Flight of the Maita Supercollection 3: Solving Galactic Problems Collector's Edition

by Moulton, CD

  Kit was finding he had a small sense of what You was planning. He knew this was going to be another attack of some kind, that You didn't understand what he was saying. He opened the psy part of his mind, but held the automatic shutdown ready.

  It was a good thing he did. He was struck by an intense bolt of psy power, shut the psy part of his mind off and stared at You a moment. He took the laser out of the holster again and deliberately fired at the base of one of the fans. There was a bluish glow where the beam hit, but nothing more.

  "It would seem we can defense one another quite well," You said. "My power has no effect on you while your own weapon is useless against me. This will be an interesting competition. You must now destroy me or I must destroy you. There can be no other outcome. I believe I have the better part of this in ways of which you have no conception.

  "Get out of this room and take these with you or I will attack THEM! I perceive that you will find such action intolerable. That is one of your weaknesses I will exploit to my advantage. I have no others to consider in each of my actions."

  Kit helped Nortich up to her feet while Volich and Zantoo helped Givzoo to stand. They went shakily out of the room and to the outer door which would not open as You had placed the padlock on the outside. Kit used the laser to melt the lock off of the hasp and to remove the ring holder so no other lock could be placed there.

  "It would seem I can protect myself from your weapon, but I can't protect inanimate objects at much distance," came into Kit's mind.

  "Which is an advantage that has shown me a way to attack you!" Kit replied. "It would seem YOU have weaknesses that I can exploit!"

  Kit led the others out to the skimmer craft and headed for A Port. There was a tugging at the psy part of his mind to return and the Klaft implored him to go back, but he ignored them. He put the craft as close to T6 as he could, disabled it to where it couldn't be taken off, then used his robotic strength to force the Klaft aboard T6. Once they were inside and shielded Givzoo said he was glad. They had no choice but to resist Kit's attempts to take them out of You's sphere of influence.

  "I'm going to instruct the ship to take you to another ship that's in orbit," Kit said. "I'm an empire agent who was sent here because of the seeming interference with the culture here on Grandish. Klist Mar is the emperor's famous detective, Tabori R. DeSixtee, in disguise. The ship you'll soon be placed on is Tab's famous intelligent ship, TRD Sixty. You'll be transferred to a Fleet ship that'll take you to Hospital or University where you can complete your research in safety. As you see, we can shield the psy power. Maita will order that you have the shields implanted so you'll be personally safe if you're ever in contact with that thing again."

  "But how can we then communicate with the plants?" Nortich asked. "We have to know what they're thinking! Will Emperor Maita really give them a world?"

  "Yes," Kit replied. "Perhaps several. You'll be able to do the research in better circumstances. The shields will be made so you can turn them on or off as I do mine. It'll have an automatic shut-down circuit that'll activate if you enter a ship. Along with the antipsy implantation will be an anti-posthypnotic suggestion device. That will ensure the thing's never taken from its designated closed planets."

  They all agreed on that. T6 rendezvoused with TR, who took the group out to a Fleet ship after going through rigorous decontamination. It was going to be certain there were no spores being carried out. Kit headed back to Grandish and to Koosd to meet with Tab.

  Very Bad News

  There was a knock on the door. Tab, who was feigning sleep in his room at Veen's, heard the approach in the hall so called out to enter. It was Kit, back in the guise of Jarj Fel. Veen was back along the hall a ways with a large grin on his face so Tab hugged Kit and swung him around. He welcomed him back, called for Veen to have some cool brew waiting as soon as he could get some fresh clothes on, introduced Kaer Peld who was sharing the bed and invited Kit inside. He put on clothes at the foot of the bed, chattering all the while about finding a good place for the glassware factory near the beach a kilometer to the north, then he and Kit went down the stairs to the public room. Veen joined them at the table where they told tales, Kit about fictitious travels farther along the coast (Checked by floaters so the descriptions would be accurate) and Tab about the strange fungi he found growing all along Flint Creek on rotting logs.

  "There was a lot of it around the lower end of Milk Lake," he explained. "Into Flint Creek to about halfway from the swamp – you remember the one where we found those funny frogs? – to Lope's farm there didn't seem to be any, but from there on down to the sea there were quite a few of them. What was interesting was that the cattle and other animals seemed to find them a thing to avoid. Even I was disgusted for some reason and wanted to stay away, but you know me!

  "I tore one of them off of a stump. The smell or some gas or something almost knocked me out! It DID knock out Kail Free, the farmer who was with me.

  "We have to find some way to stop those things from spreading. If they take over too much area there won't be anyplace where the cattle will feed. It's bad enough the stock won't drink the water in Flint Creek without something running them away from their pastures, too! I think maybe it's some kind of stuff the fungus releases that causes the water to smell so bad. They're certainly repulsive enough things. Animals can smell a lot of things we can't."

  "I saw what must be the mother of all of those things!" Kit cried. "It was all of four or five meters high! I think maybe we could find what the fungus lives on and get rid of all of that kind of food supply. That would help control it. If certain specific things aren't there fungi won't ever germinate. I learned that back in biology classes at school."

