Far-out Show (9781465735829) (58 page)

Then the muzzle jerked down and the weapon
discharged a projectile – twice. One went through each of her feet.
That hurt. And, try as she might, she still couldn’t release the
weapon.

Next, despite Feedle’s resistance, the muzzle
moved smoothly upwards until it was aimed at her head.

“Don’t fire it again, you arrogant fool,”
Lacrat called. “Oh, you’ve pulled the trigger three times but it’s
only fired twice so far. Too bad for you.”

Feedle wanted to defy Nerber and deny him any
satisfaction but she couldn’t move her arms, her hands, her
fingers, or her feet. Now she couldn’t even shout out her wishes
for bad things to happen to Nerber and everyone else on the ship,
if not in the whole universe.

“It’s safe now, Eroder,” Nerber said. “As
captain it’s your call but I recommend that the techs take these
three and put them in their separate quarters. I’ll make sure no
one else can release them until the ship reaches Ormelex.”

Eroder strode to Feedle where he found he
could easily take the weapon from her hands. She found that that
didn’t free her to move though. Molten collected the other weapons
from the floor and put all of them in a storage space for now.

“Me, I’m willing to leave dealing with them
to the governors,” Nerber said. “They have a lot of lies and
cheating to answer for. My punishment of them will be to
out-compete them and force them out of business. Gotta make some
choices here.” The screen image disappeared.

Hasley and Lacrat stared at Feedle, worried
but also fascinated to see what would happen when, and if, she got
back her mobility.

Eroder had a whispered conference with the
four techs before Biccup hurried from the room while Molten and
Yelpam led Hasley and Lacrat out to take them to their
quarters.

Feedle could move her head even if she
couldn’t walk or even talk. She glared defiantly at Eroder who
ignored her while he checked the status of things on the console.
Icetop came over to stand behind Eroder to also look for system
troubles.

Being ignored was infuriating for Feedle and
nobody cared.

At a signal tone, Biccup appeared on the
view-screen from the transport room. He said, “She’s in the
system’s grasp, Captain. When you’re ready.”

Eroder swiveled around in his chair to face
Feedle and said, “You get to choose, Feedle. You can walk to your
quarters without causing trouble or Biccup will attempt to move you
there using the transport system. We have only limited experience
using it to move guys around inside the ship but I’m confident the
system can disassemble you for transport. Whether it can reassemble
you anywhere will be a test. If you don’t make it back maybe you’ll
find and offer greetings to Zipper in the land of the disassembled.
I’m not sure he’ll give you a friendly greeting but that’s part of
the experiment only you will know about.”

Feedle shook herself all over as she felt a
tingle and found she could move. She started aggressively toward
Eroder – then quickly faded from sight.

Eroder and Icetop waited for news.

Biccup looked up from the transport console
and said, “She’s in her room. Eventually we’ll find out whether
that did her any harm.”

“But for now we have important things to
worry about,” Eroder said. He pushed a button on the console and
broadcast his alert through the ship. “
Mitzelfinkeldork!
Fellow travelers, this looks bad. All techs to control stations.
Everybody else, grab something firmly fixed and hold tight. Nerber,
we really, really need to talk-talk.”

Nerber immediately appeared on the
view-screen from inside the pod. He said, “I’m seeing what you’re
seeing so I know it’s an emergency. In fact it’s what I been trying
to outrun. Wowseyla has laid out a path around the problem areas
and I’m reviewing those as fast as I can. The guys at A.D.U. just
sent the signal to have us all
smotheroodled
– but I see
that your techs cut the ship’s self-destruct unit out of the
original chain of commands so that won’t happen the way they
expect. But...”

“I don’t like a
but
right there,”
Eroder said.

“With good reason. Their self-destruct signal
now went where it was never intended to and that change may do us
in slowly instead. The
discer prumous
who wrote that
sub-routine - and I know who he is, a fidgemit at PHEW – should
neprist oglimp vinx crupsmimp
even if he was just following
orders.”

“It’s good to vent and all, Nerber, but can
you fix it?”

“Oh, I see, that’s what’s happening.
Wintzerph dinky dork?
But that I can deal with. The
self-destruct activation signal started a command cascade in the
uninvited zerpy. Fortunately that shares programming with Wowseyla
so my zerpy can understand what’s happening inside theirs.”

“Great, great, but can you fix it and
fast?”

“Wow, things are going to bad really fast
aren’t they.”

“Thank you for refocusing on that fact,”
Eroder said.

“Give me total control. Don’t block
anything,” Nerber shouted.

