CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The schedule next morning called for a further escalation in aggression and provocation. The manually operated circuit breakers in the substation, through which all power to SP Three was routed, were opened and left open. The game thus progressed beyond the point of merely simulating intermittent supply faults; now the scientists were conveying to Spartacus in no uncertain terms that a whole vital node of its system had been totally and permanently chopped out—a direct challenge to it to try and do something to fix the situation. Then the scientists settled back to spend the rest of the day waiting for some kind of reaction. The day did not, therefore, promise to be a busy one and only a skeleton crew remained on duty in the Command Room while others continued with the analysis of the data obtained previously or drifted away to occupy themselves elsewhere around Janus.

Several of them, notably Frank Wescott and Melvin Krantz, had expressed strongly the opinion that there was no way in which Spartacus could react, and that the whole experiment would probably end right there. After all, they argued, there were only two possible approaches that Spartacus could adopt in endeavoring to restore the SP: it could either try getting inside the substation to close the circuit there, or it could use its drones to manufacture a bypass around the substation completely.

The first possibility stood little chance of success since every substation on Janus was permanently guarded by a platoon under standing orders to neutralize on sight any drone attempting to enter a predefined kill-zone. The soldiers would accomplish this by jamming the control beams used for guidance or, if that means was rendered ineffective for any reason, by bringing to bear some of the selection of more drastic measures which they had at their disposal.

The second alternative would require a bypass to connect from some point on the solar-plant power grid upstream of the substation to some point inside the SP itself. There had been some disagreement among the planners over this point. Some of them had been worried that the possibility should be allowed to exist for the substations to be bypassed at all; it could have been eliminated quite simply by declaring the SPs themselves kill-zones for drones. Others had pointed out that keeping the drones out of the SPs would not be practical because they would have to go in there to perform maintenance and carry out repairs. And in any case, Janus was supposed to simulate future Earth and who could imagine that such tasks wouldn’t be performed by drones or something equivalent to them as standard practice in times to come?

In the end the latter view had prevailed. If the drones did succeed in bypassing any of the substations by picking up power upstream on the solar-plant side, then the stream that fed all the substations could always be dammed by shutting down the solar plant itself, which could be done either locally inside its control room in Detroit, or from the Command Room in Downtown. And if that dam was somehow bypassed, the lake that fed the stream could be dried up completely by putting the solar plant out of action, if necessary by taking out its receivers with ISA missiles.

All indications were, therefore, that Spartacus would have a tough time finding a way through such a formidable barrier of obstacles, if indeed a way existed. But even if it failed as many people were predicting it was bound to, the mere fact that it had tried would say a lot about how far it had evolved, and the way in which it went about it would provide valuable information on the internal changes that had taken place to get it there.

Kim stood at the edge of the patio that led from the rear of Chris’s Berlin apartment to the small roof garden beyond, and stared in astonishment at the object that Ron was unwrapping from its cocoon of plastic sheeting. In this part of Berlin the apartments were terraced up the steeply rising edge of the Rim and every man’s roof was another man’s garden.

“Jesus! It’s a Gremlin sighter,” Kim exclaimed. “Where in hell did you two get that thing from? I thought they were supposed to be kept locked up.”

“Oh, let’s just say we’ve got connections,” Ron said nonchalantly. “And that’s not all either. How about this?” He delved back into the long, thin aluminum carry-case and brought out two pointed yellow cylinders, each somewhat under a foot long and about two inches thick.

“What do you think you’re going to do with it?” Kim demanded. “I came over here to talk about organizing a barbecue, not get mixed up in a revolution.”

Chris, who had been standing watching with his thumbs hooked in his pockets, hoisted the sighter up onto the table beside them and began stripping away some of the outer casing. The recesses below the eyepiece, into which the ranging and guidance electronics packages were supposed to fit, were empty. He selected a metal box from among the clutter of electronic test equipment and tools that littered the table, opened it to reveal the missing items and worked in silence for a while attaching test leads and tinkering with buttons and knobs.

“I can’t bear to see you getting all worked up like that,” he said over his shoulder. “Actually we’re only curious about the guidance system. If we can get it working we’re going to have a go at reprogramming it”

“What on earth for?” Kim asked.

“If the computer in the sighter can control Gremlins remotely, then maybe you could adapt it to control drones,” Ron explained. “It’d make a super remote telescopic controller...You could send your own private drone wherever you wanted it to go, without worrying about linking through the net. See—neat.”

“To do what?” Kim was looking nonplused, Chris shrugged without looking up.

