Flight of the Maita Supercollection 3: Solving Galactic Problems Collector's Edition (25 page)

"The starker
isn't a bad person, but he's not so good as she'd have you believe,
either. It's him who wants gold as much as her. He gave us the
golems, but he gets half the gold we find. I will tell you that he
didn't ...."

"I've got all
the plutonium," TR sent on an open radio signal. It was sent in our
private coded digital, so all the brain would know was there was a
sudden burst of radio. It would have no meaning to it.

Mr. Hoosh
paused. I had nothing to lose now, tactically. I was inside of the
ship and didn't think it would self-destruct too precipitously.

I looked as
innocent as I could and said, "Are you a golem, too? Is that how
you and her knowed what was bein' said when you wasn't in the
room?"

He looked at me
and didn't speak.

"They done said
that some of the golems was the same lookin' as Killits. You and
her both golems?" I asked.

I tried to
appear merely interested and not afraid.

"And are you a
Tlessarian?" he asked in Tlesson Major.

I looked
confused.

"Are you from
the Maitan Empire?" it asked in Maitan, and I looked even more
confused, as it stared at me very hard.

"We are not
golems, we just control them for the starker. I'm sorry we ever got
involved in all of this. It would have been all right if there
hadn't been that stupid trouble in Stormlee.

"Please. We
mean no harm to anyone. We will go away and do our exploring and
mining somewhere else if you will promise not to tell others about
us. We won't bother anyone, but if you tell any others they'll
never leave us alone."

"Golems don't
bleed!" I cried triumphantly. "Do you bleed?"

"Of course I
bleed! Just go! Get out of here and leave us alone!"

I got up and
swayed a bit, then crawled out, mumbling that a person would think
they'd make a door big enough to get in and out of.

I was a bit
puzzled at this point because the brain was being a bit too easy to
fool. It could think I was really a Killit, but why these extremes
of concern about my reporting them? They could kill me and be gone
before any war party ever showed up. Was the brain that
weakened?

I was a short
distance from the ship when the floater came to me from atop the
ship. I took the laser off of it and shot Mr. Hoosh as he came down
the ramp. He shorted out and fell heavily to the bottom of the
ramp. I took the trmpthm detonator TR had placed there for the
purpose and tossed it into the ship. It went off with the
tremendous force the stuff generally does go off with.

I had no belief
whatever it would harm the brain itself, but I wanted to do all I
could to distract it.

There was a
sudden buzzing sound and a small plutonium-loaded missile dropped
down under the ship on a platform. I dove for the cave entrance as
the floater dove for the missile to put up a solid shield around
the thing. I was in the cave and running for TR with all the speed
I could muster.

I remember
seeing the Noobish robot coming into the cavern on the run as I
entered the cave. I felt a rumbling and fell flat, but there wasn't
nearly the blast I expected.

"The floater
held the shield and decayed it from the top as the blast went off.
It was directed as almost a huge heat laser through the brain ship.
There's nothing left," TR reported. "The radioactivity won't be too
bad, as the mountain absorbed much of it.

"We came out
pretty well ahead of this one, I think. I really expected more of a
problem, but we backed the thing into a corner it couldn't find a
way out of.

"It intended to
take you with it. We always felt it would do that. It had to be
suspicious at the very least.

"Come on aboard
and we'll dump this plutonium somewhere. I sent in floaters and
took it all. I fused the servos who resisted and got it over with.
That's when Noobish ran out of there."

TR used the big
laser to open the outer entrance to our cavern so it could get out.
We went out to dump the plutonium into the sun, where it couldn't
ever contaminate anything, then headed outsystem.

I may have been
a bit uneasy, but we would check back here again as soon as we saw
the results of the fleet's actions.

I sat in the
pilot's chair and told TR to call up the view of the cavern before
the blast so I could watch it on the holovid screen and fill in the
gaps in my personal file.

There was the
ship with its deteriorated ion grids and the spots on the difusion
tube that had become granular. Those tubes would never have lifted
the ship a centimeter. The granulation would've gone through the
linings at first blast. The acid attack worked very well
indeed.

I watched
myself come out of the hatch and turn to see the gravity floater
come to give me the trmpthm detonator and laser, then Mr. Hoosh was
coming down the ramp. I shot him and spun as the trmthm detonator
was thrown into the open hatch.

I sat back and
started laughing. I couldn't stop. This was like a very bad dream.
A very bad dream, indeed!

"What's the
matter with you?" TR demanded.

"Oh, I was just
thinking. Wasn't it so very easy to get rid of that brain? Didn't
it cooperate so very nicely in its own destruction? A military
strategist like that! Why, it never fixed the ion drive-grids and I
doubt it ever checked the difusion tubes at all.

"How very
convenient! How clever!"

"Okay. I see.
But when and how did it get out of the ship? I wondered about that.
There was no way that strict a military mind would allow those
grids and tubes to sit there and rot.

"How could it
get out of there, and how did it handle Noobish and company? There
was no radio and no direct connection. I know that!"

"It fully
expected to be followed. Here it goes with the same tricks it
always pulls, and there we went falling into its trap again.

"It always
overdoes it just a little. If it fought us to the bitter end there,
had the servos attack, fired that missile as soon as it cleared the
ship it would've worked. It had to make it a little too easy. The
military mind at work. Don't fix something that'll be sacrificed
anyway, so the tubes stay eaten away and the grids weren't
replaced.

"A one hour
replacement job on the grids. The tubes, it still could've fooled
us, but not those grids. If that thing was still in the ship there
would've been clean gleaming replacements in those frames.

"It left that
ship while we were waiting for it to check for us out in our own
little cave and set the rest of this up. We did pretty much exactly
what it figured we'd do. It fully expected us, so programmed a
secondary computer aboard that ship with what to do in any case
that came up.

