"Is it anything serious?"
"It can't be—everything checked out just fine this morning. It's always the way when something urgent comes up." Payne looked across to the communications and electrical racks on the rear wall of the bridge, where Mike Ellipulos, the captain, and Nick, seaman and electronics specialist on the crew, had opened up the main breaker panel and were probing among the wires at the rear. "Mike, how's it going? What've we got back there?"
Ellipulos looked mystified. "I don't understand it. It wouldn't reset. The replacement module didn't work either. Now we find this." When they went through the pre-sailing checks, they had found an entire distribution subsystem dead, disabling the satellite-driven plotter and navigation system and one of the radars.
Payne strode over and looked down. "What?"
Ellipulos gestured. Nick was examining several stubs of cable protruding from the connectors. "Half the wires are gone at the back. They look like they've been cut."
Vanessa came across and looked past Payne, but still she said nothing. Payne shook his head, nonplussed. "That's crazy, Mike."
"I know."
"You're sure it was okay this morning?"
"Tested it myself."
Payne jerked his head from side to side, as if asking the world to judge if he deserved the things he had to endure. "Well, can we fix it?" he asked.
"I could replace the cables, no problem, but it would take a while," Nick said.
Vanessa moved closer behind Payne. "You don't need computers to move a boat," she muttered. "Fix the problem when we're at sea. Corfe's still loose in the city somewhere, and I don't like it. We need to get out of here."
"Forget that for now, Mike," Payne said. "Take her out manually. We've still got Loran backup."
Ellipulos straightened up and used a hand-held intercom to talk to the first mate, who was out aft on the boat deck. "Zed, get ready to cast off. We're moving out now." Nick left the bridge via an outside ladder to go forward. Ellipulos moved into the captain's chair at the wheel and alerted Cole, the engineer down below. "Is everything set down there? We're casting off now."
From the boat deck behind the bridge, Zed's voice called orders to Nick and the other seaman, George, who was at the stern.
Vanessa was still staring dubiously at the opened breaker panel. "So what's Mike saying?" she demanded curtly, looking at Payne. "Are we supposed to have a saboteur on board, or something?"
Payne could only show his hands. "I don't know. It's like I said—crazy. One thing at a time, Vanessa. If you want us out of here, we're getting out of here, okay? We'll take care of that problem when we're clear."
Vanessa looked at the cut wires again. Impossible thoughts flew through her head. She walked over to the bench seat by the chart table where she had put down her shoulder bag, picked it up, and opened the flap. Back at Microbotics, she had, as a precaution, bound the mec that she had taken from Michelle's pocket tightly in adhesive tape to immobilize it. . . . But no, that wasn't it. The mec was still there in her bag, wrapped like a miniature mummy. Puzzled but still suspicious, she put the bag down again and went back to the opened panel. Payne, standing next to Ellipulos, was looking baffled. Ellipulos frowned and pressed the button again. "I don't get this. The starter's dead too."
"This isn't real," Payne breathed, shaking his head.
"Can't you start it from up on top?" Vanessa shot across at them.
"I wouldn't bother trying," Ellipulos answered. "The fly bridge controls are farther down the circuits from here. If we're dead, it's a certain bet it will be up there too. The only other way is to use the local starters on the engines."
"Do it, then," Payne ordered.
Ellipulos used the intercom to rouse Cole again. "Use the engine-room starters. Both engines, right away."
"What in hell's going on?" Cole's voice squawked from the speaker.
"We'll look into it when we get clear. The boss says we move now."
And then the shrill woop-woop-woop of an alarm sounded somewhere in the depths of the vessel, echoed by a repeater in the bridge monitor panel. Ellipulos sprang up and moved to quieten it, checked the status displays. "We've got a fire in the galley!" he told Payne. "This whole day's getting insane." Running footsteps sounded, and Zed appeared in the doorway from the boat deck. "Get below and give Trevor a hand," Ellipulos told him. Zed disappeared down the inside companionway, while doors opened and slammed below, and voices shouted. Bazhin and Garsten appeared on the foredeck below, looking alarmed. Then the engine room intercom buzzed. Ellipulos flipped a switch. "What is it, Cole?"
