Timberlake pulled his board close to obey.
Bickel swung the AAT board to his side, keyed for ship systems/computer control, began feeding coded demands into the core recorders. What had the ship encountered that might explain that brutal deflection? What had the automatic sensors recorded?
The responders began kicking out tape almost immediately - much too fast.
"Data error," Flattery said, reading the output over Bickel's shoulder.
In abrupt fury, Bickel pulled the master override stop from his core switch, jammed a set of jumper jacks across the AAT controls, opened the core system for standard reference comparison.
"You are into the core!" Flattery said, his voice sharp with fear. "You have no guide fuse or master reference. You could louse up the command routines."
"Unhook that!" Timberlake shouted, lifting his head from the cocoon clamps to glare across at Bickel.
"Shut up, both of you. Sure, the core is delicate, but something in there is already loused up - bad enough to kill us."
"You think you have time to check some eight hundred thousand routines?" Timberlake demanded. "Don't talk nuts!"
"There are specific injunctions against what you are doing," Flattery said, fighting to keep his voice reasonable. "And you know why."
"Don't try to tell me my job," Bickel said.
While he spoke, Bickel rolled over core memory responders, direct contact, doing it gently to avoid current backlash.
"You make one mistake," Timberlake said, "and it would take six or seven thousand technicians with a second master system and several thousand imprint relays to repair the damage. Are you ready to -"
"Stop distracting me!"
"What are you looking for?" Flattery asked, interested in spite of his fear. He had realized that Bickel, conditioned to deep inhibitions against turning back, was incapable of doing anything to deprive them of one of their basic tools.
"I'm checking availability of peripherals from the core memory," Bickel said. "There's got to be a bypass or pileup somewhere. It'll show in the acquisition and phase-control loops of the input." He nodded toward a diagnostic meter on his board. "And here we are!" The meter's needle slammed against its pin, fell back to zero, stayed there.
Slowly, Bickel ordered a master diagnostic routine into direct contact, put the core standard back on fused auxiliary, began rolling the troublesome core-memory section. Working with only occasional references to the core standard, he forced the routine through the data-reference channels as modified by new sensor input.
Error branchings began clicking from his responders. Bickel translated aloud as the code figures appeared on the screen above his board.
"Core memory/prediction region rendered inactive. Proton mass and scatter relative to ship course/mass/speed did not agree with prediction."
Aside, Bickel said, "We're hitting something other than hydrogen and hitting it in unexpected concentrations - partly because of our speed/mass figure."
"Solar winds," Timberlake whispered. "They said we -"
"Solar winds, hell!" Bickel said. "Look at that." He nodded at a code grouping as it worked its way across the screen.
"Twenty-six protons in the mass," Timberlake said.
"Iron," Bickel said. "Free atoms of iron out here. We're getting a plain old-fashioned magnetic deflection of the grav field."
"We'll have to slow the ship," Timberlake said.
"Nuts!" Bickel was emphatic. "We'll put a fused overload breaker in the G system. I don't see why the devil the designers didn't do that in the first place."
"Perhaps they couldn't conceive of any force large enough to deflect the system," Flattery said.
"No doubt," Bickel's voice was heavy with disgust. "But when I think a simple cage switch with a weight in it could have prevented Maida's death..."
"They depended on the OMC's reflexes, too," Flattery said. "You know that."
"What I know is they thought in straight lines when they should've been thinking in the round," Bickel said.
He unlocked his safety cocoon, shifted his suit to portable, launched himself diagonally across Com-central to the Tool and Repair hatch. The weightless drifting reminded him they had a time limit on returning to gravity conditions. Too long without gravity and the crew would suffer permanent physical damage.
CHAPTER 7
I considered the being whom I had cast among mankind and endowed with the will and power to effect purposes of horror... A being whom I myself had formed, and endued with life, had met me at midnight among the precipices of an inaccessible mountain.
BICKEL GRABBED A hatch handle to steady himself and swung out the repair traveler. He opened a panel to get at the gravity system, identified the cables, and bent to his work. He went about it silently, angrily, with swift, decisive movements, and all the time he thought about their dilemma.
Iron. Free ions of iron out here?
Possible, but was there a simpler answer to the anomaly, something that would produce an illusory report on their instruments?
Was it possible that some part of the ship's computer/reporting system had been concealed from them, shielded away from their prying? He knew it not only was possible but probable. Why would Moonbase do that?
The complete answer escaped him, but he knew he would have to continue probing for it.
Presently, he had an improvised cage switch clamped into the main power cable into the gravity generator. He made the connections to the breaker, tested the circuits with a false load, replaced the cover plate.
"It'll have to be reset manually each time," he said. He put a foot against the bulkhead, propelled himself back to his couch, locked in, glanced at Timberlake. "System balanced?"
"Near as you can tell from here," Timberlake said. "Give it a try, Raj."
Flattery checked to see that both Timberlake and Bickel were sealed in their cocoons, closed the gravity switch. The sound of the generators building up grew to a faint hiss that subsided as the system stabilized. Flattery felt the pressure against his shoulder blades, reached up to the board, slowly refined Timberlake's settings.
"Tim," Bickel said, "I want the schematics for the OMC chamber - every sensor tie coded for function - and laid out in layers from gross to fine. I'll need the same thing for servo control, a complete -"
"Why?" Timberlake asked.
"Are you thinking of tying in a colonist's brain?" Flattery demanded, trying to hide his feelings of outrage at the idea.
"A mature human brain probably wouldn't survive such a transfer," Timberlake said. And he felt shame at how much the thought had appealed to him. Every inhibition of his training cried out against such a move. But if the OMC system were restored, none of them here ever again would have to undergo the nerve-crushing responsibility of that Com-central master board. He looked up at the live green arrow denoting that Flattery had the controls, felt himself go clammy with fear at the thought of that arrow swinging back to his position.
"What the hell!" Bickel snapped. "Where'd you two get that idea? Not from anything I said." He lifted his head from the cocoon clamps, looked from Timberlake to Flattery. "We don't know what happened to our three perfect brains. Why the devil'd I want to tie in an untested one?" He sank back. "It's impossible anyway. A man should have some say in what's done to him. How could we poll everyone in the hyb tanks? We can't wake them all."
"You thinking of dismantling the OMC controls and converting us to a closed ecological system?" Flattery asked. "If you are, you should -"
He broke off as the high-pitched hummm-buzzz-hummmm of the AAT receiver filled the room, alerting them that a message was being processed.