-21-
After two hard-working days, I’d landed a lot more equipment and personnel aboard Phobos. At last, Miklos couldn’t stand it anymore and came down to have look at my crazy project for himself.
He wasn’t too happy with any of it. I’d stripped the bigger ships of several laser turrets each with their best brainboxes attached. These were fairly big units, ones that could stop a missile or a small ship with a single burning ray. That hurt Miklos’ soul, I think, as he knew it weakened the firepower of his precious fleet. But what bothered him even more was the removal of three factories, one from every other carrier, to manufacture supplies aboard Phobos.
He came down to the surface, where I met him with a forced smile. Although we were on the sunside of the hull and his visor was pretty heavily darkened to keep out the radiation, I could see he wasn’t smiling in there.
“Commodore!” I shouted, clapping his armored shoulder. “Come on down with me and see what we’ve done.”
He muttered something I didn’t catch, and I was pretty sure we were both glad I’d missed it. I pressed on, showing him a small, shuttle-like elevator at the top of the shaft. We got inside, tapped the smart metal panel, and were whisked down into the depths.
“Over a mile of solid rock. The first tunnel was small and winding, but this is much better. We’ve transported everything inside down through this shaft.”
“Only a single exit? What would a fire marshal say about such a design, sir?”
“I’ve never liked fire marshals. Too obsessive.”
He gave me a wry look.
When the smart metal hatch opened again, we stepped out into the interior of the ship. I could tell right away that he was impressed at the scale of it. A cluster of factories, personnel, and habitation bricks circled the elevator shaft as if it were a campfire. They looked lonely in the vast chamber.
“Is this the ship’s hold, sir?”
“Yes, essentially. This is where Tolerance himself hung out. Below this deck—if you want to call it that—is an equally vast chamber full of generators and other equipment.”
“But how could the Blues…?”
“How could a bunch of clouds build something like this? Well, first of all, realize that deep down in their own atmosphere they would become increasingly dense as the pressure built. Smaller, denser beings would have an easier time manipulating solid objects. The current theory is that they built robots to do most of the finer work—things that probably look a lot like the Macros and the Nanos.”
He nodded, fascinated despite himself. He pulled himself together as I reviewed the rest of the encampment with him. He saw a lot of equipment he knew I’d commandeered from his ships and had transported down here.
“Sir,” he said, stopping in front of one of the factories. “I must protest. This is very irresponsible. There are less than two days to go now before Phobos is scheduled to burn up. Why would we want to have her take these irreplaceable units into the star with her?”
“They won’t,” I said, “for two reasons: one, I’d pull them out of here first. These factories will be on the first transport—before the crewmen themselves. Two, because Marvin isn’t going to fail. He’s going to figure out how to fly this thing.”
Miklos looked at me with a distinct lack of trust. “I’ve heard such promises before, especially from that robot.”
“Look, man,” I said, throwing up my hands, “you should be more excited than anyone about this salvage effort. If it works, just imagine what you can do with it! It will be your flagship. The greatest ship we’ve ever seen, with you manning the bridge. Hell, I might even give you the command chair.”
He perked up slightly, but his face was still sour.
“An incalculable honor, I’m sure,” he said.
I continued the tour. I was accustomed to doubters by this time in my career. Sure, Star Force had had more than her share of debacles, but wasn’t that to be expected as you explored unknown space? Did people really expect everything to go perfectly the first time they tried it?
“Many of the pioneers of science have had their bad days,” I said.
“Yes, and this one makes me think of Edison and his pet elephant.”
I frowned at him in irritation. Edison had once used an elephant to demonstrate the dangerous power of his competitor’s electrical power generators—by electrocuting the animal. The event had turned into a public relations nightmare.
“An obscure historical reference that bears no relationship to this effort,” I said stiffly.
“Uh-huh.”
As I led him to the control panel he became more interested. We now had a series of black tentacle arms applying pressure to every one of the two hundred and sixteen buttons. They could pull or push any of them. These arms were linked to a control panel that was human-sized and displayed a related series of sliding virtual controls. You could push in or pull out any tiny variation of power.
“It is odd,” I said, “that such a sophisticated people would use what is essentially an analog control system.”
“Do we know it well enough to make that determination?”
A voice came down from the hazy air above us, answering his question: “Yes. Yes we do.”
Marvin came drifting down out of the sky and settled near the control panel. “We have digitized it to some extent, but the original analog system is more precise. The slightest tug or pull will have an effect on the drive, navigation or propulsions system.”
“But so many buttons!” Miklos exclaimed. “How can we ever master them all in time?”
“We’ve determined there are actually two forms of buttons. These you see here do not actually control the ship.”
Miklos gaped at the vast array of mega-buttons. “What the hell do they do, then?”
