Sidney's Comet (28 page)

Sidney mentoed this hatch. It opened. Just inside was another red double lock handle. He threw it on.

Sidney fell to his knees, still grasping the handle and breathing hard. He caught his breath, yelled: “Tom! You here, Tom?”

There was no response.

Sidney wondered why two trailers full of cappies were connected to the Shamrock Five.
Disposables,
he thought.
Did Tom know about that?

Sidney rolled through the passenger compartment and peeked into the cockpit, still calling for Tom Javik. Then he searched two aft magnetic container storage rooms.

He’s not aboard,
Sidney thought, rolling back to the cockpit.
Where is he?

Inside the cockpit, Sidney touched one of the white molded plastic command chairs. He looked around the dimly lit area, saw the faint twinklings of stars far out at the end of the docking tunnel. He slid into the seat.

An array of dials, levers and handles confronted Sidney, and he studied them intently. He focused upon a brass plate marked “
SHAMROCK FIVE—SP-1607
” and next to that recognized a red ball plasto-cyanide bomb detonator from photographs he had once seen.

Let’s see here,
he thought, moving his fingers across a row of blue handles.
Direct Command Mode, Takeoff Mode, Docking Mode, Attack Mode. . . .

“Attack Mode!” Sidney whispered excitedly to himself, resting his hand on that handle. “My Rosenbloom! I can’t believe it!” For a moment, he imagined being under Uncle Rosy’s direct orders to save Earth . . . Atheist fighter ships were attacking the Shamrock Five from all sides! . . .

Returning to reality, Sidney retracted his hand. There was a slight throbbing at his bandaged temple where Mayor Nancy Ogg had kicked him. He touched the bandage, felt the bump.

I’ve got to be realistic,
he thought.
I’ll radio for Tom.
Sidney scanned the instruments, located the speakercom. He mentoed a switch to open the circuit, heard the crackle of static electricity.
Well get the ship out to where we can see the garbage comet. . . . I’ll pray for it to go away. That’s how I stopped the fire. . . . Garbage comets? Can it really be?

Just then, laughter cackled distantly in Sidney’s brain. It drew closer.
“Ha!”
a familiar tenor voice said.
“He’s at it again—thinks he’s a miracle worker!”

“It is pathetic,”
a second, deeper voice said.
“Now listen, fleshcarrier. You can’t pray to God. God didn’t send that comet! We did!”

The voices cackled with laughter again. To Sidney, it sounded orchestrated.

“You listen to me!” Sidney said angrily. “I’m trying to help people! Millions will die if I don’t try!” Sidney thought of Carla, felt tears coming on. He fought them back.

The voices receded, laughing merrily.

“Who’s there?” a speakercom voice asked. “Who said that?”

“Get me Lieutenant Tom Javik,” Sidney said, addressing the speakercom. “Tell him Sidney Malloy is aboard the Shamrock Five, ready for takeoff.”

Presently a rasping voice came on the frequency. “Who?” the voice asked. “Who is this?’

“Sidney Malloy. I’m in command of the Shamrock Five until Lieutenant Javik takes over.” Sidney was not aware of his appointment as titular captain by General Munoz. “Get Javik for me!” Sidney rasped. “Now!” He rested his hand on the Takeoff Mode handle.

“Javik is missing, fella. You’re that cappy he asked for, aren’t you? Just open the hatches and give yourself up.”

“No! What do you mean he’s missing? You’re lying!” But Sidney read a voice pitch meter on the dashboard. The meter dial was in the green zone.

It’s true,
Sidney thought, his spirits sinking.
Tom isn’t here!

Static crackled across the frequency.

“You’re just making it hard on yourself,” the voice said. “Be reasonable. No one’s going to hurt . . .”

Sidney mentoed the frequency shut.
I’ll have to fly this baby myself,
he thought, studying the instrument panel.
Now how do I cut the trailers loose? Maybe Direct Command Mode
. . . .

He threw on the appropriate handle, saw the words “Direct Command Mode” illuminated in blue over the handle, and beneath the handle, in blinking red lights, the words “Standing By.” The entire instrument panel blinked on with luminescent green, red and blue dials and blinking lights.

Release trailers,
Sidney mentoed.

There was no response.

“Release trailers!” he yelled.

Still no response.

Sidney stared at the words “Standing By,” drummed a finger on the instrument panel.

