Slaves of the Switchboard of Doom, page 30
“Not a problem,” he’d say on his way back up the ladder. “Just routine maintenance.”
He’d taken Rusty with him for some of the longer and louder bits of routine maintenance, and at that point Nola found herself sitting in the pilot’s seat, dearly hoping that nothing new would go wrong before they came back up the ladder.
But they’d arrived at last.
She looked through the slightly malevolent faceplate of her space helmet and took in the view. The Moon, sadly, wasn’t much to look at.
It was very gray.
Gray plains stretched out to the horizon, which must have been the rim of Marius Crater; scattered gray stones studded the thick coating of gray dust that lay on the ground. Here and there, outcroppings of gray rocks stood out against the gray surface, casting dark gray shadows over the crater’s pale gray floor.
The only spots of color were the travelers, Nola among them, who now stood at the foot of the Actaeon’s ladder. The entrance to the Temple of the Spider God was directly ahead.
Dash’s voice came over her helmet radio. “I never set down within sight of the Temple,” he said, “and I use a different spot, every time. So they probably know already that something’s going on.”
Rusty, the only one of them who didn’t need a space helmet, was looking all around him with what seemed like a lot of excitement. Maybe he sees in black and white, Nola thought. Maybe it all looks magical to Rusty.
The door in the low mound of the Temple’s entrance swung open. In eerie silence, one of the Spider God’s priests stuck out his helmeted head. He looked carefully to the left and right, then at the Actaeon rocket that was moored in plain sight. One of his hands wandered toward the ray gun on his hip. It looked to Nola as though the priest just didn’t know what to do, with Dash standing there and smiling instead of assaulting the Temple.
Finally, the priest shook his head and waved them in.
The outer door closed behind them. Nola saw a faint mist rise from vents near the floor. A moment later she was able to hear the hiss as the atmosphere filled the little chamber. She kept an eye on the priest, but he was watching Dash, and Dash alone. The priest was tapping the end of his spear on the airlock floor.
At last the airlock’s inner door slid open and they stepped into an anteroom. Everyone removed their helmets. The Spider priest’s boots rang on the steel grating of the floor; Nola watched him walk over to a control panel mounted on the wall. His eyes were still on Dash.
When he pulled a lever, he seemed to be expecting something. Dash smiled. “Opposite polarity, right? Nice. But you know I never use the same trick twice on you fellas.”
“So what trick do you have in mind? We haven’t been expecting you, Dash Kent.”
“No cats today?” Dash asked. “That’s just as well.”
He turned to Nola. “Miss Gardner, this is Thorgeir, one of the Spider God’s priests. Thorgeir, this is Miss Gardner, and Rusty.”
Nola dipped her chin politely.
“We’re here because you and me, we sort of have the same problem.”
Then he told Mr. Thorgeir what that problem was.
* * *
Before he got very far at all—hardly past the fact that a huge Projectile was heading for Marius Crater—Mr. Thorgeir led them to a meeting room deeper in the Temple and called for a meeting of the priests. So Dash didn’t have to repeat too much.
The priests all seemed very suspicious. Nola knew that this was natural; Dash was an enemy of long standing. As they learned more they didn’t seem to get any less suspicious. They did seem to be getting pretty alarmed, though.
“Why don’t we just deflect the thing off into space?” asked Mr. Gunnar. “It’s no business of ours where it goes.”
“Well, sir, in addition to the problem of the millions of people inside, I figure it would take almost the same amount of force to do that as it will to send the Projectile back where it came from. We’ve already got almost all the rockets we need. I’m just asking you to help us out. I know you’ve got an interplanetary rocket here someplace. Otherwise you’d never have started stealing the cats.”
The priests murmured in anger.
“… or, okay, whatever you want to call it. Liberating. Helping yourself to. Picking up. Absconding with. It doesn’t matter, not today. What matters is all those people on a collision course with your Temple.”
