Kaspar's Box

V: OF MEN AND WOMEN AND MACHINES

“All right, lad, so just what did you see in there?” Murphy asked Maslovic when both were again alone in the lounge. “You looked like you saw your own death in that devil’s thing.”

Maslovic shook his head. “No, no. Not that. Something infinitely more disturbing, I think. The trouble is, I don’t really know just what I saw. I can’t explain it. You take a look in one next time and we can compare notes.”

“No, I think not,” the old captain responded. “Maybe I might have just for curiosity’s sake, but after watchin’ you, I ain’t got no yen for that sort of thing. Makes me wonder why in hell them rich bastards pay so damn much for them things. Pay a fortune to be shocked and scared to death? I guess the rich are really different than you and me.”

The sergeant nodded. “I can see the appeal, oddly enough. You just have to know where to look and sense when to look away. I don’t know. Maybe even that’s somebody’s thrill. The pet demon in the gemstone. Nobody else would have one.”

“Could be. But was it real?”

Maslovic thought a moment. “I’ve been trying to decide that. It’s certainly real to the looker, as an experience, and I think it’s possible that part of the experience, if you can call it that, is real. I’m going to have to get my datalink and see if it says anything about these Three Kings. Descriptions, maybe.”

“Oh, I can tell you that. One’s supposedly a kind of paradise, a Garden of Eden place, and one’s a land of fire and water and mineral riches, and the third’s a cold, dark place of mountains and caverns. That’s all part of the legend and, I suspect, it’s from the original scouting report.”

“That’s certainly close to where I was looking. But how is that possible? I mean, how could I see real worlds so remote we’ve never rediscovered them? And what of all the stuff superimposed on them? I’d love to get one of those things in the lab. Then at least I’d know if what I was looking at was a real, natural kind of gemstone or some kind of alien device that merely looked that way.”

“Well, they say that nobody who looks into ’em sees the same thing, but they all see the Three Kings. Beyond that, the other images, them’s personal. Sooner or later, though, everybody backs away with the absolute conviction that even as they’re watchin’ the show, somehow the show’s watchin’ them. I saw how you jumped. So did she. The difference is that she’s the first one I ever heard of who wasn’t scared of whoever or whatever was lookin’ back. You get any idea of what the devil the thing looked like?”

“Not a bit. It was only a shadow. It was more like a meeting of minds that caused the reaction. I could sense that whatever was in that shadow could not only see me, it could look straight through me and into the deepest part of my mind. It was a sense of… oh, I don’t know. Violation? Being unable to stop anybody from going where only you can go and maybe into parts of yourself you don’t want to look at, which is why you put them there. Does that make any sense?”

“Kinda. Look up the term ‘rape’ sometime and you’ll see a lot of the same feelin’s and terms used. That’s sexual, but there’s a lot more to the act than just sex. Congratulations, Sergeant. I think you’ve just proved you’re human after all.”

“Perhaps. If nightmares are what make you human, then I guess that counts. But, the point is, we’ve proven two things. First, those gems are the genuine articles, and that raises as many new questions as it answers. Second, that, natural or artificial, they are some sort of communications medium. A two-way medium at that.”

“Are you sure? That would make them machines of some kind in my book. Interesting.”

“Not necessarily. You can create a primitive radio using quartz crystals. You can generate a mild current that is still sufficient to run some very small devices using the stored energy in a potato. No, they could still be either, and it really doesn’t matter which. I now think that your legendary scout’s signals were intercepted and interfered with by someone or something that did not want all the details of their existence known. They probably didn’t know enough about us and our technology at that point, considering the sample they had, to react in time to keep all the knowledge from us, but it was enough. Later on, when the second expedition solved where it was somehow and made it there, it was a different story. By that point, whoever is out there had a fair cross section of humans along with their data, both in their minds and in their ship and computers, to learn quite a lot. The second contact, that exploration ship, was sent back. Sent back by whoever it is, with just enough of those gems. They knew what would happen to them, where they would go, how they would be used. Their captives or whatever could tell them that.”

“You mean they were spies. Remote control windows to look at us.”

Maslovic nodded. “And if they can also transmit using those things, then they could learn an awful lot fast and have unwitting agents tell them all that they needed.”

“Witting agents, more like, considerin’ not only them girls but also whoever is sendin’ ’em to Barnum’s World.”

“Now, yes. But how long ago did this legend start? Centuries, you said.”

“Seems like. I dunno for sure, but it’s been around longer than I have, and that’s a fair amount of time. Sounds like our aliens are pretty patient buggers, though. Surely with that mind control stuff, they had enough information on us ages ago to conquer us if they wanted to.”

