McCade simply stood there completely helpless while his ship and a trusted comrade died in front of his eyes.
There was a burst of static in McCade’s helmet followed by a voice he’d never heard before. “Welcome to the Dump. I’m Mustapha Pong, and unless you do exactly what I say, you will die.”
Twenty-Five
McCade had never felt so helpless. The cruiser hung above them like some dark god, untouchable and omnipotent. With no atmosphere to conduct the sound of its repellors, the ship seemed all the more awesome and mysterious. Pong’s voice filled McCade’s helmet.
“Which one of you is Sam McCade? Raise your right arm.”
McCade gulped and raised his right arm. There was little point in doing otherwise. If he chose to, Pong could turn the entire crater into a lake of molten metal.
A spear of white light flashed down to pin McCade against the ground. His heart stopped beating while he checked to make sure that he was still alive. With a sigh of relief he realized that it was nothing more than a spotlight.
“Good. Now tell me why you’re here, and I warn you, McCade, do not waste my time. If you tell the truth, I will allow you and your friends to live. If you lie, or attempt to mislead me, I will know and our conversation will end rather abruptly. Do you understand?”
McCade understood. He understood that in spite of Pong’s threats he should say as little as possible. The question was how much did Pong know? It couldn’t be much or he’d have killed them by now. No, Pong was curious. He knew McCade was trying to find him and wanted to know why. He knew about Sappo’s abduction but little else.
Thank God! If Pong knew about the vial and understood its value, he’d try to auction it off to the highest bidder, use it to extort money from the Il Ronn, or God knows what else.
McCade swallowed to lubricate a dry throat. “The answer’s quite simple. The Brotherhood is offering five hundred thousand credits for your head, and I’m a little short on cash. Surrender peacefully and they’ll go easy on you.”
There was a long silence. And then, just as McCade was preparing to die, there was a loud laughter. When Pong spoke again, there was merriment in his voice.
“McCade, you’re something else. You said the one thing that could save your life, and you said it with a certain amount of style. I like that. I like it so much that I’ll let you live. Providing of course that you return my property.”
McCade frowned and looked around helplessly. “What property is that? I wasn’t aware that I had anything that belonged to you.”
There was a burst of static followed by Pong’s chuckle. “Oh, but you do. Unless I’m very much mistaken that’s my good friend Morris standing over there, and while he’s been a little too talkative of late, I’d like to offer him a ride home.”
Another shaft of light lanced down to bathe Sappo in white. He waved enthusiastically to the ship and shuffled in a circle.
“Just follow the light, Morris, and a shuttle will pick you up.”
The spotlight moved off toward the area where they’d landed and Sappo followed.
Something landed in McCade’s stomach with a heavy thud. He chinned his mike. “Neem, Reba, move toward me and do it now.”
Meanwhile Sappo hurried toward the white circle and came to a sudden halt when the light stopped moving. “That’s far enough, Morris,” Pong said sweetly. “I lied . . . and you know what that means.”
Sappo looked around with desperate eyes searching for someplace to hide, someone to help. “Please, Mustapha, don’t do this, they made me tell.”
“Oh, really?” Pong asked quietly. “Are your eyes hanging down onto your cheeks? Are you walking on broken feet? Has every tooth been pulled from your lying mouth? If you can show me those injuries, I will spare you and tend your wounds with my own hands.”
Sappo made no reply but tried to run. Due to his leg shackles he didn’t get very far. A single burp of blue energy consumed Sappo, space armor and all, leaving nothing more than some scorched rock and a puddle of molten metal. In less than a second Sappo’s shackles had been transformed into a marker for his grave.
“Good-bye, McCade. I hereby cede the Dump and all that it contains to you and your friends. Like Morris, it has ceased to be useful.”
McCade chinned his mike. “In ten or twelve hours we’ll run out of air.”
Pong chuckled. “I said I’d let you live, but I didn’t say for how long. Besides, as Morris just found out, I lie a lot. Bye.”
