New Tales from Hilbert Space

by Gabriel Just

risk.”

  “Why? What do we do with all these review points. We would only gain access to even more dangerous jobs.”

  “Exactly. And in turn even more review points. Trust me. We are the only ones who can fix this.”

  “That’s true. If we don’t act, even more people might get hurt. Very well, I’ll set a course right now.”

  The vessel of the Extermination Brothers accelerated and it was even faster than ever before. All the new holes made it lose a lot of mass, which was not a bad thing. It was a lot less aerodynamic though, but that didn’t matter in space. The ride was bumpy as always, the artificial gravity failed twice and they lost a big part of the starboard wing. However, according to Rakni, this wing was purely decorational. Pokk hailed the station as soon as they arrived. There was no response.

  “That's rude,” Rakni pointed out.

  “I think they evacuated,” Pokk guessed.

  “Then they will have no objections if we just storm in and destroy the computer core. It is the only way. As soon as the core is gone, the robots will obey the 729 revised rules of robotics without any exceptions. They will be unable to harm anyone.”

  “And how are we supposed to get there?”

  “We will just stay on our toes. I still have the map. We can find a safe route, sneak in, destroy the core and waltz out after that.”

  “Well, it’s not a genius plan, but it’s a plan.”

  “There is only a small problem. We have to enter the station undetected. That means no bumping into the hangar door, no hitting other parked vessels, nothing. You have to set us down in complete silence. Can you do that, Pokk?”

  “No! I definitely can’t do that.”

  “I believe in you, brother.”

  “That doesn’t change anything. I can’t do it, I am sure.”

  “You have to try anyway.”

  Pokk reluctantly agreed and maneuvered the ship in front of the hangar door. The door was only three times the size of the ship. A dangerous bottleneck for Pokk. He tried to approach it directly in the middle. Then he stopped and waited for the door to open, something he had never done before. He carefully navigated through the door and nearly hit it with the starboard wing. Fortunately the wing was a lot shorter since their last trip. Finally the vessel made it through the hangar door without making a single noise. The silence was finally broken by a barrage of projectiles, fired by a squad of Auto-Ex robots that guarded the hangar door. Pokk lost a huge bit of the port wing, before he was able to reverse.

  “These robots are really smart,” Rakni complained. “They thought of everything, even protecting the one and only entrance to their base of operations.”

  “There is no way we can get on this station alive,” Pokk cried. “I told you I can’t do it.”

  “That wasn’t your fault, Pokk. It was a trap, your piloting was excellent. Maybe we don’t need to enter the station after all. I have a plan. But I’ll need Old Roasty’s energy cell.”

  “Impossible! They don’t build them anymore. This cell is irreplaceable. Old Roasty saved your life more than once.”

  “Maybe it’s time Old Roasty saved a lot more lives. And you can have the cell back afterwards.”

  “Intakt?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Good. If you promise to be careful. So, what’s the plan?”

  “Coincidentally, there is a straight hole going from the hangar wall, directly to the core. You remember, the one I positioned here earlier.”

  “A strategic masterpiece!”

  “Yes, it is important to think ahead. We need to line up with those holes, so I can get a clear shot. And I need to break through the emergency force field. That’s why I need more power. Old Roasty’s power.”

  “Very well. I guess it’s the only way.”

  Pokk brought the ship into position while Rakni extracted the energy cell of Old Roasty and fused it with the energy cell of his disintegrator. Then he suited up in order to leave the ship.

  “We are in position,” his brother said via the intercom.

  “Alright, I’ll go outside now.” Rakni exited through the airlock, his overpowered disintegrator in his hand. “We are perfectly aligned. I can see the core. Hold her steady, we have only one shot at this.” Rakni charged his disintegrator all the way to the most powerful level. Like everytime he ignored all the warnings. Next he activated the additional energy cell and it was possible to charge the rifle three more levels. For those kind of power, nobody even wrote warnings. This gun was never intended to be used in such a way. Rakni took a deep breath. The air from his suit tasted stale. He pulled the trigger. In that very moment a small turbulence occurred which caused Rakni to miss the hole by a few percent. However, this small error was entirely compensated by the fact that the energy beam on the current setting was more than twice the size of the hole. It penetrated the force field with ease and burned through all the walls in its way, finally reaching the computer core and obliterating it.

