But as he continued looking at it, a new line of thought began to develop in his mind.
Why destroy the Shapieron? As he had just pointed out with great relish to Garuth, a most interesting alteration of the entire perspective had taken place. He had five ships here on Minerva's moon, all-but immobilized and barely carrying the power reserves to transport him and his followers down to Minerva, after which they would be good for nothing more than scuttling in the ocean. But here, hanging as a telescopic image on the screen right in front of him, was a fully self-contained starship, not only equipped with its own on-board power sources and designed for independent operation and endurance, but which had sustained its population of Ganymeans for something like twenty years. They didn't have to go to Minerva as refugees and beggars after all, forced to share their superiority and trade their natural advantages for a place to sleep and scraps from Freskel-Gar's kitchens. With something like the Shapieron, fitted with the weapons he had been about to consign to Minerva's oceans and starship power available to energize them, they would be able to dominate a planet like Minerva within a week.
The more Broghuilio dwelt on the thought, the more it intrigued him. However, like any prospective owner of real estate, he would want to inspect the property himself before deciding his offer and terms. But what kind of unknowns would he be risking, walking into a ship full of Ganymeans from the past that he had no experience of dealing with? Even if they turned out to be as fawning and indisposed toward a fight as Thuriens, he knew nothing about the AI that managed the ship and how it might react. He summoned Estordu across with a motion of his head. "In the days when that ship was built, there was no planetary executive intelligence comparable to VISAR. Is that correct?"
"That is so, Excellency. Full integration was effected later, after the move to Gistar and Thurien."
"So this ZORAC that we heard about while that ship was at Earth. What kind of system is it?"
"The earliest Ganymean starships had integrated control and system management directors that became surprisingly versatile and in fact provided some of the design philosophy later incorporated into VISAR. The Shapieron is probably one of the later models. ZORAC would be an intermediate development between a rudimentary autonomous intelligence and a hyper-parallel distributed architecture of full interstellar capability like VISAR or JEVEX."
"I see." Broghuilio didn't, but the words intended nothing in any literal sense. He stared at the image of the ship again. "What would be the way to go about attaining control of something like that? Does it automatically obey whoever commands the vessel? Or does is develop a more complex allegiance that builds up in some other way over time? What is its mode of operating?"
Estordu followed Broghuilio's gaze and saw which way his thinking was going. He replied, "Please understand that I have no personal experience of such systems, Excellency. But my understanding is that its primary characteristics are those of a multiply connected, self-referential learning hierarchy driving an auto-optimizing emergent associative net." He saw color rising above Broghuilio's collar and explained hastily, "That means that its behavior is shaped more by its experiences than by the initial design parameters. It would most likely have evolved a strong commitment to the present complement of officers and crew-especially so after their long, enforced period of isolation from the familiar spacetime environment."
"Hm." It obviously wasn't the answer that Broghuilio had been hoping for.
Estordu went on, "However…" His tone caused Broghuilio to turn his head. "The system builds itself on an underlying foundation of core directives that cannot be modified, ignored, or overridden. They define its essential design role and character. One of the most fundamental would be that other considerations are subordinated to ensuring the safety and survival of the bioforms that it has formed its principal attachment to. In the present case, such a tendency would have become extremely pronounced. Anything else it might judge to be right or wrong, or as being likely to have preferable consequences in the longer term, would be rendered immaterial. I, er… trust you take my point?"
A gleam of comprehension came into Broghuilio's eyes. "You mean that if it was the only way of protecting the skins of those fossil Ganymeans in there, it would follow our orders? It wouldn't refuse?"
"More than that, Excellency. It couldn't."
"Hm… I see." And this time, Broghuilio really did. Maybe he had a solution to both of his immediate concerns.
He contemplated the image of the Shapieron for a while longer. Before it followed his ships through the tunnel-for that was the only way to explain how it came to be here-it had been conducting a secret deception operation at Jevlen. He didn't imagine that it would be carrying much more than the minimum number of occupants and crew for such a mission. And that suited his purpose well.
Broghuilio moved back to confront the screen connecting him to the Shapieron's Command Deck.
"These are my instructions," Broghuilio said from wherever it was that the Jevlenese were concealed. "You will embark yourself and all occupants of your vessel in auxiliary craft and remove yourselves. I want the ship left available for boarding, with a clear zone around it of fifty miles. Immediately."
Garuth stared at him incredulously.
"We can't," Shilohin whispered beside him. "Look what just happened to the beacons." And the Jevlenese hadn't hesitated before, when they attempted to destroy the Shapieron after its departure from Earth.
"You're insane," Garuth replied. If they wanted the ship, it seemed that the crew would be safer inside it. "Do you think we're going to-"
"You seem to forget that you are not in any position to bargain," Broghuilio cut in. His image shrank to a half screen, the other half showing as a reminder Eesyan, Frenua Showm, Hunt, Danchekker, Monchar, and Garuth's two other officers now being covered by Lambian soldiers with leveled weapons, with Freskel-Gar looking on. "This is no idle threat. Would His Highness confirm?"
"On your order," Freskel-Gar said from the screen.
"Perhaps we'll begin with just one," Broghuilio said.
Garuth found that his mouth had gone dry. His instinctive urge was to call on ZORAC for advice, but he fought it down. This was the commander's decision to make. Staying where he was would mean sacrificing his subordinates and friends for certain-and he could end up losing the ship even then. Complying would possibly be to invite his own demise, in which case what would happen to those down on the surface was unclear. With the latter alternative, nothing was certain. Shilohin seemed to read the further implications too and held back from making things any tougher.
"We must have time," Garuth said.
"I have no time to waste playing games." Broghuilio waved a hand in the direction of the prisoners, indicating the more junior of Garuth's two crew officers. "Have that one step forward."
It was the most agonized and humiliating decision Garuth had ever taken. "Very well," he agreed. "It will be as you say."
The message still showing on Frenda Vesni's desk display in the headquarters of the Cerian Department of Internal Security had come in from an office of the National Aerospace Directorate that operated the satellite tracking stations. The NAD divisional chief who passed it on had appended: I don't know what to make of it. Your call.
The door from the adjoining room opened abruptly and Negrikof came out. "What is this? Calls from talking starships?… Doesn't someone think we have better things to do? There are some really sick people out there, I'm tellin' ya."
Vesni hesitated, biting her lip. "You don't think we should alert the President's Office… as a precaution?"