Far-out Show (9781465735829) (54 page)

Hasley said, “Congratulations, Nerber. You
won. You're a hero at home and you get all the prizes.”

Nerber threw up his arms and did an
abbreviated little dance in place as his
Yes, I am
victorious
gesture. Then he hurried out saying, “I need time
alone to collect my thoughts.”

“There's a bunch of stuff we'll need to
explain and that you need to explain to us, Nerber. But for now we
need to concentrate on keeping the ship safe,” Hasley said
cheerily. He was so relieved to have the zerpy back seemingly
intact that he didn’t register that Nerber walked out. “Wilburps,
Lacrat will take you directly to the zerpy servicing room to
complete your downloads and to have a tech turn off what you
probably don't know is working full time. Keep that cover on until
then so you don't give away some of our little secrets.”

Lacrat hurried out the door, taking the zerpy
with him.

Hasley asked Biccup, “No luck bringing up the
machine that caused the interference this time either?”

Biccup said, “I tried several times at all
levels but it won’t do it. We need to try transporting a variety of
their items to learn how to adjust for the conditions and
compositions here. But we’re in emergency mode so I won’t have time
to work at that now. Too bad, that would have been a useful
system.”

Finally Hasley remembered again who else was
returned and looked around, saying, “Oh yeah. Nerber, you relax in
your quarters until we get back to you. Oh, I guess that’s where he
went.”

“I should tell the captain that there’s an
odd bit in the transport record,” Biccup said as he peered at the
podium monitor. “It’s like something more came up with them than
was expected based on the record of what went down with them. Well,
the other interpretation would be that something was reconfigured
for the trip back up.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it. With all the
trouble you’ve had with the system I’d bet it’s just
cripsminz
in the system from all the changes that have been
made recently. Unless it looks like it might mess things up and put
us all in danger.”

“No, it doesn’t look like it’s affecting
anything, it just says that something unexpected seemed to
happen.”

* * *

Nerber didn’t go to his quarters, he went to
the back of the ship and stood at the closed, heavily reinforced
door marked
Restricted Access, Security Pod
.

He held out Wowseyla toward the door and said
quietly, “It’s critical to my plan that I get into the pod where I
can be secure while having access to all the ship’s systems. You
have advanced programs, Wowseyla, let’s see if you can’t offset the
lock-out program that the A.D.U. guys have in force right now. It’s
the last insult that as things are going awry on the ship those at
home want to keep there from being any survivors. I get their
motivations but I reject them as acceptable. They’re depending on
outdated programs though.
Sib sog
for them.”

There was a faint
hiss
and the door
opened to reveal a small-room sized space with two small windows on
different sides that for now only gave views of the ship’s walls
beyond them. He lost no time entering and closing the door behind
him.

Inside the pod he looked around to orient
himself. “Stasis units in case I decide that’s the only way to
survive. A full access control console. Two chairs fixed to the
floor. Basic supplies in closed storage units. This should be all I
need.”

He sat in one of the chairs, placed Wowseyla
on a marked spot on the console, deployed its view-screen and
keyboard. “With you to take initial command by direct attachment I
can get things going, then the combination of the pod’s signals and
yours should give me override control of all the ship’s systems. I
hope it’s not too late.”

* * *

Svenly and Venrik were at the program edit
room console, Feedle behind them, when Lacrat and Hasley entered.
Eroder was on the view-screen speaking from the helm saying, “We
can all feel relieved now, fellow adventurous Ormelexians. Icetop
and Yelpam have found how to safely deactivate all the
self-destruct devices and have done so. Those far away can no
longer destroy you or the whole ship at their whim.”

Svenly tapped a switch and the image of
Eroder was replaced by Wilburps's view of the parking lot scene
leading up to the explosion when Nerber and the zerpy were
extracted and the image dissolved into chaos. That sequence
repeated in a loop.

“That's a big worry off my mind,” Hasley
sighed.