  “That was brilliant!” Pokk shouted. “Precision work. You really hit just the core.”

  “Don’t thank me, thank Old Roasty. I’m afraid the energy cell is fried now. But she died a warrior's death.”

  A small tear ran down Pokk’s cheek. “That’s how she would have wanted it to be. She helped us to stop all the killer robots at once with pinpoint precision.”

  Rakni wanted to say a few words, but he was knocked off the vessel by a huge shockwave. As he looked back to the station all he could see was a big ball of fire.

  “I guess our strike was not that precise after all. I must have hit something important. But don’t you worry, Pokk. I don’t think it will affect our rating.”

  Rakni reentered the ship and soon after that they were hailed.

  “What happened? Where is the station?” the voice from the intercom asked.

  “Successfully exterminated,” Rakni said in a proud voice.

  “Are you serious? There must have been another way! You blew up the entire station?”

  “We really prefer the term ‘exterminated’. And we stopped your robots from running amok. That was the deal.”

  “Destroying our station was never part of the deal. I am sorry. I know that this might be the end of your career as professional exterminators, but I don’t have a choice. All I can give you for this disaster is a two star rating.”

  “Only… two… stars? After all this trouble? After everything we’ve gone through? That’s… That’s…”

  “That would nearly double our current average,” Pokk whispered.

  “That’s brilliant!”

  Global Warning

  “I swear it was an accident,” Professor Tinwin assured his superior. “There was no way for me to know that one single button could cause so much chaos. And so many fatalities. Now that I think about it, it was probably all Kobb’s fault. He pushed the button, so he should be punished.”

  “Punished? There seems to be a misunderstanding. This is not why I summoned you to my office,” Chancellor Balaba said. She smiled at him in a way that was friendly but at the same time sinister. “Actually the senate was quite impressed with your paper. ‘The Tinwin Sink and how Professor Tinwin Saved Madona-Epsilon-Prime’ is currently your most cited paper. The graph that shows fatalities versus the activation time of the device really impressed me. What you forgot to mention is how you managed to get so many volunteers.”

  “Well, I guess some people are just destined for scientific greatness. And others for being a test subject. I think I was just lucky that I found so many victi- I mean volunteers.”

  “Never mind. Your methods are not why you are here. I need your expertise. You are the only living scientist that saw the Tinwin sink in action. Consequently you are the leading expert in this field. Do you have a rough idea how it works? How it was able to leech all the energy from an active star?”

  “A rough idea?” Tinwin laughed. “I know precisely how the Tinwin sink works. After all, I discovered it. And it was built b
y an ancient civilisation, how complex could such a device be?”

  “Excellent!” Balaba smiled in the same way she did before. “I need you to build a small scale version of the Tinwin sink. Something that lowers the energy output of a star by a few percent. Can you do this?”

  “Of course I could. But why should I want to?”

  “Because I say so. And I am the one who elects the head of each department. However, it might help if you understood the reason for my request. Are you aware of the experiment we conducted on Kemos 8?”

  “That’s an industry planet, isn’t it? What happened?”

  “Well, the experiment was a success. For the most part. We were able to falsify a theory, which is, as you know, always a success. Unfortunately the theory was: ‘It is safe to use Hyperchloride for the production of Transsteel.’ We were only able to falsify this after large scale testing started. While Hyperchloride really increased production it also increased the average temperature on the planet. Slowly, but steadily. It is not dangerous, but detectable. And you know how the public reacts to the falsification of a hypothesis.”

  “Yes, sadly most people do not understand the scientific process. Falsifying or disproving something is always seen as admitting defeat. This is why I proposed several times we should call it ‘antiproving a theory’. For some reason it did not catch on.” Tinwin remembered his first paper that failed at coining this term. ‘Antiproving the theory of antiantimatter by antiantiproving the theory of antiantiantimatter’ was not cited once.

  “So you understand