“They are the sensory system,” Marvin said. “They provided tactile feedback from the ship’s sensors, which told Tolerance what was happening in surrounding space.”
“Ah,” I said, catching on. “That’s very good Marvin. Of course! I should have figured it out myself. How else would he be able to respond to stimuli from outside the ship in space? He read these buttons like a blind giant, reading braille with a thousand sensitive fingers.”
“Two hundred and sixteen of them,” Miklos said in an odd voice. “Incredible.”
I could tell now by looking at him he had the bug. There was something about this ship, this alien monstrosity, that made a man want to figure out its mysteries and gain at least some degree of control over it.
“Exactly,” Marvin said. He extended a long black tentacle toward the upper regions, which we could barely see. “Those units up there are the real control panels. They’re comparatively simple. There are three, separated by a considerable distance. Each grouping appears to control a different function.”
“Navigation, weapons, and—what is the third?”
“I don’t know yet. I think it has to do with life support, telecommunications and so forth. I’m focusing on the first two.”
Miklos stepped forward and put out a gloved hand. He ran it gently over the nearest hexagonal button. The nanite arm that was attached to that particular button shivered slightly as if in response.
“Very sensitive,” he said. “I’m beginning to understand the fascination you’ve had with this project, Colonel Riggs. I’m glad I came.”
I clapped my hands together again and gave Miklos a beaming smile.
“It’s great to hear you say that. Imagine the Imperials when they get a look at this thing!”
My smile widened into a grin and Miklos shook his head at me.
“What?” he said. “I can tell you have something else to show me.”
“You’re right. This is the moment. Marvin, demonstrate what you’ve learned. I want to you to fly this monster!”
Miklos laughed, and his eyes lit up with new enthusiasm. “You can fly it? Why didn’t you tell me that in the first place?”
“I wanted you to see it all from the start. I wanted you to appreciate the effort. When we turn on a TV, we never think of the wonders going on inside it. You do now, and you’ll always know how amazing Marvin’s accomplishments were.”
We sounded a dozen alarms warning everyone to get to a safe place. We cleared the surface of the vast ship, launching every transport and getting all personnel safely off the hull. After all, we didn’t really know what the hell we were doing yet.
Miklos nodded, looking around like a kid in a theme park. His transformation into a believer was complete. Marvin set about starting up the engines. It was for real this time. He engaged them and the ship lurched.
First we were all thrown starboard, then we rolled aft. The ship felt like it was heeling over.
“Let’s get to the table!” I shouted.
We pressed ourselves against the navigational table. It was hooked up via a long nanite wire to the surface where sensors had been attached to the exterior. We watched as the ship slowly maneuvered in random directions. Marvin worked the controls with ever more gentle touches.
“Don’t touch the screen,” I warned Miklos.
Miklos pulled his fingertips away from the edge of the table in alarm. Both of us gripped the border around the edge with clamped on fingers, trying not to touch anything else.
“It’s very sensitive, sir,” Marvin said. “My apologies for the rough ride.”
“Everything is clear to me now, Colonel,” Miklos said, “you were so patient with my complaints. I didn’t understand your buoyant mood. Now I do. You weren’t inviting me for an inspection; you wanted me to experience the ship’s maiden voyage.”
“Exactly, Commodore.”
“I thank you for the experience,” he said, gripping the sides of the table less firmly now that Marvin wasn’t sending us into a new tailspin every thirty seconds. “One question remains in my mind, Colonel. Why didn’t you clear out this atmosphere inside the ship? It’s cloudy and roiling now. It must not help anyone attempting to fly the thing.”
“We will, we will,” I said. “We’ll pressurize the entire interior someday with a fresh pine scent. Maybe we’ll even have swimming pools, shopping malls and parks. But for now, we lack the supply of gasses to replace what’s here. That sort of esthetic will have to wait.”
Miklos looked up, frowning and swiveling his head. My eyes were riveted to the control screen. It looked to me like Marvin was doing it. The ship had changed course and was now bouncing away from the Centauri B. It wasn’t heading anywhere useful yet, but at least we weren’t going to burn up tomorrow.
Miklos tapped me. “I’m betting those things are some kind of automated maintenance device?”
“What?” I asked, following his pointing finger.
There was something dark crawling down the nearby wall. My head swiveled this way and that, seeing more and more of them. They were coming from nowhere, hidden in the brown hazy air that hung up there until they got close.
“I’m afraid those are cyborgs, Commodore,” I said. “Do you have a weapon handy?”
“I’m never in the field without it.”
“Good,” I said, drawing my own laser projector and aiming it at the closest cyborg I could see. “Start shooting. We’re under attack.”
Marvin, who’d been utterly focused on flying his ship, appeared to be startled by my announcement. His cameras rose and panned in every direction.
Everywhere he looked, there were black, crawling cyborgs.