The Second Randall Garrett Megapack Read online

  Since the wrecked living room was a flurry of activity and his office had become a thoroughfare, Mike the Angel retired to his bedroom to think. He took with him the microcryotron stack he had picked up at Old Harry’s the night before.

  “For something that doesn’t look like much,” he said aloud to the stack, “you have caused me a hell of a lot of trouble.”

  Old Harry, he knew, wouldn’t be caught dead selling the things. In the first place, it was strictly illegal to deal in the components of robotic brains. In the second place, they were so difficult to get, even on the black market, that the few that came into Old Harry’s hands went into the defenses of his own shop. Mike the Angel had only wanted to borrow one to take a good look at it. He had read up on all the literature about microcryotrons, but he’d never actually seen one before.

  He had reason to be curious about microcryotrons. There was something definitely screwy going on in Antarctica.

  Nearly two years before, the UN Government, in the person of Minister Wallingford himself, had asked Mike’s firm—which meant Mike the Angel himself—to design the power drive and the thrust converters for a spaceship. On the face of it, there was nothing at all unusual in that. Such jobs were routine for M. R. Gabriel.

  But when the specifications arrived, Mike the Angel had begun to wonder what the devil was going on. The spaceship William Branchell was to be built on the surface of Earth—and yet it was to be a much larger ship than any that had ever before been built on the ground. Usually, an interstellar vessel that large was built in orbit around the Earth, where the designers didn’t have to worry about gravitational pull. Such a ship never landed, any more than an ocean liner was ever beached—not on purpose, anyway. The passengers and cargo were taken up by smaller vessels and brought down the same way when the liner arrived at her destination.

  Aside from the tremendous energy required to lift such a vessel free of a planet’s surface, there was also the magnetic field of the planet to consider. The drive tubes tended to wander and become erratic if they were forced to cut through the magnetic field of a planet.

  Therefore, Question One: Why wasn’t the Branchell being built in space?

  Part of the answer, Mike knew, lay in the specifications for the construction of Cargo Hold One. For one thing, it was huge. For another, it was heavily insulated. For a third, it was built like a tank for holding liquids. All very well and good; possibly someone wanted to carry a cargo of cold lemonade or iced tea. That would be pretty stupid, maybe, but it wouldn’t be mysterious.

  The mystery lay in the fact that Cargo Hold One had already been built. The Branchell was to be built around it! And that didn’t exactly jibe with Mike the Angel’s ideas of the proper way to build a spaceship. It was not quite the same as building a seagoing vessel around an oil tank in the middle of Texas, but it was close enough to bother Mike the Angel.

  Therefore, Question Two: Why was the Branchell being built around Cargo Hold One?

  Which led to Question Three: What was in Cargo Hold One?

  For the answer to that question, he had one very good hint. The density of the contents of Cargo Hold One was listed in the specs as being one-point-seven-two-six grams per cubic centimeter. And that, Mike happened to know, was the density of a cryotronic brain, which is 90 per cent liquid helium and 10 per cent tantalum and niobium, by volume.

  He looked at the microcryotron stack in his hand. It was a one-hundred-kilounit stack. The possible connections within it were factorial one hundred thousand. All it needed was to be immersed in its bath of liquid helium to make the metals superconducting, and it would be ready to go to work.

  A friend of his who worked for Computer Corporation of Earth had built a robot once, using just such a stack. The robot was designed to play poker. He had fed in all the rules of play and added all the data from Oesterveldt’s On Poker. It took Mike the Angel exactly one hour to figure out how to beat it.

  As long as Mike played rationally, the machine had a slight edge, since it had a perfect memory and could compute faster than Mike could. But it would not, could not learn how to bluff. As soon as Mike started bluffing, the robot went into a tizzy.

  It wouldn’t have been so bad if the robot had known nothing whatever about bluffing. That would have made it easy for Mike. All he’d have had to do was keep on feeding in chips until the robot folded.

