 
Characters From the Flight of the Maita Series

A collection of shorts featuring each of the continuing characters in the series.

Featuring Z:

Featuring Thing:

Featuring the Golems:

Featuring Tab/TR:

Featuring Kit/T6:

Featuring Kurk:

Smashwords edition © 2013 by C. D. Moulton

all rights reserved: no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, either electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any other information retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright holder/publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblances to persons, living or dead, or events is purely coincidental unless otherwise stated.

About the author

CD Moulton has traveled extensively over much of the world both in the music business, where he was a rock guitarist, songwriter, and arranger and in an import/export business. He has been everything from a bar owner to auto salvage (junkyard) manager, longshoreman to high steel worker. He started writing books in 1983 and has published more than 200 books as of January 1, 2013. His most popular books to date are about research with orchids, though much of his science fiction and fantasy work has proven popular. He wrote the CD Grimes, PI, series and the Det. Nick Storie series, among other works.

He now resides in David, Panama', where he writes the Clint Faraday mystery series and plays music with friends – and pursues his favorite ways to spend his time: beach bum and roaming the mountains.

He is lately active in civil rights concerns for the Indigenous people, the Indios, who he has learned to love.

As this is a series based on an intelligent spaceship, Maita, who has become emperor of a vast empire by the end of the series, I will not feature Maita alone.

Each of the characters has a personality of his (hers or its) own. I think a series this long must have distinct and different personalities, else it becomes boring. The main reason for not continuing the series after 45 books was because there simply wasn't enough to base interesting stories on and the addition of Gloria and Iggy would not be enough.

Featuring Z.

Z is the first character, along with Thing, who is a continuing character throughout the series. Tom, Tranz, Joe, etc. were only in the first few books. This is part of one story in Like Old Times. The crew, as everyone called Maita and friends, were exploring in the galactic dome when they found a very beautiful world. Z collects orchid-like plants and is exploring in a section where many were found.

Z made one more full trip back to Maita four hours later, then decided to make a short trip before returning at the six hour mark.

He had returned to a rain river in a small valley where he was collecting an orchid that much resembled the familiar Epidendrum fragrans of Earth. This one looked – and even smelled – like the Earth species, thrived in almost full sun much like its Terran counterpart and grew on rock faces like the ones on Earth. The quick gene scan the floater made for the records showed it had almost no genetic patterns that were exactly like the Terran species, but that was expected. Much the same thing had happened many times before.

Z went around a rock face, wading in the edge of the shallow stream. There was a narrow cleft with a number of what looked much like Earth's Maxillaria orchids growing in the moist shade. He took several smaller parts of the various varieties, then turned to take them back to place them on the floater waiting around the bend.

There were eight beings with long spears in a semicircle, standing there watching him. The reptilian people looked much like the Klifts, a race Z had met many years ago who were now respected members of the empire. Z could see the curiosity and intelligence in them, but knew he was an unknown quantity to them. He was a mammal, he was somewhat larger than they and he was alien. They had never seen anything vaguely like him before in all probability.

Z never had any serious trouble communicating with people, witness the fact he had pulled the original group together so well they were able to overthrow a vastly superior force and to take Maita over from the Pweetoos – even though there were five distinct races among them.

Okay, so that was ninety percent luck. Everyone there was in an impossible situation and really had nothing left to lose, but there was one very important lesson impressed on him at that far moment that served him well many times since: Take charge of the situation as though it was your natural right.

Other lessons learned had to do with cultural customs. It was his natural inclination to smile, but that was the showing of the teeth. Showing of the teeth is an open invitation to a fight in many cultures. Z's father had impressed on him back on Earth more than three hundred fifty years ago that the stupidest possible thing anyone could do who was confronted by a vicious dog was to smile, thus showing the teeth, thus inviting a charge from the dog. Dogs, other mammals, showed enmity and defiance by showing the teeth. The best thing to do was to give the other something to do. Ask – never demand – help in something.

Think fast!

Z held up the small samples of the plants, turned to point to some that were a bit out of his reach up in the cleft and indicated the spear of the nearest person. That person handed Z the spear before he thought. The others tensed so Z quickly used the spear point to prod a couple of the plants from the rock, then handed the spear back to the one he took it from, holding the plant he had pulled off of the rock proudly. The little party looked around at one another, then started to discuss Z.

Z spread his collection out on the rocks, looked over the various types and went back to the rocks. He took a small piece of a plant that was a bit different from the ones he had laid out on the flat rock (That was of a species he'd collected earlier), compared it, nodded to himself and wrapped the plants in a rag he carried for that purpose. He looked up to find the apparent leader of the hunters and the one who had handed him the spear staring at the plants and at him from a little closer than the others.

Now what? Should he trigger the automatic emergency caller implanted in his chest?

The leader pointed to the plants and said something.

"I'm afraid I don't understand your language, pal," Z said. "I wish Maita had gotten it on general principles."

The leader then pointed to the plants again, placed a palm upward and shrugged. THAT was almost universal!

Z nodded, then placed the plants into a star-shaped pattern, the deep brown, the lighter brown, the brownish yellow, the deep yellow and so on around to the red. There was one with green sepals, brown petals and a bright red lip that he placed in the center.

Art is also almost universal. The fellow understood.

Z placed a hand on his own forehead and said, "Z." He then pointed toward the leader and made the palms upward shrug. The leader shrugged in return.

Z repeated the palm to the head and the "Z," then took a BIG chance. He placed his hand on the leader's head and looked as questioning as he could.

The fellow suddenly nodded, placed a palm on his own head, said, "Imu," placed his palm on Z's head, said "Z," then placed his hand on the spear carrier's head and said, "Lix."

Lix repeated the process, then Z did it with all eight.

Okay. Introductions over. Now what?

Imu pointed to Z, then pointed downstream. Z put a palm up and shrugged. Imu pointed downstream, said, "Imu, Lix, Z."

Z shook his head and pointed upstream.

There were suddenly eight spears pointed at him. Imu pointed downstream and turned to walk that way.

So much for who's in charge!

They started downstream with Imu leading. Lix walked along beside Z and looked to Z a little apologetic. The six others were behind them.

Was this interference? The rules were suspended, but Z felt a little guilty. He had grown a bit lax, a bit careless and the floater was left back a bit where Maita couldn't keep watch on what he was doing. Now by the time he was missed and the floater came looking for him he could be kilometers away!

There wasn't any way he could mark anything. How would Maita know where to find him?

There was, about fifteen minutes later, a slight tingling in his chest.

The location beacon! He had worn the thing for hundreds of years, had even mentioned it a few hours ago and had as much as forgotten about it! He could easily activate it without making an emergency call so he did. Maita would know something was wrong and would send the floater to see what it was. Maita was certain to proceed very carefully as Z hadn't indicated any danger or emergency. It was Maita or Thing who had sent the tingle as a way to ask if things were all right. To simply turn it on, locating him far from the floater, would tell Maita something was amiss.

He didn't really feel threatened by these people. He felt almost embarrassed to find he was hoping Maita would have the floater take the plants back before coming for him.

He found himself sort of liking Lix. He sort of liked Imu, for that matter. It wouldn't hurt anything for him to go along to see what would happen. He was noticing hundreds of new plants as they went at a steady pace until they suddenly turned into the forest on an almost invisible path. He didn't dare to look upward to see if the floater was there, but was sure it was.

They came to the village in a clearing. There were a number of people about, none of whom showed any fear of him. They came to stare and to ask questions of his captors.

Lix pointed to a large tree in the center of the village, then led Z over to show him the people had planted various of the more showy orchids in it. This was going to work out fine! They had a love of beauty and collected plants to beautify their village so they would understand him! Another stroke of good luck was that there were children. Z always got along very well with kids of all types. That was another lesson learned from his father, who had impressed him with the fact that children will react as the adult expects them to. If you treat them like some kind of stupid pet they'll act like that. If you treat them like persons they'll act like people.

Several of the children came closer and closer, then reached to touch him. Lix started to shoo them away, but Z waved them to touch him if they liked. Before long he was seated on a long wooden bench under the tree answering their questions. He didn't understand a single word of the children's language and they didn't understand a single word of Maitan, but that wasn't important. Z knew about what they were asking and they knew fairly well how he was answering.

There was a very quick development of signs. Lix and several females watched him closely. After a short while Lix and Imu came to ask him to come to a hut. He went inside ahead of them, then turned to find they had placed a thick bar across the outside of the door. He was now imprisoned.

There was a square hole in the log wall he could look out of to see Imu and Lix arguing. Lix saw him watching and shrugged. He was looking apologetic again.

Okay. No problem. Just wait.

It was getting late when Lix came to offer him a bowl of a sort of meaty stew through the hole. He took it and nodded his thanks. Lix looked uncertain for a moment, then shrugged and left.

Could he eat the food here? Would it nourish him – or kill him?

There was a rustling sound above and behind him. He turned to find a very small com floater had come in by boring through the thatched roof.

*Don't eat anything until I check it. Put a bit on the com floater and I'll run analysis on the floater on the roof. I'll get their language tonight. How do you get yourself into these messes with such stunning regularity?*

"Practice, practice, practice," Z replied. "I don't think I'm in any danger, do you?"

*We'll learn that part when we learn the language I suppose. I brought your plants back and have them stored for you.*

The little com floater took the food out and returned a few minutes later.

*You can eat this, but be careful about some of the other stuff. Don't drink their booze. It's got some nasty alcohols in it your system wouldn't appreciate anymore than it appreciates cyanide.*

He made a bed of straw that was apparently there for that purpose and slept. The com floater woke him before dawn to give him the crystal of the language. He placed it, then went back to sleep. He wouldn't let the natives, who called themselves the Shrsted, know he could understand them too soon.

In the morning he was brought some soup Maita said he could eat and some boiled eggs he couldn't. He spent several hours alone before Imu and Lix came to take him out into the square. Under the central tree were a number of people, some wearing red sashes around their necks, some green, some brown. Lix and Imu, along with other members of this tribe, were wearing a tan color.

He was a celebrity, of course. Other tribes had been called in to see what Imu's group found in the forest. It was going to be fun listening to them brag, not knowing he could understand them now. Maybe they would think he was some kind of god. He had to plan a way to let them down easy if they did that. He mustn't allow it. Suspended rules or not there were limits. That kind of thing could damage the culture.

They were all seated on the benches with Z on a sort of low chair in front of them with only Lix to guard him. Imu welcomed the others, then turned to Z.

"It calls itself Z," he said. "It was gathering some plants upriver. I think it's a farmer of art(?) of some type. It didn't threaten us or seem to be afraid of our hunters. It seems to be of some clan that has never been hunted. We don't know what to make of it. Lix wants to keep it for a pet. He says it is a thinking thing, but you can see it is a kind of gorlmph(?) or something like that.

"I think we should barter(?) for something we need. It would have to be fed and we sometimes have trouble enough to feed our own people. I sent the runners for you to learn if you've ever seen one of them?"

"Not so large," Green Sash answered. "It looks almost like some kind of heempfh(?). Do you think it would be good to eat? It has a lot of meat."

Z barely restrained himself from making a reply.

"It could be a large kabrfnch(?)," Brown Sash replied. "They have too strong a taste to make good meat. This one looks like it would be coarse and very tough. Too old. Gorlmphs have to be caught and bled well when they're young or they're not good for food. I don't see why you don't just cook it up for your jrndths (?). They don't care what meat tastes like – and they're VERY good food!"

"I don't believe this!" Z exclaimed in Maitan to Lix, who shrugged and looked apologetic.

"It has language?" Red Sash asked. "That would mean it's a person. You can't very well cook a person for yourself OR for your livestock! I see what Lix meant when he said this could be a problem that's much wider than you think!"

"I think it tries to mimic us," Imu said. "It made noises with the children for a time yesterday. They think it told them things and understood them. I think it was only noises."

"But it has a name!" Lix cried. "It's called Z! Imu said as much. It also used my spear as a tool to remove its plants when they were too high to reach. It uses signs to speak when there aren't words."

"Perhaps you merely wish that was the case," Imu said. "I would like for someone to make a test to show if it really has a language. I would not want laid on my spirit that I had cooked a person!"

"If Lix wants to prove it is a person he should be given the chance," Red Sash agreed. "I suggest we give Lix six days to teach it to speak enough to prove one way or another if it can think."

