Fugitive of the Stars

CHAPTER XIII

For a minute there was complete silence in the gallery. Then Fife said, wonderingly, “A brain? A living, thinking brain?"

"Not living, like that,” said the guard. “Its a giant electronic computer, one of those that can calculate so far beyond human powers that they're called ‘brains.’ This one is the biggest there ever was."

Yso said slowly, “No wonder they killed my father. No wonder they'd kill anybody who tried to get Skereth into the Federation."

She looked desperately from Horne to Ewan and then to the aliens and Fife's clever unhuman face.

"We thought it was just their profits and power they were afraid of losing, but it's more. My father thought so and he was right. If Skereth entered the Federation, the Vellae leaders couldn't hope to hide what they're doing here. They'd go to prison for it as a menace to the peace of the whole galactic community."

Fife shook his head. “But why?"

Ewan said grimly, “Federation law forbids any world or any government or any private interest to construct an electronic calculating machine of more than a certain capability. They can have as many brains as they need to conduct their business, but they must not be linked together, and they must not exceed the fixed limit. If they do, the Federation considers it an act of war. It will take punitive action against any world, in the Federation or out of it, that endangers the rest of the galaxy by building such a dangerous thing."

The full significance of what the guard had said more or less escaped Horne, who was a spaceman and not much concerned with the complexities of galactic law outside his own sphere. But he was impressed by the reactions of Yso and Ewan, who were openly horror-struck. And he remembered talk about past trouble with such brains.

Fe asked, “Why is it so dangerous? A weapon I could understand, but an electronic brain…"

"It is a weapon,” Ewan said. “Potentially, the most dangerous of all.” He paused, as though searching for a way to explain. “Look, a spear is an extension of a man's hand and far more dangerous, isn't it? Well, an electronic brain is an extension of a man's mind — really the combined minds of many men."

That was clear enough. Horne nodded, and Ewan went on. “Theoretically, it could be extended to such proportions that the men who controlled it would be practically invincible. They would have all weapons, all strategy, all propaganda, all psychology, ready for instant use. One whole section of the brain this large could, for instance, be put to working out new equations for advanced weapons systems, leaving the rest of it free to solve the problems of attack on all levels, figure the probability curve of the enemy's movements, everything. And all the time new data would be added, making the brain even more powerful. I don't say it could never be smashed, but it would be a tough proposition, and there wouldn't be much left of the planet after it was over."

He clenched his hands and beat them gently together in a gesture of sheer desperation.

"If we don't succeed here — if we don't manage somehow to get proof to the Federation government — Skereth and probably this whole part of the galaxy will be involved in such a war that—"

"Sssh!” said Chell suddenly, bounding up. “Another cone. A bigger cone, I think."

The guard stiffened in the grip of the hairy ones. “I didn't make the routine communications check. Now they're coming to see what happened to me. It'll be a two-man cone, and armed."

"You treacherous human,” said Fife, and began to move swiftly in toward the guard.

Horne pushed him aside. “We didn't give him much chance to make his check, did we? Anyway, we still need him. Alive and unhurt, you understand. Now get him out of sight around that bend."

He handed Ewan — the gun he had taken from the guard. “See that nothing happens to him. Yso, I'll need you, and I'll need Chell."

He began in great haste to pull on the guard's red uniform. Yso said, “What are you going to do?"

"Put on a little play for them.” He paused briefly, frowning. “It'll be dangerous. We'll likely all get killed. If you and Chell don't want to risk—"

Yso said, “Let's not waste time, Horne. What is it that you want us to do?"

He told her while he was climbing into the cone. The idea had come to him quickly, very incomplete at first, but taking on a larger and fuller shape as he thought about it and considered what might be done afterward if it did what he hoped it would do.

Chell added the finishing touch.

"Use the arms of the cone,” he said. “See? They're both tools and weapons."

Horne saw now what he had not noticed before — a pair of jointed, arm-like appendages ending in iron claws, folded in under the rim of the metal cone.

"They can carry a current,” Chell said. “I know because I have seen slaves burned and shocked, even killed. So be careful. Pleassse?"

He bobbled swiftly back to Yso. Horne shut the canopy and worked the grav-shields to right the cone. He started the tiny compressed-air propulsion unit and the cone moved sedately at the pace of a man walking, back along the gallery the way it had come.

When the two-man cone rounded a curve, the guards in it saw Chell coming first of all, a huge furry green ball carrying Yso in three of his tentacles. Yso appeared to be unconscious, hanging limp with her yellow hair falling down like a banner and the scanty blue streamer fluttering from her waist.

