Authors: Allen Charles
In theory.
Nothing happened.
The tube sat jammed in against the repelling force, hard against the outer cylinder. Sheila carefully melted the protruding section of tube down to the inner cylinder face and allowed the molten gold to gently meld with the cylinder, forming a continuous pipe line to the outer surface. Then, holding her breath, she applied a very fine cutting focus to the center of the exposed circle. The molten gold of that surface should flow back to the titanium ship skin and form a seal against it with the reactive anti-matter only on the outside.
In theory.
The pinhole grew to the size of a dime and she could see the change in color of the metal beneath. Nothing nasty crawled into the hole and she breathed out in a sigh of relief.
“So far so good guys!” she reported back as she took a moment to steady herself and let the adrenalin rush wear away. She need a very steady hand for the next step. “All that cookie making as assistant chef has paid off. I just cut a perfect cookie!” she quipped.
“What flavor?” came back Martin.
“Anti-pasta! What else?”
She heard the groan at her pun. “I’m ready to install the evacuation hose.”
Because they had no idea if the air lock was pressurized or not, Graham had designed a contingency device that would vent atmosphere past the cylinders without blasting them away from the skin of the ship. He had taken a good length of carbon mono filament tubing normally used for refuelling and cemented an attachment collar to the end of it. The collar had inactive, foaming nano-glue applied to the end of the rim, ready for Sheila to activate once it was inserted into the hole, against the titanium.
A hole in the collar accommodated another laser cutting head preset to variable depth for the titanium skin at the known cutting rate. All Sheila had to do was place the tube, activate the glue, reattach the laser to the new head and program it to start cutting when the glue had cured. She did not have to remain in the cylinder for this exercise.
That done, she called to be extracted. The men carefully dragged her back out, watching that nothing got snagged on the way. The trio moved away from the vessel and the exhaust tube which was likely to flail about if there was any air discharge.
There was a wait of about five minutes as the glue set, then they saw the laser glow from the carbon fiber join of the exhaust tube reflecting off the gold cylinder walls in an eerie light show. Graham was watching his counter for the breakthrough.
The cutting went on for a few minutes. No paper thin gold foil this time. This was Space Rated titanium alloy.
“It should be through by now.” Graham said as they watched the end of the hose for evidence of air jetting out. The hose remained still and the light show winked out, setting the cylinders into deep, black shadow.
Martin moved in to the hose cautiously, expecting it to wake up and start flicking around like a demented cat’s tail, but he reached it and it didn’t move. He put a charge and leak probe near the tube without actually touching it. The small device, usually used for locating micro cracks in a ship’s skin by detecting ionized particles, remained silent and green lit.
He put the probe away and took a coiled tendril camera from his pack. They had cannibalized it from the shuttle where it ran from the passenger section back to the control cabin and had opted to keep the fine metal coiled conduit around the mono filament optic fiber. That made it all the more bulky, but gave it the rigidity they required.
Martin started to slide the tendril down the exhaust tube. They were going to have a look inside the vessel they had penetrated.
The tendril camera went as far as Martin could push it. The trio floated heads together around the small view screen as the micro light in the camera head revealed a view of the inside of the air lock, that became clear as Martin drew the camera head away from the wall that had stopped it.
“There’s the view port!” said Sheila excitedly. Look, there’s light coming through!”
Martin manipulated the camera head so it curled towards the view port which was oriented to look straight down the axis of this ship. He pushed the tendril carefully forward as he adjusted direction, until the camera looked straight down the ship.
“Ooh!” gasped Shelia in dismay. “It’s empty!”
“See! I told you not to pull the fleet people into stasis so quickly. Now the cat is really out of the bag, Peepers!”
“Look, Howley, I made a perfectly good and rational decision at the time. All the science pointed to the fleet being non-recoverable and essentially dead. The audience wouldn’t stand for a hundred boring deaths by starvation, asphyxiation and natural causes. They had enough of acts like that for the past five thousand years...”
“The audience can’t stand for anything, Peepers, they don’t have any legs to stand on! Ha ha ha. Oh I’m so funny! No legs to stand on... Get it?”
“Howley, I would puke if I had the ability to do so. Your comedy is without humor. How did you ever make it as a comedi-brain?”