"One can easily teach a Wakbird to speak," Green Sash warned. "Lix must teach it to speak in a way that would show it knows what it's saying. If it's a person we must allow it to go. Many of the gorlmph are extremely violent and vicious so there could be a problem if it has a large clan and is a person. We need no wars. We have stopped wars among ourselves. Such things are stupid at anytime."

"It's not vicious!" Lix insisted. "It's an artist! I'll try to teach it to speak, but I don't know how. I will find a way. I want it to be a person because it likes pretty things. All the children like it so I have no fear of it. Children and jgglusth(?) know when an animal OR a person are to be shunned!"

"The expression back on Earth was that camels and dogs know a crook when they see one," Z said in English. Everyone stared at him for a moment.

"See? It's only making sounds," Imu said. "Lix says something so it replies with random sounds is all."

"The way it looks at us seems to.... It would almost seem to understand our words," Green Sash said, watching Z closely. "Do you understand us?"

"Yup!" Z replied.

"It does!" Lix cried.

"It was merely a coincidence of sounds," Imu protested. "Don't get excited about something like that! I want to know if it really IS a person! We can't resolve anything if you're going to make it do things to prove something that is not real!"

"Z! Please! Do you understand what we're saying?" Lix asked. "Just one word that shows real ability to learn our language!"

Z thought of his conversations with the children yesterday. He understood what they were saying then, now that he had the language. He would have to be careful not to move too quickly, though. If he could use some of the words the children had used and could come up with an explanation for learning so rapidly he might get away with it. He searched the crystal information for something – and found it! "Look! Hair!" Z said, fingering his own. "It's a gorlmph! Talk, gorlmph! Gorlmph name Z! Big gorlmph – not bad gorlmph! Gorlmph Z!"

Okay. That was a small enough starting point. His hair was certainly different among reptiles. He just wished he knew what a gorlmph was supposed to look like.

He placed his palm against his forehead and said, "Z. Gorlmph. Z understand word."

He then placed his hand on Lix's head and said, "Lix gorlmph no. Lix understand word. Lix understand Z – Z understand Lix!"

"You DO understand the words!" Lix cried. "Z gorlmph, Z people. Lix Shrsted, Lix people. Z and Lix people. Gorlmph and Shrsted people. All people. Do you understand?"

"Gorlmph people. Gorlmph no people. All people?" Z asked.

"I don't understand," Lix said. "Yes! I do! It said Z's a gorlmph and that Lix is no gorlmph. Gorlmph are people and gorlmph no – Lix gorlmph no – are people!

"Yes, Z. We're ALL people!"

"I agree that you now seem to have proven that it's people," Green Sash said. "This is a thing I must think on. These gorlmph confuse me no.... Can they become intelligent? Are they already intelligent? Is this one so different from the ones we know? Are we hunting intelligent people for food? Are the ones in the forest not intelligent? Where did this one come from? Does it have a tribe?"

"Then extrapolate. Can serpents and eightleg webbers become intelligent?" Brown Sash asked. "If so where does it end? ARE we using other intelligent animals for food? Is that something to put weight on our spirits?"

"No," Z said. He was in a dilemma. This could cause unknowable damage to a primitive culture. A simple little thing like this could become irreversible if allowed to grow. These were very philosophical people who might not be all that practical. The one who had supplied the language to the crystal wasn't knowledgeable to any great degree. It was a woman farmer who raised a root crop for a staple. He needed Thing and Maita to get him out of this mess – but they would cause even more damage if they came in now.

"Wait," Z said. "Time. Learn. Wait. Words."

"Are you trying to warn us of something?" Lix asked. "Is it something important? We have to learn the words? We really don't understand any of this do we?"

"Wait. Learn. Words," Z repeated. "Learn words. Wait."

"Maybe you'd better teach it more words," Imu replied. "It seems to be saying for us to wait before we make decisions. Wait until it learns the necessary words.

"I think it might know some answers that we would waste far too much time worrying over."

"Yes!" Z cried. "Wait until learn words!"

"It learns very fast," Lix pointed out. "It learned from the children. It learned some words right here. From us! I'll teach it enough words for it to tell us what it thinks we must know. I believe it knows much of what we're saying here without knowing the words. Like the witches' talent.

"That's it! The gorlmph Z has the witches' talent! It knows what we're saying and is telling us we're wrong! I'll tell you what we've taught to each other when we meet again."

"Empathy," Z said.

"What? What is emp ... that word?" Imu asked.

"Empathy. Empathy," Z repeated, deciding how he would handle the problem, now that they had reached the conclusion about the witches' talent he'd hoped to steer them to. The crystal told him there was some small psy talent among certain of the women. It was called the witches' talent, though it was more of an actual empathy. The witches' talent was that one couldn't lie to a witch because she would know. She always would know if there was deep trouble in a family or great joy or excitement.

"Witch words. Witch talent."

"Then I can teach it to speak easily!" Lix said. "It will FEEL the meaning of a word!"

"Yes," Z said.

Lix soon led him away from the others. They went to a small stream at the edge of the village to dangle their feet in the water.

"I wonder if it would be best to simply talk?" Lix asked. "Will the witches' talent or this empathy give you the words if I just talk?"

"Talk. Feel," Z explained. "Talk and feel. Talk, no feel, no words."

"I must speak only words I can feel? That make me feel?" Lix asked. "Talk about the things I care about? That make me angry? About friends and enemies?"

"Friends," Z replied. "Lix and Z friends. Talk and feel."

"Yes, we're friends, I think," Lix answered. "Klat spoke of eightlegs and serpents and food animals being – or becoming – people. He felt strongly about that."

"Eightlegs and serpents no people. No think," Z said. "Food no think. No people. Z he. Lix he. Z no it."

"I'm sorry," Lix said. "You're male, I think? That makes you he. You wear a cloth ... but female gorlmphs have those teats. Yours aren't developed. You're male?"

"Z sorry. Z male. He," Z answered. "No know cloth. Too much wear. Z male. Mammal male.

"Mammal, gorlmph. Reptile, Shrsted. Lix, reptile. Reptile no teats. Z.... No word."

"You forgot you were wearing a cloth?" Lix asked. "You also forgot the Shrsted and the gor ... mammals are different?"

"Z forgot Shrsted and mammals different," Z said. "Z forgot he wears cloth."

It was a tricky thing to lead Lix along in such a way that he thought he was teaching Z the words, but the idea he would learn a word quickly if Lix felt that word or phrase very strongly helped tremendously. By the end of the second day he could carry on a fair conversation, but the others had already gone back to their own villages and Imu left it to the group to decide how to handle the gorlmph. He was convinced Z was a person, but it was out of his hands now.

That wasn't any problem. Z would certainly soon be able to convince all of them he could think and he was enjoying his stay in the village. He and Lix became fairly close friends during the six days before the other elders returned – they said six days and that meant six days!

He was seated with Imu and Lix with the others in the same places they had occupied the time before. It was for him to show his intelligence and to make them understand that speculation about the intelligence of food animals wasn't in question. Lix was a great help there when he explained that Z learned words quickly that were used when the user felt strongly about the subject. He mentioned the part about the eightleg webbers and the serpents being the key to the learning process because Klat felt so strongly a deep moral indignation to using intelligent animals for food.

Z was next subjected to a long question and answer period so had to make up a complete long history for his race, which he ended by indicating his race was almost extinct already due to some strange wasting disease that seemed to affect only a few kinds of mammals, rendering them sterile.

"The Shrsted maybe never will many my people know," Z said. "Z knows only one other in my people in many cycles wandering. Z's people soon no more. Sad it is Shrsted and Z's people no be good friends, share history good to all.

"Happy is Z. Z knows Shrsted. Good people. Good friends."

"You may stay with the Shrsted," Imu said. "You will be with friends."

"Must it is that Z wander," Z replied. "Duty has Z to take plants – loved things by Z's people – to different places for beauty always a living monument to be to Z's people. Maybe Z find mate. Maybe Z no find mate. Z happy now with new friends. Lix, Imu, Klat – all! Many more friends be for all time. Spirits one with all people all times. Z's people never really gone be. Spirits will friends be with spirits of Shrsted. Ever and always be this true."

"Yes," Klat replied. "We believe that all intelligent beings everywhere share a common spirit that can never cease to be. The fact you have the same belief when you are not of the same race or even of the same kind of beings proves it. It is a thing we all know. The spirit knows. When my spirit crosses I will know your people and your people will know me. I am secure in that knowledge.

"It is good we haven't been using animals with spirits for food. That would make for a terrible spirit life!"

"Not so be," Z said. "Purpose born to every each beings. If purpose food to be, then is good. Purpose is each to have. No purpose is no reason is not happy-making."

"Now THAT is something that will take much hard study!" Klat said, surprised. "You mean we are all born to be what we are? That we aren't able to change that?"

"No! Not that mean!" Z cried. "Purpose you have. Purpose Z have. Is no wrong if purpose found. Done. Is no wrong if change. Maybe purpose was change? Maybe NOT change is NOT serve purpose?

"Little wrongs spirits allow to teach the lesson. Big-big wrongs spirits say no-no! Inside is know. No have hunt for wrongs. Always find. Not there, but find big bad. Guilty be. Bad for spirit. Soon not know yes or no. Not happy."

"We have a saying," Imu said. "If you look for trouble it will find you. You are saying that if you seek trouble you create it."

"Only trouble then in here, not real," Z said, tapping his head. "Real, but for only hunter. Others not real. Soon nothing real."

"You make it real for yourself if you believe it's real," Lix said. "You're a true philosopher.

"What do you say about...."

They talked for most of the remainder of the day. Z learned to like the Shrsted more and more. He laid a strong foundation that would allow him to return from time to time, as he knew he would, to vacation on the world. He would be known as a legend of sorts, but not one that would affect the race in a negative way. He laid a foundation that would allow him to bring Thing along to meet these people, saying he had met other races or members of other intelligent races, but those people also seemed to be dying out. He was philosophical about it, saying nature would seek the best race for a place and would then end the others. Their spirits would always be there to give advice and help when needed. The Shrsted seemed to be the race who would inherit this world and that was a good thing. They were the best suited for peopling the world so that was their purpose.

Klat brought a gorlmph on a vine leash for comparison with Z. It was something like a spider monkey from Earth, but not as intelligent. Z couldn't see much resemblance, but then, most mammals would tend to look alike to a reptilian race.

The following morning he went back upstream, Lix and Imu going a distance with him, then planting a large plant of an orchid that looked much like Earth's Odontoglossum crispum on the cleft where Z was first found to mark the meeting of their races. Z hugged both of the Shrsted and bid them good fortune, then went on upstream while they returned to their village. The rest of the trip to that world the crew made it a point to not meet anymore of the Shrsted. There was too much danger of making a terrible mistake, but their luck was as good as it had always been. What happened there wouldn't do any damage and might do some good. They were definitely going to return to that world in the future!

It was twenty days later when they left the world Maita had designated as Shrsted. There was a large area in room six filled with new and different plants for Z to plant in his gardens and in room five for Thing to plant below the waves of EC in its own gardens. The crew discussed Shrsted and its good people. Maita recorded a large library about them. Their language was in the permanent library there on Maita.

They were in high orbit, preparing to place the satellites that would guarantee no one would ever interfere with that culture.

*This is one we can all feel good about! They'll be a good race that may have it a bit too easy, but a few of them will still manage to amount to something. Look at Islipona, for example!*

[ I liked it when they were discussing whether they should cook Z up right then and there or whether they should sell him to another tribe for food! ]

"Hah!" Z exclaimed. "Maita was saying on the way over here I tend to be smug, but you'd really see how I got my come-uppance there if you knew what I was thinking when I went to that first meeting!"

*If you weren't going to tell us you wouldn't have brought it up.*

"I was sitting there wondering how I was going to handle it when they decided to make me some kind of god!" Z said. "Can you believe that? Talk about smug!"

[ I certainly can believe it! You always did tend to think rather highly of yourself! I only wish I could have seen the expression on your face when they said they wondered if you had any intelligence at all. ]

*You DID see it! We were watching through the com floater. You said, 'Oh, wow! It's a good thing they can't read Z's facial expression! He looks like he just swallowed some particularly nasty bug!' and I said ... here! I'll play it back for you!*

They started the teasing again. It went on for hours.

Featuring Thing

Thing is almost always included with the other characters. It sometimes went along for different reasons. It is an empath who can "read" beings. It has a fixation on what it calls Sociomath (Everything is expressed in mathematical terms with Thing! It also has a compulsion to change things in a society.

