Far-out Show (9781465735829) (55 page)

Without warning the ship shook, quivered,
wiggled, and bobbed. Those not seated had to grab onto something
fixed to avoid falling. Those seated had a bit of a non-joy ride as
their wheeled chairs took them sliding around like bumper cars at a
county fair until they could grab the console and hold themselves
and the chairs in position.

Eroder got their attention with, “Uh,
guys.”

“What's happening to the ship, Eroder?”
Hasley shouted without bothering to try to keep panic out of his
voice.

“It seems that going back through the
snaggiewarp will be a rougher ride than coming here. That reading
can't be right can it? Is it possible they didn't fix the right
parts after all? Wait a second, did the self-destruct signal mess
some things up? Uh, the return trip is likely to be more dangerous
and more damaging. Maybe a lot more of each of those. Can I... No,
we're caught in the pull so it looks like I couldn't turn us back
if I tried. Oh, this is so bad. Who's gonna have the last laugh
after all?
Zebedee
, are you smirking at us? Great
goolimansions
not that! We're..! Oops!”

All those in the room said in unison,
“
Oops?
”

In the security pod Nerber scanned the
readouts on the console monitor screen with dismay. He said,
“Record this for my records, Wowseyla. Disaster at least
momentarily avoided. For my on-going record of events, the
condition of the control systems is as bad as I could imagine and
worse than I feared. I detected problems in my early scans while I
was on the planet but I couldn’t take enough control to change them
even with a powerful zerpy like Wowseyla. Plus revealing that I had
that device would have given me problems in my role as contestant
and first contact member of my kind.

“My current analysis of the situation is that
the control systems have deteriorated beyond the easy-fix stage. I
am shutting down several of the ship’s non-essential in the
short-term systems to see if that will clear away enough of the
crupsminz in the command sequences to let me make effective
corrections. I’m not confident it will work but I’ll try it since
the longer I get to work without interference, the greater the
chances I’ll succeed.

“At this point it is essential that I keep
control of several things, starting with access to this security
pod. After what the
Bang-Boom Shows
guys put me through my
mass of recorded material that could be used for shows will be for
my exclusive use. Wowseyla recorded every moment I was on the
planet from three different views. Those three
silward
fidgemits
of producers would try to confiscate that and never
give me credit for, much less the value of it. I’m sure they’d be
willing to accidentally-on-purpose kill me to get it the moment
they find out it exists.

“Closely related to keeping them out of the
pod, I must thwart all attempts to eject the pod from the ship or
tamper with its life-support systems. The crew might do that to try
to force me out of here; the producers would do it to kill me with
the expectation that they could shift the blame for it to someone
else but claim my recorded material. And I admit that I have a
healthy amount of paranoia about my situation.

“I also need to take and keep control of the
propulsion system long enough to get the ship headed quickly back
toward the snaggiewarp. Just before Mr. Krinkle took me from the
residential unit we heard what the inhabitants’ call the radio news
guy report that an Earth-made unit on the surface of the back side
of their moon has spotted
Whizybeam
and aimed what they call
a strong laser at the ship that is expected to seriously damage
her.

“That will happen as soon as they get the
signal to that unit. The command to pass along that signal has been
sent to another of their units, this one in orbit around this moon.
When it gets to this, the back side of the body, we will be
blasted. It is most unlikely that the captain or anyone on the ship
know about this very recent development. Even if they do it is
likely they will dawdle until it is too late, in part to see if
they can analyze that orbiting unit and maybe even bring it aboard
to take home to please the governors with a prize to be learned
from.

“Or that the current condition of the engines
won’t allow us to get out of the way even if we want to. I must
correct the systems but again I understand that they will insist on
talking too much and doing too little until things are beyond being
reversed. I must be the bad guy acting like what on this planet
they call a pirate long enough to save us all. Who would have
imagined such a working out of the events?”

* * *

Hasley and Lacrat stood in the hall beside a
hovering zerpy that was recording this event as Feedle struggled to
force open the security pod door with a metal pry bar, brute force,
and sheer determination. She was working up a sweat but making no
progress in that.

“As soon as I heard the crew members talking
about not being able to locate Nerber I thought of this thing but I
knew he couldn’t get inside because we’re all locked out of it by a
command code the techs can’t crack,” Halsey said.

“Or won’t admit they can,” Lacrat said. “With
only room inside for two what’s the advantage to them in letting
anyone else know they can open it? I admit that I tried it once
before we came through the snaggiewarp and couldn’t get in. The pod
seemed like the safest place to sit out the trip through that
travel way that had never been tried before.”

“So getting this open will give us more clout
with the crew as take-charge guys to be kept in the loop,” Hasley
said.

Feedle gave up her assault on the door.
“Zerpy, end recording. I’ve checked it several times. It’s always
been locked. He’s probably not in there. How could he be? He could
only pass through walls in the transport system beam and I don’t
know if even that can penetrate the reinforced walls of this
thing.”

“We should try to find out about that without
giving away why we’re interested,” Hasley said.

“Maybe he went inside and right into a stasis
unit,” Lacrat said. “Inside the pad he’d be as safe as we think
it’s possible to be on this ship. If he did that he wouldn’t leave
it so we could get in and throw him out.”

“Why would he do that?” Feedle asked. “He has
a contract. He knows he has to sit for extensive debriefing
interviews.”

“Why would he care about those details if he
believes the ship’s about to break up?” Hasley said. “We’ve been
sending signals suggesting that idea home so maybe some of those
leaked into the messages to him. He’s smart so he knows that in the
pod he is likely to be the only one to survive. He’s probably
thought about how in demand as a celebrity that would make
him.”