“No need to get personal, Charonelle!”
“She wasn’t getting personal Howley. She was just being truthful! You suck as a comedi-brain. You are not funny!”
“Well, screw the two of you!”
Charonelle laughed, “Now THAT was funny!”
“Huh? What?” asked a confused Peepers.
“Imagine two brains screwing, Peepers! That’s funny!”
“Yech! That is gross and slimy.”
“Hmph! Wasn’t supposed to be funny,” Mumbled Howley. “But now that it is funny,” his voice lit up, “can we get on with this act?”
“We are down to three acts left in the finals.” Announced Peepers. “It looks like the Fuller Zardooz acts are going to either be vaporized by Zardooz with his supposed nuclear weapon, or they will get through somehow and meet up with Sheila’s group.
As Sheila’s act had interference from us by removing the fleet crews into stasis, I think it only fair that we balance the advantage by helping the other two acts in some way. What do you suggest, Charonelle?”
“Oh, Peepers! What can I say! There’s only one thing that makes any sense...”
CHAPTER 60
On the fragment.
Fuller and Shaw hunkered down next to the little bot, watching the screen. Zardooz had taken a portable head wear camera and appeared to be transmitting everything he did. Right now he was standing in front of something that looked awfully nasty and was possibly a nuclear device. They saw a pair of hands open a compartment on the front of the device and key in a sequence of numbers. A timer started counting down from sixty. The sixty minutes Zardooz had given as his ultimatum. The image backed away from the device and they could see a work bench behind it. Fuller leaned forward and peered at the tiny screen. A smile creased his mouth.
Shaw was showing his uncertainty about the whole situation and asked,”How can you be so sure Zardooz is bluffing?”
Fuller looked up at Shaw and answered, “I’ll explain after its all over.”
“But...”
“If I’m wrong, it won’t matter any way.”
Shaw shook his head and resigned himself to faith in Fuller’s assessment. They both went back to staring at the screen. The picture reverted back to Zardooz face on at his desk. “You are still there Americans? You are very foolish. You will be the cause of the destruction of all of us by your insistence on staying here. Be it on your heads. I will let you watch the count down, but you must direct the repair bot camera towards your ship. If I see it take off I will stop the detonation. Otherwise, enjoy your last minutes in this life.”
“Shaw look at Zardooz’s desk.”
Before the image flicked over Shaw examined the screen closely, then it changed to the device with the work bench behind it.
“Now look carefully.”
Shaw looked intensely at the screen with a frown behind his faceplate. Suddenly he let out “Oh shit! Now I see it!” With a huge grin replacing the frown. He looked up at Fuller who had a small smile curled on his lips. “Its a recording. A fake.”
“Yes, and how do we know this?”
“The wrench sitting on the workbench at the back. It couldn’t possibly sit there under these spin conditions, not unless Zardooz has glued it in place, and he wouldn’t do that because he wants us to think it is real and leave. That’s why his desk was empty. Nothing would stay put on it.”
“Ergo...”
“He’s bluffing! Phew, for a while there I thought you were gambling with our lives. You saw it straight away.”
“Yes I did, but this does not mean that he does NOT have some sort of destructive device or self destruct system throughout the complex beneath us. But you know something...”
“What?”
“Two can play the same game. He want’s to see our transport lift off, so let’s give it to him.”
“That means untethering and a lot of work. What’s the point?”
“Has Zardooz seen our transport yet?”
“No.”
“Then how will he know what he is looking at?”
“We have another transport available?”
“Sort of. We better get back to the ship and set it up. Leave the bot tied up here for now and slip a packing case cover over it. Keep Zardooz blind.”
The pair jetted back to the transport, basically a small hop upwards and wait for the transport to rotate under them, then down again. Once inside, Fuller pulled up a full graphic of a transport. Not a wire frame, but a completely detailed representation that looked entirely real, except it was only twelve inches long. He then took the surface imagery and imposed the ship dimage onto it and ever so slightly in to the surface. Simulating the view that a tendril camera might capture, he launched the dimage ship which rapidly grew in size and appeared to fly overhead and then out of sight synthesized by the axial spin of the fragment.