“I don’t know. Conquer might not be the right word. Maybe they’re just curious. Maybe they’re toying with us. The devil worship business indicates that they’ve achieved a pretty sophisticated sense of humor as well as a sense of how to utilize humans. Maybe there aren’t very many of them. Or maybe they don’t know anything more about the Great Silence than we do and think that whatever happened to our ancestors will be coming for us and then for them. It would be useful to keep us as a permanently monitored buffer race. We’re only guessing, though, and those girls can’t tell us. Whoever’s behind them, though, is closer to us than to the alien masters, you’re right about that much. Whether they’re partners or surrogates for the watchers doesn’t make much difference. The trouble is, if they’re on Barnum’s World, they’re going to be a lot better positioned than we are, and they’ll know us because now one of their remote masters knows me.”

“I dunno where you’re gettin’ that ‘us’ business, if you include me in that,” Murphy said. “I, for one, am willin’ to let ’em play their silly games if their money’s still good, and I think I’ll be long dead before they start doin’ whatever it is they’re plannin’ to do. Still and all, you got to figure that it ain’t just you and your pilot that they know. Not now.”

“Huh?”

“I wonder if they ever had the chance to poke into the innards of the most powerful military battle group left in this whole region? Maybe in all this side of the Great Silence? Three rovin’ eyes plus access to that whole blasted ship’s master computer of yours. Your nabbin’ me with them three had to be a godsend for ’em, don’t you think?”

The master of logic seemed suddenly dumbstruck by the enormity of Murphy’s words and the implication of it all. “Of course! I was just too close to it to see it! Damn! They really do have it all, don’t they?”

“Don’t feel too bad,” the old captain consoled. “You’re a pretty bright lad who brung it this far. You just were born and raised in that navy factory. It’s your mother, father, sister, brother, womb and probable grave. It’s the most secure place you can think of in the whole damned galaxy. It takes an old scoundrel like me to pull you that last little bit, that’s all.”

“Yes, but they know everything! Everything! And we—we know exactly nothing at all. Militarily, the only thing left for us is to take out ceremonial swords like the ancient warriors of Old Earth and rip our guts out.”

Murphy shook his head slowly from side to side. “Nope, I don’t think so, Sergeant. I don’t think they’re gonna let you or any of us off that easy…”

She lay there in an almost fully reclined position, strapped in and padded so that she was unlikely to shift and fall out, with small motors exercising and massaging various parts of her body while other probes monitored all her vital signs down to the most minute detail to insure that she was not in any way suffering injury or long-term impairment. Small tubes fed her and others took away her waste, so that her mind did not have to have any part of itself occupied with such things nor distracted from them.

The mind, in a sense, wasn’t even there.

Many who had never experienced at least this level of bonding, mind and machine, could not imagine why so many in the past had elected to simply discard their human bodies and mate brain and ship into one permanent organism. In the Meld, as it was generally referred to by those who did it often, it was easy to think how wonderful it would be to be like this permanently, to become one with the machine and live with this enhanced power, trading a fragile human body for one that could withstand the cold vacuum of space and the heat of a reentry, who could see and control all parts of themselves at once, with senses enhanced beyond any ordinary human’s imagination.

The navy, however, reserved that entirely for the Admiralty, insisting that you remain with your body and exist when not on station or on a mission in that body and not in the permanency of the Meld. It limited you in ways that you could never explain to others, and it meant that you would have to constantly readjust to the situation, but the navy wanted no Meld that it could not control, no cybernetic bond that it could not break. Humans had almost been wiped out when they’d allowed their self-aware machines free reign and will, and they were not about to trust even partly human cybernauts with it, either.

Lieutenant Chung preferred the Meld with a fast, sleek fighter, leading a limitless team with maximum power and abilities at their command, but this was fine compared to the alternative. Even if they somehow entered lifeboat mode, she could exist like this while having only the most tenuous connection to a cryogenically frozen body. But she still needed that connection, that body; it was part of the ship, and the ship was a part of her, but if it died, her thoughts, her personality also died. She was well aware of that.

For three days now she’d flown the ship and experienced the joys of the Meld, but that was about to come to an end, at least temporarily. This was a mission, and she, not just her flying, was a vital part of its completion.

She had watched the three young witches with her enhanced powers, and sensed the enormous energy within those jewels they wore and just how they cloaked their wearers, much as the force field protecting the outer skin of the shuttle protected her. The field would strengthen sometimes, and then weaken, but it was always there, always in at least a minimal way both protecting and controlling the wearer.

Chung did not get close enough to pull that energy towards her own sensors. She was well aware that the mysterious energy was not limited to the wearer but could extend itself, perhaps sufficiently to have taken control of a great star frigate. This shuttle and her own single Meld consciousness and databanks would be child’s play for the energy, and she’d have no defense. So she studied it, and watched it, but from a distance.

