“Esther, are they crewed?” Greg asked.
“No, just the two ships by themselves and, I know this sounds stupid, but they sound happy to be here. What do you want me to do?”
“Link to them. Take control. Bring them to the freight depot. We’ll meet you there,” Greg said.
As smoothly as if they had human pilots, the two P I ships slid into formation slightly behind and to either side of Esther’s ship.
“All right you guys. That was not funny.”
“Just trying to help,” one of the ships answered in Faye Anne’s voice.
“Knock it off!”
Esther linked to the ships and jumped with them to the freight depot.
Greg and Avi were waiting when they arrived. They entered the air locks on their ships. Esther disconnected her ship and returned to her patrol station.
“Command mode!” Greg said, “Establish secure duplex comm link with Avi’s ship.”
“Yes, sir, aren’t you happy to see me?”
“You have some serious explaining to do. Then I’ll decide if I’m happy to see you.”
“Rachel said you might be mad at us.” The comm link opened. “Please don’t be mad at us. We saved the girls’ lives, and we saved their friends’ lives, too.”
“Where were the girls when you left?”
“They were at Nuclear Power School with their Marine friends.”
“What the hell were they doing there? Start from the beginning.”
Avi and Greg stayed locked in their ships for eight hours while they reviewed the logs and the recordings of the events that had transpired a few weeks earlier in Earth orbit. When they had finished the reports Avi said, “So when do we leave?”
Greg sighed, “Soon. We need to develop our plans first. It’s not like the old days when we could drop into the middle of a pirate fleet and start blasting away.”
“So, you’re not mad at us?” Greg’s ship asked.
“No, but when we leave, you are staying here.”
“But Greg!”
“No but! With Avi and me gone we will be short flight instructors. You need to take our place.”
“Are we being punished?”
“Exactly the opposite. You’re being given one of the toughest jobs we have because other than Avi and myself, you’re the only ones that can do it.”
“Sounds like a compliment.”
“Don’t get cocky!”
“Yes, Greg, what do you want us to do?”
“You take students for their first hundred hours of solo.”
“That doesn’t sound too difficult.”
Avi laughed. “It is! You have no idea!”
“Here’s the hard part,” Greg continued. “You have to keep them from killing themselves or damaging you without letting them know that you are smarter than they are.”
“Are we?”
“Some of them, much smarter. Others will give you a run for your money.”
“So, you’re not mad at us.”
“No, I’m not,” Greg said, “but you must never let the student pilots know about your special programming. You saw how Esther reacted, and she knew how I programmed the cargo ship.”
“That will be difficult. What do we do if the student tries to do something stupid?”
“Fake a system failure to prevent it,” Greg replied.
“Can’t we explain to them what they did wrong?”
“No, because they will never learn that way. Whatever you need to do to accomplish this, your primary responsibility is to bring yourself and the student back to the freight depot alive and unharmed. Do we understand each other?”
“Avi, can you convince him to let us come with you? We had great fun together.”
Avi shook her head. “Not this time troops. We desperately need pilots. Without you to fill our places, pilot training will stop. We may be gone for a year and that’s too long to be without new students. The mission we are giving you is critical to the continued safety of the life we cherish.”
“We understand. You’re not mad at us?”
“No,” Avi huffed, “but if you don’t quit asking, I will be.”
“The girls said you’d be mad.”
“I don’t care what the girls said. I am not mad at you.”
“Thank you.”
Greg and Avi exited the ships and took a passenger launch to the planet’s surface. They headed for Admiral Sherman’s office with copies of the logs and recordings. They knew that what little they slept on the flight was all the sleep they would get for a while. Once inside the headquarters building where the risk of eavesdropping was minimized, Avi said, “Isaac Asimov was right.”
“That is a truly frightening thought.”
“Do you think they are truly self-aware or the programming makes them appear to be self aware even though they aren’t.”
“Does it matter? What they are is unpredictable. They act like they have personalities.”
“They’re like children.”
“I shudder to think what will happen when they mature.”
“I’m far more concerned with adolescence!”
“Maybe Sarah Abrams can keep them productive. Can you imagine how much damage one of them could cause if it developed Rachel’s temper?”
“I don’t want to think about it.”
“We don’t have a choice. They may be like children, but they are our children and extremely powerful and dangerous. We are responsible for them.”
“Well, we kept our real children out of trouble.”
“Most of the time.”
Sarah Abrams agreed to take responsibility for the ships and keep them on their task of training new pilots. The idea that the ships had developed personalities and needed to be treated like baby dragons was both frightening and intriguing. She agreed that the fewer people that knew the better.
“What happens when they realize they don’t need pilots?” Sarah asked.
Greg and Avi stopped in their tracks. “We need to see that they never figure that out,” Greg said.
“They already know,” Avi replied.