And with that the cruiser drifted over the domes. Blue beams flashed down to burn huge holes in each structure. Then the ship engaged its main drives, lifted, and disappeared over the horizon.
“The bastard!” Reba shook her fist at the point where the ship had vanished.
McCade had never felt as depressed as he did at that particular moment. They’d come close, damned close, and now it was over. Not just for them, but for the millions, the billions, who would die in the coming war. But before he could pursue that line of thought a strange voice filled his helmet.
“Testing...testing... can you hear me? Hello, can anybody hear me?”
“I can hear you,” McCade replied. “Who are you? Where are you?”
“I call myself Henry,” the voice replied. “Although my manual says I’m a NAVCOMP IN7808/L. But that seemed so impersonal I decided to name myself after a great navigator called Henry.”
“It’s a nice name,” McCade agreed. “Although Henry had a tendency to hang around Portugal while other folks did the actual navigating.”
McCade looked around and tried to spot where the voice might be coming from. “So you’re a robot?”
“Certainly not!” Henry replied, obviously offended. “A NAVCOMP IN7808/L is a far cry from some piece of animated junk. I’m a top of the line navigational computer, and proud of it. Pong didn’t like me, and well, I thought we could be friends.”
“Sounds good to me,”McCade replied. “Where are you? Let’s shake on it.”
“Right here,” Henry said as a birdlike creature stalked out of the shadows. Something about its jerky walk reminded McCade of the movement he’d spotted earlier.
Henry had a cylindrical body and three skinny legs. Two arms stuck out at odd angles, one of which boasted a three-fingered hand, the other being equipped with some sort of complicated tool. He had a long flexible neck that extended out and up from his cylindrical body to a ball-like head. An antenna stuck straight out in front to suggest a beak and thereby cement Henry’s resemblance to a bird.
McCade extended his right hand and found Henry’s grip to be surprisingly delicate. “I’m Sam McCade. That’s Reba, and the taller one is Neem. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Henry.”
“Likewise I’m sure,”Henry replied politely.“Hello,Reba,hello, Neem. I’m sorry about your ship. Had I known you were good people I would have warned you, but I thought you were part of Pong’s security forces. They try to hunt me down every now and then.”
“They tried to hunt you down?” Reba asked. “Whatever for?”
Henry’s head drooped toward his metal chest. “They want to terminate me. I was the navigational computer aboard Pong’s ship until I made a mistake and miscalculated a hyperspace jump. No one was hurt, and everything turned out just fine, but Pong was angry and had me junked. He said I was stupid, but it wasn’t my fault. I told the maintenance tech to check a short in my number four logic sequencer, but he said it could wait.”
“So Pong threw you on the scrap heap?”
“That’s right,” Henry replied, “but I didn’t stay there. I was wearing my control console body when they threw me outside. It includes my head and one articulated limb that I use for routine maintenance.”
“I still don’t understand why they’d try and terminate you,” Reba said. “Why bother?”
“I don’t know,” Henry replied simply. “I guess Pong thought I’d die out here and when I didn’t he got mad. Anyway I managed to drag myself into this labyrinth of junk where
I went to work on building myself a new body. Bodies actually, since I now have three, each being dedicated to a different purpose. They tend to be a bit asymmetrical since I cobbled them together from junk, but appearances aren’t everything. This is the body I use for working on the ship. What do you think?” Henry turned himself around like a model on a runway.
“Very nice,” McCade said approvingly. “Did you say something about a ship?” He tried to conceal his eagerness but failed.
“Ship? Oh, yes, the ship. Well, a NAVCOMP IN7808/L isn’t worth much without a ship, so I’ve been repairing an old freighter I found. I can’t imagine how they got it here. After I revived the ship’s NAVCOMP, I learned it was retarded. Poor thing, I put it to sleep.”
