Mars Prime

by William C. Dietz

  Rosemary headed for the nearest access shaft, humming as she went, wondering if she could rig the ship's PA system to play some of her favorite music. Some Beethoven, classic Madonna, or China Rock. That would be cool.

  Rosemary rounded a corner, did a somersault into the access shaft, and pushed her way upward. B-deck. That's where the controls for the PA system and all the other command and control stuff were located.

  Rosemary turned end-over-end the moment she saw C-deck flash by and allowed her toes to skid along the surface of the walls. It slowed her down and worked better than the handholds provided for the same purpose. A thousand black skid marks showed where other people had done likewise.

  Rosemary saw rectangles of light appear below, grabbed a handhold, and kicked her feet through the B-deck hatch. She hit the deck, bounced off, and headed down-ship. She hadn't gone more than twenty feet before a gloved hand reached out of a darkened doorway, grabbed her by the throat, and jerked her inside.

  "Somebody's up and around all right! I just saw them!" The thought-voice belonged to MOMS.

  Martin pulled part of himself out of a side conversation with LES. "Saw them? How?"

  "Yeah, how?" SIS echoed.

  "Through a maintenance bot," MOMS replied matter-of-factly. "I was jumping from robot to robot, when I landed in one of C-deck's Class IV Garbage Suckers and saw somebody go up through the access shaft."

  Of course! MOMS controlled all of the ship's robots. That meant she could selectively hear what they heard, see what they saw, and sense what they sensed. Martin felt his spirits soar. "Could you see what they looked like?"

  "Nope. Class IV's don't pack a video lens. Just radar, sonar, and heat detectors. All they see are various kinds of blobs."

  Martin thought fast. "Good work, MOMS. The human was headed for B-deck?"

  "That's the way it looked."

  "Right. How many robots do you control anyway?"

  "I have three hundred and fifty-seven effectives, plus seven that are in for maintenance, and two that are slated for scrap. That's because—"

  Martin cut the maintenance computer off in mid-sentence. "Excellent. Send fifty or sixty of them to B-deck right away. Order them to gather right near the access shaft and wait for further instructions.

  "Hey SIS, are you with me?"

  "Yes . . . but I'm not sure what I can accomplish without my surveillance cameras."

  "Can you control the PA system?"

  There was a millisecond pause as if SIS was checking to see if that particular function lay within the realm of her capabilities.

  "That's a roger. Big Dan handles the command and control stuff, but I provide backup and take primary control where matters of shipboard security are concerned."

  "Well, matters of shipboard security are concerned," Martin answered, "so take control."

  "Control is mine," SIS said formally. "What should I do with it?"

  "Scare the fecal matter out of him," Martin replied grimly, "and I'll take it from there."

  Rosemary struggled at first but quickly discovered that the other person was stronger than she was. Not only that, but the more she struggled, the more violent her assailant seemed to become. Blows landed on Rosemary's face, ineffectual at first, but more so as the attacker maneuvered her into a corner and kept her there.

  Rosemary ducked, pushed with her feet, and tried to get away. The other person caught and pushed her back. The voice was cold and harsh.

  "So, trying to escape are we? You are a bad, bad, bad girl. Otis has something for bad girls."

  The blows came hard and fast. Rosemary used both hands and arms to protect her face. A horrible realization flooded the young woman's mind. This was worse than the muggings that she'd survived during her childhood. Otis planned to kill her! Then she remembered Dr. Havlik and felt something heavy hit the pit of her stomach. Rosemary went limp and pretended to be unconscious.

  Lights came on as a tiny part of Big Dan sensed activity in the conference room and responded accordingly. This triggered a response that manifested as a nagging thought in the back of the command and control computer's main processor. But there were two or three such minor irritations at any given time, so the Big Guy ignored it. Better that than to miss what Hydro would do if alien bacteria attacked the next cycle's fungus crop.

  Rosemary opened her eyes far enough to see the hooded figure that bent over her.