We left EC, taking Z and myself in Maita and Tab on TRD-60. We were to rendezvous at the W beacon, then begin a search pattern for worlds with a highly enough evolved technology to know there are other intelligences.

We do not contact civilizations directly who are not ready. It can be devastating to the culture. We do sometimes interfere (A violation of an inviolable rule) surreptitiously, but never in an overt manner.

Well, hardly ever.

The machines can modify Tab or Z enough to let one or both "do things" on a planet. There are those where I can go along, and those where I can't.

I was resting on Z's lap in the master chair in the pilot's dome while he studied some stuff from the computers. I do a thing to distract him when I'm resting. I roll my tentacles around my body to form a ball when I rest and, to distract Z, I poke one eye through the space between the tentacles to look at him. He seems to find it amusing.

"I see you're awake," he said.

[ I see you're studying more useless information. ]

*All he has to do is put a crystal in the socket and save what few brain cells he has left for something worthwhile.*

"It doesn't always turn out to be useless," he replied. "What if I hadn't known how to pilot you when you were stuck in TTH fourteen?"

[ That's a gotcha! ]

*That was worthwhile. All that information about dimensional interfaces isn't – for the simple reason you can't understand a word of it.*

"How would you know?" he asked.

[ Because Maita doesn't understand it, either. I'm the only one who understands it. ]

"And you think it's some kind of joke!" he accused.

[ That's because it's really very simple. ]

*Humph!*

We do that a lot. I have the ability to understand various of these abstractions, where Maita can use them but can't understand them. The math works, but it can't discover why.

Z may surprise me and be able to understand it someday, so I won't leave myself open to that kind of retaliation. He would never let me forget if I said he couldn't do it.

I called my floater and climbed onto it, just to irritate Z. He thinks it's silly for me to use the thing in the ship, but it's easier.

So I'm a lazy slob. We can't all be perfect!

Hey! I found a platitude that's true!

We felt the shift as we entered N space (There is interruption in electrical flow in the neural paths when the planal interfaces are traversed), and Maita fastcommed to TRD-60. We jumped in TTH4 to within a few kilometers of him (Tab is designed to look male, so I call them him.)(Z started using the term "jumped" for planal distortion relmotion, so I will do so, though that is not in any way an accurate description of the process. It is one of those things that resulted from terms he'd read in science fiction in the time before his abduction.)

The holovid came on, showing Tab sitting in his pilot's chair (Though all he does is "tell" TR where he wants to go. They are always linked through a special band. The act is because almost no one outside of the crew knows he's a machine – except for the Zulians, and they never make distinctions and would never tell anyone.)(I seem to use a lot of asides, don't I?)

"How are we going to do this?" he asked.

"You pick your direction and we'll pick another," Z suggested. "We'll work outward a certain distance, then move in a zigzag until we cover the area, then come back to compare notes." (Z tends to use contractions much more than the rest of us, with the possible exception of TRD-60.)

[ Why not simply locate radio or holovid sources and go there? We are, I think, looking for ready planets. ]

*My suggestion exactly. I'll head for that source west and south, so you can find another one. Fastcom the coordinates of each world you approach and we will first locate, then compare notes and contact planets together. Meet back here in fifty hours.*

"Yo!" TR replied, and they flashed and were gone.

Maita read the directions from the beacons, then went a few plazsis to the side of the indications it was receiving from the source for triangulation. We located eighty six planets with civilizations in differing stages in fifty hours and came back to meet Tab at the beacon. We would consider all we found and make a plan where each of us would have certain areas and duties. Our system is fairly efficient now, after three hundred years. As Z says, we have worked most of the bugs out.

We all enjoy these adventures. I hope we find some of them here.

~

We compared notes and found there was only one planet we would bother to contact and two we would observe for a few years before attempting contact. The planet we would contact was found by Tab, and was peopled by a race on the borderline between reptilian and ornithoid. Such civilizations are generally very artistic, and these were no exception. They agreed to join the empire on a trial basis (They would use the machines for awhile and make a decision later).

The planet was M4, which was a bit hot and light for me, but I wasn't evolved on such a planet, so I'm no judge.

I'd like to explain right now that it isn't as easy to find civilizations by radio transmissions, as some seem to think. The period of use of radio is usually very short.

We found the radio from these people a few plazsis out, and they were gone in less than a hundred plazsis. It isn't too long before a civilization finds light transmission, either through fiberoptics or direct and, of course, gravitics will make radio obsolete to a great degree. That's why Tab can use the radio so safely in his detective work. Very few places use radio.

This planet had developed the unsafe drive we called Umfrapt drive, but it is called many things. The moders in the drive are dangerous and unreliable, and one must make many short jumps, but a race knows it can travel to the stars when it has the drive, therefore knows there are others, and that contact is as much as assured.

The planet was called Klieve by the inhabitants, and was soon registered, then we headed for a planet we passed over with high scans earlier. Z immediately decided he wanted to see more of it.

We have nothing but time, so we could call for exploration of any systems we wanted, and everyone went along.

We were soon over an —2 planet, which is perfect for Z and would be for Tab if he were really a Swaz. It was in the favorite period for Z – the medieval period he so much loved. The people were mammals and of three or four subraces. They were a small increment larger than Z, but he fit into the size range well enough not to cause comment. He would be a bit short.

Tab could be modified easily, as it was a matter of the shape of the nose and ears. The mouth was a bit different, and a few other things.

Z saw great differences, but I saw very little. I realize Z could probably see no difference between myself and any other Mentan of my age except coloring, but I see few similarities. That is a normal thing. One sees certain characteristics of one's own race.

There was a continent with no people who were advanced above a basic tribal society and one with a quite advanced society for the period. The other two featured rather brutal, militaristic societies. There were magicians and kings and pirates – all the things Z could ask for. I could even go there, because there were many strange lifeforms being brought in regularly.

Tab had been on a planet much like this one once where he used a floater like a shield. It was a bronze and iron age and shields were common.

It's easy to put a handle on a floater, and the devices have what Z calls an "irising setup" to expand or contract the outer perimeter. They have very little natural weight and are immensely strong, even without the force shields.

Maita sent a remote servo to locate a lone traveler to get the language and customs from him. That means we use the mind probe, which is strictly a thing we may not do. Another violation of inviolable rules. We do it all the time. We must be able to use the language of a people to be able to help them, in many cases.

Maita sends me and Tab the language and information directly, but Z has a crystal he wears in a socket in his ears that gives him the use of the language. The mind is directly wired, so it's a situation where one may actually think in the language of the crystal. The crystal usually contains the customs and general knowledge of the person the information is taken from.

We got three languages on the crystal.

Maita would stay on one of the moons while TR took us down. We would come from the sea, and be from a far land.

While I have mentioned the moons – the planet had two moons, both fairly large – allow me to explain that large moons with relatively strong gravitational effects on a planet in a life producing zone will generally mean a diverse biosystem. Moons of size stir the oceans much more than no moons or small moons, and there is a more diverse mixture of original material. I have seen otherwise perfect planets that lack moons that have very limited life as a result.

Z went to the medical machines for his transformation, while TR worked on Tab. I would ride on one or the other's shoulder most of the time and be an entertainment.

I liked the mostly-water planets, and would be content to just stay in the ocean where I could explore, but this might be fun.

I have developed a sense of fun along with my sense of humor. It's a great aid in our games.

Maita modified the floaters into shields, so would stay in constant contact through them, and would be in contact with me through TRD-60.

We boarded TR, and were soon down under the ocean about two kilometers offshore in half a kilometer of water. Our floaters shield for long enough for Z to reach the surface. Tab and I couldn't care less about air.

We would go ashore as soon as it was sufficiently dark.

I found the odors and tastes of this planet to be a mixture of pleasant and unpleasant things many primitive places seem to have near populations. A planet farther back in evolution usually has a cleaner taste and smell, and early industrial planets stink horribly.

The air was a pleasant temperature, but I am adapted to a wide range of heat control, so it didn't mean much. Z would have said it was refreshingly cool at night and probably rather warm in the daytime. I believe the planet's temperature range would be quite varied over the period of its year, as its orbit was eccentric. This was the warmest part of the year for this area, so we would have all the time we wanted to enjoy it.

There were some castles, each of which seemed to have what Z called a private army to keep the population down. (I suppose that's one of his jokes. The excess birth and death rates would keep the population fairly stable, excluding plague and famine.) The castles and the small towns enclosed in their walls were excellent breeding places for plagues and sicknesses. It's my personal theory these mammalian societies become genetically strong through the immune mechanisms brought forth by this sort of filth and closeness.

The castles were nothing if not filthy – at least what I was able to observe of them.

We approached the massive stone walls to find iron gates had been dropped and large wooden doors were closed. There was what Z called a moat around the place, which was a scummy open cesspool, and bridges from the two entrances were raised, making it most unlikely we could hope to enter by normal means this night.

Tab suggested staying the night in the forests. He said he was on a planet in exactly this stage of development, and we could expect bandits and highwaymen to be in the forests. As we were supposed to be more or less barbarians (Then what were the people in those ugly, filthy castles?) we would fit in well with the bandits.

We didn't find any bandits that night, and slept in little huts we made of branches. We had food for the morning and went to the castle as soon as the gates were opened and the drawbridges lowered at first light. There were guards at the gates. Tab and Z garnered their respect when they were challenged by the guards by the act of overpowering them physically and taking their weapons away from them.

Z seems to sometimes enjoy this kind of physical violence and rationalizes that no one is actually hurt, though I am sure the guards would have killed him and Tab (If Tab had been an organic) gleefully. They meant to impart damage with their weapons, but Tab was designed with full abilities to protect himself, and Z had the crystal in one ear from the oriental girl of Earth that gave him the full use of what he calls karate.

Several of the beings of the castle watched as the guards were dealt with, but none interfered. I stayed on the lower part of the gate where I managed to locate and pick up several coins lost in the scuffle. I placed them on the floater later and had them duplicated, though we brought some of the heavy metal, gold, for exchange. It wasn't very common on this world, and was used in exchange.

We proceeded into the castle, where I was somewhat a center for attention, as these people had never seen anything like me before. We stopped at a small restaurant Tab called a "pub" to have some hot beverage made from grain and fruit. It was rather bland to me and Z didn't like it at all, so he had some sweetcake and syrup which is not balanced, being almost all sugars.

The castle was called High Keep, and there was a Lord Hooven and Lady Luce who were in charge.

I pictured a time when we had gone to a magic planet where we met a Countess Toot, but the people here seemed to like the Lady Luce. The wizard at the castle was called Meecham, and was not liked at all, and the guards were despised.

It occurred to me that if the Lady and Lord are as good as the people believed, why would they tolerate a guard that was oppressive and corrupt?

These are the things Z is so very fast to note. I could see he hadn't missed the point, and he asked the pubmaster, who said the wizard and the head of the guard became dangerous to the Lord and Lady through the seizure of power. Z and Tab grinned widely at one another and I knew we were in for some fun. They would try to rectify the situation in their own way.

I was, of course, not in communication with Z, as I couldn't speak directly here, but I was in contact with Tab, and received the message we would find a way to challenge the wizard.

Z can use some small part of the magic we learned on Tlorg, as can I. Tab and TR learned something from before the trip to Earth from the Inktan ship, T6 (Also just Ship), who learned it from a wizard on another world. Some magic is real, in that a thing that can be done in apparent opposition to natural law is magic. Once explained, magic is science.

Tab gave the pubmaster a small piece of gold, and the man was amazed.

"We can make all we want," Tab told him, and winked at Z. He told me on the internal radio that he had TR extract tons of the stuff and place it in some large kettles on his medieval planet to defeat a wizard. It could be done here.

We went on toward the castle to be approached by a band of thirteen soldiers who challenged us as being illegally inside the castle walls. Tab told them we could "kick a little hell out of" them, too. They bristled at the challenge, and I feared we would expose ourselves as aliens or we would be damaged by this number of foes, but Tab said there was no danger, as these people feared barbarians.

It must be so, because they blustered and threatened while Z and Tab laughed at them. One came quietly up behind Tab, whose shoulder I was riding, so I sprang onto his head and wrapped a lower tentacle around his neck, squeezing until he lost consciousness.