  But the robot did know about bluffing. The trouble is that bluffing is essentially illogical, and the robot had no rules whatsoever to go by to judge whether Mike was bluffing or not. It finally decided to make its decisions by chance, judging by Mike’s past performance at bluffing. When it did, Mike quit bluffing and cleaned it out fast.

  That caused such utter confusion in the random circuits that Mike’s friend had had to spend a week cleaning up the robot’s little mind.

  But what would be the purpose of building a brain as gigantic as the one in Cargo Hold One? And why build a spaceship around it?

  Like a pig roasting on an automatic spit, the problem kept turning over and over in Mike’s mind. And, like the roasting pig, the time eventually came when it was done.

  Once it is set in operation, a properly operating robot brain can neither be shut off nor dismantled. Not, that is, unless you want to lose all of the data and processes you’ve fed into it.

  Now, suppose the Computer Corporation of Earth had built a giant-sized brain. (Never mind why—just suppose.) And suppose they wanted to take it off Earth, but didn’t want to lose all the data that had been pumped into it. (Again, never mind why—just suppose.)

  Very well, then. If such a brain had been built, and if it was necessary to take it off Earth, and if the data in it was so precious that the brain could not be shut off or dismantled, then the thing to do would be to build a ship around it.

  Oh yeah?

  Mike the Angel stared at the microcryotron stack and asked:

  “Now, tell me, pal, just why would anyone want a brain that big? And what is so blasted important about it?”

  The stack said not a word.

  The phone chimed. Mike the Angel thumbed the switch, and his secretary’s face appeared on the screen. “Minister Wallingford is on the line, Mr. Gabriel.”

  “Put him on,” said Mike the Angel.

  Basil Wallingford’s ruddy face came on. “I see you’re still alive,” he said. “What in the bloody blazes happened last night?”

  Mike sighed and told him. “In other words,” he ended up, “just the usual sort of JD stuff we have to put up with these days. Nothing new, and nothing to worry about.”

  “You almost got killed,” Wallingford pointed out.

  “A miss is as good as a mile,” Mike said with cheerful inanity. “Thanks to your phone call, I was as safe as if I’d been in my own home,” he added with utter illogic.

  “You can afford to laugh,” Wallingford said grimly. “I can’t. I’ve already lost one man.”

  Mike’s grin vanished. “What do you mean? Who?”

  “Oh, nobody’s killed,” Wallingford said quickly. “I didn’t mean that. But Jack Wong turned his car over yesterday at a hundred and seventy miles an hour, and he’s laid up with a fractured leg and a badly dislocated arm.”

  “Too bad,” said Mike. “One of these days that fool will kill himself racing.” He knew Wong and liked him. They had served together in the Space Service when Mike was on active duty.

  “I hope not,” Wallingford said. “Anyway—the matter I called you on last night. Can you get those specs for me?”

  “Sure, Wally. Hold on.” He punched the hold button and rang for his secretary as Wallingford’s face vanished. When the girl’s face came on, he said: “Helen, get me the cargo specs on the William Branchell—Section Twelve, pages 66 to 74.”

  The discussion, after Helen had brought the papers, lasted less than five minutes. It was merely a matter of straightening out some cost estimates—but since it had to do with the Branchell, and specifically with Hold Number One, Mike deci
ded he’d ask a question.

  “Wally, tell me—what in the hell is going on down there at Chilblains Base?”

  “They’re building a spaceship,” said Wallingford in a flat voice.

  It was Wallingford’s way of saying he wasn’t going to answer any questions, but Mike the Angel ignored the hint. “I’d sort of gathered that,” he said dryly. “But what I want to know is: Why is it being built around a cryotronic brain, the like of which I have never heard before?”

  Basil Wallingford’s eyes widened, and he just stared for a full two seconds. “And just how did you come across that information, Golden Wings?” he finally asked.

  “It’s right here in the specs,” said Mike the Angel, tapping the sheaf of papers.

  “Ridiculous.” Wallingford’s voice seemed toneless.

  Mike decided he was in too deep now to back out. “It certainly is, Wally. It couldn’t be hidden. To compute the thrust stresses, I had to know the density of the contents of Cargo Hold One. And here it is: 1.726 gm/cm³. Nothing else that I know of has that exact density.”

