Pulling himself back from the edge, Derec turned to Avery and Wolruf, who were still staring at him with confused looks on their faces. “Dad, can we put the civil war on hold for a while? We’ve got a real problem. ”
Chapter 24. The Weapons Shop
Derec gave Avery and Wolruf a full update on the situation as they traveled to the Compass Tower. For a few minutes Avery held out the hope that Aranimas was bluffing, but Wolruf only shook her head.
“ ‘E never lied an’ e’ never laughed,” she said. “Don’ think ‘e’s got it in ‘im to bluff. “
Eve caught up with them just before they entered the tower. “I still can’t locate Lucius,” Eve reported. “I did manage to raise Mandelbrot, though. He said that half a dozen younglings broke off from the mob and tried to seize the ship, but someone named BlackMane kicked the stuffings out of them. The ship is secure and Ariel is unhurt. ”
Avery raised an eyebrow and looked at Derec. “Then we still have a back door. ”
Derec looked disgusted. “It’s our fault that Aranimas is here. I won’t leave the kin to pay for our mistake. ”
Avery nodded. “Right decision. I was just testing. ”
Derec’s face flushed red to the roots of his blond hair. “Will you kindly knock it off with this testing crap? Every time I turn around you’re testing, testing, testing! I am sick to death of being tested!”
“Sorry. ” Avery shrugged. “It’s a character flaw. ”
SilverSides caught up with the four of them as they started up the slidewalk to Central Hall. “Well, I’ve persuaded the mob to disperse,” she announced cheerfully as she bounded onto the slidewalk behind them.
“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 scanned the ship for radioactive emissions. This area,” Beta used a red laser pointer to pick out one battered hull on the underside of the ship, “appears to contain a significant amount of plutonium, as well as other dangerously radioactive materials. ”
“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. ”