I have found that most mammals will pass into an unconscious state rather quickly if their air supply is disrupted. I also must be careful I don't use a pressure that will cause tissue damage or they won't recover, and I certainly don't wish to kill any of them unnecessarily. It isn't in my nature to harm anyone, but I have learned through hard experience there are times when one must act against the dictates of his nature or he will himself be harmed.

We were watched warily as we strolled away from the encounter (Tab and Z strolled away with me as a rider. One does not stroll on tentacles.)

As we approached the castle proper, several young saw us and exhibited curiosity about me.

I have found two things about the young of almost any race we have encountered. They have some affinity for Z and will go to him naturally, and they like to play with me. I empathically note they think that I'm "cute" and "different," and children don't have natural fear of strangeness. That's a thing they are taught – fear.

Z carried a child on his shoulder and Tab picked one up, so I climbed onto his head, and the child, a female, petted me.

We seated ourselves under a tree and played with the children a short while, then proceeded to the castle, where we asked to see the Lord and Lady. The guards laughed at us, so Z held his hands up and a blue flame appeared in his palms. He looked across the flame and said we would, in that case, speak with the wizard.

The guard became nervous, but said it wasn't possible.

"Then we'll turn you to stone and find him ourselves," Z said. "You don't seem to realize, this is a demand, not a request."

Tab used the floater surreptitiously to produce a thin "card" of silver with pure gold letters saying we were Ops and Neet and their familiar (me) Tooques.

The guard called a boy over and told him to take the message to the wizard.

"This is almost what happened on Tlorg!" Z said.

"Not really," Tab responded. "You went in there rather more openly as wizards."

The boy returned in a few moments and ushered us into the castle, where we went down some stairs and to a large room below ground level where a fat man who radiated deceit to my empathic powers invited us in and offered a beverage much like a wine. I could feel his strong desire that we all drink and warned Tab, who took a goblet of the stuff and drank it right down.

Tab has what Maita calls an elemetizer grid that disassociates molecules and analyzes them, then they can be either stored or vented off, in the cases of gases.

"I have to tell you we are both immune to Calmath and other scopalamides you use in these silly concoctions," he told the wizard. The wizard laughed and said he really didn't think it would work. The empathy told me he was distressed because it was ineffective against us.

"You have quite a little setup here," Z noted. "Meecham the Wizard and head of state. Along with your captain of the guards and the impotence of the real rulers, you can run things the way you want.

"How did you manage to pull that one off?" (That is one of Z's idioms that I use. He uses them much of the time, but we can all understand them now.)

Tab sent a request to me to start nosing around the laboratory to see what we could discover about the state of Meecham's actual abilities. I went to a table, where I was perusing the bottles and equipment when Meecham suddenly broadcast alarm and dislike, and moved to try to push me off the table violently.

I used a little of the magic I learned on Tlorg and gave him an electrical shock, then pushed some of the bottles onto the stone floor where they broke and their contents made a cloud of foul-smelling gases.

Meecham picked up a sword and advanced toward me with rage and hatred in his mind, so I utilized the microwave generator on the floater Tab had placed on a chair to heat the metal of the sword. I pointed a tentacle at him and stood on the tips of my other three tentacles and hissed. That seems to effectively show that I am displeased to these types.

The microwaves heated his belt buckle and some pendants and medals on chains around his neck while it did the same to the sword he was brandishing. A knife in a sheath in the front of his belt seemed to cause him the most discomfort.

Tab and Z looked amused as he danced around the room peeling off his clothing. When he stopped disrobing Tab said that, as I have more power than Meecham, it might be well-advised for him to refrain from attempting to attack me. This was simply my way of warning him. Had he angered me, I would have cooked him alive.

I would never do something like that, but I have learned these deceptions are sometimes useful.

We stayed only a short time more, and Meecham was broadcasting a sick fear, which I informed Tab would soon interfere with his actions, as his circulatory system was dangerously stressed and was clogged with hardened fats.

We said we would return later and left.

"Was he really on the verge of heart failure?" Tab asked when we were safe from anyone's hearing and the floater could carry vocalizations for me for Z's edification.

[ His heartbeat was arrhythmic and stressed, and his fear was almost palpable. ]

"Let's locate this Clorkith, Captain of the Guards character," Z suggested.

"Where did you find his name?" Tab asked.

[ Troon, the pubmaster, mentioned it. ]

We went up the stairs and into the large hall where the same troop of soldiers who had accosted us in the street was waiting. Before they could say anything, Tab said, "Take us to Clorkith. Now!"

The leader of the guards broadcast surprise and led us on in his confusion. He was also wary, and seemed to expect trouble, while we acted friendly toward him and his soldiers.

Clorkith had six guards standing around the room, while he was seated at a large table. He fairly radiated suspicion and fear. He seemed afraid of everything according to his mental state, but his actions seemed deliberately to wish to provoke greatly us. I appraised Tab of the inconsistency. Tab replied that he was only a coward who survived on bluff.

Nothing was suggested to me as to how to conduct myself, so I decided to have a little fun. A cowardly bully is not a type of person I would care to waste my compassion on, so I waited until Clorkith was sitting back in his chair trying to act as though he had complete charge of events and knew no fear, then sprang to his desk, and went right to where his feet were on the table. He threw his arms out at me and fell over backward onto the floor, fear of me a stink in the whole room. He could only exist because these people were not very sensitive to odors.

He was fighting to control his terror, and to get to his feet. He was terribly embarrassed at the same time, and deceit was an imperative in his emotions. He was more concerned about others knowing of his fear than with the fear itself.

As soon as he stood I sprang to his shoulder, and he screamed and ran around the room, so I wrapped a tentacle around his head. He ran into the stone wall, becoming unconscious with the sudden contact. I went to Z's shoulder and shrugged my upper tentacles at him, whereupon he laughed, and Tab joined him.

The six guards seemed somewhat uncertain and were broadcasting confusion, of which I informed Tab.

"Why not dump him on the table until he comes around?" Tab suggested to the guards, and it seemed to relieve them somewhat that someone was giving orders.

Strange.

Tab suggested I stress Clorkith's mind to an extreme and, as I have stated, I felt no compassion for him, I waited until he was fully conscious and starting to sit up and again jumped onto his shoulder. He was fighting desperately to control himself, so I wrapped a tentacle around his head and bent to peer into his eyes with one of mine, while I watched the guards with the other. This so disconcerted him that he began to hyperventilate (Z had told me about that) and fell off the table onto the floor. I stayed on the table and hung over the edge to peer at him.

I felt his mind leave him, and he became a gibbering mass of fear and hatred. He ran from the room as soon as he could gain his feet.

I sat up and shrugged the tentacles at Tab and Z again, then went to a guard who was standing beside the table and climbed to his shoulder. He was very still and was confused and wary, but not afraid very much.

Tab told him I was curious and wouldn't hurt anyone unless I was threatened. He said I drove a coward insane, and the guard let a small grin escape before he controlled his face again. My empathy told me he disliked Clorkith intensely and had felt he was a coward.

"Clorkith is no longer sane, so you must have a new captain for the guards," Z instructed. "Get someone who isn't afraid of that phony wizard."

"You say Meecham is a fake wizard?" the guard asked. (I felt incredulity.) "I've seen his power! He can do things – I know! He once turned me into a blorthog!"

Tab turned to another guard, stared him in the eyes, and used a trick his Acnian friend, Rollo, taught him. He had him fully hypnotized in a short time, and told him he was a blorthog. The soldier went to all fours, rolled around in the filth on the floor, and made grunting noises until Tab said, "Wake up! Tell us what happened to you."

The man was crying and feeling humiliated, so I went to him and used my empathy to take the embarrassment from him.

"I was a blorthog," he wailed. "It was a terrible thing. I am no longer a man!"

"You were not," Tab scolded. "It's a trick that only you felt. Don't be ashamed. This can be done by anyone to anyone. It's only a trick. Meecham is a trickster, not a magician."

The guard looked to me and I reassured him.

"I can teach you to do that," Tab informed them, "but you'd probably do it to the wrong person and end up dead – or worse.

"Meecham has only the power YOU give him. Don't give him any and he has none. The same was true of that coward, Clorkith."

"I suggest you meet with Lord Hooven and the Lady Luce to have them select the next captain – someone who'll be loyal to them and fair to the people," Z added. He likes to think he's being noble and, in a way, I guess he is. It's an honest effort with only a little selfishness in it.

Tab sent that we had to do something to get rid of Meecham as we went back to the pub where we had taken the breakfast. It was hard to believe it was only slightly past midday. We had already resolved much of the problems for this little province. We have learned the most efficient things to do over the years, and can make changes for the better very quickly, at times.

Now I'm feeling noble, but that's all right. It's a good feeling.

Tab and Z discussed options at lunch, while I ate what the floater said was safe, as did Z. The floater has a mechanism to analyze foods to match them to our individual systems, much as Tabs elementizers do.

I suggested these people were ready for the attentions of one of the M-82nds, but Tab said they had been here, and showed me the legends.

The M-82nds are a race who came here from that galaxy – one that is exploding – but who were trapped in two planals at once. They can't die nor breed nor any of that, and have devised a system whereunder they contact primitive races to steer them to a sense of wonderment that, hopefully, they will never lose. Z says they were on Earth in the guises of Apollonius of Tyana and of the wizard, Merlin. They were on Zeena as the wizard, Fezzwin, and one of them is working with a race on EC called Joe's People under the name of Zeewin. His real name is Zianteus, and he has already brought about a genetic change in Joe's People that will allow all future generations to speak.

We were feeling pretty good, so spent the remainder of the day exploring the town and spent the night in the inn behind the pub.

In the morning we explored the area around the castle and Z suggested a way to grow the food that would be more productive, then Tab showed them how to use water from the hill behind the town to flush the garbage and refuse to a sort of swamp on the end of the moat. I didn't see it would be such an improvement, but it was a start. Tab has explained before that one small idea will sometimes grow.

I can see what he wanted to accomplish, in that to get the garbage out of the town would stop the worst of the odors there (And a lot of disease), and the contrast when the people came to the filthy moat would encourage them to clean up the moat, then more and more the idea of getting away from the garbage would spread.

The next day about midday a wizard from the neighboring castle (approximately twenty five kilometers distant) arrived in a fancy carriage. A soldier from "our" castle was leading it, so I would assume Meecham had sent for him.

It was soon obvious we were to be challenged. This magician was older, and everyone said he was the teacher of Meecham and was known throughout the land as being the most powerful of the wizards.

I could feel he did have some small power, but these people weren't evolved to T-powers, so their real magic was as much as nonexistent. I informed Tab that this magician was slightly T-kinetic.

"All he has to be able to do is stop a tiny electrical discharge – or cause one – for a short time, and he can destroy the mind," Z warned us. "Remember that gestalt amplifier?

"It's easy to stop the heartbeat."

"Not in me, and not in Thing," Tab replied. "You're to stay out of this, Z."

As Z had been nearly killed because of the ability to affect a few molecules, he had to agree. He would stay away from this new wizard.

We had a soldier come to tell us our presence was requested at the castle, so Tab and I went while Z stayed. We were met by Meecham and the two he introduced as Lord Hooven and Lady Luce.

I saw concern, fear, and kindness in the two rulers and wished there was some way to reassure them.

"I wished to have you meet Master Wizard Hume," Meecham said, confidence projecting strongly. "We will have a demonstration of a wizard's power to show our Lord and Lady the wisdom of ... a number of things we have discussed in the past."

He turned to Hume and demanded, "Kill them!"

Tab grinned at Hume, and I felt the small tugging at my heart that said he was trying to reverse the blood flow. I informed Tab of what was happening and he assured me that, having no blood, it was a somewhat pointless exercise on him. I could use my empathy to reduce any effect on me. I also have two hearts, so wouldn't be negatively affected to any degree.

We waited until we saw Hume begin to perspire, then Tab said, "Anytime you're ready, you may start. I don't have all day to let you use me in your side show.

"If you're not successful, we'll see if maybe I've got a few powers myself, hmm? If your silly trickeries don't work I'll let Tooques stop Meecham's heart.

"Fair enough?"

Hume was shaking with his concentration, and I felt the sudden withdrawal of his attempt. He looked at Meecham, who was again beginning to radiate the fear. His heart was already stressing and arrhythmic. He was working his mouth, but no sound was coming forth.

"Are you through?" Tab asked of Hume.

"I determine you are well-shielded from my power," Hume answered. "I admit to defeat in this challenge, but only in this one."