The energy wasn’t a visible thing; it was something tangible and living but beyond the abilities of a mortal human to see and feel. Only in the Meld was it clear, a writhing mass of almost protoplasmic pulsing and oozing, pure energy that acted like organic matter. She had never seen or encountered anything quite like it before, but it was clearly real and it was clearly not emanating from the three girls nor their developing fetuses nor from some sort of parasite or some other sort of life that might live cooperatively inside the girls. The source was external, from their gemstones or, more likely, through the stones. There was no evidence of a Meld of any sort with or within the stones; whatever was guiding it was using some sort of remote control. From where, and how, was by no means obvious.

It was clear that it could not stray too far from the stones on its own. It needed the girls to wear the gems around their necks to extend its own limited reach, but if they were in contact with something then it was in contact as well.

Still, mere contact with electronic channels aboard the Thermopylae had been sufficient for it to have penetrated the ship’s primary computer core, at least enough to give it a program to erase the witches from the sensors. And while all three combined didn’t seem to be powerful enough to have actually taken control of the huge ship, they had been able to sustain their modifications, undetectably access the database whenever required, and also essentially operate the three girls’ bodies as remote extensions. That was impressive, and meant that, if those entities wanted to, they could certainly do what they willed with Chung’s own Meld.

The fact that they hadn’t apparently done so meant that either she had nothing to offer but the ride and that’s what they were getting anyway or, possibly, that she had been fully compromised and reprogrammed not to know it. She put that out of her mind for now, though, not so much from paranoia as from pragmatism. If that were true, then it really didn’t matter insofar as there was nothing she might be able to do to discover or counter it.

Chung had watched with fascination as O’Brian’s operator—there was just no other way to think of it right now—had flowed rather nicely into Maslovic’s hand and then through him, until he had sensed it and let go, cutting the contact. That had yielded some very interesting and possibly useful facts. First, that the more it extended into and over Maslovic, the thinner the energy field around both he and the girl had become, so there was a real limit to how much that gemstone device could put out after all. That was probably why all three were needed to do what they did aboard the Thermopylae ; the power had to be combined.

Still, all three together had also been sufficient to have somehow reprogrammed the living sentry’s memory of them leaving, and the memory of anyone who came close to them. The three of them together, in perfect symmetry, had been necessary to create a field that could fog the mind of anyone coming into its proximity. Nobody could create a condition where someone would be invisible to everyone and everything across the whole catalog of senses and monitors, but apparently together, the three could create a thin field that would make no one and no thing notice that they were there. Fascinating.

It also implied limits to that power, however vast. They could put in their clever little program to the ship’s computer, but they couldn’t stay there and keep the girls supplied and protected or, worse, controlled. They could use the girls’ bodies and sensors to explore, almost like robotic probes or ferrets, but the requirement that the field, however thin, be stretched as far as possible vastly limited what they could actually do during those explorations.

She had never experienced this sort of energy, did not know its full properties or potential, so there really wasn’t a lot she could do to tell more about it without attracting unwanted attention from it, but it did allow her to see the energy in its ebbs and flows and something of where it went and what it could do.

It always had at least a slender thread directly into each girl’s cerebral cortex, and it also had a similar hairlike thread into the same region of the nearly fully developed fetuses. It certainly wasn’t using those connections for control, at least not now, but it did occasionally send quantities of energy in short, coded bursts along those connections, sometimes to the mothers but more often to the almost children within.

What would a newborn be programmed to do? What could it do? It wouldn’t even have full vision or control of its muscles for some time. Latent programming, probably, or lots of data and routines to be activated once the child was old enough for it to matter.

Were these, then, a class of invading soldiers being created by an enemy almost from the moment they had a developing brain? Or the perfect agents, or spies? What were the operators on the other side of those stones doing, and why?

As much anxiety as she felt, Chung also felt a great deal of excitement. No more pushing around little toads like Murphy or doing shows of force to get taxes from poor worlds growing poorer; this was what a military was for.

Now there was an enemy, a bit out of the shadows where those like her could see them at work, if obliquely. And if the operators were friendly, why had they spent so much time and trouble keeping in those deepest shadows?

How she’d like to follow that energy back to its source! And not in this little shuttle, either, but with her fighter, perhaps the whole fighter squadron, and on their own, without potential corruption from the mother ship’s master computers!

As it stood right now, though, this ship had four weapons, all personal weapons of no real use in space, and none of them was assembled and charged.

And with the last of the gates looming ahead, they were only a few hours out from those who sent those images that so troubled Maslovic, someone who, like herself, was without the fear of death and whose entire self was devoted to the mission, and not to some intermediaries in this obvious vast interstellar plot.

She saw the wormgate ahead, quite suddenly, but it was no surprise. Directly on the flight path, just where and when it should be, here it was, out then, with only a slight adjustment, back in for one last, very short ride.

