On the Planet of Bottled Brains

by Harry Harrison

  It was funny how, at a time like this, Dirk's eyes, tracking idly around the room, came to rest on the single long-stemmed blue rose in its tall stemware.

  Sometimes a little thing can fix the attention. There is no record of Captain Dirk's associations to the blue rose. Not even the thought-sensitive walls of the Gumption picked it up, since they were going through a normal dewaxing operation at the time of this incident. It was Dirk and Dirk only, in a silence deeper than the grave and far more symbolic, looking at the blue rose which said to him, by some unimaginable channel, an unbelievable message.

  "Yes," Dirk said, though he later had no memory of it, "I'll do it though hell should bar the way!"

  He raised his eyes to the remote control board. Photon interceptors interpreted the direction of his gaze and turned the computer on to passive remote.

  "Your orders, sir?" Might there not have been a break in the smoothly synthesized voice of the computer?

  "The fastest course possible for Sanctuary!"

  The crew of the Gumption, sitting around the ward room listlessly shooting craps and reading out-of-date magazines, heard these words and looked up, galvanized, then broke into a run as they went to their battle stations.

  "Rig for full scale battle!" Dirk shouted. God, how he wished Splock were here! He looked around. "Doctor Marlowe!"

  A bearded man in a charcoal gray one-piece elasticized jumpsuit looked up alertly. "Sir!"

  "Are you conversant with the principles of shield reduplication effect?"

  "I think so, sir," the bearded, gray-eyed man said quietly. "Mr Splock was showing it to me just before he — left."

  "See if you can duplicate his efforts, Dr Marlowe," Dirk said. "I think we're going to need all the shielding we can get."

  The ship executed an impossibly tight turn onto the new course. The piled-up grav units were backfed into the ship's supercharger — another of Splock's innovations. The gigantic spaceship took off like a scalded positron.

  This particular Murdid fleet which was even then closing on Sanctuary was not the same fleet that had sacked Carcasal the previous year. That fleet, made up of suicide flyers interfaced with flying bomb ships, had proven irresistible to the forces of civilization. The battle fleets of Elkin and Van Lund had been forced back clear across the Carpathian Gulf, and might have been destroyed utterly had not a vast gale blown up from space and dispersed the attackers before they could drive home their final charge. The Murdid empire was slowly recovering from that debacle. The present fleet was barely half as large, but far more maneuverable. The Murdids had given up suicide tactics, and had managed to purchase WiseGuy Software from Hidden Tactics Technologies, main suppliers of inimical software to criminals and other enemies of civilization as we know it. Their motto: "Let it Come Down."

  This new attack software, with its emphasis on exotic maneuvers at high speeds, was baffling to the forces of Earth, which were still confined to logic-based decision modifiers. Even with basic codes broken so as to make possible a mapping and definition of Murdidean tactics, the outcome was for a long time in doubt, since the human operators, doubting their senses, lost valuable time asking each other, "Did you see that?" and other non-productive questions of that nature.

  At this time, when the starship Gumption was boring through hyper-space at a respectable multiple of the speed of light, and its paradox bafflers were working overtime to prevent temporal implosions due to irreducible dilemmas, Bill was scrambling up a winding iron staircase in the upper tower of Messer's sanctuary, hoping to find a power relay point he could take out, or, failing that, something to drink.

  He bounded up the narrow stairs, taking them several at a time. Below him, he knew, Splock and Duo were battling increasing hordes of beetle-armored warriors, the wall of crisped corpses moving nearer and nearer to them as more berserk warriors threw themselves across the bodies of those who had gone before. A door stood in front of him. It was made of steel, and had hinges which were massy and bright. It would not yield before Bill's pounding. He took out a laser pistol, set it to a high setting, and cut through the metal of the door like a red-hot knife going through a wall of cheese, only with less smell. The door burst open. Bill ran into the room, stopped in his tracks, took in what lay before him, and his lips puckered in a wry but unspoken comment.

  Finally he did say, "Well, this changes things a little."