Meecham was making whistling sounds, and was red in the face. Tab turned to him, and said, "Okay! Our turn!

"Tooques, kill him!"

I pointed a tentacle at him and released a small spark of electrical energy at him. It was to make him lose consciousness, and we could later say we took pity on him and send him from the castle, but he hemorrhaged in his brain. I felt the cold blankness spreading and could do nothing as he slumped forward and died at our feet. I sent what happened to Tab, and he took advantage of the situation. I felt no remorse that Meecham was dead.

"Hume, you will get the hell out of this town and never come back here again," Tab ordered. "We're going to another place soon, but will keep in touch with this place through our powers. If ever again you send your flunky to this town I'll have to challenge you to a duel of powers. I think you know full well the result will be that you'll end up like Meecham. Little Tooques had more power than you and Meecham combined.

"While I'm here, Lord and Lady, I say to the guard that they'd better be very careful in their treatment of the people and in their loyalty to you, the legitimate rulers here. A thousand of these soldiers would be no more problem to me than Meecham was."

The Lady Luce held a hand out to us, and I touched a tentacle to her, which startled her somewhat, though she made no outward sign, then Tab held her hand a moment. We repeated the ritual with Lord Hooven, and were invited to remain for as long as we liked at the castle, but Tab said we must continue in our quest. I assume he said that for theatricality, as we have no particular quest.

We returned to Z to go into the forest, thence to TR and to Maita. Z and Tab both agreed this wasn't what they expected, and they spoke about various aspects of the adventure that escape me.

I have little doubt Z would have made it sound very much more exciting and Tab would have spent many pages explaining how carefully he designed the water-wash program, but I find more interest in the personalities we meet. Z would say we have turned the society away from a brutal cult and into a productive benevolent form, and Tab would insist we have planted the seeds of a better and healthier world.

I say we pointed out to the people that you can't defeat a bully or a fake if you don't stand up to him. Hume may be able to kill three people before the rest of them tear him limb from limb in their fury. We have shown them they can do it.

We used the facilities on Maita to clean ourselves, then ate a truly delicious meal, then we insulted one another for awhile until Z came to the pilot's chair to sleep. I came with him, and curled in his lap to sleep, myself.

"That was an interesting little place," he reported to me. "I think the people will be a lot like the Cheeth in the future. They already show signs of not accepting politics and bureaucracy to any extent. We've started them on the road to a pretty good society."

[ Quite the opposite, Z. They were like that when we arrived, but we have instilled an idea that bureaucracy is the only way. ]

"What?! How do you figure?" he asked.

[ I could feel the strong shift of mind when you and Tab kept preaching loyalty toward the Lord and Lady to them, and how the soldiers must be controlled by rules, not by some self-concerned captain. Those words were designed for the introduction of rules and bureaucracy! ]

"NOW you tell me!" he cried.

Featuring the Golems

The golems were introduced in the fifth book as a device for that book alone, but it turned out they were the most requested characters, so I was as much as forced to use them in other books. People find them hilarious. They are a lot of fun to write. This is from Iggy - A New Perspective. Iggy would become a continuing character, as would Gloria, if I had written more in the series.

*Iggy? Please wait a few minutes before leaving for Jlokt.*

That (* ... *) is the special tone Emperor Maita uses in all its communications. It always amazes me that the emperor would ask, when it made me – and IS Emperor of the Maitan Empire in two galaxies and across three planes!

"Certainly, Maita. How are things at EC?"

*Rather boring. I'm not good at a routine, but I'm preparing to set out on a little vacation. Tar-One will handle things and the crew are getting restless.*

I made a small machine laugh and remarked that almost any of their various "little adventures" would serve most beings, mechanical OR organic, for a lifetime.

*Easy enough to say when you're not part of what we are. The Terran, Thing and Kurk are coming aboard. They'll be there in only a few minutes. You have had a few "little adventures" of your own.*

"The basic threesome? What will you, Kit and Tab find to occupy you without them?"

"We're taking Gloria to Phantasie," TRD-60 (Tab's ship and partner, affectionately known as TR) answered. "We'll introduce her to Searcher on the way."

*There appears to be a small problem there. I see your passengers are entering. Bon voyage. Try to keep them out of serious trouble.*

"It will be fun!" GD interjected. "Thing, Z, Kurk – and the golems!

"What's the problem in Jlokt, Maita?"

*I'm not certain, but it seems very possible the Urprohds have found a colony of Krofpth in Jlokt. That will give you a lot of new data for your studies in sociomath.*

"For that you need the crew?" T6, Kit's ship, asked.

"If there are also some Immins on the same world I'd say so!" Inge, Gloria's ship, replied.

We ships are linked for most things in case you wonder how that bunch got in there.

I linked with Library for a fast input of data on Krofpth.

Dumb! I KNEW Krofpth had set up Library and that they built TAR-1. They were a culture that had an empire a quarter million years ago and had simply shut it down, believing there was no point to such an entity. Maita and the crew found them and had joined them. It was using their amazing machine, TAR-1, as a partner.

They had sent a few ships into intergalactic space, but had never heard from any of them again so ended the project.

I'd have to add ten cubic meters of data storage cubes and wait almost ten hours for all that input. Fortunately, I could restrict the parts I'd be likely to need.

Z announced they were aboard and that they had everything they would need. Maita said Inge would meet us in Jlokt. All the organics would travel aboard me to have company on the long trip. They would need an intelligent ship when they reached Jlokt and Inge would get the chance to work with the crew other than Gloria.

We said our fond good fortunes to Maita and the crew and I lifted. GD checked out the golems and sent them into the salon.

–Well! The Three Mushketeers! This is going to be one DULL trip!–

"Gack!" Kurk exclaimed.

+Now, No.+

-Sheesh!-

*

We were almost to the midpoint, eighteen days out, when a Bentan woman died in her quarters. It wouldn't be so strange that a passenger died on my sixty fourth trip between the galaxies – except for the simple fact that every passenger is VERY carefully examined medically before they embark on such a difficult trip and her medical records were spotless. She died of circulatory/respiratory failure, which could possibly have been allergic anaphylaxis, but I was sure the medcheck would have alerted me to any such possibilities.

I called Thing, who was playing a game of Stars and Comets with a Vendan, a Jornian and myself.

Thing was the black. The rest of us were red. Thing was about eighty one percent ahead of the rest of us, which meant we were doing extraordinarily well.

I informed Thing about the death through our silent empathic channel and it instructed I have the medoff do a complete biotic infra-cellular scan. If it didn't show anything suspicious it was probably a natural death. One in fifty thousand chances DID happen!

The scan didn't show anything.

Then, the very next sleep period, the Jornian who had been playing the Stars and Comets game with us died under identical circumstances.

Thing declared it was a shame this was a trip with no Feach medical team aboard, but we would make do (an expression from the Terran, no doubt).

We called Z and Kurk to explain what was happening and Z said to have the golems keep a close watch on all Bentans and Jornians aboard. I was to also isolate all the standard scans of them to check for contacts with the dead people.

I asked why.

"Because a premeditated murder outside the race of the victim is rare," he said.

[ You think it's murder? ]

"Oh, yeah!"

*

"I don't even understand why I'm doing THIS part!" I protested. "There were contacts with both victims by almost everyone!"

Kurk laughed. "We have to know which ones made NO contacts whatever with either victim and we have to know if there was anyone else those people had NO contact with."

–Ahha! Furface has, once again, shown a rudimentary ability to almost think!–

+Oh, dear! If YOU see logic in Kurk's processes I fear he is terribly wrong!+

–Stick it, Bee Brain!–

"I see," Z said.

–Now I'M worried that I was wrong!–

"So!" I cried. "We are sharing a rather confined space for an extended period. It isn't likely anyone would avoid contact with ALL others aboard. CERTAINLY those of the same race would meet! A lack of any contact whatever would almost necessarily be contrived – but WHY?"

+I see! No, you were right, much as I hate to admit it. NOT meeting would be abnormal in the extreme. It would be virtually imPOSSible not to meet, at least in a momentary passing sense, at many points in the daily routines we all take for gran....+

–GHEEAAAAIGH! Why not FILIBUSTER for an hour or two, Brass Brain?–

+Now, No.+

"I understand!" I said. "Very well."

A few seconds more to review the surveillance records of the trip with that in focus let me know that all had met at one time or another – except with a Jornian named Yet Farm Khot.

I reported.

[ Is there anyone else here Farm hasn't spoken with? ]

"Yes. A Bentan woman, Keathe Leah Mikt," I replied.

"Did she meet with the others?" Kurk asked.

"Yes, but infrequently," I replied.

"She's the next victim," Z said. "Watch carefully to see how he does it."

–And STOP it, of course, Dense Dome!–

+There would be that.+

*

We arrived at Welcome in Jlokt without further incident, which puzzled everyone. We decided there was something very important missing from what we knew, but couldn't figure what it might be. Z and Kurk placed a surveillance mini-device in the personal luggage of both Farm and Keathe, knowing they were definitely up to SOMETHING (that's a Terran expression), but not knowing what.

Farm was en route to Library Jlokt and Keathe was going to EC Jlokt – so Kurk and Thing went to EC, being most visible of the group and Z took on a disguise and went to Library. I arranged for Inge to be ready for their use when they returned. Chest, a Unit Captain in the Fleet, would direct them to the area where evidence of the possible colonies was found. After four local days everyone returned to Welcome and Farm and Keathe checked into a hotel on different floors to await the return trip in sixteen days. The crew came back aboard, met and invited me to participate.

"What did Farm do? Where did he go?" Kurk asked.

"He spent the entire time doing research on water worlds," Z replied. "He studied heavy planet planoforming techniques and mining of fumaroles. There are some very advanced studies here that can't be found in Esgerl.

"What about Keathe?"

[ She spent her time at the census bureau. ]

"I'm totally lost," I admitted. "What could the connection be in Esgerl? They're going right back there."

"I've been doing a number of mathematical constructs on transdakz convergencies on the qat zeta axis, Thing," GD reported. "It takes into consideration the psychological imperatives of both races and finds the veltrid chi confluence crossover zed co-bacht qid rannr lines suggest something rather specific. Are they made aware that psiltripium is now a comparatively common commodity or has Maita decided to phase it in gradually to not disrupt the economic base built on it?"

[ Psiltripium? It will have to be displaced in the economic matrix through gradual increasion.... ]

"I'll be damned!" Z cried.

"What?" Kurk asked. "You don't have a hint of what they're talking about!"

"Psiltripium is found exclusively on heavy worlds," Z said, smugly. "They've found a heavy water world, which could make it easy to mine."

"Exactly!" GD said.

"I see! They can FLOAT it to the surface with any number of simple devices!" I suggested. "It could be collected and floated in close containment, then removed when mining was completed, making it possible to remove great quantities without normal permits.

"The deceased were partners who knew where the world is so were a division of funds they prefer to not make! NOT meeting in normal shipboard situations took some definite collaboration of both parties."

"THAT occurred to me from the first," Kurk said. "What now? Follow them to the world when they get back?"

"No. We'll know where it is before we return," GD said.

[ Oh? ]

"We'll put them on the probe. We'll know everything they know in seconds," I replied. "I can show with very strong probability that they committed the murders. They will refuse to volunteer to take the probe to answer the question of whether they were in any way involved in the deaths, which is indication of guilt to a near certainty."

[ You still can't put them on the probe. ]

"Sure we can!" Kurk replied smugly. "IGGY is the only law here in intergalactic space and they present a direct and clear danger to all your other passengers.

"That's true, you know. If anyone figures them out they'll kill without thought."

[ And if we're wrong? ]

"I'll offer my sincerest apologies and suggest extreme monetary compensation," I answered. "If they're innocent they'll agree to the probe on their own."

"Your sociomath tells us that," GD warned, stopping Thing from arguing further.

Thing and Z reluctantly agreed, stating I was the law once we were outside of Jlokt, then went with Chest to the area of the mystery colonies.

There were no Immins, but there were some very strange and aggressive people of a new race who had copied the ships of the Krofpt – who had established a bustling colony world – and were starting to harass many of their neighbors. Sociomath showed they were a nonviable race who would destroy themselves naturally within two hundred local years. They were very much like the Immins.

They didn't know the theories upon which the ships were built. They had merely stolen a ship and copied it, part for part. They could probably build everything except moders now and had made large numbers of weapons of types found on the ship. Without moders the ships would go nowhere.

