Flight of the Maita Supercollection 3: Solving Galactic Problems Collector's Edition (89 page)

Tab was
manufactured by Maita, along with his spaceship, TRD-60, who was in
fact part of him. Kit was also manufactured by Maita to be part and
companion to his own ship, T6. T6 and TR were intelligent in their
own rights. TR had been manufactured that way while T6 accidentally
became independent and aware through what amounted to "It’s good
enough for government work" repairs. The Inktan government
maintenance shop had used parts designed for other things and had
taken other shortcuts that resulted in T6's intelligence back when
it was used by Inktan professor, Rimalt.

As ships handle
all such things, it had registered itself as Rimalt's property and
a great friendship quickly grew between them. When Rimalt died (He
refused the curse of life extension offered by Maita) Maita made
Kit as companion to T6 and as partner in Tab's detective business.
Kit was very recent and had only handled a few cases so far with
Tab, but was learning.

All of the
information about their business – or any other – could be
programmed in, but actual experience resulted in an undefinable
sharpening of skills that could NOT be programmed.

Thing came to
drop off the floater onto Kit's shoulder. It was an empath and
couldn't directly vocalize so Maita had designed a system through
which it could speak through speakers on any of the ships or
through speakers on the floaters. Maita and the robots and their
ships could speak through the same speakers so devised a system
from the first where it used a soft bell tone to announce its
speech (*) while Thing used a middle "C" tuning fork sound ( [ – ]
) to announce its speech. TR and T6 had distinct enough intonation
that they didn't need anything else. From the first, Maita and
Thing spoke in the form of machines, using neither inflection nor
paragraphing in their speech. They now used inflections, but the
old habit of not using paragraphing persisted. Everyone was now
used to it so it presented no major problems.

Thing settled
on Kit's shoulder and spoke through the floater. [ Do you two
detectives think you can figure Z's exact age in Maitan Empire
Standard years? ]

"Sure," Tab
said. "If we can be given a date to start and a date he was
abducted."

"I was born May
sixteenth, nineteen sixty one on Earth and was abducted September
nine, nineteen eighty five," Z informed them. "That abduction was
on Prime nine, seven fifteen twenty seven MGS."

"Well, an Earth
year is point nine eight three Maitan Galactic Standard years so
you were twenty three point ... nine one six four MGS years old
when you were abducted," Tab figured. "It is now Medate eleven,
seven eighteen oh oh. There was the three year adjustment one
hundred eighty one years ago so your ... three hundredth birthday
would fall on ... Medate nine, seven eighteen oh oh! That's when
the party started!"

*I figured that
out. I try not to forget birthdays such as the big three oh
oh!*

"I hate to
interrupt all this maudlin drivel," TR said over the speakers (The
ships were on EC so they could use the radio pickups to speak with
the whole group, though they were tied by a special combination
radio/gravitics band to Tab and Kit). "We have a case coming in
over the fastcom. As we're detectives I think perhaps we should
answer it one way or another."

[ So answer it
already! Do I have to do everything for everyone? Can't you make a
simple decision for yourself? ]

"Up yours!" TR
snapped back. "Maybe I'll have Tab tie those ridiculous tentacles
in knots for you!"

The group
constantly insulted and bickered among themselves. It was actually
affection, though those unfamiliar with the game would think there
would soon be mayhem at times.

[ Careful! I
might deprogram all those defective circuits in you! ]

*Might we find
what this case is about or will you two sit around bitching at each
other?*

[ I vote to
bitch! ]

"Me, too!" TR
responded. "However, as Maita is so curious – it's a case of
shipments of valuable articles being lost on a certain run. No one
seems to be able to find what happens to the stuff. The ships
aren't attacked in any way and none of the crew knows what's
happening. It seems to be almost magic – which I won't argue with!
– or something entirely new. The captain of the last one
volunteered to go on the probe in hopes she knew something she
didn't know she knew, but the probe didn't find anything.