With his two spare tentacles, Chell made gestures of warding off Horne in his cone, who was apparently herding him along with his burden. The powerful claw-handed arms were extended now from the cone, threatening him, and one was close enough to his fur to make Chell's gesture of alarm authentic enough. Even so, he was careful to keep as much of his bulk as possible between Horne and the others, to hide him.

Horne, keeping his face turned away, said over the speaker attachment, “I found this slave and the woman in the gallery. They attacked me and I was forced to subdue them. The woman may be badly hurt. I'm glad you came. Will you get out and see to her? It's vitally important that we take her alive to Ardric."

The two guards in the cone were staring fascinated at the white-skinned girl in Chell's grasp.

"Who is she?” one of them asked. “And how did she get into the gallery?"

"I don't know how she got in,” Horne said, “but I'm pretty sure I know who she is. I've seen her picture. That's Morivenn's daughter."

"Morivenn's daughter?” said the guard at the controls. His voice tightened and went up a notch. "Morivenn's daughter?"

"There isn't any doubt of it,” Horne said.

"Here in the Project?” the guard said. “You're right, this is vital!"

He set the cone down with a thump. The propulsion unit died. The canopy opened and both men jumped down and ran toward Yso.

Instantly Chell dropped her gently to the floor, let go of her, and flung his tentacles around the nearest guard, who bellowed in alarm. The other one reached for his gun and shouted for Horne to do something about Chell.

Horne touched two controls in swift succession. The cone shot forward several feet and a great iron hand reached out and gripped the man's arm with its amazingly flexible fingers. The gun splashed a brief fury of flame, against the rocky ceiling and then dropped as the man was hauled off his feet and held dangling.

Chell must have called to his friends, because they came swiftly and one took hold of the second man so that Horne could let go of him. Yso looked up excitedly at Horne and cried, “It worked! Now what?"

Horne neutralized the cone and jumped down. He was feeling good, and fighting it, because he knew that it was far too early in the game to start congratulating himself. He said grimly, “Now we finish the questioning and make our plans, and they'd better be good ones because we won't have any chance to change them later on."

"We had better hurry, too,” said Chell, “before yet another cone comes searching after these two."

They joined Fife and the other slaves and Ewan. Horne bent over their first captive.

"Now,” be said, “I want to know about those locked doors and the passages behind them."

From there on the actual planning did not take long. It was a wildly improbable venture and, Horne thought, almost certainly foredoomed to failure, but it offered the only possibility he could see and no one disputed him, or suggested anything better.

The locks of the iron doors were controlled by a frequency key in the guard's cone. The doors actually were access hatches for maintenance and repair in the labyrinthine corridors of the Project — the brain that already required most of a mountain to contain its cells and ganglia — vast memory banks, computing units, comparison centers, data analyzers, all the components of the human brain except that indefinable part from which man derives his emotions, his personality and his humanness.

With the feeling of one about to make an uncanny entrance into the very tissues of a quasi-living entity, Horne activated the frequency key and opened one of the doors into the brain.

The door had been carefully selected from the guard's information. Now the three Project men, bound and gagged, were pulled into the chamber beyond the hatch, where they would not be discovered too soon. Horne turned the small cone over to Ewan, who would have use for it.

Yso was already at the controls of the larger one, with Fife beside her. Chell and his two comrades would go with them. All the rest would come with Horne.

There was not, Horne thought, much to choose between the two groups in the probability of survival.

Horne and his group were to make their way secretly to the Administration Center and attack from within. Yso, Ewan and Fife, and the three from Chorann, were to make their way openly into the lower galleries where the slaves were working, rouse them to action, knock out the guards, and attack the Administration Center from without. They hoped to get, not only Ardric, but the brain itself. Then, if they died, they might at least wreck the brain while they were doing it.

"Make it good,” Horne said to Ewan.

"You, too,” said Ewan. His voice was determined, but it revealed no great note of hope.

Horne glanced at Yso, dazzling in her garish finery. He smiled.

"You're just what we need to lead a crusade,” he said. “Give it to them, Morivenn's daughter"

She nodded, shaking back her yellow hair, and he knew he did not have to give her either urging or encouragement. He knew she was thinking of her father. Horne felt a brief but remarkably sharp stab of regret that he would probably never have the chance to know this girl any better than he did now.

Fife smiled to himself and played hungrily with the weapon, keys on the board before him. Horne spoke to him and then held out his hand to Chell, who wrapped the tip of a tentacle around it.

"Okay,” said Horne. “Let's go."

He nodded to Lurgh and the purple gargoyle, and stepped in through the hatch door, and the whole weird crew padded after him into the secret corridors of the brain.