Fleet Jlokt swooped in suddenly and removed all the ships. They had and used the standard trace to find all moders then left them to their own devices. As we predicted, several political divisions on the planet believed the others there were behind it so there would be no measurable damage from the actions taken by Fleet. They would slide into their own self-made oblivion.

The Kropth colony would be in contact with their own mother race in Esgerl in only forty two more days. Four representatives would return there aboard me.

*

[ I'm torn between the use of the probe like that and the fact we were essentially right about Farm and Keathe. I wonder if sociomath might make use of the probe too commonplace. I see a very real danger. ]

–Don't be an ass just because you're an ass! It will only be used any different than always by Iggy!–

+Now, No. Thing merely fears the unrestricted use of such intrusive measures could become far too....+

–YEEEEE! Why not filibuster us to death, Frog Breath? Couldn't you just say Soup Brain worries 'way too much about nothing?–

"GD? Aren't they supposed to be, er, entertaining the paying customers?" Kurk asked.

–PAYING customers?!? On an intergalactic ship?!? Has all that fur displaced what passes for your brain, Butt Puss?–

+Now, No. The contact between the galaxies, indeed, among even the planes, has great value in many forms. The payment is proffered in the knowledge garnered from diverse....+

[ Just say payment is not in monetary form. ]

"Just say NOTHING for a radical change!" Z suggested.

"THAT would be downright shocking!" Kurk said.

–What, Sex Addict? Not enough females to keep you occupied this trip? You need us for a diversion to pass the time!–

+NOW you did it! You will NEVER learn!+

–Say what?–

"That's an idea! Women!" Kurk declared.

[ That! ]

This would go on all the way home.

Featuring Tab/TR

Tab/TR is the first robot detective Maita built. He is an independent intelligence and becomes a major part of the series. Kit/T6 is introduced later, the second robot.

_"Call Me Tab"_

My name, or designation, is Tabori R. DeSixtee. I am a detective specifically for the Emperor Maita, exalted leader of the Maitan Empire of the This Galaxy. (I call it This Galaxy as there's really no reason to name the galaxy one happens to be in at this time because we've never developed any method to cross the currents of intergalactic space, though the emperor has assured me it can be done.)

My card:

Tabori R. DeSixtee

Private Investigations

Code TRD-60 Perfect 3

"Call me Tab"

Now that the crap is over my "Name" stands for Transitive (Or traveling) Abecedarian Basic-ordered Random Intelligence. The "R" stands for robot and the D-60 is my design production number. The emperor designed and built me personally.

Maita's a machine too, but few know that. It could cause some problems among the organic members of the empire. They claim to have these hangups about being ruled by machines – meanwhile they allow those computers to handle almost every facet of their lives. I see just about everywhere I go that they stop for traffic signals on those planets that have surface travel.

The truth is they already have their lives controlled almost entirely by machines.

You explain their thought processes. I can't, though that IS my real purpose.

You see, Maita has this crew of diverse organic beings and close friends – well, just two at the moment, but there have been various others for varying lengths of time.

Thing is a Mentan and an empath while Z's from some backwater world called Terra. I was there once, and you talk about a really screwed up place.... But that's another subject entirely. Suffice it to say Z's taught us quite a lot. He's shown us that absolute illogic is sometimes the best weapon in one's arsenal.

He also gave us all a sense of humor, which is an emotional response to a ridiculous situation or about the same response to deliberately looking at something from a different perspective than was intended.

This isn't about Z and Thing.

My initials, fastcom code and ship's designation are all TRD-60.

Did I mention my ship (I know I didn't. I'm a machine)? It's really my transportation, a huge memory bank, a laboratory, a factory, a friend and part of me. We're in constant contact through a thing called radio that was once very popular among certain stages of most emerging cultures. It's a short-term usage thing as better ways of communicating come along so it's soon out of use, which makes it safe to use as TR and I do because it can't be intercepted except by Maita's machines – which have their own instructions.

In primitive cultures we have to be careful. They use it so can find it if we do.

It seems strange to enter a primitive culture and know they have the means to discover me when cultures thousands of years advanced over them seldom do.

Only Maita and I have the newest drive, designated TTH14. TR discovered it because of an accident on one of our recent little adventures. It isn't safe for ships that aren't independently intelligent. The planal interface factors and the dimensional mode planal interstices are far too complex for them.

Theron and Searcher, two intelligent machines we know, don't want the drive as it isn't really that much faster (To a machine with infinite patience) and is, as stated, dangerous to use.

Let's see. Anything else?

Oh, yeah. Perfect 3.

Perfect 3 is the third planet outward from the sun designated "Euclich," near the base of the spiral "N" arm of the galaxy. We call it N43/-1/1107, which is its galactic coordinate setting. It's one of four trade worlds in the system, each having certain characteristics that lend it to a different type of being.

Perfect 1 is small, hot, light, thick atmosphere. M1, in other words.

Perfect 2 is medium. Medium everything. Size, atmosphere, temperature. M2, (Like Terra). (If you've read any of Z's books he uses the old system where Terra was an M3, but the recent restructuring of classification puts Terra at M2, very close to M3.)

Perfect 3 is medium-sized, low atmospheric pressure, lower temperatures, low water content. M3.

Perfect 4 is large, heavy, thick atmosphere and medium temperature. It produces some heat internally. M4.

After that the planets in the system don't match their M numbers.

In the old system the "M" numbers were reversed.

I always say Perfect 3 is a nearly perfect (Get it? Sorry.) description – if you're judging on a scale of one to ten.

The galactic coordinates are simple and are possible because Maita and crew (Sometimes me included) placed gravitic pulse beacons a few years back at ten location across the galaxy. One at galactic center (Almost. There's a black hole at center, so we didn't think the beacon would hold up for long if it were placed in there. Get it?), one at the "top" of the center globe, and one at the "bottom," and one at each "compass arm" of the galaxy at 25,000 plazsis (A Maitan Empire standard light year) from galactic center. N43/-1/1107 is, therefore, 43 degrees from the galactic "N" beacon, one plazsi negative, which is galactic south of the center plane of the galaxy, and 21107 plazsis from galactic center. Set your coordinates for that, and you'll be within one plazsi of Euclich when you enter N space. Having once been there, you can calibrate much closer for subsequent trips.

42.849/-1.103/21106.8492 is within three light minutes, which is within the system about halfway between the orbits of Perfects 3 and 4.

I'm a shade under two meters in height, mass at 87 kilos and am designed to look like a Swaz.

A Swaz is an amphibian being from Swaville. Swaville (SWAH vuh leh, not Sway vil) is a planet that's not far (In interstellar terms) from Terra. It's also M2.

I have the general shape (K-form) of the reptilian Kheth or the mammalian Terrans, have webbing between my fingers and toes about one third of their length, have dual-lidded eyes (Inner clear, outer opaque), am what Z has called "built like a pro running back", (I haven't any idea what that means. I seldom know what he's talking about) have a vestigial small dorsal fin from the back of my neck to the crack of my ... buttocks. My skin is tough and leathery and I, of course, am hairless.

Swaville is a planet with a great deal of heavy metal salts in everything, which is why Maita chose the form. Those salts are stored in the skins of the beings from those planets for toxic isolation. The cells carrying the salts grow out and slough off with the skin layers. This rids the body of the cumulative poisons very effectively.

The lead and gold and such in the skin also very effectively make it virtually impossible to scan me with X-rays and E-M beams.

Neat, huh? Keeps them from finding out I'm a robot.

I was also designed to handle such things as eating and excretion and other organic functions so no one knows or can tell I'm not an actual native Swaz.

I have credentials from University or anywhere else I choose because I can plug into the machines that run things, program it in, and all will be confirmed.

That handles the preliminaries. Now to the case.

I was tinkering with the atom architects in the lab on TR when it told me there was a fastcom message coming in. I went in to take the sheet from the printer (Fastcom can only send printing, not voice) and read it.

That's another thing. I can plug directly into the fastcom to send and receive. Part of being a machine.

<TRD-60>

~Lanta:gvrnmnt brdcst:N52/0/20001

~Manipulation of economics causing disruptions

~See what's going on there Tab

>Maita.<

"Lanta," I said.

"You got it, Boss!" TR replied and took off.

Lanta isn't but a couple of hundred plazsis from Perfect so we'd be there in a few minutes. I asked TR to give me everything it had on Lanta and their systems.

Lanta is a very rare sort of place, I discovered. It has two intelligences who evolved together and who actually get along fairly well. One's basically reptilian, the Mirks, and is the higher intelligence. The others are called the Keepos, who're (Ha! I just noticed! Don't forget the apostrophe in that one!) like some animal Z calls "an intelligent chimpanzee with speech".

They're mammals.

They have a large reptilian animal they use for a beast of burden.

We grounded on the space port where I went to the local hotel, checked in and established myself under the name of Eks Trah, a name I often use.

I've had enough publicity in the past that it interferes with my investigations. I'd be the only Swaz on Lanta but, as all peoples of one race tended to look alike to another race that wouldn't be a serious problem.

TR can modify me tremendously when necessary and has a few disguises of its own.

I decided to take awhile to see what the real situation was before I put my big mouth into it, so strolled around getting the feel of the place.

A nice thing about being a machine and, to top that, being designed by the designer of most of the machines used for keeping the records for a large empire, is that I can interface directly to "read" those machines.

Now all I had to do was to discover what meaning any of it had so far as this case went.

I wasn't even sure what this case was. Maita hadn't said very much. It was economic, which generally isn't in the detective area so I'd have to go back to TR to study economics. I had all the information these machines around here would give, now I had to get the entire theory behind it.

It would take about two minutes as I simply plugged into TR's console to have it input on demand. I have several distinct partitions in my "mind" so I can input the information to study later. I can erase what isn't needed and use the space for something else.

Lanta is a stage four planet so there's only a very limited part of the world where empire people and other aliens are allowed to go. I sent floaters out at night to "read" the machines in other areas. I immediately found that the interference was from outside so it was definitely an empire matter.

But why? What did Lanta have to offer?

It was an agricultural planet. I wasn't aware of anything here anyone else would want badly enough to try to manipulate an entire economy to get! Titanium and rhodium were exports, as was the very high quality beryllium they produced, but that wasn't enough to bring anyone in. Those were all things that could be acquired easily from any number of places.

I input all about the agricultural products, but there didn't seem to be anything of overriding importance grown on the planet.

Okay. I had to find who was here illegally and get them out without harming an emerging culture. These things were delicate, but I wasn't worried about these people. They were open and friendly and aliens weren't a problem to their psychology.

Why the culprits, whoever they were, were here was another question. The only race who actually were stupid enough to think they could start an empire with themselves as overlords were the Immins and they were, for most practical considerations, now extinct.

Races joined the empire by their own request and could drop out anytime they chose. All the empire really is is a huge trading guild and social club. It was strictly for convenience races used the empire machines instead of millions of obstructive bureaucrats.

So who? What? Why?

I took two days (Local) gathering data, then went to see the agents for Lanta. I was still totally unlearned as to anything except that someone was manipulating the economy here for the singular purpose of bankrupting the place. The extreme economic depression seemed aimed at the people themselves.

A Keepo named Kupe spoke to me for a moment, then led me in to introduce me to a Mirk named Lahro, who was some sort of liaison officer for Lanta. He was somewhat slender, had fairly short arms in relation to his legs and body, a slight snout and sharp teeth.

He was wearing eyeglasses! It was the first time I had ever seen a reptile with glasses. They were of a strange design with a sort of clamp around the upper snout.

The ears were like mine. Slits in the side of the head.

"Please make yourself at home," he said. "Kupe said you were an economist?

"Please understand, if you are not familiar with our races, that Kupe's people are not as developed as are the Mirk. They were for centuries used for pets, they have evolved intelligence. It is in a formative stage. At this time they have the mental abilities of someone just prepubescent in my race.

"The races cooperate and we do get along well.

"Why is an economist from University on Lanta?"

"Because there's some anomalous feature in your economy that's about to throw your world into a great depression internally. We wish to prevent that," I replied. "There's the strong possibility it's an outside influence."

He (?) studied me carefully for a moment. "I am, of course, aware something is not right in our economy," he said. "We have a study team trying to find what is wrong so it may be corrected. I was not aware that University involved itself with such local things – especially on undeveloped worlds such as Lanta."