Knowing that Zardooz would not take the launch at face value, Fuller continued the simulation for two more spins of the fragment until the dimage transport was lost in the blackness of space. He then had the computer add some particulate matter to the launch, creating a small dust storm that blasted out in all directions, clouded the view for the first critical moments and the dispersed into space like the spiral arm of a galaxy. The dimage movie then looped an empty fixed landscape with the stars rotating in time with the fragment. Exactly what Zardooz would expect to see.
The final touch was to add drifting tether ropes that had just been released. Fuller ran the complete clip, looking for any obvious errors. Finding none, he called the group together and ran if for them without explanation.
“Any errors?” he asked when the final loop cut in.
There was no comment from the group until Shaw asked, “How do we get that piped to Zardooz so he thinks it’s real?”
“Oh, a little robot is going to help us.” replied Fuller.
Fuller and Shaw were back with the repair bot. It didn’t move and it appeared that Zardooz had given up on thrashing the tendril camera about under the cover. It was the only part of the robot that could still move, that had not been disabled by the pair earlier. Fuller pointed to one of the pitons that had been used to secure the cover over the robot.
Shaw knelt, secured by the tether ropes left earlier. He placed a pilot helmet in front of the piton with the heads up view screen facing the selected spot. He activated the image generator and had the starting loop running, with the transport sitting on the surface, apparently held in place by thruster control with discarded tether ropes drifting about, now only attached at one end. The scene was set for Zardooz.
Fuller took out a small, very sharp, pointed cutting tool and secured himself next to the selected piton. Just above the head of the piton, where it rubbed against the fabric of the cover, he worked the tip in between the weave of the carbon fibers, pushing them apart until a tiny hole appeared. He forced the lower fibers under the edge of the piton head, gave a quick upward shove on the opposing fibers and withdrew the blade. There was now a tiny hole that appeared to have been made by the rotational forces working the cover against the piton head. Too small for the tendril camera to get through, but large enough to get a view of the helmet scene. Except that to the camera the scene looked entirely real, if not somewhat distorted by the tiny hole it had to look through.
Fuller inserted a single thread of carbon fiber into the hole, as if the piton had managed to cut one, however unlikely that may be. This was the weakest part of the plan, but necessary to show when Zardooz found the hole. The thread would move and also occlude the view, forcing Zardooz to use the tendril head to hold the thread down, preventing him from extensive angling through the hole.
They settled back to wait again, certain that Zardooz would not blow himself to smithereens without one more attempt to see outside. They did not have a long wait.
Fuller was looking away at the real transport when Shaw tapped his shoulder, pointing to the thread which was jiggling madly. After a few gyrations and waves, the thread settled down to a slow movement as Zardooz tried to massage it out of the way. He used the tendril to roll the thread so that its natural curve tended down, out of the view, and then locked it into place with the camera head, exactly as Fuller had intended.
Shaw gave Fuller a look of admiration as Fuller said, “Give him another thirty seconds and then start the launch sequence.” Fuller looked at his countdown timer. It was fifty minutes since Zardooz had given his ultimatum. Enough time elapsed for “launch preparation” and sufficient time left to show “fear” of the ultimatum.
Shaw waited the few seconds then keyed the remote control, setting the second seamless scene into motion. The image showed the retaining thrusters shut off and the lateral thrusters below activate, blowing away some debris. In a few seconds the transport appeared to fly towards the camera until it completely obscured all vision, then it abruptly vanished from view directly overhead.
They saw the thread move as Zardooz tried to watch the transport fly over. After a few twitches it settled back to the stable position as Zardooz waited for the next rotation. “Oh so predictable,” thought Fuller.
The rotational sequence only took forty five seconds and went through five cycles, the transport image dwindling away each time until by the sixth time, the thread dropped as Zardooz turned off the tendril to conserve the bot’s limited power.
“What now?” Shaw asked Fuller.
“My only concern is that he may use the bore hole to send another bot, if he has one, or possibly cut through in another location and all of that does not take away the possibility that he does have a self destructive device down there. We need to go on the offensive and neutralize him as quickly as possible, before we consider taking off for Alpha Centurai. Let’s get back to the ship and see what we can do.”