"I can't start it," Cole's voice said from the speaker. "We just had a bang down here."
"What do you mean, a bang? What went bang?"
"It sounds like something shorted out in the starter. There's smoke, and a breaker's out. I'll have to check it."
"I'm coming down there." Ellipulos snapped off the intercom and headed for the stairway that Zed had taken. Vanessa had swung the breaker panel wide open, torn the bundles of cables aside, and was searching determinedly around the back of the uncovered racking. As Payne started to turn to follow after Ellipulos, Vanessa seized something inside and straightened up triumphantly to brandish it at him.
"There!" she exclaimed. "There's your saboteur, Martin!"
It was an intermediate-size mec, maybe an inch high. One of its grasping limbs was detached, hooked to its utility belt, and had been replaced by a pair of scissorlike cutting blades.
Payne stared at it incredulously. "How . . . ? I don't understand."
Vanessa marched to the open window at the wing station and threw the mec far out over the water. "Oh, don't you see? It's that woman. This wasn't the only one that she had. Come on."
They left the bridge and went below through the day cabin. Gray, choking smoke filled the passage leading forward to the galley. In the middle of it they could make out the figure of Zed in the galley doorway, directing a fire extinguisher. Trevor, the cook, was waving his hands and remonstrating to Ellipulos. "I know it was oil all over the stove, but I'm telling you there wasn't any oil open or anywhere near it. Hell, Mike, you think I don't know how to run a galley, for chrissakes? . . ." Ellipulos cut off the alarm, which had been drowning out the voices and other noises coming from around the boat. Vanessa led the way aft past the dining room, toward the main salon, Payne following.
One of the two guards that Finnion had left was hovering at the forward entrance to the salon, trying to gauge the situation, when Vanessa and Payne came in. Michelle sat on the bench seat farther back, doing her best to seem detached and contemptuous of the fiasco going on around her. Vanessa came over and stood in front of her, face flushed, eyes blazing, looking as if she was barely able to prevent herself from attacking Michelle physically. "Okay, how many are there, and where are they?" she grated.
Michelle eyed her distastefully, refusing to show any comprehension. "What are you talking about?"
"You know what I'm talking about. What other ones have you got?"
"What other what?"
"Give them to me!" Vanessa's voice rose as she finally lost control. Payne caught her arm to restrain her, but she shook him off.
At that moment a man in crew's dress appeared from the stairs at the rear of the salon, going down to the corridor leading aft past the bathroom. Michelle guessed he had come from the engine room. He was holding something between his fingers and looking mystified. "What do you make of this?" he said, addressing Payne.
"What is it?"
The engineer showed it. Payne turned it over and passed it to Vanessa without comment. The engineer went on, "It was jammed across the starter solenoid. That was what shorted it out. How'd it get there? I never saw anything like that before." It was another inch-size mec—or what was left of one. Its casing was blackened, and an arm and a leg had been partly melted.
"These!" Vanessa hissed, turning on Michelle again. "The rest. Where are they? Who's working them?" She spotted Michelle's coat, snatched it
up, and began searching through the pockets, pulling out the contents and scattering them on the table top among the plates and buffet dishes.
And then more yelling and commotion broke out forward of the salon. There was a crash, the sounds of footsteps running, more banging, and then somebody fired a shot. The guard who was by Michelle wheeled, producing a gun reflexively; the other, at the forward end, was backing from the door, aiming his pistol low toward the floor. A metallic parody of a face appeared above the sill at the bottom of the door, followed by an approximately cylindrical, can-size body equipped with arms in the act of bracing themselves to haul the contrivance over. It was one of the telebot prototypes that Michelle had seen in Garsten's office. The guard fired at it, splintering wood from the sill, and the bullet ricocheted out of the room evoking more outraged yells forward.
"Hold it, you idiot!" Payne shouted.