“I see,”McCade replied, not quite sure whether he approved or not.“How long before your ship’s ready to lift?”
“With some help I could do it in three or four standards, without help a couple of weeks, a month max.”
“If we helped, would you give us a lift?”
“I’d give you a lift even if you didn’t help,” Henry replied cheerfully. “Though partially sentient, I’m also programmed to help humans, especially where matters of navigation are concerned.”
“Excellent,” McCade said, his spirits rising. “You’ve got yourself a crew.”
Reba cleared her throat.“Aren’t you forgetting something,Sam? You know, the stuff we breathe?”
“Oxygen?” Henry asked. “I don’t use the stuff myself, but there’s lots of it around.” He gestured toward the surrounding junk with his three-fingered hand. “I come across it all the time.”
“Well, then,” Neem put in. “What are we waiting for? Let’s repair the ship and haul rectum.”
“Neem that’s...oh, never mind,” McCade said. “Let’s do it.”
It took three standard days of extremely hard work to ready the freighter for space, and even then the word “ready” was more optimism than reality.
McCade had never seen a ship exactly like it, and guessed the freighter was around a hundred years old. The last twenty or so of those years had been spent in the crater, and thanks to the surrounding vacuum, there’d been little or no deterioration to its hull.
She’d been chock full of number nine core drills when Henry found her. Someone had removed her drives, her weapons systems, and her old-fashioned hydroponics lab before converting her into a warehouse. But her hull was sound, her control systems were intact, and her auxiliary systems were still functional, so Henry went to work.
The first step was to unload the number nine core drills. Even with the asteroid’s gravity this was quite a task since each drill weighed about eight hundred pounds. To deal with the situation Henry constructed a body small enough to negotiate the ship’s narrow hatches but strong enough to pick up core drills four at a time. It looked like a cross between a fork lift and an all-terrain vehicle.
Once the core drills were removed Henry had systematically checked out every inch of the ship’s wiring, run diagnostics on its antiquated subprocessors, and effected repairs wherever he could.
The next step was to find a drive, not just any drive, but one which would fit inside the little ship and could be linked to its ancient systems.
It took Henry the better part of a month to find the drive. And when he did it was in a lifeboat for a much larger ship. Like most lifeboats this one echoed the vessel it was built to serve. It was therefore almost as large as the freighter itself, and while it was twenty years newer, its systems were still compatible. Lifeboat design always seemed to lag behind everything else and for once that worked in someone’s favor.
Tests proved that the drive was in fairly good shape but there was still a problem. The lifeboat was trapped under the wreckage of a mobile refinery that hadn’t been mobile for ten years or more. And that’s the problem that faced his new friends. How to move the refinery and get at the lifeboat’s drive?
Difficult though the task was it could have been worse. They could move around freely now that Pong was gone and thanks to the accumulated junk there was plenty of stuff to work with.
First they went from wreck to wreck searching for, and finding, enough oxygen to last them a week or more. Once it was safely transferred to some portable storage tanks they were ready for the task at hand.
Both McCade and Neem were handy enough, but it was Reba who shouldered most of the load. She had a natural aptitude for things mechanical and it was she who repaired a large winch, ran more than two miles of durasteel cable through a series of improvised pulleys, and lifted the refinery clear.
And having done so, it was Reba who worked hand-in-hand with Henry to remove the lifeboat’s drive and install it in the freighter.
McCade worked hard as well, but his tasks were more routine and left him time to think. And the more he thought, the more he believed that they still had a chance. If so, Henry would be the key.
But there was no point in discussing something like that until the ship was repaired.
Time passed, work went on, and final tests were run. Then as the drive hummed, and the main accumulators built up a charge, he popped the question.
The control room was the only part of the ship that would still hold an atmosphere and the three of them were sitting around with their helmets off. Since none of them had bathed in three days, the stink was terrible, but it felt good to escape the close confinement of their helmets. “Henry ...I’ve got a question for you.”
