Flight of the Maita Supercollection 3: Solving Galactic Problems Collector's Edition (26 page)

"Can you show
me a little bit of the routine going's on of the brain's servos?" I
requested. "Run them at only about ten times normal speed. I don't
want to miss anything I'm looking for."

TR broadcast to
me for two hours. I spotted what I thought I would need right from
the first, but wanted to be sure.

"Do you see
something suspicious about this?" I asked.

"It's your
show. Obviously, you've figured it out and want to play games with
me, so I'll wait."

I laughed and
ran my recorded memory back to three things over the twenty plus
hours of TR's recordings. I replayed them on the return
circuit.

"Notice how the
servos take the mining carts out along this cavern wall here," I
explained (I would refuse to be drawn into an argument now. It
would be fun, but this was more important). "They bring the ore
back between the wall and the ship. It's a sort of oval pattern to
avoid getting in each other's way. The empty carts go out along the
wall and the full ones come in near the ship.

"Now, we count
the ones coming in here. There are never more than two in the
cavern at one time, but one comes from the ship here, moves along
past the refinery, and goes on out.

"Now, next trip
in, it goes back into the ship here and its companion cart goes on
around the circuit. It has the little motor down on the bottom by
the drive motor that those others don't have, so it's easy to
recognize.

"Now, here it
comes out again, four trips later. It goes past the refinery and
continues on outside.

"Didn't that
strike you as odd at the time?"

TR ran back
through its data. "I noted it, but decided there was a need of
another cart for either larger production or to replace one that
was out of service for one reason or another. I won't make any
excuses for missing something so obvious."

"It was so
damned obvious there was never any question it'd be missed. We did
the same sort of thing with that little opening in the caves,
remember? Too obvious, so it was natural. Very cleverly done!

"Over a period
of time the entire brain was removed from the ship component by
component and re-assembled somewhere.

"Were there any
sensors between the cavern and the mines?"

"No. I'll
locate where the carts went by the records from the sensors inside
of the mines. Hmmm I see. Very clever.

"It left the
regular cart outside somewhere, substituted for the one carrying
the brain, and took the brain elsewhere. The timing shows the cart
with the little motor didn't enter any of the mines. Ever.

"You know what
that means?"

"Yes. It knew
where our sensors were, and it used them to its advantage. We don't
know how many loads were taken out before our sensors were working,
but you can figure it by seeing how many were taken out while they
were in operation."

"There were
between ... seventeen and twenty three loads. Eighteen would
account for the space in the ship.

"The amount of
time the cart was out of the cavern shows where it was taken wasn't
farther than the mines themselves and we can eliminate under water
because the components weren't protected in transit. It'll be in
another cave, so it'll be in a large area to search."

"Oh, I'll go
directly to it," I promised. "I just wonder what all the extra
loads contained. I'm afraid I already have a good idea."

I went to the
fastcom and plugged in to talk with Maita. "Has the fleet reported
on the physical size of all the brain's ships they intercepted?" I
asked. "Cancel that, Maita. They'd all be carrying the same stuff
this one originally was.

"What size was
the escape pod the brain used to escape the gas giant when you
first shot it down?"

*I don't like
the sound of this at all. It was perhaps six meters long by one and
a half meters thick and was a round-ended cylinder with a small
difusion engine. It could move anywhere inside of the system.*

"I calculate
that ... it would be about right with TiChroPlat alloy in
prefabricated sections," TR interjected. "The difusion engine would
do a lot of damage if it were to be used on the planet, but that
thing couldn't care less.

"It wouldn't
have room for servos or weapons, but I guess it could slowly build
one or two from wherever it lands and start over again. It doesn't
have mining equipment or anything."

"Yo! If it has
to move it doesn't," I agreed. "We didn't do anything to the
equipment already in those mines yet. We planned to come back in a
few years to take them off the planet or drop them into the
volcano, but weren't in any hurry. That would wait until we made a
second search of all the planets between here and Old Home.

"The brain
could've made a stockpile of raw materials in a cave somewhere,
then waited for us to go."

*I see you're
finally learning how this clever mind works. The fleet will make a
secondary sweep and we will make another every five years for the
next two hundred to be sure. If you run into too large a problem,
call me. Z and Thing say to tell you hello and to tell you we're
back on EC. T Six has the drive and I am going to build it its own
counterpart. We have Tab and TR, now we'll have Kit and T Six, too.
Finish that up and come on home.*

I disconnected
and went outside. I would really be anxious to meet the new robot,
Kit, when Maita finished it but for now I had more pressing
problems.

I would find
the brain by simply following the tracks of the extra cart. If it
carried TiChroPlat alloy it was damned heavy and would have made
little scars here and there on the rocks. Those scars would show up
very clearly in ultra-violet light because of the scraping off of
natural oxides. They may not show in visible light, but I wasn't
confined to visible light.

The trail
wasn't hard to follow into a small cave that ended rather abruptly.
There were little passages that would be almost impossible for me
to enter.

"It brought the
cart in here with its load, then had small servos take individual
components through one of those holes and assemble them in some
cavern or cave back there," I sent to TR. "Can you send a servo to
check it out?

"I would think
that slit over there would be the only one the plating could be
moved through, so check it first."

I wasn't
worried the brain would overhear the radio. It was shut down to
strictly standby power until it could be sure we'd left for awhile.
This was one chance it would be forced to take because to use
energy would make it detectable.

A small floater
came in and went into the slot, stayed a few minutes, and
returned.

"It's in
there," TR reported. "I'm sending in three little searchers to find
another way to reach it. It would take too long to burn through
twenty meters of that granite and the energy use would surely trip
some kind of wake-up relay. If we can come from some other area
we'll possibly not disturb the brain."