“He didn't mention it, but we'll still record
the self-destruct command if they send it,” Venrik pointed out.

“Yeah, that seems like something we'd want to
know even if it doesn't have the intended effect,” Hasley
agreed.

“I say we send on this entire last scene from
the planet surface right way without altering or enhancing,” Feedle
said.

Hasley and Lacrat nodded agreement. Hasley
said, “Give them a thrill too exciting to not show the audience but
that leaves it all hanging in suspense.”

Venrik nodded and touched switches. Svenly
looked up from a small monitor on the console and turned to face
the others and said with a stern look, “You're all fired.” Then she
broke into a big smile. “In fact we're all fired. Word just came
through. A.D.U. informed the
Bang-Boom
home office that the
show is cancelled effective immediately. They wash their hands of
us.”

“Did they give us that word in proper legal
form?” Hasley asked, leery of celebrating too soon.

“Yes, the home office emphasized that it's
all legal and definite,” Svenly confirmed.

All the producers jumped in the air and
happily flapped their feet.

As she continued to monitor an arriving
message Svenly added, “A.D.U. made a big point that they'll make no
further payments to our company and have no financial or other
obligations to the survivors of any who died making the show.”

“That last not a surprise but a claim worth
fighting about in court to set a precedent,” Hasley said.

“Hey, everyone, there's more,” Svenly called
out.

“Good stuff or bad?” Lacrat asked warily.

Svenly replied, “It doesn’t sound good to me
but I may not know all the implications. They say that from the
moment they delivered their notice of the change our company will
be charged for the use of all equipment, including this ship, at a
rate they get to unilaterally decide. So whether we get home safely
or not
Bang-Boom
will owe them a huge amount of money.”

“That seems to me like strong motivation to
make them squirm and then make them beg for forgiveness,” Feedle
growled.

Venrik tapped a button several times as he
watched the display on a monitor then said, “Nerber brought some of
the confusion up with him. He supposedly went to his quarters but
almost immediately the routine monitoring system in that area went
fritzerish
. Not a real problem, just another example of how
unreliable this ship is.”

“Don’t worry about him,” Feedle said. “He’s
back and, even more importantly, the zerpy with all its recorded
material is back. Nerber needs some time to get over being scared
so much for so long.”

“Especially knowing so much of it was being
done to him on purpose and without regard for his mental health,”
Venrik added in a tone that left his attitude about this fact
unclear and without looking at anyone to clarify that.

After a moment of hesitation as they
considered the implications of the tech’s words and tone the others
refocused on other things.

* * *

In the security pod Nerber examined the data
on the console monitor screen. “The initial scan finds that the
connection is established as I expect but the ship’s control
programs are in worse shape than I hoped I’d find.” He tapped a
command sequence into Wowseyla’s keyboard. “I need you at full
working capacity Wowseyla so I’ll free up more of your memory space
by downloading a lot of the stored images to the pod’s even
big-bigger memory. There I’ll store two copies to have a backup for
security. If all else fails the new programs I’ve loaded into it
will increase the chances of the pod reaching and going through the
snaggiewarp even if nothing else does. The pod’s emergency beacon
signals are to get it noticed and retrieved when it gets anywhere
near home. Then someone can see what I learned and experienced
here. I downloaded the important memories from Wilburps at the last
moment so those would be available for examination too. Good, I’ve
cleared your head of that stuff, now see what you can make of this
mess.” He entered commands on the pod keyboard, then entered others
via Wowseyla’s keyboard. He sat back to watch and wait. He was far
from at ease.

* * *

In the program edit room Svenly directed
everyone's attention to a screen section where Eroder appeared
speaking from the helm. “You'll all be happy to hear that Yelpam
thinks they've identified the damaged engine parts. Icetop says
that if we land and shut the main engines down for a short time
they can probably fix the problem. Then we can go home with
reasonable confidence, not just hope to limp home with minimum
facilities.”

“Do we have to land on the planet?” Hasley
asked.