Mr. Thorgeir nudged Mr. Bodhvar-Bjorn. “They’re no friends of ours, Brother.”
Nola could see that this was the consensus. Dash, think of something quick, please.
SUNDAY, 12:19 AM
Stark floodlights lit the big cylindrical hole of the construction site. With its floor now gone, the walls of the excavation fell down into darkness at a depth, Harry knew, of more than a thousand feet. Plenty of room for the Great Net to absorb all the momentum of the Projectile when it landed, if that was even the word for what it was going to do.
Davies and G-94VA—now somewhat mended, and eager to join the project—had finished disassembling one side of the ultrasonic drill that still loomed over the excavation. Harry called the other robots over to carry the materials to the spot where Abner Perkins and his team were finishing the first support gantry for the Net.
“Once we’ve got this lot,” Harry told Davies, “we’ll need to head across the way and take apart some of that bridge.”
G-94VA looked over at Davies. “Would that be before or after our fifteen minute break?”
The man patted the robot on the shoulder with a look at his boss. “Extraordinary circumstances,” he explained. “We’ll get comp time tomorrow.”
Harry heard a distant roar, which multiplied when five separate plumes of smoke appeared over the empty city and rose to the heavens. That would be the ASAA officers, he knew. He looked at his timepiece and scowled. They were running late.
SUNDAY, 12:21 AM
The Ogmatronic 1400 was a brute of a rocket ship. Its engines roared between their bulkheads far below Maria’s seat: there was no time now for the normal gentle ascent of an inertrium vessel. They really needed to make up some time.
She hadn’t heard a thing from Dash Kent since the Actaeon’s approach to the Moon. And everything was running late. Just everything. She surely hoped that this was all going to work.
Ogmatronics weren’t made for comfort or for much of a crew. She had sixteen construction robots stowed in the cargo hold because there just wasn’t any cabin space for them. They’d have to go outside the ship at the rendezvous, of course. The robots had an advantage over human workers in that they didn’t need an atmosphere to get the job done.
So they had the workers they’d need when they reached the rendezvous. Now if they only had the rockets!
The radio buzzed. All her fellow officers were checking in and on course. They’d launched a bit late, she knew, but they could still overtake the Projectile somewhere near the halfway point of its flight. If Kent was able to raise his reinforcements and get there at the same time.…
On her way out of the atmosphere, Maria called Abner Perkins again. She wished the man could work out a way to do this with just the six rockets they had.
His voice sputtered out and she lost the signal. It never occurred to Maria that somebody else might have radio trouble at the most convenient times.
SUNDAY, 12:34 AM
The group adjourned so the priests could discuss the matter privately. Mr. Thorgeir stayed. His dark, forbidding gaze rested on the three across the table.
After a few uncomfortable minutes, Nola asked if she could see more of the Temple. “You unbelievers—” the priest started, but he was interrupted by Dash.
“Oh, come on, Thorgeir. You know I’ve seen most of it already. I just stay out of the sanctuary out of, you know, respect. But there’s no harm in showing Miss Gardner around some.”
So Nola followed the reluctant priest while Dash and Rusty trailed behind.
Dash was doing most of the showing, though. “This here is where they used to have a heat ray, really clever, that traveled around the whole hallway, widthwise, you understand, in this little groove. I had a heck of a time with that one, didn’t I, Thorgeir?”
The priest was almost smiling. “It has been reconfigured into a surprising new form,” he said. “But over there, Miss Gardner, is where I once captured your friend in an expanding cylinder of molten regolith. Very successful.”
“I don’t know if I’d call that success,” Dash added, earning a scowl from Thorgeir.
They kept showing her the sites of all the Temple’s most interesting pitfalls. But Nola was looking at the drapes; especially at their surprisingly ragged hems that nearly swept the floor.
Through an open doorway she spotted a stone-floored room that was piled high with pillows. She stepped in and moved one of them from its place beside the wall. She nodded to herself at the sight of what lay underneath.