  Wallingford pursed his lips. “Dear me,” he said after a moment. “I keep forgetting you’re too bright for your own good.” Then a slow smile spread over his face. “Would you really like to know?”

  “I wouldn’t have asked otherwise,” Mike said.

  “Fine. Because you’re just the man we need.”

  Mike the Angel could almost feel the knife blade sliding between his ribs, and he had the uncomfortable feeling that the person who had stabbed him in the back was himself. “What’s that supposed to mean, Wally?”

  “You are, I believe, an officer in the Space Service Reserve,” said Basil Wallingford in a smooth, too oily voice. “Since the Engineering Officer of the Branchell, Jack Wong, is laid up in a hospital, I’m going to call you to active duty to replace him.”

  Mike the Angel felt that ghostly knife twist—hard.

  “That’s silly,” he said. “I haven’t been a ship’s officer for five years.”

  “You’re the man who designed the power plant,” Wallingford said sweetly. “If you don’t know how to run her, nobody does.”

  “My time per hour is worth a great deal,” Mike pointed out.

  “The rate of pay for a Space Service officer,” Basil Wallingford said pleasantly, “is fixed by law.”

  “I can fight being called back to duty—and I’ll win,” said Mike. He didn’t know how long he could play this game, but it was fun.

  “True,” said Wallingford. “You can. I admit it. But you’ve been wondering what the hell that ship is being built for. You’d give your left arm to find out. I know you, Golden Wings, and I know how that mind of yours works. And I tell you this: Unless you take this job, you’ll never find out why the Branchell was built.” He leaned forward, and his face loomed large in the screen. “And I mean absolutely never.”

  For several seconds Mike the Angel said nothing. His classically handsome face was like that of some Grecian god contemplating the Universe, or an archangel contemplating Eternity. Then he gave Basil Wallingford the benefit of his full, radiant smile.

  “I capitulate,” he said.

  Wallingford refused to look impressed. “Damn right you do,” he said—and cut the circuit.

  CHAPTER 7

  Two days later Mike the Angel was sitting at his desk making certain that M. R. GABRIEL, POWER DESIGN would function smoothly while he was gone. Serge Paulvitch, his chief designer, could handle almost everything.

  Paulvitch had once said, “Mike, the hell of working for a first-class genius is that a second-class genius doesn’t have a chance.”

  “You could start your own firm,” Mike had said levelly. “I’ll back you, Serge; you know that.”

  Serge Paulvitch had looked astonished. “Me? You think I’m crazy? Right now, I’m a second-class genius working for a first-class outfit. You think I want to be a second-class genius working for a second-class outfit? Not on your life!”

  Paulvitch could easily handle the firm for a few weeks.

  Helen’s face came on the phone. “There’s a Captain Sir Henry Quill on the phone, Mr. Gabriel. Do you wish to speak to him?”

  “Black Bart?” said Mike. “I wonder what he wants.”

  “Bart?” She looked puzzled. “He said his name was Henry.”

  Mike grinned. “He always signs his name: Captain Sir Henry Quill, Bart. And since he’s the toughest old martinet this side of the Pleiades, the ‘Black’ part just comes naturally. I served under him seven years ago. Put him on.”

  In half a second the grim face of Captain Quill was on the screen.

  He was as bald as an egg. What little hair he did have left was meticulously shaved off every morning. He more than made up for his lack of cranial growth, however, by his great, shaggy, bristly brows, black as jet and firmly anchored to jutting supraorbital ridges. Any other man would have been proud to wear them as mustaches.

  “What can I do for you, Captain?” Mike asked, using the proper tone of voice prescribed for the genial businessman.

  “You can go out and buy yourself a new uniform,” Quill growled. “Your old one isn’t regulation any more.”

  Well, not exactly growled. If he’d had the voice for it, it would have been a growl, but the closest he could come to a growl was an Irish tenor rumble with undertones of gravel. He stood five-eight, and his red and gold Space Service uniform gleamed with spit-and-polish luster. With his cap off, his bald head looked as though it, too, had been polished.