It had been decided from the start that she would not communicate with those inside if she could help it, only observe, but they were now at the point where there was no more purpose to the silent treatment, meant to simply not remind the girls and whoever was behind them that someone else was aboard and watching. Now it was moot; they were almost there.

“Please awaken our passengers, Sergeant,” her voice came from the lounge public address speaker, sounding crisp and professional. “There are clean, loose whites in the locker aft, and whatever else they might wish to wear on exit. They certainly can not exit looking like that, nor, I suspect, would they want to.”

Maslovic sat up straight, almost at attention, and nodded at the speaker. It was conditioning; in this circumstance and until they actually landed, the lieutenant was the captain.

Murphy simply looked startled. It had been long enough since he’d seen the pilot that he’d forgotten that the whole thing wasn’t automated.

“You can clean up and get some fresh clothing as well, Captain Murphy,” Maslovic told him. “We have time yet.” He glanced at his watch, which now read 2:44:06. Murphy did the same, and chuckled.

“Three pregnant lassies, one toilet, one shower, and under maybe four, five hours tops from right now and some of that time strapped in. You’re dreamin’, man!” He paused for a moment, then added, “I’ll skip the prettifyin’, if you don’t mind. Bad for me reputation anyway. In fact, I think I’ll spend this last comfy time enjoyin’ what I can of that pretty good stout, and maybe a couple of scones or sweet rolls to settle me stomach. Tonight it’s a celebration! I’m free of them and all of you starched machines, and it’s payday to boot!”

“Suit yourself,” Maslovic responded, getting up and making his way aft to the beds. Somehow he suspected that the old captain wasn’t nearly as free and clear of this business as he might have hoped.

Murphy was a bit worried about that, too, but he was equally certain that he felt neither kinship with nor obligation to the military folks, now or at any forseeable time in his future. If this was any sort of menace, they were probably the least equipped to handle it with their rigid codes and genetic specializations. Pirates, con artists, and maybe a physicist or two, they might at least make a go of it. He’d grown to like Maslovic, at least a little, and respect his mind and almost con artist-like manner, but, deep down, Murphy knew that the marine was essentially an act, a performance, trained and programmed and superimposed on a hard and cold body and mind. All that surface charm and friendly company could shut down in a moment and the same fellow would shoot him and never think a moment on it beyond that, and blow away his mother, too, if he had one. Of course, his mother had been a machine, so in that sense he and the rest of his kind were the spitting images of their parents.

Not that Murphy didn’t have the con man’s personable manner and coldness of heart as well, but at least, he told himself, he’d earned that in the school of hard knocks.

The sergeant came back in and nodded. “Well, you were right. They can’t even wash their long hair in three hours. Each!”

“Aye. Told you so. Of course, it would help if they had some hair dryers. Guess that wouldn’t be likely in a ship built for a bunch of baldies, though. Well, they’ll make do. This is, after all, where they, or them what’s behind them, want ’em to be, so there’s not likely to be a lot of patience with the folks on the ground if they decide to take a few hours before clearin’ the authorities.”

“You’re probably right there,” the sergeant agreed. “I wonder who the hell is picking them up?”

“Well, they was to be dropped off to members of the Knights of Saint Phineas on Barnum’s World. That’s all I was told. The others I delivered now and then, they was all a bit different, or at least seemed a wee bit more normal, so they just went off while I did me paperwork and that was that.”

“You trusted them?”

Murphy shrugged. “What could I do? Besides, I didn’t do much except transport ’em, and all but these girls I had to bring in kinda on the quiet, if you know what I mean, so there wasn’t much I could do but trust the others. The money was always there, though, in the accounts, ready to spend, and the notation of credit equivalent to the amount was posted with the bank down there. Why not? If they stiffed me, I didn’t exactly have to come back the next time, you know. It’s not like there’s a hundred ships dock regular at Tara Hibernius.”

“I see what you mean. Well, there’s no sneaking these young women in, I don’t think. Not now. And that means either somebody meets them or they have to use their voodoo on the authorities down there. Either way, I figure they aren’t going back on this shuttle!”

“No papers. Be interestin’ to see if they are expected, won’t it? Uh, that is, interestin’ for you.”

Maslovic smiled. “Yes, for us, I guess.” Like Murphy wasn’t dying to know who or what was behind this, particularly now that he’d seen the power in back of it and the possible real money and valuables they had at their beck and call. “The Knights of Saint Phineas, you said. Know anything more about them?”

“Nope. It’s been eons since I been anywhere near a church, let alone catechism school, and I’ll be blamed if I ever heard of a Saint Phineas, although, I admit, that blamed church’s got ten saints for every day that is, was, or ever will be.”

“Fascinating. Not one of the major ones, then.”