I waited
awhile. There was nothing to do until we could find a way to reach
the brain.

"Okay," TR
finally said. "Go back around the mountain to a small cave about
here (I saw the spot on my interior 'screen') where I'll have a
large floater with a laser-cutter waiting. You'll have to do some
cutting, but you'll come to a cave. I'll tell you when you've found
the right one. You can then go right along to a small hole here.
It's only six and a quarter meters from the brain's cave. We can
find a way in from there easily enough.

"I don't want
to wake it up, but may have to when we get in there. If it starts
the difusion engines there they'll do a lot of damage, but ...
well, we can try to prevent that."

I trudged
around the mountain, found the floater, and entered the cave. Much
of the area was basalt and would cut very easily, so I had TR send
carrier floaters to haul out the rubble.

I wanted to
take the big laser with me. It occurred to me the brain may have a
shield around itself and still be active in the cavern, but TR
hadn't reported that, so it would just be waiting. Probably it
didn't have shield generators here because they were so bulky.

Right! Their
casing was too large to get into that slit, and would have to be
one piece.

It took four
and a half hours to get to the small vent hole that led to the
brain's cavern. I wanted to be absolutely certain about precisely
where I would have to burn, so ran a fiberoptic line in through the
hole to check. I saw a small light-sensitive cell with a reflector
dish aimed right at that hole.

"TR, that thing
knows about this hole – probably planned to use this route out of
there eventually, so it'll detect the use of the laser here. Send
in a small sensor probe to find out if it can detect vibrations,
too," I radioed.

I had to wait
for half an hour, then TR reported it found only the light/heat
sensor.

"That means it
has prepared for high technology methods, but not primitive ones,"
I said. "All of its equipment uses lasers, and all it's seen of
ours use the same types of lasers, so it minimized and rejected
good old-fashioned metal drill tip mining techniques as
probabilities."

"It would take
fifty days to grind through there! It's solid granite. That's not
basalt anymore."

"I figure two
hours for what I need. Make a drill with diamond teeth. The shaft
will have to be about seven meters long, and the drill head about a
third of a meter across."

"What do you
plan?" TR asked.

"I want to
drill a straight hole through this rock that points directly at the
centerpoint of the distance from the front of the drive engine to
the end of that cylinder. It has no defense there and I don't want
to chance that it tries to move before I slag it. Even if the brain
itself isn't in that part of the thing, the controls to the
difusion engine are."

TR sent a sort
of radio "nod" and I suddenly knew how it had always been able to
make "dry" or "sarcastic" statements! It sensed I caught the
subliminal waves and sent a laugh along the system.

"I screwed up,"
TR said through the laugh. "I should never've sent an unaccompanied
signal.

"You'll have
the drill rig pretty soon."

I waited and
checked several times to be sure the hole I was going to drill
would be where I wanted it. It must point exactly to the spot I
wanted to hit, as I would have to fire the large drilling laser
through it. It would be the barrel of my "cannon".

The drill
arrived and I began a slow bore. I wanted to keep even vibration at
a minimum.

It took more
than five hours, but the hole was as close to perfect as I could
have hoped. I fitted the focus of the laser to the hole, simulated
taking a deep breath, and hit the instructor switch to maximum
tight beam at infinite focus. The beam itself would be no more than
eighteen centimeters across, so shouldn't heat the hole at all
before it was too late for the brain. I held the fast recharge/fire
switch wide open for a whole minute, then backed the
laser-drill-cannon off and waited.

It wouldn't be
possible to look in there for about six minutes as the heat the
hole had absorbed wouldn't allow it. I received a picture from the
floater TR kept inside of the cavern. The whole place was glowing a
pale orange from the reflection, but there was almost a full
quarter of the ship missing from the end of the difusion engines
forward almost to the middle of the ship.

I backed the
laser cannon off and began cutting a tunnel big enough for me to
walk through. It took about twenty minutes, then I waited for TR to
send forced air in to cool the place. It would take a couple of
hours, and I could go in even now, but there was no hurry, and I
didn't want the excess heat to interfere with my sensors in case
the brain tried to laser me or something worse.

There were no
weapons type of radiation and we had isolated the fusion cell, such
as it was. It was above the engine section between the nozzles and
wouldn't be available to the brain – if the brain even existed
anymore.

I went in
finally to find we had isolated the energy even for standby to the
brain. It had taken its power from the storage cell directly.

I didn't fully
trust that, but couldn't detect anything more from the ship.

I talked with
TR a bit about reading that brain, but a couple that had been
launched after this one had been read by the fleet. I wanted to be
rid of these things, and really didn't want to energize any of its
circuits.

TR agreed, so I
took the thing apart, isolated the boards, and melted the entire
thing and all the pieces there to a puddle, and headed back to TR,
who had rounded up the servos and equipment with floaters and was
going to take it all aboard. It would prove useful for some of the
nearby worlds. New Home could put it to use.

We spent three
more days making a most thorough search of the planet, then left
Killit for New Home. I was feeling uneasy, and didn't quite know
why when I reported to Maita.

*Don't take
that chance! Dump it all into the sun there!*

"Why, Maita?"
TR asked. "It's all stuff the Tlessarians can use."

Thing came on
the fastcom with its own peculiar code.

[ I suggest you
measure every smallest piece of the larger equipment. You can't
know what instructions are built into every circuit there. That
brain is very clever and very tricky. It may have counted on us
taking the equipment somewhere. ]

"I don't really
get it," I argued. "I know for a fact we got the brain in that
cave!"

[ And how did
the brain GET into the cave? ]

"Oh, hell!" TR
said. "It went in a piece at the time. It may have a second set of
components stashed aboard something. It was ASSEMBLED in
there!"