"It slipped my
mind it was here on Killit for some time, and certainly wouldn't
have all of the servos it produced at work around Stormlee. It had
plenty of time to make all it could need.

"I didn't check
while in the ship, but I'd be willing to bet there was a hell of a
lot of empty space in there. It had the servos unload it and carry
it to some special spot as soon as it landed. It'll have a full
complement of robots to do everything it needs, but they'll all be
shut down completely. It can wait until it's sure we're gone for
good before it starts actually doing what we thought it was doing
there.

"Now it DOES
think it's won. It can take centuries to build its forces at its
own pace."

"There's no
detectable energy use anywhere around that mountain," TR said.
"What has it done with the power supply for all of those servos?
What about its own power?"

"It'll have
generators it can start and small power units in battery form to
start the generators," I answered. "It has to wait a minimum of
twenty years to be sure we won't be watching anymore. It took more
than a century to get here and doesn't mind waiting another to
start. Time is nothing to it."

"We may have
one more ingredient in all of this in our favor," TR agreed.
"Unfortunately, it's also pretty much against us in another
way.

"If it's
started a decay timer or something and is on standby it won't
resist us when we find it: On the other hand, we'll have a hell of
a time locating something that isn't using detectable power.

"I'm going to
land directly in the cavern where its secondary blew up its
ship."

We went into
the cavern, where TR sent servos with sensors to check over every
square centimeter of the place. We did a lot of calculating with
the debris from the ship and servos and robots minus the stuff
mined, minus the plutonium, and came up with a data crossover from
the trace of power being expended to move the ship from Stormlee to
the island.

"Between thirty
and thirty three and a half tons unaccounted for," TR figured.
"That's enough for mining equipment, servos, a machine shop,
component extras, and more.

"Some of those
servos show scrapings and such to show they've handled copper,
antimony, cesium, iridium alloys. Do you see what that means?"

"It has shield
grids and may be doing pretty much what we did in our own little
cave. It can use all the power it wants inside the shield and we
can't detect it. We can assume it has passive sensors through the
shield to watch approaches.

"If we can
locate the sensors we'll know where it is. They have to be very
close to the shield."

"I can find
passive sensors. I'll make them form eddy currents and locate the
eddy. It'll tell the brain we have it located, but that won't mean
much. It had one and only one hope here, and that is that it is NOT
located. This is one trap it built and fell into itself!"

"Well, it
didn't have any real choice. It was either that or actually destroy
itself. Find it and we'll see if we can get past its shield. It'll
have a plutonium reactor in there and a breeder, so it won't ever
run out of power for the shield. As tricky as that thing is, we
could never.... Ahha!"

"You got it,
Boss!" TR replied. "I think we're going to find our shield pretty
easily!"

"It activated
the shield from outside, so maybe you can find the switch to turn
it off through the same place. If it used a simple ... it'll have
programmed a servo to turn it on. It can afford that.

"It would never
take the chance we'd find a way to drop the shield to find it isn't
in there."

TR was right.
We found the shield without much trouble at all. The brain decided
to make a transparent plot with the ship so we would search for its
hiding place. There wasn't any reason for the servo to have those
traces of alloy. The shield grids would definitely have been coated
for storage, so we were to "find" a shield which we couldn't open.
We would then place sensors around every centimeter of that shield
and wait for the brain to come out – even if we had to wait
centuries – and we would wait for centuries, because that shield
was self-perpetuating and had a power supply that wouldn't fail for
millennia.

"Okay, but now
how do we find the brain?" TR asked. "When and how did it move
again, and where? That's the big question!

"It probably
does have a lot of servos and equipment hidden for its eventual use
somewhere, but there wasn't enough on that ship for two reactors,
even if they do mine their lead and other materials here. It'll be
on the decay timer and will be hard as all hell to find.

"We have no
choice. We must find it, and we must determine its not really
pulling a double trick planning that we won't trust it. It may
really BE inside of that shield, you know."

"It isn't, but
it doesn't really matter. The mass attraction factor of that shield
and contents can't be more than twenty tons. This is an uninhabited
island. We can treat the shield and field as though it were a solid
object. Set some servos to dig us a way to put a steel net around
the shield and bring it out where we can look at it."

I could almost
feel TR giggle as it sent floaters to dig out the tunnel leading to
the force bubble. The thing was just over twelve meters in
diameter, so TR had the cave lasered out around it, it was rolled
like a ball down an incline, then cables were formed into a net
around the whole thing. They were drawn to hold it and TR acted as
a tug to pull it out into the sunshine. It sat floating about an
eighth of its diameter under the water.

"Weight seven
and a quarter tons here. What do you suggest?"

"Take it out
and let it join that plutonium. Inside the atmosphere of that sun
the shield will collapse in a few minutes. Nothing will survive. If
the brain's in there it's gone. If not we're rid of the shield and
won't have to watch it for centuries.

"Let's get that
done, then let's come back here. I have an idea of where the brain
is and how it handled the whole thing right under our best sensors.
It didn't have to hide nearly so much as I thought at first. That
may mean it has some kind of ... but we'll have to wait."

It took time to
haul the force sphere to the area of the sun, as your speed is
definitely limited when you have a thing like that hanging on. We
shot it into the sun and stayed until we saw it pop and the
plutonium in its reactors emit all the radiations as it became a
part of the star. There was no trickery there, and there was
nothing that escaped the thing. We went back to the cavern, where I
took a few things onto a floater.

"I'm going to
assume you know what you're doing," TR snarled sarcastically (!).
"What should I do?"

"Be ready to
blast the brain to vapors when I find it," I said as I went down
the ramp.

Don’t
Miss Anything

I moved along
the cavern floor looking for the tracks I wanted to trace, thought
a moment, and went back aboard TR.