“I dunno,” he confessed. “Who cares? We’ll worry about that when we’ve got the thing working,”

Ron and Kim continued to watch in silence for a while as Chris studied the waveforms on one of the small screens. He grimaced and looked dubious.

“The cartridges are okay. It has to be that output driver pack, Ron. It checks through all the way up to there.”

“The K56?”

“Right.”

“Then we’re in trouble,” Ron said. “Those aren’t general-purpose grade. They’re special, purpose-designed units. Where the hell are we gonna get another one of those?” Chris put down the probe that he had been holding and squinted thoughtfully into the distance. “There is one possibility I can think of,” he said. “Wouldn’t you think there’s a fair chance that a Maintenance & Spares Unit might carry them?”

“Mat Solinsky!” Ron slapped his thigh. “Yeah, of course. I was forgetting him. Why don’t you give him a call right away.” Chris had already produced his viewpad and was tapping in the code to call up the Janus directory.

Kim nodded and looked at Ron reproachfully. “Maintenance & Spares Unit, eh? So that’s where you got it from. What did you trade for it—drone programming services or a crate of Scotch from the Officers’ Club?”

“You couldn’t get one of those in one piece for a solid gold copy of Janus,” Ron answered, nodding toward the sighter. “We scraped a bit here and a piece there...you know how it is.”

At that moment the face of Mat Solinsky appeared on the screen of Chris’s viewpad He frowned for a second and then his face creased into a curly-topped smile of recognition.

“Hey, how ya been? Haven’t seen you and Ron for a coupla weeks now. When are you coming up to this part of the Hub again?”

“Fairly soon maybe, Mat,” Chris replied. “We’ve got a small problem.”

“Oh, too bad. Anything I can do?”

“Maybe. That’s really why I’m calling. Do you remember those surplus cartridges you let us have when we were last there—the KFD and KFGs?”

“Them ones you wanted for that tabletop scanning microscope you were planning on building. Yeah, I remember. What about it?” Outside the viewing angle Ron winked cheerfully at Kim. Kim shook her head and raised her eyes momentarily in despair.

“Well,” Chris replied, “we needed some kind of driver to go with part of it and somebody told us that a K56 pack should do the job. We managed to get hold of one but we think it’s a dud. What are the chances of scrounging another one from somewhere?”

“Mmm. K56s, huh.” Solinsky looked dubious. “I think they might be difficult. Restricted issue. Give me a second to check.” The face vanished to reveal a view of the inside of part of an office in Hub Section 17D.

“I always knew you two were a pair of crooks,” Kim told them.

Chris considered the statement. “There are only two types of crooks in this world,” he said finally. “The ones that won’t admit it and the rest of us. Very sad.”

“It all has to do with evolution,” Ron explained. “There’s only genes of bad guys around nowadays because good guys never did all that much to help the species along...Know what I mean.” Kim gave up. At that moment Solinsky appeared again on the viewpad.

“You might be in luck,” he said. “The guy that ran the outfit next-door to us here went sick a few days ago and left everything in a mess. There’s more items of all kinds of junk than there ought to be according to the records, including a couple of K56s. Do you want me to check out the one you’ve got?”

“Yes, if you can do that,” Chris replied. “What do you want me to do, just hook it in?”

“Sure. I can run a diagnostic here.”

Chris disconnected the pack from the leads, attached another short cable to a microconnector set into one end and plugged the other end into a socket on the rear of the viewpad. About twenty seconds elapsed while Solinsky attended to unseen operations offscreen.

“It’s dead,” he confirmed at last “Looks like something’s blown in the comparator. I’ll send you another one down through the tubes. What’s your delivery address?”

“We’ll go get it,” Ron whispered. “I could use a change of scene for an hour.”

“It’s okay, Mat,” Chris said. “It’s our afternoon off while things are quiet in the Crystal Ball Room. We’ll take a trip up there and collect it”

“Great! Do that We’ll see ya here in what...say, half an hour or so?”

“Something like that.”

“Good. Well, you know where to find us. See ya then.”

Chris flipped off the pad and returned it to his pocket. They repacked the sighter in its case and stowed it back in a closet inside the apartment.

“How about coming on a trip up to the Hub?” Ron said to Kim as they were finishing. “Have a break and see some changes. We’ll stop off at the Poolside and buy you an ice cream. There’s a super view of the Spindle from where Mat works too.”

Kim shrugged and tossed out her hands.

“Why not? Okay, you’re on. I suppose if I’m going to associate with crooks anyway, I might as well enjoy it.”

“That’s the idea,” Chris said as he locked the closet door. “It’s like the old saying says—it’s a great life once you’ve weakened.”