  Mike looked at him thoughtfully. “I see. So you’re commanding the mystery tub, eh?” he said at last.

  “That’s right,” said the captain. “And don’t go asking me a bunch of blasted questions. I’ve got no more idea of what the bloody thing’s about than you—maybe not as much. I understand you designed her power plant…?”

  He let it hang. If not exactly a leading question, it was certainly a hinting statement.

  Mike shook his head. “I don’t know anything, Captain. Honestly I don’t.”

  If Space Service regulations had allowed it, Captain Sir Henry Quill, Bart., would have worn a walrus mustache. And if he’d had such a mustache, he would have whuffled it then. As it was, he just blew out air, and nothing whuffled.

  “You and I are the only ones in the dark, then,” he said. “The rest of the crew is being picked from Chilblains Base. Pete Jeffers is First Officer, in case you’re wondering.”

  “Oh, great,” Mike the Angel said with a moan. “That means we’ll be going in cold on an untried ship.”

  Like Birnam Wood advancing on Dunsinane, Quill’s eyebrows moved upward. “Don’t you trust your own designing?”

  “As much as you do,” said Mike the Angel. “Probably more.”

  Quill nodded. “We’ll have to make the best of it. We’ll muddle through somehow. Are you all ready to go?”

  “No,” Mike admitted, “but I don’t see that I can do a damn thing about that.”

  “Nor do I,” said Captain Quill. “Be at Chilblains Base in twenty-four hours. Arrangements will be made at the Long Island Base for your transportation to Antarctica. And”—he paused and his scowl became deeper—“you’d best get used to calling me ‘sir’ again.”

  “Yessir, Sir Henry, sir.”

  “Thank you, Mister Gabriel,” snapped Quill, cutting the circuit.

  “Selah,” said Mike the Angel.

  * * * *

  Chilblains Base, Antarctica, was directly over the South Magnetic Pole—at least, as closely as that often elusive spot could be pinpointed for any length of time. It is cheaper in the long run if an interstellar vessel moves parallel with, not perpendicular to, the magnetic “lines of force” of a planet’s gravitational field. Taking off “across the grain” can be done, but the power consumption is much greater. Taking off “with the grain” is expensive enough.

  An ion rocket doesn’t much care where it lifts or sets down, since its method of propulsion isn’t trying to
work against the fabric of space itself. For that reason, an interstellar vessel is normally built in space and stays there, using ion rockets for loading and unloading its passengers. It’s cheaper by far.

  The Computer Corporation of Earth had also been thinking of expenses when it built its Number One Research Station near Chilblains Base, although the corporation was not aware at the time just how much money it was eventually going to save them.

  The original reason had simply been lower power costs. A cryotron unit has to be immersed at all times in a bath of liquid helium at a temperature of four-point-two degrees absolute. It is obviously much easier—and much cheaper—to keep several thousand gallons of helium at that temperature if the surrounding temperature is at two hundred thirty-three absolute than if it is up around two hundred ninety or three hundred. That may not seem like much percentagewise, but it comes out to a substantial saving in the long run.

  But, power consumption or no, when C.C. of E. found that Snookums either had to be moved or destroyed, it was mightily pleased that it had built Prime Station near Chilblains Base. Since a great deal of expense also, of necessity, devolved upon Earth Government, the government was, to say it modestly, equally pleased. There was enough expense as it was.

  The scenery at Chilblains Base—so named by a wiseacre American navy man back in the twentieth century—was nothing to brag about. Thousands of square miles of powdered ice that has had nothing to do but blow around for twenty million years is not at all inspiring after the first few minutes unless one is obsessed by the morbid beauty of cold death.

  Mike the Angel was not so obsessed. To him, the area surrounding Chilblains Base was just so much white hell, and his analysis was perfectly correct. Mike wished that it had been January, midsummer in the Antarctic, so there would have been at least a little dim sunshine. Mike the Angel did not particularly relish having to visit the South Pole in midwinter.