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sure what that is. Me, now that you sprung me, I'm the most dangerous living
creature in the known universe. Don't worry you all are safe, unless I'm
desperate. I
kind of like this game, and I want to play it out."
"What are you babbling about, old woman?" Manka Warlock asked impatiently.
"You'll see, Stone Head. You'll all see when I'm ready. Until then, let's play
this out. First we got to get out there, where it's too big to find even some
worlds. Then we'll talk about your rings and your Master System. Then I'll
tell you how we're gonna get 'em."
The ship increased speed and turned inward toward the Earth, a course it would
keep until it passed out of Outerbelt traffic control. Then it would swing
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around at a wide angle, beyond traffic control's reach, and head out past the
asteroids, out to the great giant Jupiter and its quiet graveyard of ancient
monstrous ships.
* * *
"Don't worry, Chief," Arnold Nagy, Chief of Melchior Security, said
consolingly.
"With the amount of brains and talent we get in here, it was bound to happen
sooner or later. Look, it took centuries for somebody to figure out just one
way, and that was with inside help. That way won't work again. I'll settle for
one every few hundred years or so, even if I wish it hadn't happened on my
tour." He paused a moment, thinking. "Of course, the system is still okay.
Those two traitors came in with full Presidium authority and credentials. They
weren't forged. One of the directors is behind this, and you can't really
expect to protect against the top boys. I just wonder why in hell whichever
one he or
she is sent 'em here in the first place. Still, there's no true security
problem as such."
Doctor Isaac Clayben sat at his desk, head in his hands. "No, Arnie, you don't
understand. We've loosed a terrible, horrible threat on the human race, one
that now might be impossible to stop, and we can't even report it."
"Huh? You mean the American Indian with the rings? We fixed that, boss. He's
officially dead, and all he knows with it, back in the swamp of Earth. The
blind girl's a goner, too, officially. Oh, we'll have to report those two
security traitors, but the Vals will cooperate. It'll be a dead or alive
situation.
We've taken care of messes- like that before. Besides, it probably won't even
come to that. Where can they go? They got our marks on 'em they're either
unregistered or they're criminals and that ship can't leave the solar system.
They got no place to go. When the food and water run out, they'll come out and
we'll blow
'em to hell."
Clayben suddenly looked up at the security officer and fixed him with an angry
stare. "I don't care about the rest, but unless you can absolutely blow the
whole ship with Reba Roll on board, it won't matter."
Nagy looked confused. "Koll? Who the hell cares about Koll?"
"Ten years ago we began a set of experiments to see if we could literally beat
the system. The whole system. Master System's control points are based on
retinal patterns, fingerprints, and mindprints. Getting past two out of three
would be easy, once, but we wanted it to be possible repeatedly. The mindprint
looked impossible, but we managed a solution to all three. Something that can
walk through any standard security system as if it wasn't there, come up to
you and have you greet it like it was your own mother, then kill you
and worse. We developed such a being. We made it, and it almost got loose. We
had a classic example of the nightmares of science on our hands. We created a
monster, an inhuman monster that kills to live and is virtually undetectable
by any means.
The original was insane, of course. We weren't concerned with that at the
start."
"What in hell are you talking about, boss?"
"We convinced it that we could destroy it, and we developed methods to
stabilize and control it. Here, under lab conditions, it was possible, which
is why we let it live, but it had to be constantly renewed. One day we would
solve the riddle and be able to do what it does on demand, to create a
superior being that would make Master System impotent.
"I'm not worried about the damned escapees. I know you're right on all the
usual counts, but it is with them, damn it. Even out there, on Earth,
Mars anywhere
without our treatments it will be unrestrained. It's malicious, deadly. It
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will probably kill them all anyway in the end. Then it'll come back for us,
for me and for anybody else in authority. It won't be stopped, and we might
well welcome it through the main port!"
"Huh? You don't mean "
"Yes. Right now it's out there, with them, doing a perfect imitation of the
late
Reba Koll."
13. WALKING ON FIRE [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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