  Reassured by his victim's lack of motion, Otis stopped beating her long enough to remove a roll of utility tape from a pocket and tear a piece off. It made a sound like ripping cloth.

  Rosemary debated what to do. Remain limp? Hope Otis would leave her alone? Or renew the struggle, knowing her efforts might fail, and incur his wrath?

  Rosemary remembered the news coverage, remembered that Havlik had been wrapped with tape, and made the logical decision. She waited for Otis to move in a little closer, stiffened two of her fingers, and drove them through the hood's eye holes. They encountered something soft.

  Otis screeched with pain, brought up hands to cover his eyes, and started to babble. The assailant's voice had taken on a strange childlike sound.

  "You hurt us! I hate you! Kill her, Uncle Otis! Kill her now!"

  Rosemary tried to absorb and understand the strange words while she looked for a way out. Otis floated between her and the hatch, and while temporarily out of action, wouldn't stay that way for very long.

  Rosemary put her feet against the wall and pushed. She headed down towards what would have been the deck if the concepts of up and down had meant something.

  But Otis saw the move and made a grab for her. Rosemary felt a hand catch the back of her collar and pull her upwards. She grabbed for the console that occupied the center of the room and missed. An arm wrapped itself around her throat. And then, just as the grip began to tighten, the public address system came to life.

  "This is the Shipboard Information System. I know where you are and what you are doing. You will stop, place your hands on top of your head, and await further instructions."

  Rosemary felt the arm loosen slightly as her assailant took the latest development in. Inertia was carrying them upwards. The overhead, if she could place her feet on the overhead ...

  Otis tried to understand. How could SIS know where he was and what he was doing? It couldn't, not without surveillance cameras, so what the hell was going on? A bluff? But computers don't bluff, do they? Or do they? Some played poker, he knew that, so maybe they could bluff too. The babble of many voices filled his mind. Muscles twitched as neural impulses were sent to various parts of the body and subsequently cancelled. Frank could be heard above all the rest.

  "They know where we are! Run, Uncle Otis, run!"

  "Shut up," Norma said testily. "Otis knows what he's doing."

  "Who died and left you in charge?" Morey asked. "What a jerk."

  "Now Morey," Susy started, "that's no way to talk to-"

  "Stop it." The words came from Kathy and were instantly obeyed. "Otis, finish what you were doing, then head for the chamber. Something has gone wrong."

  Otis remembered something Kathy had learned a long time ago and started to break Rosemary's neck. He was in the process of twisting her head around when the robo cam hit him between the shoulder blades. The blow was hard enough to knock the air out of the body's lungs and push him forward. He hit a bulkhead and bounced off.

  Martin gave the electronic equivalent of a rebel yell. The fact that he had access to a video camera, and could bring it into play, had been an afterthought.

  The computer entity repositioned Corvan's robo cam for a medium shot. It was something less than satisfying. The killer, and there was little doubt in Martin's processor that this was the same individual that had killed Havlik, wore a hood and an over-sized ship-suit.

  Rosemary was free-floating now, trying to suck oxygen in through a badly bruised throat and kicking with her feet.

  SIS picked that moment to come over the public address system again. "Ho
ld it right there. Place your hands on top of your head. Wait for further instructions."

  The body could breath again. Otis turned his back to the wall. The woman drifted free. Some sort of video camera hovered in front of her. Thank God for the hood. The odds had shifted. His eyes went to the hatch. It was filled top to bottom and side to side with robots. They came in all shapes and sizes and blocked the compartment's only exit. Frank began to cry and Otis didn’t know what to do.

  "Tackle them straight on," Kathy advised. "Push them out of the way."

  The words made sense. The robots could slow him down but that was all. Otis felt a renewed sense of self-confidence. He placed both feet against the bulkhead and pushed. He hit the wall of robots with both hands extended. Two of the robots gave slightly then stopped. Norma swore.

  Otis couldn't believe his eyes. The first wall of robots had been reinforced with a second, and beyond that, a third! All of them had their propulsion systems on and were resisting his attack. The body was trapped!

