Maverick

“How’d you manage that little feat?” Derec asked.

SilverSides hung her head and looked at Derec with big puppy-dog eyes. “Er, actually I, uh, told them that the spirit of the FirstBeast was coming down from the sky, and that you two were only his representatives, not worth fighting. They’ve gone back to their dens to fetch their best weapons and prepare for a glorious battle. ”

“All right,” Avery said. “One crisis at a time. Derec, have the city supervisors managed to find Aranimas’s ship yet?”

Derec activated his commlink for the barest moment. “Yes. They’re setting up a giant viewscreen in the atrium. Speaking of which-” He turned to SilverSides. “Uh, SilverSides? As you might remember, the Central Hall security robots are specifically programmed to seek out and destroy you in this form. ”

“Oh. Right. ” With a shrug and a shudder, the robot invoked its shape-changing abilities. By the time they reached the top of the slidewalk, Adam was back as a silver copy of Derec.

Gamma 6 greeted them as they came off the slidewalk and escorted them past the security robots and into Central Hall. Alpha and Beta were in the atrium, supervising the last details of setting up the giant screen. As they crossed the cold terrazzo floor of the cavernous room, Adam sped up a bit to catch up with Avery.

“Friend Avery,” Adam said softly, with a hint of embarrassment in his voice. “I just wanted to assure you that I no longer feel confrontational. My earlier behavior was a side-effect of the SilverSides imprint, and I now realize that my thinking was in serious error. It will not happen again. ”

“Friend Adam,” Avery replied, every bit as softly, “that was your last mistake. I’m still packing the laser. Screw up again and you’re slag. ”

“I understand. ”

A few moments later they entered the atrium and came to a halt before Central’s main I/O console. The hall lights dimmed slightly, and the giant viewscreen flared to life.

“We have located the Erani ship,” Beta said. The viewscreen took a dizzying swing through the local starfield and came to rest on a misshapen yellowish blob. Magnification jumped, and the by-now-familiar profile of Aranimas’s ship appeared. “In accordance with your request, we have sca

“That’s an ancient Terran dump ship,” Avery whispered. “They used to load them up with nuclear waste and fire them into their sun. Where the blazes did he find one of those?”

“From the angle of approach and the condition of the hull,” Beta went on, “we have concluded that the dump ship is not capable of powered flight. ” The starfield disappeared to be replaced by a colorful graphic showing the planet’s surface and two diverging flight paths. Cartoon spacecraft moved as Beta spoke. “ Analysis indicates that the Erani intend to dive in at a steep angle, jettison the dump ship, and then use their planetary drives to veer off into a cometary orbit. The dump ship will make a simple unguided ballistic entry and strike the planet’s surface, creating a dead zone approximately one hundred kilometers in diameter. ”

“So much for evacuating the city on foot,” Adam noted.

Derec took a step forward and looked closely at the dump ship’s flight path. “Won’t it burn up in the atmosphere?”

“Owing to the steep angle of entry,” Beta said, “we compute that more than 70 percent of the ship’s mass will reach the planet’s surface intact. If the ship burns faster than we project, it will only increase the dispersion of the nuclear material and the size of the dead zone. ”

A different thought was nagging at Avery. “Unguided ballistic entry? What are the odds of a complete miss?”

“Negligible. We compute that this method of attack has a potential targeting error of as much as ten kilometers, which still puts the city well within the dead zone. This calculation, of course, is based on the assumption that the dump ship is released at the optimum time. ”

“Which is?”

“ At the veer-off point, exactly twenty-three minutes and fifteen seconds from now. ”

Avery nodded. “I see. And if the ship is released early, the margin of error increases?”

“At an exponential rate,” agreed Beta.

“Then we can assume that they’ll stay on course until they drop. ” Avery turned to the group and rubbed his hands together. “Okay, gang, that’s it in a nutshell. We have twenty-three minutes to find a way to either evacuate the city, speed up the planet’s rotation, or force Aranimas to delay the drop. ”

Derec wrinkled his nose. “Huh?”

“Deflection shootin’,” Wolruf said. “Why d’ya think ‘ur seein’ ‘is ship in profile? ‘E’s aimin’ for where ‘e expects us t’ be in a ‘alf an ‘our. ”

“Right,” Avery agreed. “ And if we can force Aranimas to delay the drop by even a few seconds-”

“-He’ll have to veer off, and the planet’s rotation will carry us past his aiming point,” Derec completed. “The ship will strike somewhere off to the east. ”

Beta spoke up. “I feel obliged to point out that the result will still be an ecological disaster. ”

“Perhaps,” Adam said. “However, the bulk of the population from the eastern lakes country is now gathered in this city. Far more kin will survive if the ship strikes elsewhere. ”

“The greatest good for the greatest number,” Beta said, nodding. “This conforms to our programming. ”

“I’m glad you approve,” Avery said, as he pushed himself between the two robots. “Now if you don’t mind, we now have twenty-two minutes to come up with a brilliant idea. ”

The group fell silent as each of them lost him- or herself in private thoughts. Adam’s face began to reform, and he took on a somewhat canine aspect. Eve began to grow wing webbing between her arms and her body. Wolruf absent-mindedly scratched her ears.

Derec scowled at his shoes and chewed on a thumbnail. “A pity these robots never built a Key Center,” he said at last. “If we had enough keys, we could just teleport the whole population out of danger. ”

Beta’s eyes flared brighter. “We may not have built a mass-production center, but we did build a small prototyping facility. How many keys would be sufficient?”

Derec looked at Adam. “About five hundred,” the robot said.

Beta’s eyes dimmed. “We have six. ”

Derec looked at his shoes again, then raised a finger. “Okay, next idea: How about if we use those keys to teleport six robots onto Aranimas’s ship, with instructions to find and sabotage the drop controls?”

Avery answered with a sneer more eloquent than words. “These robots? They’re more likely to decide that the Erani are human and start following their orders. ”

Derec fell silent and retreated into his dark scowl.

Long moments dragged past, and then Wolruf looked up. “ ‘Ere’s an idea. Aranimas doesn’t ‘ave any automatics; all ‘is controls are manual. ‘Ow ‘bout we strap a key t’ one of those giant lizards and teleport it onto ‘is bridge? That ought t’ keep ‘im busy. ”

Avery shook his head. “Wouldn’t work. Takes two key presses to teleport; one to get to Perihelion and another to leave Perihelion and get to wherever you’re going. ” Avery paused, and his eyes widened. “But say, here’s an idea-Beta, is it absolutely necessary for someone’s finger to be pressing the teleport button?”

“If you wish to teleport, you must be in physical contact with the key. ”

“No, I mean, if you wanted to send the key on ahead without you. ”

Beta’s eyes flickered as he considered the problem. “A switch is a switch, “ he a