Henry had reverted to his smaller control module configuration and popped out of the console like a prairie dog coming out of its hole. He waved his single arm by way of a greeting. “Sure, Sam. What’s up?”
“Does Pong have another base?”
“Yes he does,” Henry said matter-of-factly. “His main base is in the heart of the Nakasoni Asteroid Belt. As a matter of fact this asteroid is located on the outer fringes of the great Nakasoni, which is why Pong used it. He needed a place where his business associates could come and go without learning the location of his home base.”
Both Reba and Neem were suddenly paying attention. Neem was staring at Henry with an intensity that would’ve made a human somewhat nervous. “And the course to Pong’s base...do you know it?”
Henry looked from Neem to McCade and back again. “Of course I know it...I’m a NAVCOMP IN7808/L, aren’t I?”
Twenty-Six
There was zero G inside the ship and that made the space sled easy to handle. McCade used small squirts of nitrogen to hold it in place as he waited for the hatch to open.
Outside, the Nakasoni Asteroid Belt stretched off for thousands of miles. And somewhere inside that vast drift of tumbling planetoids was Pong’s secret base and, with any luck at all, the Vial of Tears.
McCade fought back the fatigue that threatened to roll over him and tongued another stim tab. This was number five, or was it six? It was hard to tell since the last few days had become one long blur of nonstop effort.
Sleep. He’d give anything to sleep, but sleep takes time, and time was slipping away. If they moved now, and if the plan worked, there was still a chance to recover the vial and prevent war.
Pong had done pretty well for himself since deserting the Brotherhood, but he’d made some mistakes too. The first was his decision to junk Henry, the second was his murder of Ceex, the third was his destruction of Pegasus, and the fourth was leaving McCade alive after committing the first three.
The hatch was wide open now. It served to frame the nearer asteroids and the starfield beyond. There were thousands of asteroids out there, ranging in size from small ones a mile or so in diameter, to larger specimens, some of which were five hundred times that size. And, just to keep things interesting, the asteroids were in constant motion relative to the sun and each other. So, if you didn’t know the right way in, you could have one helluva time finding your way out, and that wasn’t all. There could be man-made hazards as well.
And that’s why Henry and he were about
to undertake a one NAVCOMP, one man scouting mission.
McCade chinned his mike. “Thinks for the lift. Don’t bother to see us out, we know the way.”
“That’s a roger,” Reba replied. “Neem sends his best. You two take care of yourselves. We’ll meet you here in two standards, Methuselah willing.”
Every ship should have a name, and since the freighter was old, more than a little crotchety, and very dependent on the goodwill of a supreme being, Methuselah had seemed perfect.
They had a plan although the word “plan” implied more order and logic than seemed apparent now. The heady realization that Henry could lead them to Pong’s hidden base had been followed by an equally sobering discovery.
Henry knew how to get there, but he didn’t remember what sort of defenses they might encounter, how many ships Pong had under his command, or anything else of military value.
As a partially sentient computer Henry was largely self-programming. That meant that while he had a predetermined “purpose” he was free to decide which areas of knowledge might be useful to the fulfillment of his mission and which wouldn’t. And although Henry didn’t like to admit it, the size of his memory was limited, and that forced him to make choices about what he’d remember and what he wouldn’t. And while he’d stored away the long strings of numbers necessary to find his way through the great Nakasoni to Pong’s base, he hadn’t seen fit to memorize whatever defenses lay along the path. On a large cruiser those matters were the province of other computers and not his concern.
So the decision was made to equip a modified space sled with extra oxygen that would allow McCade to scout the path into the asteroid belt. Henry would come along to guide him in and out again.
In the meantime Reba and Neem would take a short hyperspace jump to the nearest Imperial outpost and request help. Marshaling whatever forces were available, they would return and rendezvous with McCade and Henry. An assault on Pong’s base would follow.
McCade on the Run (Sam McCade Omnibus) Page 16