The Computer Connection

“What is the bad news?” the Greek asked.

“Wait, please.”

“How did you get it?” I asked.

“Not now, Glig. Be patient.”

We followed him to the antique art moderne hall where a stockholders’ meeting was in progress. Long table up front inhabited by a line of board brass. A hundred-odd fat-cat stockholders in the audience facing them, all with plugs in their ears transmitting the translation of their choice.

A vice-president-in-charge-of-accounting-type was on his feet with display projections alongside him while he talked statistics, which has never been the language of my choice. The displays weren’t the old graphs as I used to know them; they were all cartoon animations — butterflies smoking pipes, frogs wearing beards, crocodiles playing croquet, elephants doing a schottische. A smile on every cartoon face. An upbeat report.

“Would you like me to take over now?” Poulos asked quietly.

“Not yet, but thank you for being here.” Sequoya remained standing while the report finished. We stood behind him, wondering what he was going to do.

“Be seated, Dr. Guess,” the chairman called, and the Chief, still standing, launched a cold attack on the chairman, the board, and the R D division of U-Con for refusing to fund the new cryonaut research. It was news to the stockholders. It was news to us. The cold savagery of the attack was appalling.

“Dr. Guess, we have not yet a

“But I know it is your decision. Can you deny it? No.” And he continued his icy denunciation. He sounded like a professor contemptuous of a class of illiterate students.

“This is not the way to negotiate such matters,” Poulos whispered. “He should know better. What is wrong with him?”

“I don’t know. It’s not like him.”

“Can you stop him and let me take over?”

“N way.”

The Chief’s indictment of the board ended and then he electrified the meeting by continuing with personal attacks on each board member. Acidly, he described their private lives, their sins of commission and omission, their lurid corruptions. It sounded like a résumé of ten years of secret investigation.

“Where did he get all this?” I whispered to the Syndicate.

He made a face. “All I know is that he is turning them into deadly enemies, the last thing he should do.”

“Is anything he’s saying true?”

“To be sure. You have only to look at their faces. And that only makes it worse.”

“This is a disaster.”

“Not for I.G. Farben. It means we get him by default.”

Sequoya concluded his polemic, turned, and stalked out, Poulos and I following meekly like the tribe following their chief. I was depressed and angry. The Greek was elated.

“Capsule,” Sequoya ordered.

“Just a minute, Fearless Leader. Why in hell did you ask Poulos and me to come to JPL with you?”

He looked at me i

“You know damned well what’s wrong. You burned the board and turned them into enemies. You didn’t need us for that.”

“I did?”

“You damn fool did.”

“But I was speaking reasonably, logically, wasn’t I?”

“You were—”

“Allow me, Guig,” the Greek interrupted. “Dr. Guess, can you recall everything you said?”

“Of course.”

“And in your opinion, as a man of the world, was it calculated to win friendly cooperation from U-Con?”

Geronimo thought hard. Then his face broke into a grin of shame. “R, as usual, Group. I did make a damn fool of myself. I don’t know what possessed me. My apologies. Now let’s see what we can salvage from the wreckage. We’ll have a look at the cryonauts.”

He led the way. I glanced at the Syndicate and he was as perplexed as I was. One minute a monster; the next an angel. What was going on inside him?

Fee-5 was waiting for us in the landing theater at the edge of the pad where the capsule was sitting on its ass, no doubt wondering why there was no pitch, roll, and yaw.

“Fee. Alert,” the Chief snapped.

“What, Chief?”

“Report.”

“The capsule is increasing in weight by 180 grams an hour.”

“Verify.”

“I had the techs install a light balance.”

“How do you know about light balances? That’s topsec information.”

“I picked up bugs.”

Sequoya smiled and patted her cheek. “Y. I should have known. Fee-5 Grauman’s Treasure. Ta. Now let’s see; that would come to four kilos a day or — What?”

“I didn’t say anything.”

He motioned her for silence and listened. “Oh, all right. Four point three two kilos a day. I wish you’d been programmed for round numbers. Let’s call it nine pounds. Three per cryonaut. In fifty days each cryonaut will weigh 150 pounds, in round numbers.”

“What weight did they start at?” I asked.

“One-fifty, Guig.”

“So where does that leave us?”

“Us?” he snapped. “How did you get into the scene?”

“Sorry. Just trying to help.”

“It leaves me with the problem of examining their development. I’ve got to get into a thermal suit.” He turned and strode out of the theater.

“What’s the matter with him, anyway?” Fee asked in bewilderment. “He sounds like two people.”

“He is not himself,” the Greek said. “He is upset because U-Con refused his request for R D financing.”

“N!”

“Y.”

“That’s awful.”

“Indeed not. I will support him.”

“But why should he take it out on me?”

“He is human, my dear.”

“You should have heard him taking it out on the Board of Directors,” I said.

“He sounds like he hates everybody, all of a sudden.”

“My dear, not to worry. He will return to himself again when you are working happily with your capsule on Ceres.”

A figure entered wearing a white thermal suit. Instead of the ordinary faceplate on the helmet it had a pair of binocular microscope lenses before the eyes. It looked like something out of The Rover Girls. The Chief, of course. He motioned sharply to the hatch of the capsule and Fee opened it. He climbed in and closed it behind him. We waited. It seemed to me that I’d been spending a hell of a lot of time waiting lately, but when you’ve got all time, why complain?

Half a dozen techs came into the theater pushing a floater loaded with tanks of compressed helium. They shouldered us away from the capsule.

“What are you doing here?” Fee demanded.

“Orders from the Board, miz. We got to move it. Bert, start the gas recharge.”

“R.”

“Move it? The capsule? Why? Where?”

“Exobio Section, miz. We don’t ask why. Hulio.”

“Y.”

“Get on the console. Be ready to lift her with the vertical jets. Then we’ll walk her.”

“R.”

“But you can’t. Dr. Guess is in there.”

“Got enough gas for everybody, miz. He’ll enjoy the ride. Bert.”

“Y.”

“Recharged?”

“Y.”

“Hulio.”

“Y.”

“Lift her about a foot and hold at that level.”

“She don’t start.”

“What d’you mean?”

“Lights don’t go.”

Fee was attacking by now and it took two techs to hold her.

“You flip all the right switches, Hulio?”

“Y. She don’t start.”

“Can you get the console going for us, miz?”

Fee replied with language she could only have learned in the fifth row (orchestra) of Grauman’s Chinese. The capsule hatch swung open and the monster from outer space emerged. It locked the hatch and pulled off its helmet. “By God!” the Chief exclaimed. “By God! Victory!”

“Doctor,” Fee cried. “They’re trying to take the capsule away. The Board told them to.”

“Now, now, darling, stop straggling. The console won’t function until I unlock it. You men: Go back to the Board and tell them that I’m in control. Complete control. Go.”

The quality of command. The techs looked at each other helplessly and shambled out. Fee, Poulos, and I looked at each other helplessly, waiting for a volunteer to start asking questions. Edward Curzon, naturally.