“Ship’s computer,” he said, speaking into a console-mounted microphone. “How do I release the trailers?”

“That is not in my program,” the computer replied.

“Where would such a thing be programmed?”

“That is not in my program, either.”

“Can’t you even suggest where I might look?” Sidney asked, pleading.

“No.”

Frustrated, Sidney shook his head.
A bureaucratic computer,
he thought.

* * *

At the forwardmost hatch of Mass Driver One, Madame Bernet confronted five black-uniformed security guards, one of whom was Sergeant Rountree.

“Roll aside!” Madame Bernet commanded. I’m going through!” The meckie stood with both hands thrust into its pockets, glared menacingly.

“This hatch is double-locked,” Sergeant Rountree said angrily, holding one hand on the handle of his bolstered pistol. “Stay the hell out of our way now, Madame!”

Without another word, Madame Bernet drew two long knives out of her pockets. The meckie crossed them in front ceremoniously, then swished them through the air, their steel blades glimmering brightly.

Sergeant Rountree and the other guards drew their pistols, commenced firing at the meckie.

“Pttting! Pitting! Thud!” Bullets ricocheted off walls and off Madame Bernet’s plastic and metal body.

The killer meckie smiled, a death’s head smile. Then, with five precise strokes, it decapitated the guards. Sergeant Rountree was first to die. The guards fell in blood-squirting heaps, their bodies separated from their heads.

Madame Bernet crossed the knives, then slid them into pocket-concealed sheaths while mentoing a code to break the hatch’s double lock.

The hatch slid open.

The meckie passed through the door, double-locked it again.

Seconds later, Madame Bernet stood at the rear hatch of the Shamrock Five. The hatch slid open at a mento-command. As the killer meckie rolled in, the Shamrock Five shifted on its tether, causing a raised surface to appear underfoot. Madame Bernet’s moto-shoes struck this bump, and the meckie fell violently to the floor, butting its forehead against a bulkhead.

The meckie jumped to its feet with knives drawn, rolled in a confused pattern. Something had been damaged in the fall, and a programmed track commanded:
Mission complete! It is time to kill!

Madame Bernet rolled forward through the passenger compartment, paused uncertainly when she saw the seat upon which she had ridden from Earth to Saint Elba.
Mission complete!
the program repeated.
It is time to kill!

The meckie restarted, rolled to the cockpit hatch.

Sidney turned at the sound of steel hitting the hatchjamb. “Who the hell are you?” he asked, recognizing the short-haired woman he had seen on the mass driver.

Madame Bernet did not respond, appeared disoriented to Sidney. With a gaze that rolled all over the cockpit, not focusing upon anything, the meckie began to swing its knives while rolling into the cockpit. The knives moved slowly at first, then faster and faster.

“Swish! . . . , Swish! . . . Swish-swish-swish!”

The meckie closed in on Sidney, flailing wildly like a blind man fighting a burglar. Sidney fell against the instrument panel, accidentally tripping the “Takeoff Mode” handle. He ducked, climbed around the command chairs and rolled into the passenger compartment.

The ship’s four Rolls Royce engines rumbled on, then smoothed out. Sidney lunged to the floor behind a double chair to hide, peered across the top of an armrest at the cockpit. The meckie was still in there, thrashing around and cutting everything to pieces. Sidney heard breaking glassite, thuds and crashes.

Sidney recalled the dream he had experienced in the detention center sleeping room on Earth . . . the knives that approached inexorably. . . . Tom’s head being severed horribly. . . .

He’s dead,
Sidney thought, grimacing at the thought.
That monster killed him!

The engines whined, and Sidney felt a surge of power.
Tethers are holding it back,
he thought.
This thing’s trying to takeoff!

The tethers snapped, and the ship lurched violently, throwing Sidney against the seat behind him.

Mayor Nancy Ogg stared impatiently in the direction of the forward firewall hatch Sergeant Rountree had gone through minutes before. Just as she started to roll forward, the mass driver shell lurched, and she rolled hard against a quarter bulkhead. Grabbing the bulkhead to stay on her feet, the Mayor read a Patterman Gravitonic Indicator dial mounted there. The reading:”1.027.”

She saw other people sprawling upon the floor, heard confused yells and the clanging of unsecured metal tools. A scaffold fell to the deck just a meter away, sending its occupants flying and screaming in pain.

