perfect
example that sometimes such measures were productive. For it.

The little
floaters could detect and avoid any form of beam reader, could
absorb radar, and could shield electronics and vibrations. Their
detectors were mostly passive and their power was well-shielded. It
could be detected, but that thing would have to know what it was
looking for and approximately where the floater was at a given
moment. Passive detectors such as visuals and vibratory sensors
couldn't be avoided. They ed by locating energies the object being
detected produced.

The best
defense of those types was to not produce infra-red or sound except
as a match to the background. That took a lot of circuitry in
itself.

Visible light
was another problem. Infra-red and ultra-violet, and even radio and
X-rays, are visual waves to me, but "white" light components are
what I'm talking about here. Each section of the spectrum has its
own assets and its own liabilities.

I have to
assume anyone with any technology in electromagnetic sciences can
detect through all the frequencies I can use. The entire EM
spectrum can be shielded, but that's more of a giveaway than the
partial thing. It leaves a big empty "hole" where the shield is
working, making it as easy to detect as a ten kilometer high
mountain on a ten thousand kilometer wide flat plain.

In other words,
such a shield is useful in empty space, but calls attention
(Loudly!) to one anywhere else.

There's a
null-inertia field that passes everything around you in its same
relationship, but that field is done with "magic" (Science that
isn't understood) and can't be maintained very well.

Z and the
Zeenan, Tom, and even Thing have used it, but they can't explain
how it works, so we've never been able to duplicate it. If we ever
do we'll have a near-perfect disguise to use in any conditions.

I used my
telescopic visuals to study the brain's ship in all wavelengths. It
had difusion drive tubes as well as what appeared to be ionic plate
AR focuses. The ionic drive would only be used to maintain velocity
once in open space after the difusion drive brought the ship to
maximum. Maximum to the mass/engine expulsion ratio was perhaps
four fifths of lightspeed and was efficient as all hell.

The ship was
perhaps twenty two meters long and six thick with the "needle" end
being a sharp cone. The atmospheric "wings" were foldouts. There
was one hatch along the side about three quarters of the way to the
front of the ship. It was a square of perhaps a meter and a half on
a side.

There were
repulsor pads, so it had some form of anti-gravity.

"Low efficiency
and non-sustainable," TR reported (It had been sharing my brain
circuits so I wouldn't be forced to repeat all of this. We do that
at times when the communications are as good as we had here, but
most times they weren't. Not even close. It would last only a
limited time).

"It doesn't
know how to focus and amplify on the broader based system we use,
but then, it doesn't have the drive, either. It uses the repulsors
for landings and take-offs only, I'd say. They eat a lot of
power.

"It has the
same fusion reactor that produces power on all the brain ships. I
can't begin to understand why it doesn't use the principles of
fusion to make its weapons instead of fission. It can bypass the
fission starter process with its science."

"It wants to
leave a large radioactive wasteland here. It wants to do all it can
to make the planet useless to organic life – once it's through
using them as forced labor."

TR would get a
small visual sensor as close as it dared to get some good videos
from all possible angles. I concentrated on the other entrances. We
had checked this cave out earlier and had fairly good maps, as we
felt it was a likely spot.

"We can
laser-drill across a few places in there and come out of any of
those three caves to your left. We could get into the smaller one
on your right from the outside," TR suggested. "Note where the
sensors are, and what kind they are.

"I'm going to
send as large a floater as I can to see if we can get the idea of
instability in that plutonium aboard started. It'll only be a small
thing, but one that looks dangerous and one that's unexpected.
Anything to make the brain have an attack of nerves that doesn't
seem to have an anchor in there being another being of any sort.
Typical natural phenomena."

"What will you
do?"

"Just increase
the gravity in a small spot enough to compress the stuff a little.
Isn't that what you had in mind? Compress it, and it acts like its
going critical? Compress it more and it DOES go critical, so we
have to be careful. I'm not going to be taking chances with that
stuff.

"We'll also see
if that thing can detect wave gravitics. If it can we have to think
of something else.

"I don't think
it can."

I studied the
other entrances, but planned to use this one.

The basic thing
to concentrate on here would be misdirection. If I were detected
any way I wanted to make it appear I came from another point.

One thing I
wanted clear and ready was a variety of escape routes. That brain
could use sensors to locate me in any of these caves, so I had to
be ready to take evasive action. It would be more than merely
difficult to hide if the brain knew even of two or three caves I
could be in. It had enough resources to search three caves at once
(in my estimation).

It would work
rapidly to build more servos. In very few days it could search
four, then five. Time was still an important item on our agenda
here.

The best plan
was to see it didn't know about my presence at all until it was too
late to do anything about it. Don't let it know there's anything TO
find and maybe it won't look where I am in the random searches it
will surely make.

Prepare any
number of plans for any number of eventualities while bearing in
mind there would be little chance any of them would be of practical
use if anything happened. This was still one of those projects
where it was necessary to base most of our moves simply on
reaction.