“Definitely not. I dunno. Maybe they ain’t so well known down there, if you know what I mean. I don’t know if I should ask about ’em, strictly out of concern for the lasses, you understand, or keep me trap shut. Sounds like some old crusader stuff, or order of soldiers for God, like the Knights of Malta back in ancient times, but I don’t think these folks would be them kinda soldiers, and not for God, neither.”

“Well, not your old god, anyway,” the sergeant said. Maybe for some dark gods lurking in the shadows of a cave upon some bleak and distant world, though, he added to himself.

The full ship’s intercom came alive, and Lieutenant Chung’s voice announced, “Five minutes to gate emergence. Depending on traffic control, no more than twenty or thirty minutes insystem until at least orbit.”

“Put the traffic control low on the speaker when you emerge, Lieutenant,” Maslovic requested. “And if we can get a visual of the planet and resolution to ground as applicable, I’d appreciate it.”

“I will do it if I can, Sergeant,” the pilot told him.

Murphy shrugged. “It’s generally an easy in and out. Mostly freight modules in orbit, a few tugs but mostly storage containers, and service bays for two freighters. Port Bainbridge is the single ground spaceport, but it’s pretty decent size for the fairly low traffic it does. When they export, though, it’s usually very large and often fragile consignments, so they need the equivalent of a much larger planet. There’s towns with specialists all over the world, including a large number of underwater domes, but the only one that can be called a ‘city’ is Port Bainbridge, population under half a million, and that’s where we’ll come down. Almost entirely import-export and inland supply. That’s all they do. A lot of the world is self-sufficient, or so they say. I never been more than a few kilometers beyond the spaceport meself. Why bother? Go out into the bush and wind up gettin’ eaten or worse, or spend time in a station feelin’ like you’re infested with creepy crawlies. Nope. Not me cup of tea.”

“It doesn’t sound like a particularly good place to send three girls, even these girls, pregnant and without much knowledge of the outside.”

“Oh, I don’t think that’s a problem for ’em here. They’re from a far more rural place than even this, ’cause it’s not so high tech and managed as Barnum’s World. They’ll have good facilities for birthin’, and, let’s face it, somebody is expectin’ ’em. Be hell tryin’ to track ’em if they go off into the bush, though. Never thought of it before, either, but Barnum’s World’s actually a pretty fair place if you want to keep secrets and be out of the public view. Wilderness, mostly, lots of ways to hide and lots of places where even if you were found you couldn’t be snuck up on, high tech as you need it, low population for less questions, and yet a fair amount of in and out interstellar traffic. If it wasn’t for them creepy crawlies, I’d say it’d be a good place to run anything not legal, come to think of it. Me, though, I got this thing about them creepy crawlies.”

“What do you mean by that?” Maslovic asked the old captain.

“You’ll see. Think of the whole world as a zoo, an animal preserve, and a botanical gardens to boot. Just about everything that was still livin’ when the place was set up, a century or more before the Great Silence, goin’ back to Old Earth species and through any of the stuff we found out here. Animals, plants, you name it. So if some nasty booger comes along and all Tara Hibernius’s sheep get sick and die, here’s where they come to get more, genetically perfect and maybe immune as well. New Siam short on their kind of elephants? Got some. And if you’re terraforming a place to specific design, here’s the plants and bugs and bacteria and crap you’ll need, and they can be specially produced to adapt perfect to what you can’t terraform. Hell of a business, even now on some worlds. And now that nobody can go back and pick up any species not already extinct, and there’s tons of those, the folks down there think they got a kind of sacred trust. Me, I just think most of ’em prefer animals to people.”

“I scanned the database on it. Fascinating sounding. But I’ve never been on a world with a full ecosystem including everything down to the microbe level. This could be quite interesting.”

“The first time you get stung by a bloodsucker insect and then you come face-to-face with a jumpin’ spider bigger’n your head, you’ll think different, Sergeant. I promise that.”

The intercom came on again. “Out of jump. All nominal,” Chung reported. “I’m now in the system control region of Barnum’s World. Too far out for a really good picture but I’ll give you what I got.”

The wall area between the two food service ports flickered and came to life, and there was a realistic three-dimensional view of the new solar system they’d just entered, looking inward. The sun was a bright yellow-white but too far to require any optical filters or adjustments, and towards it they could see several planets, mostly gas types. It looked quite normal, just the kind of solar system that produced terraformable worlds which were used for colonies.

One of the girls popped her head out the hatch and looked around. She was wearing a white pullover and had her long hair wrapped in a towel, turban-style. She saw the display and said, “Oh, wow! Neat! Which one is ours?”

“I don’t think it’s quite in view yet,” Murphy replied. “It’ll be comin’ in to sight on the right-hand side in a few minutes, maybe less. Don’t look too hard, though. Compared to even those planets ye can see there, it’ll look like nothin’ much more’n a dot at this range.”