The telebot seemed to reassess the situation, ducked back out again, and disappeared off to one side just as a heavy ornamental brass from one of the walls crashed into the spot that it had occupied. A man that Michelle didn't recognize appeared framed in the doorway briefly, flailing with a fire ax to the crunches of tearing woodwork.
"It's going for the stairs," Finnion's voice yelled from somewhere behind him.
"What in hell is it?" somebody else demanded from somewhere.
There was a mêlée of bodies trying to get past each other and go in different directions at the far end of the room. Then Garsten materialized from among them and strode on in, looking from side to side and around the floor. "That was the same as the one in my office," he muttered. "Which one of you had my bag? Where is it? . . . Ah, there!" He stooped as he saw the briefcase, and grabbed it up. "Jesus!" He showed it to Vanessa and Payne, pointing at the rent cut vertically down one side.
He cleared the end of the table and tipped out the briefcase to produce a heap of cords and cables; bits of string, wood, and plastic; a carpenter's measuring tape; and an assortment of metal items in various forms and shapes. "They're gone!" he exclaimed, gesturing. "All the bugs and walking junk they had in my office was in here. Look, they must have got out through here. Christ, they must be all over the ship!"
Ellipulos came in, looking around demandingly from face to face. "What is that thing? What's going on aboard my ship?"
Payne showed him the burned mec. "Little machines. There's more like this around. Get your men looking. Look everywhere."
Vanessa looked back at Garsten. "How many were there?" she asked, paling.
He spread his hands. "Hell, I don't remember. It wasn't exactly a time to be stock taking. I just—"
Vanessa seized the neck of Michelle's sweater and dragged her to her feet. Her mouth compressed into a tight gash on a face bloodless with rage. "Who's controlling them? Where from?"
"You're the scientist. You find out."
Vanessa took a glass from the table, smashed the rim against the edge, and held the jagged edges close to Michelle's face. "I'm warning you. . . ." Michelle was paralyzed, unable to react in any way.
Garsten raised a hand, looking alarmed. "Hey . . ." he cautioned. Payne took a step forward and caught Vanessa's arm.
And then something dropped from among the figurines and trophies along the top of the wall cabinet, onto Vanessa's head. She screeched, dropped the glass, and began tearing wildly at her hair. . . .
Corfe felt as if he were in one of those nightclub acts where the performer gets lots of china plates spinning on top of flexible canes that have to be tweaked periodically to speed the plate up again before it falls off. By the end, the act reduces to a nonstop panic of running frantically back and forth across the stage, rescuing one platter after another seemingly just on the verge of crashing.
Having eleven mecs scattered through the boat was all very well, but there was only one of him in the van to operate them. Besides cutting equipment cables up on the bridge, shorting out the engine starter, sabotaging the galley, and deploying his other troops, he had kept his audio system tuned to the mec up on top of the cabinet in the salon in order to listen in on what was happening with Michelle. But there was a limit to how much he could keep up. It had been bad enough when he could switch from one to another and move them into place surreptitiously, before anyone on the boat—other than Michelle—knew what was going on. Now that things were happening, he was losing track of which mec was where and their different situations; and as often as not, there simply wasn't time to coordinate his moves, even when he did know.
So far he had lost two and was about to lose another. The one he had left in behind the main breaker panel on the bridge had stopped responding; one, he had sacrificed to short the starter in the engine room; and the one he had just thrown off the cabinet in the salon had been almost out of charge anyway.
He had to get back to the telebot that he'd managed to get outside and left hidden temporarily behind a rope locker by the entrance foyer in order to intervene with Michelle, even though it was being chased, shot at, and obviously in a tight spot. He rolled and clutched to entangle himself in Vanessa's hair, pinched at her fingertips when they came clawing at him, and then switched back to the telebot's channel. . . .
Only to find himself cartwheeling through the air, then falling toward shifting hillocks of wind-jostled water. There was a shock as he hit resistance, a brief impression of sinking through green, opalescent light. Then nothing.