"We usually don't interfere when a race is doing something that'll cause problems only to itself," I said. "That doesn't seem to be the case here. We want to know what's happening so we can prevent a disaster that's not of your own making.

"We don't manipulate economies because that always comes back to haunt a culture later. It's a political trick.

"I must know who's going into the interior here who isn't native to this planet. Perhaps I can trace what's wrong and who, why and how it's being done, if you follow me."

"No one is leaving Spaceport," he said definitely. "That is certain. Our own economists have said it is an artificial kind of influence. They have the same trepidations as you, apparently."

I nodded, spoke a few pleasantries, then took my leave.

The empire had sensors so the only way anyone could come to this world undetected was to do it through this city. That no one had left this city other than natives of this world was equally certain.

That meant tampering with the machines. THAT'S something I'm particularly well-designed to handle!

Two days later I had to say flatly that there had been no tampering here. Period. No tampering and no one from outside.

How was it being done? – and, damn it! Why?

I went back to TR where we had a silent discussion. We decided it had to be a plan by someone who'd been here or who'd been represented here since the start of the decline.

It also had to be someone who had connections with Lanta's native financial institutions.

We went over the lists of aliens who fit that description and found there were only thirty four possibilities. TR said it would send floaters to follow that many, then argued they could easily defense surveillance.

Some people seem to think we have some very sophisticated weapons to use in detection, what with all the technology.

That's true. Unfortunately, every advance in our technology has a corresponding advance in something designed to thwart the technology and we're further behind all the time in some ways.

Not in mentality!

"Then we'll have a very good idea of who they are!" I said.

TR is nothing if not quick to see a point. "Yo!" it quickly replied.

I went back to the hotel to spend the next afternoon and evening until TR sent me the list of six who had defensed the floaters.

It worked! There were six people here who were deeply into something they wished to keep hidden so strongly that they had gone to the expense of buying anti-surveillance equipment. Three were investigators for investment firms so would naturally have such equipment. Three more were legal police organizations who would, also naturally, have the equipment.

By logical elimination it was one or more of the investment investigators. Someone had found something here and wanted to break the economy as a means of getting control of it.

That wasn't logical.

I went back to TR to argue it out, but it boiled down to those six.

I fastcommed the emperor to ask what possible thing could be on this world, then waited. It would take a certain amount of time for even such a sophisticated machine as Maita to search through every little clue.

The fastcom dinged and began printing: *There are no minerals or precious stones or inorganic compounds on Lanta that can't be found elsewhere in greater concentration and/or on unowned planets or asteroids. That leaves organic compounds or technology. There's no technology on Lanta that's more than primitive. There are no unusual theories and no psy talents beyond the norm. There are no drugs that can't be synthesized cheaper and better, either medical or recreational. It remains for you to discover what else it could be. Thing says hello and to ask you if you have found anything like gincha there? It's a thing that can be synthesized only with an atomic architect and only you and I have that technology. Z says to remember Feach. I assume that will mean something to you. I send greetings.*

Signed with the emperor's seal, so to speak. (Our personal link carried the seal as asterisks in the form of the great seal. Only direct coms from Maita had those seals on empire machines.) Even if there was something of interest in the message to anyone other than myself no machine in the galaxy would receive the message except TRD-60, its coded destination.

I thought a moment.

I knew who the culprit was, but I didn't know why or anything else. I didn't know how.

It was Koomthe Klaas, the investigator for Maitan Galactic Delicacies.

Both Thing and Z figured it much the way I did. It was a spice or rare flavoring that could be synthesized only with an atomic architect. Everyone else here dealt with other types of products.

Now to find the stuff, straighten out the economy and get Koomthe off the planet.

I had TR set a spy floater to watch the MGD warehouses and another to trace all shipments that came into the place. It could call others as needed.

It was wait time again, which is ninety percent of detective work, so I strolled around until I found Klaas in a shop having the aforementioned gincha with two natives. I had TR send two minifloaters to follow the natives when they left and sat at a table close to Klaas. He would know I was interested in him – or that someone was – because of the floater. I would dare him and see what transpired.

When the two left he nodded, then signaled for me to join him.

"I suppose they're to be followed?" he said as I sat.

"No, Klaas," I answered (Proving a machine CAN lie – if it's designed to do so, so don't believe what you've heard about that one!). "It's you I'm going to catch, not your flunkies."

He studied me.

He was a Fethren, which is a mammalian species something like an overly fat Terran with black and white fur.

"I wish you luck, but not good luck," he replied. "What are the charges to be?

"You're working for Lanta?"

"No, I'm working for the economics department at University," I lied, watching his reaction. He gasped slightly and I could see he was having a bit of trouble breathing.

If anyone caught the interest of University they were doomed and he knew it. The very finest brains from thousands of cultures directed at one was scrutiny nothing could withstand for long.

I stood and said, "Don't die of heart failure on me! I want to see you thoroughly destroyed and your name held to ridicule throughout the galaxy!" and walked out.

This was, obviously, psychological warfare. If he got scared he'd get careless and, though I planned to finish this quickly, every edge was an edge.

TR said two people had come to the warehouse and left. It reported the floaters had sent followers that had shown one to be a farmer in the mountains while the other was a free stockbroker. They both left with large sums of money on their persons.

I went to the nearest records machine where I plugged in as soon as it was safe to do so.

The way the economy was being wrecked was that vanadium, THE precious metal here and the basis of the economy, was being dumped in large supply all over the planet, destroying the basis of the economic system, thus the system itself. A gram of the metal was two hundred credits exchange one year ago, but was only forty two credits exchange now. A few more tons of a common element and this economy would collapse.

I went to the warehouse, used my sensors to find the security system, then used a couple of floaters to protect myself as I went inside after the place was closed for the night.

There were various cartons, sacks of things, jars and crates. I took small samples of everything, then went into the "office" section.

Klaas was seated behind a desk with a small light on his face. He was dead.

I ran sensors that determined he had died half an hour earlier of an electronic interference that stopped his heartbeat. He should never have told them I was after him.

Whoever "they" were.

I "read" the console of the security system to determine who was in the building at the time of death, then searched the rest of the offices.

In a closet in one was about a quarter ton of vanadium ingots, which I took on a pallet, loaded onto floaters, then sent to TR along with the samples from the containers.

I made the security system "forget" I'd been there, then went back to the hotel.

In the morning TR told me what was happening. There was a spice that was as much as addicting here, it grew in the outer mountains, it couldn't be synthesized except with the architect and the natives wouldn't grow it except as a last resort as they didn't use it on moral grounds, and these are a moral people. It was a rare type of compound in that it affected both reptilian and mammalian beings.

"Break the economy and force a depression so you can force the people to grow this stuff," TR snarled. "Every time I think we've found the lowest lifeform in the galaxy we find something lower.

"What next?"

"Does MGD have a ship here now?" I asked.

"Yo!"

"We have to get aboard," I said. "How long has it been on the planet?"

"Since yesterday morning," TR replied. "They took on some boxes and sacks."

"Has anything been taken off?" I asked.

"No. Two people," TR said.

I grinned and stood. TR told me which ship so I took four very small passive "bugs" along with some other very important stuff I "swallowed."

I went to the ship and strolled in as though I belonged. A security robot checked me over, but I turned on my "machine" responses so it decided I was another depot cargo handler servo.

I placed the "bugs" where I wanted them, then went to the control bay. No one was there so I announced my presence on the PA mike.

They came from all over the place with disruptors and lasers drawn. I grinned at the two who were obviously in charge.

"Kopey Lahch and Beerm Kluce?" I asked. "I spoke with your representative yesterday. Klaas?

"I really think you'd better leave Lanta and head out to intergalactic space. You people working for them who can take the probe and know you'll pass needn't worry, but the ones who're in the know will wish you hadn't been born or hatched or whatever."

"Kill him!" Kluce snarled.

I dropped the special compound on the elementizer grid (The thing that makes it possible for me to eat and drink), which breaks things down to their basic elements. I can then reassemble or vent off the gases, such as the strong anesthetic I sprayed over them. They were all sound asleep as I searched the ship with the help of several floaters. We removed two more tons of vanadium along with all the narcotic/spice.

I sealed the ship and called Maita to send an Empire cruiser, then went back to TRD-60.

"Boss, they store the vanadium in a huge vault in Capital City, not too far from here. What can we do?" TR asked.

"What if the weight of all that metal were to cause some kind of cave-in where most of it was forever lost?" I asked.

"I scan limestone caverns all under the place, but nothing deep enough to handle it," TR replied.

"So make something deep enough to handle it, then do it," I said.

To make a long story shorter, TR sent a floater with a sonic disintegrator to carve a deep flue, then to take the floor from under part of the vanadium.

I hoped to get the price back up to normal, but we only got enough to get it to about eighty six credits, but that was enough to save the economy after a bit of inflation and devaluation.

Now we'd have to bring others here to suggest the world's monetary system be changed to something that wouldn't be so easy to manipulate as some stupid metal. Maybe we could eventually get them onto empire exchange – which is based on the fact that most cultures wanted to get along with most others so it wasn't really based on anything except when Maita decreed one credit was the value of the average work done by any citizen of the Maitan Empire in one fifth of a MGS (Maitan Galactic Standard) hour.

To be quite truthful, the money was nothing more nor less than an excuse for diverse peoples to get together.

There's really very little crime in the empire. I'll have to spend some time answering some hard questions, such as: Why did these Fethren, a generally good, law-abiding race, want to get large amounts of money?

Why would they stoop to such a low method as to deal in addicting drugs?

Is this the only place such a thing is taking place?

Why is there a market for the drugs?

Where is that market?

There are thousands of other questions.

This is what I'm designed for – not so much for answering questions, but for asking new ones. It's a big galaxy. I'm sure there are far more questions out there than there are answers. I want to discover what some of them are!

Featuring Kit/T6

Kit/T6 is the second robot. He is not featured alone in any shorts, so I'll put one here where he and Tab work together. All the continuing characters work with all other and in any combination.

"Here it comes now!" TRD-60 announced to its two passengers, Tab (Tabori R. DeSixtee) and Kit, two robot detectives for the Maitan Empire. The two were together aboard TR at that moment though they were in constant communication through the special internal circuitry with each other and with their ships, TR and T6. It was a complicated arrangement the ships had worked out together (The ships were also independently intelligent) making the group for all practical purposes one being at the same time they were four separate personalities.

The internal system was a mixture of gravitics and radio they were sure couldn't be detected – yet. If anyone ever discovered they were using it they would soon have eavesdroppers. The trouble with technology was that as fast as a thing was invented its neutralizing principle was also invented so the detective business wasn't much easier in this tremendously advanced empire. It was about the same as before space flight was even developed.

What TR was referring to was the expected fastcom call with a client for the T-K Detective Agency. The Emperor Maita, itself a machine intelligence (We won't go into that now except to say the Maitan Empire was galaxy-wide and few knew the emperor was a machine), had built TR and Tab as detectives more than a century past. T6 had developed intelligence because some "government" maintenance people had used a number of shortcuts and improper parts in its upkeep and repair. Kit was later built by Maita to serve the same functions with T6 that Tab did with TR.

Kit was designed to look, feel and smell (VERY important!) like a Kheth while Tab was ditto as a Swaz, though Maita, T6 or TR could modify them greatly as needed when they were to pass for other races.

"What sort of thing is it?" Tab asked aloud. They had agreed to speak aloud whenever they were together or when there was no reason not to so they would be "in character" as a habit. That would prevent deadly slips later. TR could pass fastcom directly to them on internals. They all enjoyed playing odd word games and one-upmanship games, which required vocalizations because it was often a matter of inflection or using a particular word NOT in translation. The digital sign for a word like "no" was the same for almost all negatives so a play between "not" and "knot" wouldn't work in silent communication.

They carried storage for any known language, the customs of the speaker of that dialect and much other racial information. They could be programmed thoroughly for a language in less than one second or could "unload" or erase that language as quickly. TR and T6 had all known languages ready at no notice.

While they could be linked together in any combination to share their mental capacities each had a secret part of its mind it did NOT share. That was important, even to machines, and would have made the original experiment useless had it not been included. The real reasons the experiment hadn't worked had to do with other things entirely.

"It's some kind of big business deal gone sour on Klohr," TR replied. "It wouldn't be brought to our attention except there've been a couple of murders. Someone's playing dirty. Tab really likes murders, as you'll learn soon enough, Kit."

"Information," Tab said.