“Reluctantly we’re in your hands,” Eroder
said.

“Okay, that problem’s dealt with,” Nerber
said.

“What did you do?” Eroder asked.

Biccup came into the communication and said,
“Somehow he got that strange zerpy to release its hold and then he
immediately used the transport system to eject it from the ship.
That was definitely a
pomidipser quidniffop
. If we survive
that is.”

Icetop leaned over Eroder for a better look
at a console monitor and said, “The ejected zerpy just stopped
being intact. Probably due to its self-destruct unit. There’s not
much left for the inhabitants to examine even if they saw that and
come to search that area.”

“It had to go because the changes forced on
it made it impossible to permanently disable its self-destruct unit
which was powerful enough to destroy the whole ship,” Nerber said.
His voice made it clear he was busy entering code and pushing
buttons as fast as he could go.

“With that danger gone can we stop and repair
the engines and the command programs before we enter the
snaggiewarp, Nerber? We should have time to turn everything off and
double-check the programs before we reboot. I’d feel a lot safer
then,” Eroder said.

“It’s not that simple,” Nerber said. “Check
what I just sent you.”

“That can’t be right,” Icetop said. “We
shouldn’t be that close to the snaggiewarp already.”

“It’s accurate,” Nerber said. “All those
changes piled up together have us moving faster than we expected.
In fact faster than we thought possible with these engines. But
that’s because the default command programs were making the engines
as inefficient as every other system. Now they’re exceeding their
listed capacity – which was also deliberately misrepresented.”

“Sorry, Nerber, but as captain of this ship I
insist on taking command and making the decisions. I understand
that you’ve been helping and I appreciate it but things are too far
out of line now. We need to slow down and proceed with caution. I
demand the return of full control. We have to be more certain we
can withstand the strains of passing through the snaggiewarp.”

“That’s what I’m working on. To make you
grasp the reality I’m releasing partial controls to you. Everything
you should need to try to slow, turn, or stop the ship,” Nerber
said.

“You’ve scared me with that,” Eroder
admitted.

“
Splinkflert!
We’re definitely too
close and going too fast this time. There’s no way we can stop now.
We’re being sucked in,” Icetop gasped.

“What happens now?” Eroder asked, his fear
evident.

“I boot the changed command programs and we
all hold tight. Captain, I’ve given you back the control so you can
set off the ship’s self-destruct unit and all the personal ones if
you decide that’s called for. You get to make the final decisions
if I’ve made a big-big mistake about all this technical stuff.”

The ship shook for several seconds. The
lights went on and off, then came on and stayed on.

“
Whatsydoodle
!” Biccup said.

“
Wimpledimples!
” Icetop said, then let
out a
beechens
.

“Nerber, you get the
vipsig mermin
in
my opinion,” Eroder said. “Things are stabilizing. System after
system is falling back into the normal function range. You saved
us!”

“Now I’m giving you back control of
everything except this pod. We’re too close to the snaggiewarp to
do much except go for the ride but now you have at least the basic
controls to get us through that safely. Then you techs can take all
the time you want to review all the programs and decide what can be
improved on and what should be cut out entirely. I expect that the
governors will want a complete and detailed report. This is, after
all, actually their hardware and they’ll want to consult with those
who did that about the alterations they made in the control systems
before it set off on this mission to make entertainments for the
masses.”

“You’re not coming out of the security pod
now that it’s safe from all those dangers?” Eroder asked.

“We have back full controls, Captain,” Icetop
said.

“I have work to do that I can do best in
here. I also know too much about a lot of things and guys to be
trusting,” Nerber said. “I can’t even guarantee there are no deeply
hidden traps in the control systems that might still mess
everything around as someone’s final solution to a complex problem
like having a group of guys know too much about a bunch of behind
the scenes stuff. I’ve sent you all of Wowseyla’s analyses and
suggested solutions. Get the guys busy going over them to see if
there are potential problems to be ready for in case those things
happen.”

“Okay, but I’m confident that we have smooth
going now. Well, you know what I mean. As smooth as it can be going
through the rough and tumble of the snaggiewarp,” Eroder said.

“
Fampfuzzle
! It doesn’t make sense
that they’d program this to happen but it looks like they did,”
Icetop said.

The ship began to vibrate, then to wobble.
The lights went out and stayed out.

“This isn’t stupid, it’s deliberate
sabotage,” Icetop said.

“This does not look good,” Eroder said.

“Stay tuned, folks,” Nerber said.

Then there was silence.