Three gone. Then the noise from the salon faded in his ears and died. Corfe transferred his audio input to the remaining acoustic mec, lodged under the bedside table in one of the guest staterooms. It brought sounds of too many voices yelling at once, with banging and noise in the background, for anything to be comprehensible. No time to wonder about that: Check back with Michelle.
He activated the mec still tucked behind the edge of the carpet under the salon table. It showed Payne trying to help Vanessa disentangle the mec from her hair, Garsten turning away to meet another figure approaching from the far-end door. Michelle had moved back, away from Payne and Vanessa—she seemed okay for the moment. A chance for a quick review elsewhere. Corfe juggled channels frenziedly.
The KE was posted as a lookout on a ledge in the corridor leading aft from the salon. All was quiet there.
Back to the surviving telebot, which he'd left below a life preserver on the boat deck just behind the bridge. A crewman was rampaging around in the wheelhouse, obviously searching, moving closer. Situation getting risky.
Meanwhile, the audio continued bringing voices from the stateroom area midships:
"Look at this. It's cooked."
"That's what we're looking for. You two take that side. Start looking everywhere."
"You mean there's more of them?"
Feet thumping; objects moving; doors slamming.
Corfe had a general tool-utility mec in the engine compartment, which had climbed part of the way up to a fuel supply line. Could he afford the time to move it the rest of the way?
"Hey, guys, what's that? Look, is that one? I think I found one."
Corfe groaned. It had to be the one that he'd been forced to leave at the base of a wall while he attended to another emergency. He hastily switched channels to it and found he was being nudged by a wooden mainmast leading up to a huge figure looming silhouetted against light. He was prodded out onto an open expanse of floor; then the heel of a huge boot was coming down on him like a swooping dragon.
Five gone.
Too much to do. There wasn't enough time for anything. He was overwhelmed. . . .
Then everything went blank, and Corfe found himself suddenly back in the coupler station inside the van. The rear door was open; figures were clambering in. He blinked, stupefied. His concentration had been so total that he had lost all track of time.
Kevin slid quickly into the station next to him and put on the headset and collar. Taki was getting into the third, on the other side behind Kevin. Ohira was at the door. "Stay there," Ohira told Corfe, extending an arm. "Jus
t give me the keys." Corfe found the keys in his pocket and handed them over. Ohira tossed them to one of his kinsmen, who ran around to the front and climbed in the driver's door. A car filled with more Oriental faces was pulled up close behind.
"They've got Michelle on Payne's boat—Shoals, on Lake Union," Corfe gasped.
"I know. Eric told me. We're going there now," Ohira shouted. "He's heading there too. Keep stalling them." He slammed the doors. The motor started, and moments later Corfe felt the van moving, then pulling away fast and cornering. He and the other two buckled themselves tight into the seats—once neurally coupled, they would have no functioning reflexes to stop themselves being thrown around.
"Okay, then, Doug, what have we got? Initiating now." Kevin scanned the displays, his fingers racing over switches and keys.
"We're losing mecs," Corfe said. "There's only six left functioning on the boat."
"That's okay," Taki said from behind. "I brought a box of them in the car."
And now there were three operators.
"Right." Corfe smiled for the first time that day. That ought to even things up a bit. "Kev, there's a telebee in trouble up near the bridge that you can pick up on," he said. "Taki, I've got a critter in the engine room that needs to move." He switched them all through to the common audio channel, then reentered coupler space himself.
"Got it," Kevin's voice said on the circuit.
"Active," Taki confirmed a couple of seconds later.
"I'm forward of Taki, in the salon where Michelle is," Corfe told them. "She's going to need help pretty soon. The KE is along the passage to the left leading aft. Kev, the general utility on Channel Three is at a switchbox farther forward. It's sawed halfway through the main input power line. Can you handle that one too? . . ."
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
One of Finnion's men had found a medical kit containing scissors, and Payne was trying to cut the mec out of Vanessa's hair. It seemed to have lost all life but was hopelessly entangled. She shook with the effort of containing her fury and trying to keep still. "Get it off me, Martin! Get that thing out!"
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