“Shuttle THP stroke two four Navy, you have flight path two three niner,” said a reedy male voice over the intercom. “You are cleared to proceed in system. Coordinates coming your way. Acknowledge receipt.”

“Received, Outer System Control,” Chung responded. “Am on the beam. Do you wish control?”

“Negative. Passing directives to your navigational computer. Estimated inbound ninety-two minutes standard. Recommend force field be maintained at this speed. Orbital Control will take you at insertion point.”

“Who’s that?” Mary Margaret’s voice came to them. She came in, dressed pretty much like the other one who’d first looked in.

“That’s Barnum’s World,” Murphy told her. “Or, rather, it’s the controller computers bringin’ us in. This is one time when we’re better off aboard here than on our old ship. For one thing, on the old tub we wouldn’t be here yet, maybe not fer another week or so. And, second, we could never come in at this speed and we’d be all strapped in.”

“So we’ll be landing in an hour and a half?” she asked.

“No, longer than that, but it won’t be comfortable then, so you’ll have to be up here and strapped in. They’ll bring us into orbit around the planet, scan us, ask us who we are and what we’re doin’ here and all that, and if they like the answers they’ll let us land.”

“Who needs them?” she responded. “Why don’t we just, like, land?”

“Well, we could try’n do that,” Captain Murphy admitted. “But then they’d just atomize us and we’d be all dead and gone without a trace. No, you do it their way when you come in like this. Don’t worry. This is where you wanted to be.”

McBride nodded, looking suddenly a bit bewildered, almost like a child who suddenly wasn’t sure if this really was where Mamma said to head for if lost.

“Yeah, that’s right,” she said, more to herself than to them. “This is where we all want to be. Only, like, I wish I knew why…”

Customs and Immigration at Barnum’s World was not initially pleased to hear that the primary purpose for their visit was to drop off unwelcome guests, but the navy still had considerable clout in the older colonial sectors in particular because of its firepower and its ability to set its own protection rates.

“Why isn’t Captain Murphy with his ship and cargo as scheduled?” the controller wanted to know.

“We have confiscated his ship for transporting contraband and for longstanding refusal to pay his tax bill,” Chung answered.

“Yes, well, put him on. We need to know if he has a way off.”

“Aye, you miserable dung beetles! Of course I have a way off,” the old captain fumed. “Just check my credit. My letters of credit should be sufficient to get me off your colony for creepy crawlies as soon as I can, and I should have more in there within days, which is why I still have to come here at all!”

There was a pause. “Very well, then. But the three young Hibernians are also your responsibility, Captain,” Control warned him. “If you bring them in, it is under your own authority and responsibility, and if no one else gives them finances or takes over that responsibility, then you will also leave with them. Is that understood?”

“Of course I understand, you officious reptile! Hell, I’m stuck with ’em now! I’ve been stuck with ’em for far too long! I might as well be on me own with ’em down there as stuck here as a guest of the damned navy!”

Again there was a pause. “Very well. Naval shuttle, relinquish control to Port Bainbridge Interstellar Spaceport. We will bring you in to a merchant tug pier. There you will be allowed to discharge your passengers. Do you wish a berth?”

“Affirmative, Port Bainbridge Control,” Chung responded. “Two naval personnel, ID and genetic information now downloading. We will require a routine service for turnaround and a berth for seven stellar mean days until our ship passes close enough to here to pick us up. Our standard credit will be covered when the Thermopylae comes in system. We will wish to discuss some security matters with the Port Captain’s office, but no other naval business is pending with you at this time.”

“Understood. Are you permanent pilot or Meld?”

“Meld.”

“Then please disengage now. We can not dock you unless we have full navigational controls.”

“I know the routine. Disengaging and standing down.” Chung felt the sense of regret and loss as she initiated the disengagement procedure. It always was hard to let go; it was like a god suddenly becoming mortal and puny, and the mind fought it even as training did what was required.

She punched the intercom. “All passengers please strap in. You have three minutes to get ready and show ready on my board. You can not land until it is done. They will not land you. Is this understood?”

Maslovic and Murphy had no problems, but the girls were fidgety and didn’t like the idea of wearing the basic weblike restraints even though they were hardly uncomfortable. They didn’t like being confined.

Still, it was necessary. Even though Chung had brought up the gravity slowly over the past few hours to equal that of Barnum’s World and had also begun the slow adjustment to a Barnum’s World atmospheric mixture, it still was bumpy and often uncomfortable coming in for a real planetfall.

Once free of the Meld, Chung went through a series of breathing exercises to adjust her mind and body back to being merely human again and proceeded with some isometrics to insure that her muscles and reactions remained in good shape.