"These are
Kheth ships so neither of you will need disguises. They have Swaz
in their crews. I told them we'd be on Khee on Medate thirteen so
you can fool around for a couple more days."

"Since when do
you accept the jobs for us?" Kit asked.

"Don't start,
Lizard Lips!" TR shot back. "It's hard enough keeping ahead of
Thing!"

[ On Z's five
hundredth birthday you'll be two hundred years further behind me!
The day you ever get ahead of ME will be cause for massive
celebration over the entire Maitan Empire! ]

"So you admit
it!" TR shot back. "Dumping you off that floater will be a day for
celebration over the entire galaxy! You rubber tyrant!"

*Actually,
Thing doesn't have quite the same consistency as rubber. It's a lot
more like certain plastic compounds.*

They snipped
until Kit and Tab and their ships left the following afternoon. The
others are still at it so far as I know.

Khee is
the world that was center of the old Kheth Federation. It was once
so filled with petty bureaucrats and rules it almost toppled that
government from internal inertia and friction, but the Kheth
petitioned Maita to be allowed into the Maitan Empire – which
hardly existed at the time. Maita's servos took over all of the
duties of millions of useless paper-shuffling obstructionists and
now Khee was known as a progressive world. It was a center of
distribution for Zeenan, Mord and Zulian crafts and industrial
output, as well as for the art of Parf, the Woost worlds and New
Zule and the medical products of Feach and New Zule (The Zulians do
everything better than anybody, but that's another
story).

Tab/TR landed
at Port City where the flights left and arrived that were being
hijacked while Kit/T6 landed at Port Records Center to search
through the files and records for anything useful. The two wouldn't
let it be known who they were or that they knew each other until
they built a basis for investigation. It would be necessary to
determine one fact other than that things were missing in an
impossible situation.

It was true, they discovered long ago, that there were
quite a lot of unexplainable things in the universe. Magic was as
good a name for it as anything so long as magic was defined as
things science couldn't explain – yet. Once explained they were no
longer magic. Maita and crew learned that lesson very pointedly on
Tlorg! (
Now
You See It – Now You Don't
: Book five)

No one
seriously considered this was any such thing, but it wasn't closed
as an option.

*

Tab left TR and
went to the Traders Guild Dispatch Center to meet with Norn, the
one who called the agency. Norn was a middle-aged Kheth with a
harried look, not so easy among those reptilian peoples. Tab
introduced himself and said he would be operating under the name
Meik and had papers to put him in any number of jobs aboard a ship
if it came to that. He asked for the facts.

"It seems so
impossible," Norn said. "The first one was over a year ago. Just
one and you can believe somebody loaded the stuff on a wrong ship
or something. It was raw gincha so we weren't too badly hurt by it.
The insurance paid for it, but the gincha never showed up anywhere
else. That didn't make any sense. We naturally thought there would
be a way to trace such things as two hundred metric tons of raw
gincha being dumped on the market!

"I got
suspicious and personally checked the loading robots. They don't
make mistakes. They do exactly what they're designed to do. I ran
the scanner records of each one, six of them, that had loaded the
gincha and, believe me, it was put on that ship. It was on that
ship when that ship left the pad! Period! That's a fact! The mass
detectors even say two hundred tons of organic material WAS on that
ship!

"It wasn't on
the ship when it made groundfall on Parnett. It arrived there
pretty much right on schedule – maybe an hour and a half late, but
there's that kind of variation in the schedule and the ship is
always held in low orbit for two hours so arrival times aren't so
critical.

"I couldn't
find any way the stuff could have been taken off that ship. I spoke
with the crew – two Kheth, two Swaz and a Mome. They even had a
Feach passenger and I spoke with him.

"Nothing! It
was a normal and even boring trip. There were no noises, vibrations
– you certainly know how much vibration moving large masses in
space sets up in a ship! Every little scrape will make the whole
damned ship a sounding board!