  Otis grabbed hold of a robot and pulled. It gave a little, fired reverse thrusters, and held.

  Martin felt a sense of grim satisfaction. His quarry was trapped. Now to close in.

  "HOW DARE YOU INTERFERE WITH A HUMAN?"

  The thought-voice seemed to reverberate through Martin's circuits. Big Dan was powerful, much more powerful than he'd realized, and the force of his presence-personality was almost numbing. Martin tried to say something, tried to respond, but found that he had been isolated from the rest of the ship. He no longer had the ability to control the robo cam, interact with the other computers, or even speak.

  SIS, LES, and MOMS were similarly affected. The robots seemed to lose interest in guarding the hatch, created a momentary traffic jam as they tried to leave, and returned to their normal assignments.

  Otis saw the confusion, pulled a dart gun from an inside breast pocket, and shot Rosemary twice through the throat. Blood sprayed into the air, made millions of droplets, and formed a curtain of red. It was not the way that he wanted to kill her, not the way that he needed to kill her, but there was very little choice.

  After that it was a simple matter to flee the compartment, make his way through the now blinded corridors, and dump everything into an ejection chute.

  The worst part was the journey from the ejection chute to the suspension chamber. Frank cried, Norma bitched, Morey laughed, Kathy was silent, and Susy told everyone that things were fine.

  Well, things weren't fine, and Otis knew it. Corvan was alive, he still had the notebook, and the ship's computers had come close to canceling his ticket. The process was far from pleasant, especially the catheterization, but he got it done. Sleep came as a blessed relief.

  Chapter Eight

  Like most computers, Martin had a tendency to view time as little more than a performance parameter.

  But Martin was acutely aware that nine months had passed since Rosemary's death. The Outward Bound was in Mars orbit now, and he had very little to do but remember what had occurred and wonder if he'd done the right thing.

  What if he had notified Big Dan? Would the Big Guy have listened to him? Taken action to stop the killer?

  SIS, LES, and MOMS said no, but they were biased. They were on the Big Guy's shit list too. What would Kim say? Would she be disappointed in him? Wipe his memory so that he ceased to be? It would be a relief in a way. Better than the guilt that continued to haunt him.

  Damn! Damn! Damn! If only Hydro's presentation had run five or ten minutes longer. If only Big Dan had given him a chance to explain. If only Rosemary was still alive. But she wasn't, and that was that.

  And so it was that time passed and Martin waited.

  Rex Corvan drifted slowly upward, like a feather borne on a light breeze, floating toward the light. And there was sound, too, like a great ringing of bells, filling his head to overflowing.

  This seemed to go on for some time, with the light gradually becoming more intense and the sound dying away. Then, when the light was so bright that it seemed almost certain to burn a hole through his head, Corvan opened his eyes. A rather attractive woman looked down at him and smiled. She wore the jagged line of a life support tech over the left breast pocket of her ship-suit. A stethoscope drifted sideways from her neck.

  "Welcome to Mars orbit. Stay where you are for a while. You may feel some nausea."

  The woman's words quickly came true. The chemicals used to resuscitate him had some powerful side effects. A series of dry heaves convulsed his body. They seemed to last forever. But time passed and so eventually did the discomfort.

  Corvan waited awhile to make sure that the nausea was truly gone, hit the harness release, and floated upward like a spirit departing for heaven. He saw that others, Kim included, were doing the same thing. He used the suspension chamber to pull himself vertical.

  His wife looked thin and pale. Her previously short hair hung down around her shoulders in waves of black. Her nails were long and twisted. She held a hand up in front of her face.

  "Yuck!"

  Corvan grinned. "You look like hell."

  Kim made a face. "Look who's talking!"

  A quick check revealed that Corvan's hair and nails were as long as hers. Not only that, but he had a beard that touched his chest.

  Corvan laughed, started to record what Kim looked like, and stopped when he saw her glare. "Don't you dare! Not unless you want to sleep with your robo cam for the rest of your life."

  The reop held up both hands in mock surrender. "Yes, dear. No, dear. Whatever you say, dear."