Then, even as the spaceport took control of the shuttle’s systems to bring it in, the pilot checked to see that the system was acting as programmed. Then she turned in her chair, still webbed in, and began a series of manual instructions in a code only she currently knew and of which she would be wiped clean once it was fully executed so that even she would have no further knowledge of it nor lingering subconscious memories of her actions that might be picked up by suspicious types below, insured that all was going nicely according to plan, and settled back for the landing.

The authorities on Barnum’s World would not have approved, but she didn’t care. They were a bunch of biologists and tree huggers; this was military business.

It took under half an hour to bring them down in their own lane and put the shuttle gently into an enclosed horizontal ground bay. The angle of entry and speed made sightseeing not really possible, but everyone on board did get a glimpse for a fraction of a minute of the city below and the deep green world, distant mountains, and swirling clouds.

The sensation was similar to a flight simulator used in training; a bit on the queasy side for those not used to it, barely noticeable for those like Chung or Murphy who had done it more times than they could count. There were also some bumps in the lower atmosphere and some really violent sways as the shuttle actually entered the parking bay and settled in on standardized rails.

There was a sudden cessation of all movement and all external sounds. They were now parked on Barnum’s World.

The webbing automatically retracted and they were all free to move again. Chung leaned forward, stretched in place, and then hesitantly got up, holding on to the chair with her left hand. It was odd to be walking again, feeling all those moving parts of the body, and trying to regain a comfort level. Still, training was everything, and within a minute or two she felt much like her old self again. She went over and removed the programming module from the bridge controls and put it in a small compartment inside her flight suit, and then she picked up her small case and walked back towards the lounge.

The others were already up and about, and the girls were more than ready to go. Still, Mary Margaret at least seemed surprised to see the pilot come aft, as if she’d forgotten that somebody real was actually up there. It wasn’t, after all, like they’d just had a long time in transit with Chung as company.

“Gee, I thought they was all big brutes,” she whispered to Irish O’Brian. “Most of the women we saw looked more like the men back there. She’s tiny.”

“Aye, but still bald, muscled, and with the expression of a stone carvin’,” O’Brian whispered back. “I guess they built her for speed or somethin’.”

“Naw. They’re gonna build her into the ship sooner or later, you wait and see!”

Murphy couldn’t help but notice that the girls already seemed to have put aside their fears and uncertainties and gone back to the banal. In a way, he envied them that. His stomach was already turning and he could use a good slug right about now, and he knew Barnum’s World and where he was headed. At least he hoped he did. These girls seemed to have the damndest knack of destroying his plans.

Lieutenant Chung went back to the airlock and pressed her palm on the identiplate. The lock hissed but turned, almost lenslike, then moved aside. The second did much the same, and when it, too, moved out of their way, the strong smells and hot heavy air of Barnum’s World came in, enveloping them like an invisible blanket.

“Jeez! The whole place smells like cow poop!” the normally quiet Brigit Moran commented in that high, breathless voice of hers.

“Yeah, smells like home,” Irish responded.

Murphy chuckled. “Ah, that magnificent scent of this here world isn’t just mere cows, girls, although there’s sure some of ’em about, nor horses, neither. You’ll see once we get out into the open and past these formalities.”

Some illuminated arrows on the wall of the docking bay indicated direction, and they turned, Chung as pilot leading the way, and headed for the customs symbol. Murphy went behind, then the three passengers, with Maslovic bringing up the rear. The sergeant wanted to make good and sure that he had the whole party in sight the whole time, even though he knew that any modern freight terminal like this one had to have full monitoring. He had seen these girls disappear from the state of the art in monitors before.

You could certainly tell that they had landed in the industrial part of the spaceport, if indeed there was any other part. The place was dirty, stained with who knew what on the floors and walls, and it looked like you could take your fingernail and run it across any point and come up with a large glob of unknown composition.

Once out of the bay and into the loading dock area, they had to go slowly and carefully to keep out of the way of robotic vehicles moving containers full of goods or running empty ones back to the various ships. There were also some really nasty-looking creatures about, most quite small and trying to feed on the dropped matter without getting squashed. These included millipedelike insects so large that a few were the size of human arms, with ugly pincers at their heads and giving off threatening looks; huge hairy spiders; lots of flies and roaches; and quite a number of scuttling things that looked not even close to anything any of them had seen before. The one thing that struck them all, though, was that the seamier side of wildlife on Barnum’s World seemed to be oversized.

“Yuk!” Mary Margaret McBride said over the din of port business. “I suddenly feel like things are crawlin’ all over me!”

“Just don’t step on anything livin’ or the remains of somethin’ live in them bare feet,” Murphy warned. “Some of these got poison. Otherwise, just ignore ’em and they’ll ignore you for the most part. They got their business here and we got ours!”

The arrows ended mercifully at a large set of double doors that slid open as they got to them and remained open long enough for them all to get inside.

“Ow!” Irish O’Brian exclaimed as her foot hit the point where the door met the floor. “What the hell was that?”