  "Mar says it always grows on old rotten wood, like old stumps," Veen said. "Its what he called a common type of bract fungus. We sort of thought maybe we could get rid of all the rotting tree stumps and logs laying on the ground near the pastures and keep the stuff out that way. It only grows where it can have shade when it's small, too, so that shouldn't be too much of a problem."

  "Is it all just along Flint Creek?" Kit asked.

  "Seems to be," Tab replied.

  "Then why don't we get a bunch of people together to remove all the stumps and logs within, say, ten meters of the banks? If it's some kind of fungus that's gotten a start near Milk Lake that should get rid of it pretty effectively," Kit suggested. "Everybody knows the best way to get rid of a pest is to starve it out. If it isn't in the swamps with all that rotten wood there it could be because it can't stand too much water when its young or maybe the swamps are too acid. Or something. Too stagnant. Maybe there's some sort of bugs in the swamps and bogs that eats the spores or seeds or whatever."

  "Now, that's true!" Veen agreed. "The mate showed me a long time ago we wouldn't have any bugs or mold if we took care and saw to it there was never garbage of any kind inside overnight. We wash everything down before bedding at night. Have for twelve years and for twelve years we ain't had any bugs. Starve 'em out! It works!

  "This here fungus eats rotted wood so if there won't be no rotted wood for it to feed on then there won't be no fungus. Stands to reason and I learned the same thing in school."

  "The spores won't die for years, but if someone goes up and down Flint Creek and around Milk Lake once a year it should control it," Tab suggested. "If it'll guarantee the cattle will graze I'd think the farmers'd say it's well worth the little effort."

  "Make it a project for the kids," Kit suggested. "After the first time, of course. They can do it a couple of times a year. All the farmers have children old enough to make a good job of it."

  They agreed such a thing would be easily worked out, then everyone went back to their rooms and to bed. Kit was given an adjoining room to Tab's so when everyone else was sleeping soundly they were able to attach the shielded information lead to share each other's experiences since they last were together. They communicated silently when the information was exchanged.

  "
I don't like it!" Tab argued. "That thing has some plan. It's going to act very soon, I think."

  "We'll have to wait until it does whatever," Kit replied. "I don't have any idea what it'll do now, but it's going to try something against what it considers my weaknesses. The problem with that is I'm not at all sure what it considers to BE weaknesses. Note it attacked me with the pain thing at a time that didn't make any sense to me. The fact I was openly going to try to destroy it wasn't reason enough, but the fact that I seemed to demand – in its estimation – that it think in a certain way was considered an intolerable insult."

  "We knew from the start we couldn't hope to understand the thing," Tab agreed. "The good thing is it doesn't understand us any better. In the morning we'll go together to the labs. We'll take a floater and some better weapons and have an old-fashioned face-off showdown. It'll know by now that its spores, the ones that were growing, are gone. It may have to wait years for any more to sprout. It's been two days now, three in the morning, since we've demonstrated we can at least hold our own against it."

  "It'll definitely force the issue," Kit said. "You'd better get back to bed. Peld is stirring."

  They disconnected and Tab climbed carefully into the bed. Peld turned over into his arms and gripped tightly around him. He wouldn't get out of that bed before morning without waking her!

  In the morning the two took a good meal with them, saying they were going to take Lope's skiff up the creek to see exactly how much of a job it would be to move all the rotten wood along the waterway. If it wouldn't be too bad they could get started right away, but the farmers should begin immediately to move all the wood from their own lands.

  "The fungus grows from spores," Kit explained to the few who were there. "It grows fast. The sooner you get its food supply taken out of there the sooner your cattle will come in to eat the grass. If it gets started again it could get really out of control in very little time."

  The farmers agreed to spread the word to everyone along Flint Creek.

  Tab and Kit took the cart with a few supplies to Lope's farm, loaded the skiff and headed up the creek. They took the time as they went to scan the banks with their telescopic vision for any of the fungi Tab may have missed earlier. They found two small patches getting started over the past couple of days so knew they'd have to check regularly for awhile, at least.

  Something was different about Milk Lake. The algae wasn't so prominent as before and the water was clearer. The floater was right there with some heavier lasers and a couple of small phase shifters so Kit dropped some of the lake water onto the analysis plate.

  "It's almost back to normal lake water," he reported to Tab when the readout flashed. "I don't like this analysis at all. The machinery that controlled the food supply to that thing was automatic and was the best that can be made. That's why Givzoo couldn't disrupt the supply. The fungus – by the way, it calls itself ‘You’ – had complete control of that."

  "You?" Tab asked. "Oh, I see. Visualize the word 'you' when addressing it and it'll respond. The machinery's turned off, which is something that can have several meanings, none of them good."

  They went into the creek where the labs were located, noted that none of the sensors were operational and walked the path to the lab. The door was still hanging open, though they could see the steel doors at the end of the hall were closed. Those doors weren't locked. Tab pushed one and it slid easily out of the way.

  "You, we're coming in to talk with you," Kit said as they entered. There was no reply.

  The fungus looked quite different. The gold veining was gone and the entire upper part of the "fronds" were black and cracked.