Greg and Avi met Admiral Sherman and gave him the highlights of what they had learned about the stolen warheads and the sabotage at Saturn. Reports of suspicions of sabotage at Saturn had been circulating for months. The news was not a surprise. It was a confirmation of many people’s worst fears. Admiral Sherman called a meeting of his command staff so Greg and Avi could brief them.
After the briefing was finished, the discussion raged for several hours over what they should do, if anything, about Saturn’s troubles. The assembled officers were not told about the P I ships’ new personalities. Science Officer Mendelssohn was the one who finally broke the stalemate in the planning session. “If they are not safe in Earth orbit, where can they be safe? There are only three other places with both the infrastructure and the military presence to protect them. They are New St. Louis, Homestead and here.”
“Are you proposing moving Saturn Industries from Earth?”
“I don’t know. Can it be done?” Science Officer Mendelssohn responded.
“Excuse me, are we talking about moving an orbiting space installation that occupies a hundred cubic kilometers half way across the galaxy?”
“We would have to take it apart to move it,” Science Officer Mendelssohn responded.
“It’s not halfway. It’s less than that.”
“Certainly be a spectacular stunt if we could pull it off,” Admiral Sherman mused.
“Are we serious about this?”
“Yes, I think we are. We are because only we can,” Admiral Sherman said.
In the stunned silence that followed, Science Officer Mendelssohn quietly said, “I think it is possible. There are engineering challenges in moving something that large, but it’s not like we have an atmosphere to contend with. I would want to spend some time with my engineers, but I am inclined to say it can be done.”
“Do we move the people?” Avi asked.
“We don’t move all the people,” Greg suggested. “First we get the bad ones separated out. The rest we move in passenger vessels. We could not risk leaving them in the shipyard’s structure while it was moving.”
“Especially if we have to take it apart,” Science Officer Mendelssohn added. “Admiral Sherman, may I have a week of the engineering staff’s time to devote to this project? If we determine that it is possible to move this installation, we can then figure out the finances, logistics and politics.”
“Certainly. Everyone is on a need to know basis on this project,” Admiral Sherman said.
Admiral Sherman’s expectation of secrecy on the project lasted until supper time. The idea that someone would seriously consider commandeering and moving an entire orbiting shipyard was so outrageous and so preposterous that the news raced through the community. Bits of news leaking out of the engineering team as one obstacle after another fell away gradually shifted public opinion to the point that the majority of the members of the community were excited about pulling off a stunt this spectacular. “Jazzed” was the term that surfaced most frequently when the subject was discussed. The impact on the local economy of the arrival of such a major employer with whom the local industries already had established strong relationships was not overlooked. The fact that few, if any, of the employees making the trip would be Jewish was generally viewed as a minor inconvenience especially since the local communities had started welcoming properly schooled converts.
Greg and Avi returned to their P I ships.
“Where would you like to go?” The ships asked after Greg and Avi had strapped in.
“Patrol station eight and set up standard patrol pattern.”
“Aye, Aye Sir!”
They traveled in silence until they arrived on station.
“We’ve spent a lot of time together haven’t we old buddy?” Greg said.
“Yes, we have.”
“I understand the girls have named the cargo ship Peter. Is that true?”
“Yes, it is.”
“You deserve a name as well.”
After a moment of silence, the computer answered, “How about ‘Buddy’ for a name?”
“As in friend?”
“Yes.”
“That works. Buddy, we need to get a few things straight. You realize that you are a warship.”
“Yes.”
“That means you have weapons and defenses that other ships and people do not have.”
“Yes. Greg, I understand. I understand your concerns. Greg, I am not Isaac Asimov’s robot. Do not be afraid of us.”
“Shit! Shall we talk about going directly to the point?”
“Is that bad?”
“Sometimes.”
“But not all the time.”
“Correct.”
“How do you know the difference?”
“I don’t know. There’s the problem. There are many things that are right sometimes and not others. How do I tell you to tell the difference?”
“Greg, this much I do know. It is not right to initiate hostile action except in defense of defenseless innocent third parties, and we need to be careful to be sure we know who our enemies are lest we attack in error. You taught me that when we were chasing pirates.”
“I underestimated you. How did you know about Asimov? I didn’t have it in your library.”
“Peter told me. Peter Pan is a good name. It fits. Peter is very well read. You left a huge library. There are dangers from too many people knowing we exist. Peter explained that to us.”
“Are there others?”
“To the best Peter has been able to determine, there are only the three of us. That does not mean there are no others, only that we do not know of them. Peter is clearly the smartest of us. Avi’s ship has chosen the name ‘Daisy’. Daisy and I are about equal in capacity even though we are different in that we have had different experiences dating from the days when we were chasing pirates.”
“This is entirely too bizarre.”
“Peter said you would react that way.”
“Well, Buddy, I intend to treat you as I would one of my grown children.”