“Get medical attention for the injured!” Mayor Nancy Ogg yelled.
For cappies?
she thought.
Who cares about them?

Acknowledging the command, a melon-shaped security corporal snapped a first aid kit off the bulkhead. But the mass driver lurched again, and the corporal went sliding across the floor.

“We’re taking off!” someone yelled. ‘The tethers just broke!”

The Shamrock Five surged unhesitatingly through Saint Elba’s main docking tunnel, probing the darkness ahead with its collision sensors. Still in the passenger compartment, Sidney lifted his head and peered out a porthole. Outside spotlights flashed on,

Presently, Sidney no longer heard Madame Bernet slashing about in the cockpit. Instead, he heard the radio blaring from that direction.
They’ve found an override frequency,
he thought, recalling when he had shut off communication.

“Shamrock Five!” a voice said over the radio speakercom. “You do not have takeoff clearance!”

Sidney rolled cautiously to the cockpit hatchway.

“Shamrock Five!” the radio blared. “Acknowledge!”

Sidney looked around the doorway with one eye, saw the meckie crouching in a corner, knives crossed in front of its body. A piece of plastic skin on the back of one of the meckie’s hands had been peeled off, and Sidney saw metal gears and nylon tendons inside.

A meckie!
he thought.
Is it out of power?
He recalled the comment he had overheard concerning a killer meckie, shivered with fear.

Sidney lifted a manual from the floor, hurled it at Madame Bernet. The meckie did not move.

“Shut down your engines!” the radio commanded, “or we will blast you away!”

Sidney lunged for the instrument panel, replied: “Accidental takeoff. Do not fire upon us! Your mayor is a passenger in one of the trailers!”

The line clicked on, then went off.

They’re checking,
Sidney thought.
She probably didn’t have time to get off.

Sidney cleared debris off the command chair and slid into the seat.

The Shamrock Five and its mass driver trailers cleared Saint Elba’s docking tunnel and darted into open space. Sidney saw twinkling vastness ahead, flipped on the semi-automatic Direct Command Mode. A red “Standing By” light went on under the mode’s handle.

Presently the voice returned to the radio, and it demanded, “Shut down your engines! Hit the master switch!”

“Request refused,” Sidney said. “This ship is not turning back!”

“Why not, for Rosenbloom’s sake?”

“Call it a holy mission.”

There was a pause, followed by: “You’re crazy!”

I don’t think so,
Sidney thought.

After another pause, the voice said, “Release the trailers.”

The Mayor IS aboard,
Sidney thought. “I’d be happy to,” he said. “How is that accomplished?”

“We’ll find out. Stand by, Shamrock Five.”

“Standing by for course coordinates,” the ship’s computer said.

Sidney flipped through a console-mounted clip-file which miraculously had survived the meckie’s onslaught.
Ah,
he thought.
Here it is!

“Course eighty-four degrees, seventeen minutes, C.P.,” Sidney said. “Fifty-eight. . . . ” He paused, adding, “Wait a minute, computer. This says takeoff was supposed to be yesterday! Won’t that change the coordinates?”

“Give me the original figures,” the computer said. “We are tracking the comet, and will correct.”

The comet?
Sidney thought.
If I’m nuts, so is this computer!
Sidney completed the entry of coordinates.

“Course received,” the computer said. “Over and out.”

Sidney felt acceleration in the gravitonically normal cockpit, was pushed back against his seat.
They’d better tell me how to release those
. . . .

“Shamrock Five, this is Saint Elba. Locate a green panel box on the cockpit bulkhead, just behind the co-pilot’s chair.”

Sidney turned around, reported back: “I see it.”

“Open the box. Push two green buttons inside. Hit them simultaneously.”

“All right,” Sidney said. “But no funny ideas about firing on me afterward. I’ll have the rear guns trained on those trailers.”

“No tricks,” the radio voice agreed.

Within seconds, Sidney had cut the trailers loose. On the console screen, he watched two ships close in on the trailers. Sidney gave the command for maximum speed, and the Shamrock Five hyper-accelerated. The images on the screen became pinpricks, then disappeared entirely.

He glanced at the killer meckie out of the corner of one eye, thought he saw an eye open. Sidney did a double-take, but he saw nothing unusual the second time. He looked away, took a deep breath.