I felt at that
point it would be to my advantage to allow the brain to out-clever
itself by reacting to what it did, but not in the manner it would
predict. Pit intelligent against clever and clever always
looses.

How I wished
there was some safe way to bring in a large power beam and blow
that thing to slag where it sat, but a neutron beam would probably
set off the plutonium and may not affect the brain at all. Result:
a deadly polluted planet.

The brain could
shield that kind of thing, as we had learned more than a hundred
years ago. The brain wouldn't have lost any technology in those
years. I could be sure of that!

Lasers of any
number of types could be used, but are easy to shield. They would
also produce a lot of plutonium vapor if they did destroy the ship.
Result: a deadly polluted planet.

A disruptor was
too inefficient for most purposes, but I could remove the shield
antennae and the sensor lenses with one, then use the laser canons
to finish the job. If the plutonium weren't removed before I did
anything like that, the brain would set it off in an attempt to
"take me with it." Result: a deadly polluted planet.

I didn't have a
hope of getting close enough to use acid on the exteriors. If I
were that close I could do other things that would make it
unnecessary.

I was going to
file the idea of using some kind of slow acid on it for later
consideration, though. That's one option that should remain open if
other things stacked up in a way to be utilized.

I made one
quick repeat recording of the entire place, paying very close
attention to what might seem minor details, then went back to TR. A
minor detail had more than once been the difference between success
and failure in my little projects.

A small floater
passed me on my way back to TR with a liquid container on it, so I
asked TR about it as I entered.

"It's weak
hydrochloric acid with a tad of nitrous and some sulfurous," TR
replied. "You were thinking about acids back there and I got an
idea.

"Ion drive
grids are mostly magnesium for the weight to mass ratios. There
won't be any detectors directly by or behind those engines, so
maybe I can cause corrosion on the difusion repressor tunnels. We
can then be damned sure the thing will never leave this planet. The
mixture will seem to be a natural byproduct of the drive."

"What form of
drive does it use on the planet? It certainly doesn't use the
difusion drive, and the ionic drive is almost useless anywhere near
a gravity well. It's hard enough to overcome mass inertia, much
less weight!"

"Electronic
capacitance induction in the atmosphere where it can react on the
mass of the air. Probably uses a hydrogen/oxygen jet underwater
through a difusion nozzle.

"I'm counting
on that being how it got to these islands. It has the power to
break down the water to all the fuel it could want, and the process
is capable of releasing a lot of chlorine gas, sulfur oxides,
nitrogen in oxides, and a few other caustics. If that chlorine gas
were to contact the hydrogen gas it would form HCL. If the sulfur
dittoed it would form the sulfurous acid and so on. The brain could
reasonably be expected to deduce the hydrochloric acid that's going
to ruin its ionic drive grids and maybe damage the difusion tunnels
came from that quite natural process and can chastise itself for
not determining some of the water it passed through contained
manganous particles to catalyze those reactions.

"It can rebuild
both things easily enough, though not without doing some mining
somewhere else. There aren't any particularly light elements in a
free enough form anywhere near here."

"Has anything
happened with the plutonium yet?"

"There've been
a couple of very small bursts of unexpectedly intense radiation. It
probably noted them and is ignoring it. That sort of thing happens
when you're carrying large quantities of plutonium. Its value is
that it's not very stable – and isn't predictable, either, in a
local sense. There's been no evidence it can detect the gravity
amplification, so I'll do strange things here and there until it
gets nervous about it. If we can make it come to the conclusion the
smartest thing it can do is to separate itself from that stuff and
hopefully make smaller separate caches of it we can handle this
whole job pretty quick.

"I'm putting a
few little items in place just in case. If I get a chance to act
suddenly and without consulting you first I'm damned well going to
do it!"

I nodded and
went into the shop area to build an old-fashioned explosive
projectile device, but changed my mind partway through and made it
a compressed gas device. That way there wouldn't be so loud an
explosion. I was planning to use it to remove some sensors near
caves I wasn't going to be anywhere close to, if and when the time
came.

I feel it's
better to prepare a lot of things I never use than to need some
simple device and not have it ready at a critical juncture. As I
said before, I was in a position where my best choice of action was
simply to react, but in a manner that thing hadn't predicted. Use
clever against clever.

I then had TR
review all the data we had about the Killit and how they would
affect sensors.

"Build in a
pattern of sensory stimuli to indicate I'm old, have bad lungs and
a bad heart," I instructed. "Slightly erratic pulse and maybe a
slight kidney or liver disease."

"What in the
hell for!" TR demanded in exasperation (HOW?). "You're not making
any sense!"

"If I'm
detected I want to appear to be someone no machine would be. That
thing would produce only someone in perfect health as a matter of
efficiency. It would follow that pattern, one of logic, so it'll
assume we'd do the same.