  CIA did have a habit of popping up at odd moments. It was something that had always struck Bill as faintly ominous about the undercover intelligence agent. It was difficult to tell where CIA was at. Or what he was up to. It was also difficult to know if CIA knew that there was something a little weird about him. Perhaps all military undercover agents were like that; it was a pretty loathsome profession.

  Whatever the reason, there was CIA, in the power point relay station, busily splicing cables together as Bill entered.

  "Bill! I'm so glad I got here in time!"

  "How did you get here?" Bill asked. Everything CIA did made him suspicious.

  "No time to explain now," CIA said. "But you can thank that girlfriend of yours for a lot of it."

  "Illyria? I met a lady named Tesora who said she wasn't exactly Illyria."

  "And do you know why not? Because of you, Bill! I hope you're planning on doing the right thing by that little lady. That's love if I'm any judge."

  "What are you doing?"

  "Resetting the mine field pattern."

  Bill stared at him as comprehension dawned in his head. It was a brilliant move, he was sure of it, though he couldn't say just at the moment who it was going to help.

  "Help me, Bill," CIA said. "We have to help Ham and Splock."

  Bill saw that CIA was making new connections at random, scrambling the mine field so that no safe route could be found through it. He sat down on the floor and helped CIA tie off the last connections. The din from downstairs, which had grown fainter for a while, now redoubled in volume. There were loud explosions of the sort made by recoilless cannons, the high pitched scream of needle jets, the low warbling of temporal disruptors. Splock and Duo were fighting hard for their lives, using all of the weapons that the far-thinking Splock had brought along in case of just such an emergency.

  Bill and CIA finished their work and hurried back down the stairs. The sight that greeted their eyes had already gone beyond the shambles stage and now was taking on some aspects of order again. The beetle-armored soldiery were advancing on Duo and Splock, who had been forced back to the foot of the stairs, from behind hastily constructed barricades made of energy-resistant cellulose. They pushed the light barriers ahead of them, and they were armed now with blow guns whose darts were tipped with skin-curling poison, another outlawed weapon that the Murdids used with impunity and unction.

  Bill tapped his friends on their shoulders. "Come on. We gotta get out of here."

  "And about goddamn time," Ham Duo grimaced. "Have you any idea what I had to do to sneak into this place to help you out? First I had to buy a flamenco dancer's outfit —"

  "Tell me later," Bill said. "Right now I think we better get moving."

  Glancing toward the enemy, Duo perceived what Bill had just noticed. The Murdids had finally gotten one of their heavy weapons into place. It was technically a UKD-12d, a harmless-sounding sound for a glowing blob of energy that gobbled up whatever lay in its path and converted its victims into sludge by ways science did not yet fully understand.

  "I guess it's time, all right," Duo said. "All right, now what?"

  Bill turned to CIA. "Now what, CIA?"

  CIA raised his hand to his head. A pathetic expression crossed his face. He said, "Ugh, urggh..."

  "CIA," Bill said sternly. "Now is not the time for you to do a number."

  "Glarp," said CIA, his eyes rolling in his head.

  "Hell," Bill said, simply, but with feeling.

  Just at that time the starship Gumption, its battle-plates glowing from its passage through sub-space with its stripped-down nuclei, bur
st onto the scene. It popped out into normal space in proximity to the little world of Sanctuary, evading CIA's randomized mine field by appearing in the middle of it, all guns blazing. It was the work of a second, no more, for a series of commands to be passed at radionic speeds training the ship's heavy artillery on the sanctuary. Then it took only a microsecond, no more, to retrain the guns on the Murdid fleet, which even then, pursuant to orders which were obvious to so well-trained a combat commander as Dirk, was boring in on Sanctuary.

  Splock, hearing the characteristic thud-giggle-thud of the Gumption's heavy ordinance, took in the situation in a moment. "To the balcony!" he cried.

  Bill picked up CIA, who was still making odd noises due to something that had come over him in the last moment or two, but whose elucidation would have to await a calmer moment. With Duo cutting the way with sword-gun and explosive bludgeon, they burst through the serried waves of beetle-armored soldiery and ran up the narrow stone steps leading to the balcony.