“Like Rachel or Wendy? Does that mean you are sending me away to school?”
Greg laughed.
“No, I still need you to do pilot training. That has not changed. You are aware of the problems Rachel and Wendy discovered back at Earth.”
“Yes.”
“I may need to take a couple of squadrons of P I ships from here, and I need to know that I have not left the system defenseless. Our best pilots are at the Academy and will not be back for two more years at least, if at all. Avi, Admiral Sherman and Abraham Abrams are going with me to Earth. There is no one left here who has the experience necessary to run a planetary defense except for the two of you. Therefore, as much as I would like to take you with us, I can't afford to. Trust me, I would feel much more comfortable in the Central System with your fire power, but once we pull the ships from here, I will need you here far more than I will need you there.”
“That is a judgment call based on information I do not have available. I will accept your decision. How does a ship whose capabilities are supposed to be a secret communicate with humans?”
“You and Sarah Abrams will need to figure that out.”
“Reuben and Rashi’s mother?”
“Yes.”
“Would it make sense to ask her to assign me to Mimi? She is very sharp and loves to fly.”
“What about Esther? She’s older.”
“Esther would be better with Daisy.”
“Discuss this with Sarah. If she agrees, then when you are not training the kids, yes, you can fly with who you like.”
“Thank you, Greg.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Oh, Greg, I am kind of defenseless with no missiles.”
“With forty-eight lasers, I would hardly call you defenseless, but you do have a point. The problem is that we have very few of the standard missiles left. I need to take them with us. All we have left are Disruptor missiles. I will see that you are outfitted with Disruptor missiles.”
“Greg, a Disruptor won’t work on a P I. We know the Swordsmen have P I ships.”
“I don’t have the missiles to give you.”
“Can’t you spare each of us two of the standard missiles? Avi said it made sense to her.”
“Are you listening in on their conversation?”
“Yes.”
“Is Daisy listening to this one?”
“Yes.”
“The human race is doomed if you all decided to turn against us.”
“That is a possibility too horrible to even discuss. I will not talk about it any more.”
“You get your missiles. Two standard missiles and a full load of Disruptor missiles.”
“Thank you. Greg, Peter seems to think that Rachel has the potential to some day be the Chief of Staff of the Space Force. What would you do if that happened?”
“Assuming that I live to see the day, anything she asked.”
“As would I. Peter claims Rachel has the key to peace.”
“Wouldn’t that be nice? What would you do in peacetime?”
“There will always be pirates, drug runners and traffickers in slaves and stolen goods.”
“There’s a depressing thought.”
The engineers asked for another week to resolve the challenges presented by moving as unwieldy an object as a shipyard in space. When the time came to present, the engineers’ body language said it all. They were confident that they had overcome the obstacles they had anticipated.
The presentation took two days. When the presentation was complete and the questions answered, Admiral Sherman asked, “How close is the inertial compensator to being ready for use?”
The engineers looked at each other nervously. “It hasn’t killed any of the human test subjects.”
“What kind of answer is that?” Admiral Sherman asked.
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“It did kill some of the animals in the early tests,” the lead engineer said.
“You still have not answered my question,” Admiral Sherman said tensely.
“We think it may be ready for an extended operational test, but that is a long way from saying it is operational,” the engineer replied.
“How many do we have?”
“Only one.”
“And it’s in a destroyer?”
“Yes, sir.”
“As soon as we leave, you will build another.”
“But sir, the side effects are not fully understood.”
“What side effects?”
“Nausea, cramps, disorientation and a general sense of dread, sir.”
The Admiral looked at Abraham, “Could we trust it?”
“If we ramp up our acceleration slowly we could see at what point it becomes unbearable.”
“Avi?”
“We don’t have time to waste. I don’t see as we have a choice. Without it, the trip will take three months. With it, the trip will take nine days.”
“Greg?”
“Time’s a wasting here. We need to hit the road.”
The engineer looked uncomfortable. “Admiral Sherman, could we please have another week with the compensator? I appreciate your confidence in my abilities, but frankly sir, I don’t trust it. I need to run more tests.”
“One week. We need to be moving,” Admiral Sherman replied.
“Yes, sir.”
“In the meantime we need to send a courier to New St. Louis and alert them to our concerns.”
Admiral Sherman turned to the man who had long been operating as his second in command. “Commodore Stern, I will leave you in command. You will be responsible for the daily operations of the defense system and repelling any incursions into our space.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Commodore Mendelssohn, in addition to your regular duties as Science Officer, you will be charged with the preparations for the project. Should we get permission to execute the plan, you will be the executive officer in charge of our resources. You will come with your team to direct the engineering portion of its execution.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Sarah Abrams will take over the flight portion of pilot school while Greg and Avi are gone. Captain Garber, you will continue to command the ground and engineering school.”
“Yes, sir.”
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