“Critter barrier,” the old captain told her. “Just don’t step right on that place where the door’s kinda rubbed from openin’ and closin’ so much and you’ll be fine. It’s just a mild shock to keep them things from comin’ in with us.”

There was a second doorway forming a flimsy airlock of sorts just ahead, and from the ceiling a blue energy field, very thin and quite transparent, formed a kind of curtain they would have to pass through. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what it was doing; the carcasses of incredible numbers of flying things not only had piled up just in front of it but there was a constant crackling and buzzing as more things that made it past the ground barrier were stopped in midair.

“This one’ll tickle you all over,” the old captain warned. “But if ye think ye picked up anything, it’ll nail that, too. No hitchhikers!”

He was right. It did just tickle. Still, both Moran and McBride stopped ahead of it and seemed unwilling to go through, while Irish O’Brian hardly gave it a thought.

Maslovic smiled. “Come on, girls! It won’t hurt you, your babies, or anything else! Promise! But no more creepy crawlies,” he promised, adding to himself, until we get back outside, anyway.

Eventually, first McBride, then Moran, got up the nerve to step through, particularly when some of the large flying insects started making for them and their hair, and it was done.

The terminal wasn’t really a passenger terminal, either, although it had a small section for that. Mostly it was for captains of orbiting freighters to check in, get their records and orders and bills of lading straight, and to arrange to have whatever part of their cargo was destined for here off-loaded by tugs and delivered to the right docks or for the cargo to be picked up to be put aboard. Only small vessels like port tugs and the occasional shuttle came through this area; there was a commercial passenger shuttle bay on the other side for the use of such passengers when a liner or fully equipped passenger module on a freighter was available.

A woman with short hair and dark skin and eyes wearing a lime green uniform approached them, nodded crisply, and said, “Military shuttle passengers follow me, please!”

Maslovic couldn’t help noticing that the woman, clearly Customs and Immigration, had given a more than cursory glance at the three pregnant young women and there was a fleeting look of surprise, perhaps disdain, when she’d done that.

If anyone was here to meet the passengers, clearly they weren’t going to be wearing a uniform.

The young woman punched in a code and a sliding door opened on the far wall to reveal a moving walkway. “Does anyone need to sit down?” she asked. “You can pull down seats if you like from the far wall, but please do not touch the area outside of the walkway.”

The three young women all looked more than relieved and, when they followed the leaders onto the belt, immediately pulled down the hinged seats and sat.

As they went, they were scanned as thoroughly as they ever had been in their lives. By the time they reached the end point of the walkway, perhaps a kilometer or so, the master Customs and Immigration computers could tell them how many hairs they had on their heads (if they had any), where their scars were, what they’d had for breakfast, and almost everything else. At the end, each of them had to stand and place their right index fingers in a small fitted slot before moving on. Although none felt a thing, their genetic histories were now added to the files.

It ended at an unstaffed set of kiosks. A green light would go on, and you had to enter, one at a time. Lieutenant Chung was first, depositing the credit and authorization cube from the shuttle. It would allow the navy pair to charge throughout the city region and order whatever maintenance was necessary on the shuttle. The others were simply asked by a disembodied voice to state their full names, their planet of origin, and how long they would be on Barnum’s World. The girls were told to say “We don’t know at this time,” to that, which resulted in a warning that they had a week to find out and notify authorities or they would be located and deported.

There was nothing else required of them. No matter where they went on Barnum’s World from this point, their own DNA matched to the database just compiled would be known, and their every move tracked within the city. Outside of the city, the transport would be known, so that authorities generally could find them as needed.

The one thing the girls couldn’t do was buy anything. That made them totally dependent on Murphy for now, or on whoever might meet them. Murphy wasn’t all that worried about that part of it. Even on their own, he bet himself that the girls and their funny gemstones would allow them to buy almost anything they wanted without the transaction ever even registering. When you took over a naval frigate, what was a government tracking system?

For all the precautions taken, and this was typical of modern, well-run colonies now, even Murphy knew how to bypass almost every system they had, and he didn’t even have to.

Finally, they reached another double door setup quite like the last part but this time much cleaner and better maintained. When they went through the second of them, though, they were back into the hot, humid, and smelly air of Barnum’s World and now facing transport into the city. It ranged from robotic taxis and a basic mass transit train to the more exotic. There were carts about, and carriages, and all sorts of other conveyances, which were in many cases pulled by great beasts the likes of which none but Murphy had ever seen before. Elephants, both Indian and African type, and camels, among others.

“There’s some of the smell, ladies,” he told them, pointing. “The local cheap and scenic route.”

They just gaped at it all, the taxis and trains as exotic as the bizarre animals, unable to take it in.

“Welcome to Barnum’s World,” said Captain Murphy.