  The balcony door was locked. But Splock had taken into consideration this eventuality. A flicker of his eyelids showed Bill what he had to do. Turning over CIA into the strong but surprisingly gentle arms of Ham Duo, Bill attacked the door, using the portal-bursting techniques he had been taught in Breaking & Entering training. No static object is a sufficient barrier for a warrior charging in full door-bursting mode. The door went down and the little group came out onto the high balcony. Bill rubbing his bruised shoulder and muttering complaints, which extended into the upper atmosphere.

  As they did this, the Murdid fleet came sailing into combat. They moved with confidence, because their spies had previously learned the layout of the mine field that protected the satellite against those who thought the sanctuary concept was passé. Ship after ship blew up, emitting loud clouds of many-colored smoke into the uncaring vacuum of the upper atmosphere. But others took their place, and there were still others behind them. The Murdids, somehow, sensing a trap, had sent in their noncombat vessels first to clear the way. It was a peculiarity of Murdid tactics, and this time it paid off. Ship after ship burst into fire and smoke and sparklers, but the main ships of the enemy fleet, the huge, heavily armored dreadnoughts, proceeded unscathed.

  Standing on the balcony, passing among them the single oxygen mask which Ham Duo always carried in a little pouch on his belt, along with condoms he had never used, Splock set off the emergency flares. They arched upward, bursting in bright blue coruscations of light. It would have been a pretty sight if the moment had not been so desperate.

  The Murdid fleet, finding the starship Gumption in their midst, turned their attention from the satellite to the big ship. Cursing gun captains applied the lash lavishly as the gun crews sweated with hyperspike and mass driver to swing the guns into line — for the guns of the Murdid fleet, due to a trifling miscalculation in the blueprints, had to be trained by hand. One by one the big guns came to bear, and red-tipped explosive charges, driven by massive presser beams, arced toward the Gumption in implacable flat trajectories.

  "Shield redoubling effect!" Dirk ordered, hoping that young Muni had managed to get the field working. The first shell arched in, rotating slowly. The Gumption's shield field seized it. Tiny sensors guided it into a boomerang orbit. Before the Murdids knew what was going on, their own energy shells were being thrown back at them.

  "Steady now," Splock said. "Here comes the rescue launch."

  He could see it coming straight toward them, dodging static explosive fields, its little red and green bow lights winking steadfastly.

  Bill picked CIA up under one arm as the Gumption's launch touched lightly against the side of the balcony. They scrambled aboard, all of them, and heard the satisfying sound of the double hatch clanging shut behind them. Aboard the tiny ship CIA was trying to tell Bill something, but his words were lost in the staccato blast of energy weapons.

  And then Dirk was at their side, his eyes still blazing with battle fury.

  "About time you got here," Dirk said to Splock, in the insulting voice he used to show affection. "You better get to the engine room. We got problems."

  Then he spotted Bill. No expression whatsoever crossed his features as he said, "Hello, Bill. There's a phone call for you. You can take it in my office."

  While Dirk and Splock were at the controls trying to extricate the Gumption from the fire fight that had boiled up within the randomized mine field, Bill went off to find Dirk's cabin. Directions on the Gumption were indicated by colored lines, so that, by merely depressing your gaze, you could find your way to the various important parts of the ship. But Dirk had forgotten to tell Bill that normal combat procedure was to change the line coloring when the ship was in combat, in order to foil the anticipated attempts of a spy who might be expected to choose an emergency time as the moment to perform sabotage and its modifiers. He went through the crew mess hall, deserted now except for one plump petty officer who was hastily finishing his bowl of tapioca pudding with plum duff on the side. Then Bill was racing down a long, curving corridor, following the line marked for the Captain's quarters, which, due to the combat scrambling, brought him to the Gumption's shopping mall. He raced through it, ignoring the importunities of noncombatant clerks, who wanted to wish him a nice day and point out the weekly specials. Normally a good shopper, Bill had no time now for such matters. He continued to follow the twisty lines that were supposed to lead to the captain's cabin, only now he was getting the suspicion of doubt that these were doing him any good at all. He stopped at a stationer's and picked up a ship's guide to locations during emergency operation. With the help of this he was able to find Dirk's cabin.