Dash and Mr. Thorgeir came in, reminiscing about disintegrators they had known. “I wonder, Mr. Thorgeir, could I see your kitchens?”
Both of the men seemed surprised, but Rusty was looking at the pillow. His golden eyes lifted up to Nola’s, and one of them went dark and then brightened again.
I do believe he just winked at me.
The kitchens, as Mr. Thorgeir explained, were completely empty of interesting pressure plates and motion sensors. “We, ah, we should do more work in this area,” he apologized.
Nola started going through the shelves and cupboards. Yes, just as she’d suspected: the sacks of flour and grain, the boxes of pasta, and the barrels of something called fermented fish were all contaminated. Something very small but tenacious had chewed through all the containers of food; and trails of little dark pellets, like the ones she’d found under the pillows, led to cracks in the woodwork.
“Mr. Thorgeir,” she said. “I’d like to have a word alone.”
Dash and Rusty wandered out, but they promised to stay in sight of the kitchen door. It was an honor system.
Nola started to tap her foot. The priest of the Spider God hadn’t yet learned what that meant.
“Okay, Mr. Thorgeir, it’s just you and me here now. No more of this talk about flaming jets coming out of the floors. That doesn’t cut any ice with me, mister.”
Mr. Thorgeir’s face went deep red; his eyebrows descended over the overhanging precipice of his brows.
“No, and none of that, either. You don’t fool me for a minute. I’ve got three brothers.”
The fit passed.
“What if I told you I could find you all the cats you need? That if we can just save those poor people out there, they can help you get all the cats you need, until you’re breeding your own litters up here and you don’t need to steal your cats from anybody?”
The priest began to bluster. “We are the priests of the Spider God! We can take what we want at any time! We—”
“Save it, Jarvis,” Nola said. She had no patience at all with this kind of malarkey. “First off, nobody is so tough that he doesn’t need a little help now and then. Nobody. I don’t care what kind of scary helmets you’re wearing. All you need to do is ask. And second, haven’t you ever heard of an animal shelter?”
* * *
Dash seemed a little confused about how she’d done it. She’d let him stew for a while, Nola decided. You look just fine, pretty quick on the uptake, indeed.
Because once Mr. Thorgeir reconvened the priests of the Spider God in a private session they almost immediately agreed to send their rocket with the Actaeon in its flight to meet the Projectile. The priests all thanked Nola. Then everybody piled out to board their vehicles and inside a half an hour they were on their way.
As they pulled away from the Moon, Nola finally told him.
“But they’re the priests of the Spider God, Nola! They’ve got death rays and, and, and great big blocks of stone that smash you when you go into their tunnels! They’ve got huge, spiked … Why would they have any trouble with mice?”
“They probably came up in a food shipment. It’s always those little guys that cause all the trouble,” she said. “The ones that you don’t even know are there.”
SUNDAY, 1:32 AM
A hush had settled over Pitt’s control room. Evan was snoring just a bit, in little wheezes, while Evvie tossed restlessly on the cold, hard floor.
“Gnackshter,” she mumbled. “Gack Destroy Surrencker. Gack.”
She rolled over into another position that wasn’t going to work, either.
“Surrendnik. Disintigritch. BOOM.”
She sighed, and then she seemed to relax. Evvie was in a happy place.
SUNDAY, 1:54 AM
It wasn’t the best of spots to fortify. Pitt gripped his slide rule. He could have done so much better! But it was the strongest point they’d found in the alley.
His twelve surviving robots formed immovable walls at the front and back. They were dangerously exposed from above, though, and all Pitt could do about that was to assign a couple of robots as guards. Their eye lamps drew arcs of surveillance all the way up to the roofs on either side of the alley.
For the moment the scientists in the street were quiet. Pitt decided that the best thing he could do for now was to rest. Maybe in the morning, when his enemies grew sleepy and careless, he could break out and subdue or … or escape them.
It was humiliating. But Pitt could see that he would need a much larger force to properly contain the Experimental Research District. He’d have to go back to the construction site.