  Kim smiled. "That's better. Come on. Let's do something about the way we look."

  "You're sure you don't know what this is all about," Corvan said, pulling himself down-ship toward the B-deck conference room. Most of the colonists were still sealed inside their chambers so the corridor was nearly empty. The two of them had just taken some much needed showers. Corvan's hair was still wet.

  "Nope," Kim replied, "but Jopp was even colder than usual. I think we're in some kind of trouble."

  "Trouble?" Corvan inquired. "How could that be? We've been asleep for nine months."

  Kim made a face. "I don't know. But if anybody could do it you could."

  Kim felt guilty about the joke, and the fact that if they were in trouble, the fault was probably hers. Especially if Martin had been discovered. What was the penalty for introducing an unauthorized computer entity into the ship's systems anyway? Kim wanted a cigarette in the worst way.

  The conference room was just ahead. The hatch stood open. Corvan paused and gestured for Kim to enter. Her hair was short again, her nails were neatly trimmed, and her makeup was in place. She looked wonderful. He winked and she winked back.

  Kim pushed her way into the compartment and Corvan followed. The room was smaller than an Earth-side counterpart would be. This stemmed from both the shipboard space restrictions and the absence of gravity. Gone were the conference table, chairs, and other furniture that one would expect to find, and in their place was a centrally mounted console and a series of wall mounted Velcro "hooks."

  Hobarth and Paxton were both present but only one of them smiled. "Welcome to the inquisition," Paxton said wryly.

  Corvan positioned himself in front of some Velcro and backed into it. His suit made contact and held him in place.

  "It's that bad?"

  Paxton looked serious and nodded. "I'm afraid so."

  The security man looked as if he wanted to say something more, Hobarth produced a smug smile, and Jopp chose that particular moment to enter the room. Her expression was as cold as the vacuum outside. Fornos was close behind, and while he didn't look quite as threatening, he didn't seem especially friendly either.

  The two of them took their places on the opposite side of the room from Corvan, Kim, and Paxton. Hobarth made a show of giving his slot to Jopp. Fornos touched the console and the hatch hissed closed. He looked first at Corvan then at Kim. There was no sign of the good-natured patience that t
he reop had encountered before. The administrator was angry and willing to let it show.

  "There's something I want you to look at."

  A child-sized finger stabbed something on the console. The room darkened. Video appeared on the ceiling. It took a moment to figure out what he was looking at, then Corvan saw a super-graphic flash by and recognized the B-deck corridor. The camera turned a corner and entered a well-lit room. The reop looked and looked again. Yes, it was the same room they were sitting in now. Two people could be seen struggling with each other. One was distinctly female while the other was disguised by a hood and over-sized ship-suit.

  The camera paused for a second as if checking the situation out, then charged full speed ahead, and struck the hooded figure between the shoulder blades. He or she let go of the woman, bounced off a bulkhead, and looked around. The camera pulled wide. Corvan saw a doorway packed top to bottom and side to side with robots. All kinds of robots. The assailant dived straight at them. They held. Unable to push his or her way through to the other side the attacker pulled instead. It didn't work. The robots continued to bar the way.

  Then something strange happened. The robots started to disperse. They backed up and left the room. The camera drifted from the assailant to the woman. She held up her hands as if objecting to something. Her face contorted in pain. Blood gushed from her throat. The picture faded to black.

  Fornos touched a button. The lights came up. The administrator looked Corvan in the eye. "The victim was a life support technician named Rosemary Parker. The investigation is still underway, but it looks as if Parker used her specialized knowledge to arrange for an early release and was up and around when she shouldn't have been."

  Corvan nodded. "And ran into someone else who was up and around when they shouldn't have been."

  "Yes," Fornos agreed heavily, "and I think we know why." Corvan watched as the administrator unzipped a pocket and withdrew a small notebook. He recognized it right away. It was Havlik's book, the same one he had hidden away beneath his pillow and forgotten to retrieve. The other man's words suddenly acquired additional significance.