  Dirk's cabin had the usual wall-to-wall carpeting with deep pile reserved for senior-class officers. Bill noticed that a dinner had been laid out for one, giving him some penetrating insight into Dirk's social life. And, ahead of him, on a little lucite stand of its own, was the telephone. Its little call-ready light was blinking steadily.

  Bill lunged for it, smashing several crystal figurines in his haste. "Hello!" he barked.

  A feminine voice on the other end of the line said, "Two whom did you wish to speak?"

  "Someone was calling," Bill said. "They told me to pick up the call here."

  "And who are you, sir?"

  "Bill! I'm Bill!"

  "I'm Rosy, the phone operator at Fleet Central Communications. I think we met once at the reception given by the Drdniganian Embassy. That was on Capella last year."

  "I was nowhere near the place," Bill said. "Now will you get me my bowbing call."

  "It must have been some other Bill. Did you say something about a phone call?"

  "Yes!"

  "Just a minute, I'll try to trace that for you."

  Bill waited. Behind him the door dilated. CIA came in, his face a study in perplexity.

  "Bill?" he said. "Are you all right?"

  "Yes, of course I'm all right," Bill said. "I'm just waiting for this phone call. What happened to you back there?"

  "It's a little difficult to explain," CIA said. "But what I was trying to explain to you was, whatever you do, don't go aboard the Gumption."

  "Now's a hell of a time to be telling me that," Bill said. "What's the matter with the Gumption?"

  Just then the operator came back on the line. "I have your party, Bill."

  A shrill feminine voice came onto the line after that, saying, "Bill, darling, is it really you?"

  Although Illyria's voice changed every time she changed bodies, which was more frequently than Bill liked, nevertheless, a characteristic timbre remained. And besides, what other feminine voice did he know these days.

  "Illyria! Where are you?"

  "Never mind about that. Tell me, Bill, is CIA there with you?"

  Bill glanced around to double-check. "Yes, he's here."

  "Good. There's something you must know about that so-called military intelligence officer. Thank God I've reached you in time."

  "Yes, what is it?" Bill asked.

/>   "Bill," CIA said, "we really need to talk." He sat down on the desk beside Bill. The long flap of his army greatcoat swept across the telephone receiver, seemingly by accident. There was a click, a small sound but ominous in the context.

  "Illyria! Are you there?"

  The operator said, "I'm sorry, sir, you have been cut off."

  It was at that moment that Dirk and Splock came into the room, followed by Duo.

  Dirk was really an extraordinarily good pilot, and with Splock backing him up on the action-synthesizer, there was no better team in the galaxy. This thought had not been lost on Dirk as he had performed the Marienbad maneuver, a movement of considerable risk to the perpetrator, and calling for nerves of steel as the ship was retrogressed back along its previous course. It was a bumpy passage, since the retrogressed course was alive with vast electrical potentials, some of them left by the ship's previous passage, others formed up spontaneously, and all of them colored electric blue.

  The Murdid ships tried to follow, but the lead ship had forgotten, during the heat of battle, to take in the bow spoilers. The churning of sub-space modalities rendered it impossible for them to follow the dazzling passage of the Gumption. And so they contented themselves with blasting hell out of Sanctuary while their intelligence officers prepared a cover story blaming the loss of the neutral satellite on climatic conditions.

  Safe for the moment, Dirk brought the ship back to an even course. The cooks down in the vast kitchens of the starship breathed a sigh of relief and returned to ladling out bowls of potato onion soup for the crew, who had worked up a healthy appetite during the brief but strenuous combat. Saltines were served with the soup on Dirk's orders. He knew the crew needed something special after what they had gone through.

  Then Dirk, accompanied by the saturnine and pointy-eared Splock and the swaggering, flat-eared Duo, went to the captain's cabin to see how Bill was getting along. As they went there was a suspicion of something amiss, something not right, an unclear matter about which hung an unhealthy miasma of sorrow and regret. They were not aware of it, however, not even the normally thoughtful Splock, who was to remember only later the potential for prescience that this moment possessed.