With a sudden start he remembered the Adversary who was now, Pitt had to assume, taking over what was left of Pitt’s forces and establishing himself in Pitt’s old headquarters. Who was doing this? To what end?
He thought about the now quiet and orderly world beyond the District’s boundaries. Once he got back out there—into his ideal world—he should probably just bomb this ridiculous neighborhood out of existence. It might be the only way to preserve the perfection he had built.
This place was a nightmare. Yes, he’d just destroy it once the morning came.
The sound of crackling energy beams tore through the street. With any luck they’d turn on one another before dawn.
SUNDAY, 2:14 AM
They’d been making good headway on the Projectile’s trail. Not good enough to make up the lost time, but better than Maria had hoped. Now she was simply waiting for something to go wrong.
It was Stella Moya who broke the news.
“I’ve lost my thrust,” Stella’s voice told her over the radio. “I’m still on course … but I can’t decelerate.”
Stella’s rocket was now a bullet that was shooting out of the target range. They’d been aiming to intercept the Projectile at an angle, and that meant Stella was going to shoot past the Moon. Maria felt as though her heart had dropped into her stomach.
“You’re all right, though? Your air and heat are okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine here. I already called the Patrol. They’ll have someone out there to pick me up in about a week, if you can’t get to me in time. These old rockets, they just aren’t … Oh, Maria. I’m so sorry.”
Maria stared out of her viewport. One of those lights up ahead might be a reflection off the Projectile. Millions of people.
She remembered that Stella was waiting. “Don’t worry about us,” she said. “We’re due to reach that thing pretty soon and we’re just going to proceed. If Kent can round up that help he’s looking for…”
She remembered that she was on an open channel.
“Hear this, everybody,” she told them all. “We’re going to intercept the Projectile and get ourselves welded to it, just like we planned. Then we wait for the cavalry.”
The other pilots acknowledged her call. They didn’t have much else to say.
The cavalry? she asked herself. Really?
“We start decelerating in twelve minutes ten seconds, on my mark. Mark.”
Then she called down to the cargo hold. “You guys get all that?” she asked.
“We heard,” came a robot’s voice over the intercom. “You should not worry. The Plumber will come.”
Maria stared at the comm panel. Who the blazes was the Plumber?
* * *
At 3:24 in the morning—just a little late—Maria’s collection of battered old rockets had drawn ahead of the Projectile and matched its speed. With cautious bursts of their thrusters they were able to pull right up alongside. The thing was big. Maria tried to imagine it sitting next to the main monorail terminal in Retropolis, and she was pretty sure you could fold the terminal over a couple of times and stuff it in there. Big.
Her cargo hold disgorged the crews of robots and their equipment. They scattered across the Projectile’s hull and made for their attachment points. Three spots were empty, of course. She had a few minutes before the robots would need her to realign herself, so she called Officer Moya. “We’re here,” she told Stella. “As I guess you can tell.”
There was a slight delay before Stella’s response came back. She’d plowed on ahead the whole time Maria’s group had been decelerating. “Yeah, I can hear you,” Maria heard at last. “Just stick to the plan.”
“What are you doing out there?”
“Oh, you know me. I’m just in it for the scenery. I’m keeping the channel open. I’ll listen in from here.”
Maria called back home. “Hey, anybody? We never heard whether there was some way to contact the people inside. Can we let them know we’re out here?”
She waited for the reply. When it came, it was: “You could pound on the hull, Abner says. That’s about all. Pitt’s robots say there aren’t any radios in there.”
By then the robots were ready. Maria eased in close enough to graze the hull and watched through the viewport while they welded her rocket in place.
SUNDAY, 3:45 AM
Delbert Kent felt somebody poking him in the ribs. “Did you hear that?” Blanche asked him.
He shook his head and tried to listen. The pounding throughout the ship had died out hours before. He had a feeling that the folks in all the other compartments were catching whatever weightless sleep they could, just like him.