"That was the
'Klaj Starship Four' on a standard run with a standard cargo. Next
was eight days later, the 'Qat Leader.' That one was carrying
computer systems to Klovis. Exactly the same. The stuff was on that
ship when it left this port. Period. It wasn't aboard when it
grounded on Klovis. I interviewed, with the same results. It was a
normal trip. It arrived only twenty minutes off center schedule.
Normal is up to two hours late. We were even watching for funny
stuff on all loadings because of the other lost shipment, but
everything – and I DO mean EVERYTHING – was normal in the loading
until that ship left orbit!

"There was a
period of ninety three days when nothing more happened, then 'Qat
Carrier Three' arrived without its cargo from Ternz. A full
shipload of navigational equipment was simply gone! I interviewed
everyone and even went to Ternz where I checked out the robots. The
ship was forty minutes off exact center expectations. Normal
variation from Ternz is fifty minutes.

"Fourteen days
ago the 'Nimb Giant,' carrying medical supplies from Feach, arrived
empty. Exact same thing all the way through. Capt. Land insisted
there was some memory suppression technique at work and insisted
she be put on the probe. You have the results right there. Nothing!
Nothing at all! The trip was standard. The ship arrived seven
minutes off schedule center! Seven minutes EARLY! Most ships on
that run are more than twenty minutes LATE!

"Now! Three
days ago the 'Klaj Starship One' departed this port for Goombridge
Four and arrived there empty. Agricultural equipment. I called your
agency because I understand you're the very best and even the
emperor has used you.

"I don't have
the least conception of what to do next."

"I think
there's an established technique here so I can figure which ship
will be hit next," Tab said. "It will be a Qat ship, more likely a
Nimb ship and possibly a new company. I see what kinds of cargo are
being grabbed, I think.

"Can you give
me a list of the stuff scheduled by those three companies over the
next ninety days? If I can't find what I want there I'll have to go
through all of the things listed to be carried on all the ships for
that period of time. All we really have is that Khee is on one end
of the deal, somehow."

Norn made a
long printer readout for Tab, who glanced over it. He grinned at
one certain item and cautioned, "If you see me anywhere you don't
know me. If I don't speak first don't speak. If I do say anything
follow the lead strictly. You've never seen or heard of me before.
Okay?"

"It's fine with
me!" Norn agreed. "I admit to being totally lost! Anything I can do
to find out what the nine hells is going on here I will do!"

Tab got up and
headed for TR. He had to contact Kit and he had to get a job. A
special job. On a special ship. The "Nimb Colossus."

How did they do
it?

* *

Kit went to the
records division, found an unoccupied booth and put up the privacy
screen. He quickly plugged into a machine with his variable
built-in socket, spent several minutes studying everything
available there and stopped to correlate. The record of cargo
transfers, the insurance risk stats, the companies involved,
cross-reference anything that was pertinent to the case,
extrapolate other factors and it will happen right there. That ship
will be next.

But how was it
done? And who was doing it?

It was a sure
way to make a lot of people very wealthy if there was some market
waiting for all the stuff. It was all very much in demand, from the
gincha that grew well only on three planets to the equipment, all
of which had ready markets and all of which simply wasn't supplied
nearly enough to meet the demands. One thing to keep in mind was
the fact that enough had been stolen already for the crooks to
afford the very best equipment made. That could suggest some very
high technology to fight.

Kit went back
to T6 and lounged back in the pilot's chair to think. He had T6 put
the routes of the ships whose cargoes had been hijacked on his
"interior holovid screen" to try to find where the hijacking would
take place. There was, in the case of the robots, no such screen,
but Kit "saw" one anyhow. T6 sent the impulses along Kit's optic
sensors.

So that was
exactly where it would happen and where the stuff was taken. It
would seem someone else would have thought of this, but then,
organics had trouble seeing three dimensional figures, much less
four.

When he thought
about it, organics couldn't possibly project interplanal physics as
an overlay effect. What it boiled down to (Another of Z's
expressions) was that things in the TTH4 plane weren't in the same
relative positions in N space. Geometry between the two planes was
based on fractal illogical laws relative to either of the planes
themselves.