“No.
Zebedee
seems to be smiling on
us. We're lucky because we seem to have everything on board that
we'll need to fix what they've identified as the non-working parts
so a spot on this moon will be okay. I have full confidence in the
techs but protocol requires me to say that this conclusion assumes
that they've correctly identified the problem.”

Hasley said, “You're in charge of the ship,
Eroder. Let us know when and if we're gonna make some major move so
we can be sure the orbiting zerpy will record it.”

“Right. We're considering two potential
landing spots.”

“News just in,” Svenly announced. “A.D.U.
fired our company and legally cut all connection to us a while ago
and just now they signaled us all to self-destruct. Oh, and the
Power Players are dumping them.”

Hasley smiled. “It's a whole new game. If we
survive the next short time we're at the controls of a blockbuster
show.”

Eroder said, “Here goes everything, guys. We
are descending and deploying the camouflage system.”

Venrik tapped a switch and the whole
view-screen image changed to a view of the back side of the moon
and
Whizybeam
. The image then zoomed in on the ship as it
dropped close to the moon's surface toward the upper polar area,
then deployed an energy-based visual umbrella that covered it so it
was much harder to recognize against the lunar surface.

“Looks good to me,” Feedle said. “Or more
precisely doesn’t look like anything of interest or out of
place.”

The image zoomed out to a view from a higher
orbit from which it nicely showed an NASA unmanned lunar satellite
as that circled around the edge of the moon in an equatorial
plane.

“I'm monitoring its detectors. It doesn't see
anything unusual,” Svenly said in a tense whisper. “Its image
capturing system only records a strip of the surface on each orbit
and, as our guys calculated, we're beyond the current strip.”

“The controls are programmed and ready,”
Eroder announced.

The screen image zoomed in on the lunar
satellite.

“Each time their device goes around to the
other side we move to a spot where it won't see us next time,”
Eroder said.

“While our one orbiting zerpy records this
view and the other one records the messages to and from their
device and among the tense masses on the surface waiting for
reports from that machine,” Feedle noted with satisfaction. “When
we get home safe we'll have more than enough material for the best
show in Pacification By Distraction With Entertainment
history.”

“All we have to do is get home safely,”
Hasley said.

Eroder said, “Forgive my interruption but the
techs are signaling that the engines are fixed. We can recover the
orbiting zerpies and head home at your go-ahead.”

Hasley, Feedle, and Lacrat shouted in unison,
“Go-ahead!”

With nothing more noticeable to those onboard
than a little lurch,
Whizybeam
rose off the lunar surface,
made a curving sweep during which it retrieved the two orbiting
zerpies on the fly without even slowing down, then shot into deep
space on a direct path that would keep it behind the moon long
enough for that orb to block any detection systems on the Earth
surface monitoring for such movements.

As the ship traveled through the vastness
Hasley noted, “As far as they know on Ormelex we no longer
exist.”

“Until we break our radio silence when we're
close enough to send messages to the rival companies offering the
new show to the highest bidder now that we totally own it since
A.D.U. legally divorced us,” Feedle chuckled.

“We make sure to share the wealth with all
our employees and we all prosper with minimum risk of being
undercut by sneaky-sneaks like ourselves,” Lacrat added as a
reminder.

“I'll go through all the recordings to see
what we have before I recommend how we can stretch it to maximize
its value,” Feedle said.

“If we can set a new model for actually
interesting entertainment, the whole planet will benefit,” Lacrat
said.

“That'd give us more clout with the governors
to go along with our new wealth,” Hasley agreed.

“We really have figured all the angles and
hit a streak of best-most luck,” Feedle said feeling very
self-satisfied.

“That last message to the
Bang-Boom
home office should keep them hopeful of our return no matter what
the official news so they'll continue to pay our contacts for
insider recordings. I can hardly wait to see what's happening at
A.D.U. and the Power Players right now,” Hasley said with a
smirk.