Jeb Stuart Ho was about to activate his communicator and make contact with his companions, when a small trapdoor flipped open in the surface of the sphere. A short antenna emerged from it. At its tip was what looked like a bundle of sensor lenses. Jeb Stuart Ho glanced round. A small forest of these antennae had sprouted all over the area in which the task force either lay or crouched. The scanners slowly revolved, moving as one. The intruders had been spotted and were obviously being inspected.
After two complete rotations, the antennae withdrew and the trapdoors closed again. For a few moments nothing happened. Jeb Stuart Ho looked at his companions. He spoke into his communicator, but nothing happened. Either it had been damaged in the fall, or something inside the target was interrupting the signal.
He stood up. The rest of the force were unhooking their laser units to start cutting through the outside shell. Abruptly another set of larger trapdoors snapped open. Telescopic stands flashed into position. Mounted on top of them were wide barrelled projectile throwers.
They opened fire, silently flashing in the airless silence. Each one of them turned briskly, spraying self propelled shells through a 360 degree arc. Jeb Stuart Ho tried to push himself down into the unyielding metal. He waited to be hit. After a while, the gunfire stopped. It seemed as though the weapons didn’t have a low enough elevation to hit anyone lying flat on the surface. Jeb Stuart Ho assumed that if that was the case, the rest of the task force would also be unharmed.
The projectile throwers were still in position. Jeb Stuart Ho carefully turned his head. The guns didn’t start firing again. Jeb Stuart Ho suddenly felt like he’d been kicked in the stomach. He saw how wrong he had been. More than three quarters of the brotherhood executives were dead, They hadn’t hit the ground as fast as he had.
The dead were strewn all around him. On one side of him Quang Howard was almost cut in half. On the other lay a figure he could no longer recognize. The clear globe of his helmet was slowly filling up with bloody pink foam. Jeb Stuart Ho looked beyond them, trying to make contact with the survivors. Na Duc Rogers was lying some ten metres away. At first Jeb Stuart Ho thought he was dead, then he saw his head move inside the bubble helmet.
Na Duc Rogers spotted Ho. He raised his hand. A single weapon opened fire. The projectile neatly ripped off his arm just below the elbow. Jeb Stuart Ho watched in horror. The worst thing about it was the all enveloping silence. Na Duc Rogers slowly rolled over and lay still.
Jeb Stuart Ho saw another survivor moving carefully towards him. He was worming his way along the surface, pressing his body flat to avoid triggering the projectile system. It was Lorenzo Binh. He touched helmets with Jeb Stuart Ho so his voice could be heard.
‘The communicators are out.’
Ho nodded.
‘I know that.’
‘What do we do now?’
Jeb Stuart Ho looked at him grimly.
‘We must go on with the task.’
‘But we’re pinned down.’
‘We’re safe as long as we remain flat.’
‘Can we cut through the outer shell in this position?’
‘We can try. Are there no other survivors?’
‘There are two more brothers moving towards us. They’re right behind you, you won’t be able to see them from the position you’re … Oh no.’
Lorenzo Binh’s face contorted in an expression of horror and pain. Jeb Stuart Ho looked at him sharply.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Edgar Allan Piao got it. He raised his head a little and a projectile punctured his helmet.’
Jeb Stuart Ho turned his head grimly. Tom Hoa crawled up beside him. He touched helmets with the other two.
‘Are there just the three of us?’
‘It would appear so.’
Lorenzo Binh glanced round.
‘Wait, there’s someone else coming.’
Lee Harvey Thot joined the other three. Sweat was standing out on his forehead.
‘We are the only ones left. We’re stranded here. We’ve failed before we even started.’
Tears began to stream down his face. Jeb Stuart Ho reached out and gripped his shoulder.
‘Get a hold on yourself, we’re going on with the task.’
‘We can’t, we can’t move.’
‘We will start cutting through the outer shell.’
‘We’ll be killed.’
‘That’s quite possible.’
Jeb Stuart Ho looked round at the other two.
‘We must move round so we are all facing each other.’
They cautiously did as he suggested. Lee Harvey Thot seemed to be more in control of himself. When they were in position, Jeb Stuart Ho unstrapped his laser unit and placed it in front of them.
‘If you each support one side of it, we can keep the cutting aperture pointed at the shell.’
The others nodded and took hold of the squat grey metal unit. Once Jeb Stuart Ho was confident it was in position, he nodded.
‘I’ll switch on now. We’ll have to keep moving round to cut out a section we can crawl through. Is everything clear?’
It was the others’ turn to nod. Jeb Stuart Ho slowly raised his hand to the controls of the laser. The Stuff Central defence system remained silent. He set the laser to maximum cut. Then he pressed the trigger. A pencil of violet light flashed out from beneath it and struck the surface of the blue metal. The metal turned black, then red. Finally it began to smoke and melt. The four black suited figures looked tensely at each other. They had started to cut into Stuff Central.
***
CYN 256 was unaware of the conflict taking place on the outside of the sphere that was Stuff Central. He had no way of knowing. His world was too prescribed, and his sources of information too scanty.
CYN 256 was fully occupied by his own conflict with the Computer. For some twenty work periods he had collected all the sets of figures that had shown up on the printout in his work cubicle, and not felt right to him.
He had gone on carefully dividing them into the three arbitrary categories that he had invented, the ones that seemed to relate to stuff output, to energy and mass intake, and internal operations of the machine. He copied them carefully on to his stolen scrap of paper with the stolen scriber, out of sight of the sensor, in the sanitary unit of his sleep cubicle.
His collection of figures got larger and larger until it threatened to fill up both sides of his paper. CYN 256 knew that he couldn’t simply go on collecting figures for ever. He realized that eventually he would slip up. He would either be detected by the sensors, or his hiding place in the disposal vent for paper and scriber would be discovered.
CYN 256 had expected that if he kept on collecting the figures for long enough, some kind of revelation would come upon him. He would discover meaning in the ambiguities that he sensed instinctively.
He’d collected the figures from twenty work periods, and nothing had become any clearer. He realized that he had to do something drastic. He only had one option left. The only thing he could think of was to feed the material back into the Computer through his work cubicle console, and see how it reacted. CYN 256 realized that there was one major drawback with this plan. The Computer might react by simply killing him.
He delayed the final act for two whole work periods before he could summon up the courage to face the Computer. All his lifelong programming screamed out against it. For as long as he could remember he had been enveloped in the Computer’s all embracing love. His small gesture of rebellion and deceit had been hard enough. To go directly against the intelligence that had always been the central core of his whole existence was almost impossible.