  "Holy novas!" Kit cried. "The damned thing's spored! It's dead!"

  "And look at that!" Tab added, pointing to the plastic pipes sticking up through holes in the roof. "That thing could control exactly when it spored. It used the food supply line.... No, the drainage pumps! Let's check this out. I think we're in big trouble here. Very big trouble!"

  The fungus had used its psy powers to control the robotic maintenance servos. They had twisted the plastic drainage pipes upward from where they entered the ducts to the neutralizer tanks, knocked holes in the roof to stick the exhaust ends of the pipes out and anchored the ends outside pointing straight up.

  "It flooded the retention area below itself, turned off the food supply, dropped all the spores into the retention pond, then pumped the spores and food at very high pressure out and up," Kit said after studying the system. "The pressure readout gauge has a highest/lowest pressure level indicator that says the pressure was one hundred forty six kilos. That would throw the spores more than a hundred thirty meters high, which would be in the wind stream coming inland from the sea. These spores sticking to the sides of this tank, if they're average, could be blown outward for hundreds of kilometers along that wind stream. If there were thermals or strong updrafts those things could cover this entire continent. If they reached the jet streams they could be all over the entire planet in a few days."

  "The fungus has very definitely won rounds one and two," Tab said. "It was able to propagate itself successfully here and to spread itself all over this planet. Now we'll have to stop it, but I don't think we have the knowledge or the tools.

  "Gather a few liters of the spores from various areas around the pool, then we'll laser the place clean of the rest of them. We'll burn the husk of the fungus because there are bound to be millions of spores still sticking to it in various places. Let's get it done!"

  They managed to finish decontaminating the facility before nightfall, burning the husk to ashes. They then went back to the skiff, put the spores on the floater and went to the lakeshore before making their further plans. They both considered the situation very carefully. TR came in to sit on the lake and they went aboard to attach to the main console.

  "Well, I'll have the easiest part for awhile," TR decided. "I'll take these spores to Givzoo and his crew then we can take them all to some world like PUR thirty two six seven fifty four M. Maita designated four worlds where the spores can be released for study. The psy grids are built into Givzoo's crew to guard against the thing. They can begin immediate research into workable ways of combating it here. This world is doomed, I'm afraid. I don't see how we can stop this thing here. Those spores DID reach the jet stream. I've put up interceptors at all levels and find they're spread more than halfway around the planet already and will be falling for most of a year."

  "The important ones will be too big for that," Tab said.

  "No, they won't!" Kit warned. "I see what it did! It programmed the information in bits and pieces into the spores. To depend on a few large spores would be too chancy. It would go along with its evolution, which would be to produce millions of copies of each set of memories to ensure that a few of each would survive.

  "Pulling those fronds showed me they definitely DO communicate among themselves so could grow the RNA for all the stored memories in billions of individuals. We would be sure to miss some of them. It would be attrition from this point on. It WILL be if we can't come up with something."

  "I'll get Maita to send us a few hundred specialized search floaters to locate them as they reach a certain size," TR agreed. "We can't defeat it that way, but maybe we can keep the problem to a smaller scale. We can buy some time to find a cure or whatever. What are your plans?"

  "We'll go back into Koosd as Klist Mar and Jarj Fel," Tab replied. "We'll open a glassware plant in the area we selected, we'll have the farmers remove the rotting wood as planned and we'll hope we can come up with something effective against this thing before it can go through another cycle."

  "The best method is to note signs of the fungus through any differences in the way people act," Kit suggested. "It'll instinctively begin to control people as soon as it's large enough. I believe a major part of that control will be directed at one Clohk Nate. I'll definitely be perceived as the most important of the fungus's enemies. I got the idea it felt that to defeat me was
to win over all of the empire. I don't get the logic in that, but the feeling was there."

  "The logic system is that of the plant," T6 replied over the system (It was listening in from the first. There was no longer any point to hiding the radio). "It felt the competition was between you and it. If it was able to spore before you found a way to stop it it won. If you stopped it you won. There won't be any directives against you now, I think. You're defeated and are no longer of any importance. It might want to gloat, but plants might not be that petty.

  "That's conjecture, but I've studied this very carefully."

  They all agreed with the logic of that. TR soon went into orbit, then to take the spores and the biological research crew to a world where there was no higher animal life while Tab and Kit headed back for Koosd.

  "Our hardest part will be to inform these people it'll be pointless to haul off all the wood because the fungus will eventually take over anyhow," Kit said bitterly. "The one good thing I can say is the thing wasn't deliberately cruel or belligerent to the Klaft so there's a fairly good chance it won't randomly attack the Grandish."

  "If it perceives them to be a threat it will," Tab replied. "We won't stop them from getting rid of the rotting wood. If there's a big enough area cleared there's a small chance the influence will be resistible in it. It may be our only chance."

  "It could influence the Klaft as far away as A Port," Kit reasoned. "A little patch here and there won't much matter – particularly since there'll be millions of the things around here."

  "We're going to be attacking them as fast as we find them," Tab said. "We can hope it won't retaliate against the Grandish. I'll try to make it clear the attacks are from us, not from the natives."