“If he’s in there he must have had a key to
open the door. But maybe his key is that the A.D.U. guys let him
in. They control the door. Maybe they have plans for him that don’t
include us,” Lacrat said.

“Always with the paranoia,” Feedle
grumbled.

“His idea makes sense to me,” Hasley
said.

“Me too but I’d hate them so much if I let
myself think about it that I might lose my composure. Like this!”
Gritting her teeth she raised the pry bar again. The others stepped
back.

Hasley said quietly, “Zerpy, record.”

Feedle went a short distance down the hall,
then turned back and got a running start. She raised the pry bar
overhead and, as she got close, swung that down to smash at the
door. She muttered, “If I can’t be safe in there, nobody will be
allowed to be. He also owes us answers to a lot of questions.”

The bar never made contact with the door.

Instead Feedle and the piece of metal were
thrown backwards and into the wall opposite the door. The force of
that collision made her drop the bar – that landed hard on her foot
which made her cry out in pain and try to jump around. The slightly
delayed result of her impact with the wall finally clicked in
though, and she fell to the floor and lay there stunned into no
more than twitching.

Hasley and Lacrat glanced back and forth
between Feedle and the door but made no move to help her up or even
check closely on her condition.

“What did that mean?” Lacrat asked in a
whisper.

“Most likely that he is in there, can see and
hear us, and isn’t about to give up his safe place without a fight.
Oh, and that he has powerful tools like that shock system to use,”
Hasley said. “I’m glad I remembered to get this event recorded. It
will be good show material. Has Nerber gone crazy? Did his contest
experience make that happen because he has a weaker mind that our
screening revealed?”

“Okay, so an open frontal attack is stymied
by strong mechanical defenses but we still need to get into this
thing,” Feedle said as she struggled to her feet. “We need a
plan.”

* * *

In the security pod Nerber watched on a
monitor as the three producers moved off down the hall.

“Dear diary, knowing them they’ll be back in
some form but for now I seem secure in here. While I’m waiting for
results from analyses being done by Wowseyla and now some of the
ship’s systems working with my zerpy I can record more of my
story.

“From early on I figured this pod is the part
of the ship most likely to survive a disaster so I hoped to sneak
in and close it up. I didn’t anticipate the A.D.U. guys locking
everyone out but I’m taking advantage of that since I could
override their program but leave them with the blame. I wrote a
program that should orient the pod right toward the snaggiewarp if
it’s released from the ship, whether that’s because the ship breaks
up or because they do something really stupid and I eject the
pod.

“My hope is that the pod will pass through
the snaggiewarp in one piece so my records may survive and make me
or my heirs very rich and also be helpful to my kind even if I die.
Even if the rest of the crew perish, if the ship doesn’t break up
until close to home I can send messages ‘from the grave’ about
adventures I can make up to meet the audience demand.

“At first Wowseyla wasn’t as good as Wilburps
at picking up the inhabitants’ talk-talk to one another signals so
it didn’t give me better warning about the dangers from the
inhabitants and their devices. But when it got proficient at
interpreting those Wowseyla did such a good job of making me aware
of what was happening that endangered me that I started to
panic.

“I also began to suspect that those on
Whizybeam
were keeping Wilburps from telling me all it
detected on the earth news and made it keep its reports low key and
reassuring. I am not certain about this and now I have more
important things to worry about but I consider it possible, even
likely.

“For this record, I become a
Far-Out
Show
contestant in part so I could less conspicuously check out
Whizybeam
for the governors. They feared that the A.D.U.
guys would have the main control systems reprogrammed at the last
minute but they couldn’t be sure about that without revealing how
much the governors knew of what was happening in supposed secret.
They need strong proof of that alteration of the ship to justify
exposing their backing of the project and their true reasons for
that at an especially politically sensitive time.

“The bottom-most lineage is that P.D.Q., with
the secret okay from the governors, sent
Whizybeam
off with
what they knew were less than cutting edge control and operating
systems because of their concern about what would happen in the
snaggiewarp. Their engineers felt they could predict the expected
effects on those old systems but had no idea how safe and reliable
the latest generation of systems would be. They expected that and
calculated that the feedback from the ship after it got through the
Snaggiewarp would let them improve the control programs. They would
even try to transmit revised versions to the ship to make its
return safer if they saw what would work more reliably.

“Too bad that the A.D.U. guys had programs
installed that are so radically altered that the P.D.Q. guys
apparently haven’t been able to sort it out so we’re operating with
severely inadequate controls. What now?”

* * *

Feedle stood behind Svenly and Venrik who
were in their chairs at the console of the program edit room.

“You need to authorize this for the record,”
Svenly said.

“Feedle says do it,” she shouted.

“No good. You must specify,” Venrik said.

“Feedle authorizes the attempt to open the
security pod using the modified special unlock program,” Feedle
grumbled.

Svenly tapped a button, then sat back to
watch the result.

Venrik watched a monitor and announced,
“Didn’t unlock it.”

“That’s the last of the standard
modifications written for that sub-routine,” Svenly said. “Unless
you have some secret tech info to offer I don’t know what else to
try.”

“Uh oh,” Venrik said. He quickly tapped a
console button and winced. When nothing seemed to happen he relaxed
a bit.

“What was that about?” Feedle asked.

Venrik tapped that button again and the room
filled with loud, distorted sounds – several voice messages
repeated many times but out of synch so they were confused chaos.
Those sounds were overlaid with various
beep
s, clattering
sounds, and electronic
gurgles
that also repeated but out of
synch.

Venrik quickly shut that off again, his point
made.

“What did you fools do?” Feedle asked.

“We can’t take credit for that. It’s Nerber’s
cleverness. He has created interference to annoy us and keep us
from messing up what he’s trying to do,” Svenly said.