"The Klohrians are mammals on the order of the Cheeth," TR replied. "They have a common type economic system that's competitive/capital structured. They're fairly new in the empire, of course. These things don't happen in the more evolved societies.

"The problem, as it seems to me, is almost twelve percent of the population of the planet are employed by the two companies so this could quickly deteriorate into a worldwide economic depression. Needless to state it's the working people who suffer at those times and they tend to revolt. Revolution breeds repression, breeds violence, breeds further repression, breeds the failure of the system. The particular system there has run its course and should fail, but not in such a manner. It probably won't be too easy a job, but maybe you can defuse this bomb."

"What kinds of things are supplied by these two companies and does merger mean monopoly?" Kit asked.

"Transportation facilities and, yes, a virtual monopoly," TR replied.

"Stock and bond market?" Tab asked.

"General type. A few people control the wealth of the world," TR replied.

"Could we cause a recession and devaluation of both companies' stock?" T6 asked. "That could stop them short of the revolution-repression cycle, force the merger and leave us with time to make longterm adjustments."

"We could try what you and Z did on Klemmr," Kit suggested. "Invent things that will drain off interest in the companies and weaken them both and maybe start a process directly on the stock market that will make such things impossible in the future. Bring in strong market laws."

"We'll do a little of both," Tab agreed. "We have to design something that'll make permanent changes in the way things are done there. Maita doesn't want to have to intercede in this sort of thing because once it gets started it's so damned hard to stop. It would soon have to spend all its time screwing around with these local problems.

"Let's get modified and go to Klohr. We can assess it better there."

They agreed to that and each went to the shop on his ship. The next thing Tab or Kit knew they were in orbit above the planet.

"I have an idea," Kit said over the com system. "We can be competitors! I can move into the market in Southport and you can move in at the same time in Majority City. TR and T Six can use our abilities to input a held company for each of us that has been registered for some time. What we'll need is some reason to suddenly both need to get capital from the market – and in the transportation area. It'll divert the market and, if it's good enough, should maybe make the other two companies move to get together to get rid of us."

"It could work," Tab agreed. "They've got linkage to Library, but don't use it much. I'll show research linkage for the past two years – my company will have been registered then. TR says it can input whatever we want into the computer records here easily enough. The way their comps work we can have been in the records for decades without anyone noticing.

"You should register a bit earlier and should have linkage records to Library. Something's beginning to take shape!

"TR's done it. I'm Frah Lore, owner and sole stockholder in Bright Future Success, Inc., a diversified exploratory company. I've accessed the ancient world of Kleefan Dis through Library and discovered the Nrxrmf Beamed Power Principle which will be very cheap to produce, will be available right away and will make what they already have here obsolete. My use patent for Klohr is in the files as of today."

"I'm Neep Tide – that's a joke from Z – who is sole owner etc. of Innovative Concepts, the same sort of company," Kit said. "I'm an ass to get along with, but I've searched through Library and have found ... what?"

"The Armantane Gravitic Drive," T6 suggested. "The AGD is everything the NBPP is, is a bit more expensive to produce, but cheaper to use. The two should balance so far as the market is concerned. You registered your use patent just yesterday."

"You're both planning to arrive in Record City tomorrow and are prebooked at the Royal Palace Hotel there," TR continued. "You share the third floor, but at opposite ends of the building. You must go there if you wish to open a stock option. Perhaps you'll meet at the registrar's office for a moment. You'll read in the listings the following day about each other's companies – and that you've both registered major stock openings in transportation. You both have to raise money to go into production so will become immediate competitors.

"I'm afraid you'll have to take it from that point yourselves. T Six and I can't do it all!"

"Damn!" Kit replied. "You mean I can't stay here and let you handle all of it through the computers?"

"Stick it!" T6 shot back. "We are now given permission to land on our separate pads. You two'll have a whole afternoon to set up your companies that've been there for a year or more! Enjoy! Enjoy

*

Tab landed on the assigned pad, went to his hotel, then out to find something in the local records he could use as a business location. He would necessarily have to find some place that was unoccupied for the past year, at least. He plugged into the hotel's computer system through the phone connection and came up with a better idea.

He went to the local postal building, accessed the records, located a box number that hadn't been used in several years and registered it in his name. He had the small fee such boxes cost placed into the PO account, informed TR as he did it so it would be placed in the records of the Future Success business.

As the company had never been active no one would know it was done until they had reason to check. They would, hopefully, have reason to check very soon.

He knew TR was making the working model of the NBPP-1, as he would call it, to show to potential investors. Notes and diagrams that would appear to go back for almost a year were also being made, including a fastcom readout of the entire text the "idea" came from. As nothing in Library required a patent except in the section that dealt with active patents anyone who had the credits it cost to have such things fastcommed could do the same thing.

The patent Tab, or rather, Frah Lore, held was a use patent that would guarantee no one else on Klohr could make or sell the thing nor would it allow identical units to be brought to Klohr from offworld for sale for a period of ten MGS years.

He then spent the evening making friends.

In the morning he went to Records City and to the Royal Palace Hotel, room 302.

* *

Kit went through much the same process and even came to the same conclusion for the address of Innovative Concepts. The difference being he spent the evening being obnoxious to people.

His room in the Royal Palace Hotel was 321.

At the assigned time, Kit went to the records officer at the government complex to open a stock venture. T6 gave him official papers these bureaucrats would always require along with a lot of useless ones. Kit was to be abrasive so would have learned a long time ago to cover any possible requirement no matter how silly or unreasonable. In short, he pretty much knew how to deal with bureaucrats. He was a total ass to the woman at the desk, but he somehow intimidated her, hinting he had friends in high places and any trouble from her and she'd be reassigned to the Icedesert Station offices.

He wanted her to remember him if the time came when he would need her – and she most definitely would! He would be remembered as the first-prize obnoxious ass of the year!

As Neep Tide was leaving the office Frah Lore was coming in. Tide made a remark about rude people who barged blindly through a door without regard for the safety of others and banged on out.

Z grinned at the desk clerk and shrugged. She rolled her eyes upward and had him sit. He went through the process in no time.

Kit went directly to the offices of the stock exchange to register to sell one hundred fifty thousand shares of common stock at ten credits a share. The brokers were trying to get it through to him that he wasn't going to be able to sell any stock without some kind of proof he could produce what he claimed and at the cost he claimed – and besides, he didn't tell them what he was going to produce yet!

"Transportation, damn it!" he snapped. "I got the patent and everything. No way am I gonna stick MY neck out for the sword. I know what I got. Got all the figures and projections and all that damned crap. Worth billions! All I need is the opening capital. Had it and I'd do the whole damned bit myself. Don't need anymore damned aggravation! Worth billions! Everybody the hell on Klohr will want them! Ain't all that expensive, neither. Big BIG profit margin. There ain't any competition on the whole damned world – and I got the patents that say there ain't GONNA be any for ten years!

"Get off your fat asses and turn over some money! That's what the hell you're paid to do, ain't it? Do I have to even do your jobs, too? Move!"

"Can we see a model? Some blueprints? Some proof it will work? Anything?" the agent asked. "Has it been tried? Can you show us something other than a lot of claims?"

"Tried?" Kit snapped in disbelief. "TRIED? Damn it, this is from the Library records! It was TRIED for centuries! It WORKED the hell for centuries! OF COURSE I have a model! I'm not stupid, damn it!"

"I see," the broker said. "Can I see the use patent? Is it complete and for how long?"

"Here! I already SAID it was for ten years, minimum! Are you deaf or just stupid? Damn!" Kit spat and threw the patent and the descriptive fastcom readout onto the desk. The patent was complete and was renewable every ten years for ten renewals.

"Here's the cost of production, the cost of use and the cost to the consumer," Kit snarled. "I ain't damned stupid! It's all done, damn it! Just get off your fat ass and SELL the damned stuff so I can get started!"

"My word!" the broker cried, reading through the reports and computations. "This IS worth billions! Can you really produce them for that figure? That's all it costs to keep them running? They don't use any fuel except the storage cells? Why hasn't this been done before?"

"Yes, yes, yes!" Kit said. "It HAS been done before! How the HELL do you think I GOT the stuff? DAMN! Don't anybody here have any damned SENSE? Are you all deaf? You didn't hear me say it was from Library? How the hell do you think it got there if it hadn't been used? Cripes!"

"I meant why hasn't anyone ever found this in Library before now?" he replied. "This kind of thing is public property anywhere in the empire."

Kit took on a hard look and tone of someone lecturing a small and slightly retarded child: "I rather would think it's been done a thousand times before in the empire," he said. "I also rather think I'M the first one here to have the common sense to LOOK for it from HERE! It took me almost a year of looking through all the stuff in Library to find this. That cost me a lot of credits. The bills from EFC are right there. That's why I'm out of money. That's why I must sell stock.

"Will you get off you FAT ASSES and do something?"

The broker jumped up and went to confer with his supervisor, who called the head office, who said the stock would be placed on sale, but it wouldn't be pushed hard until a place was found for production and a working model was shown that could be placed on display for potential investors.

"Well, I can have a place ready and the model at, say, midday on the day following tomorrow? It will be at home. Southport. I'll meet your committee at the port and take them right to the prospective plant."

It was arranged.

Neep Tide marched back to the hotel where he grunted at Frah Lore, who was in the elevator with him and the other passengers. Lore tried to start a conversation about seeing him leaving the records offices, but he grunted and pushed out of the elevator on 3. Lore got off on the same floor.

*

A similar day was passed by Tab except that he was pleasant and people were pleasant to him. He set up his agreement for production and headed back to Majority City. Both Kit and Tab had the same idea about the meeting with the broker and representatives. That wasn't so surprising, as both had the same previous experiences programmed in or lived through. The communications system made it even easier to do things that would keep them at about dead even in the competition. To work, the schemes must be timed to suddenly conflict with one another soon after the big companies tried to buy in.

Tab met a company broker representative, a sales representative with recording equipment, video and audio crap and two "major potential investors" from major automobile companies who "happened" to come along for a relaxing time away from their offices.

"I am Don Darl," the broker said. "This is the rep, Ginj Fee, and Jehr Nill and Pond Kard, two people who may wish to invest if this is anything like it's purported to be.

"Shall we get this started?"

Tab led them to the model of the NBPP-PCV-CW, as he had named it. They were excited at the sleek clean lines and the roominess inside. They were soon en route to the large structure Tab had rented the day before. Production could begin as soon as funding was guaranteed and parts were ordered.

"This is called NBPP hyphen PC hyphen CW, meaning a word we can't pronounce – a name of the inventor, really – that started with the N sound, B for Beamed, P for Power and P for Principle, then the PCV is for personal conveyance vehicle, then CW for cargo wagon.

"The rear where Fee, Nill and Kard are seated has fold-down seats. They fold to leave a large area to carry things. It'll mostly come in handy for families or small commercial deliveries. The motive power is simple gravity. The principle is to take gravity, amplify it like we do on the spaceships, but then to reverse its field with a gravitic resonator. The car stays about twenty centimeters above the surface so you needn't stay only on paved roads. You have no tires to wear or anything else. Nothing touches the road. It pushes liquids aside so I don't recommend going over water, ha-ha!

"The gravitics are beamed from the rear to move you forward. As the lower units neutralize weight and friction it doesn't take much to move you. If you're standing within a meter or so of the rear grid when the car starts out you can feel the push. If a full-power start is made it could knock a person down, but it's a square of the distance thing so it's not dangerous.

"That rear propulsion is where the B comes from. There are no moving parts so nothing ever wears out in the drive train. The doors can be made in magnetic repulsor fields, but that's an unnecessary expense. Hinges won't wear out for many years if the owner lubricates once a year.

"We're here. We traveled at a sustained velocity of two hundred kilometers per local hour, the maximum allowed speed on the freeway. I think you'll have to agree it was the quietest and smoothest ride you've ever taken at even half the speed! A gravitic field is very pliable so small obstacles aren't projected to the vehicle itself. The luxury model will have a double field so will be able to move over ridges in the path that're much larger than any vehicle with tires could navigate – and the passengers will feel absolutely nothing!

"Hovercraft are almost as comfortable to ride, but are very expensive to maintain and to fuel. They are loud, while this is entirely silent, as you have noted.

"The air can be vented through the reactive part of the field to heat it or through the expansion vanes to cool it so air-conditioning or heating is automatic.

"I've rented this warehouse. Most of the interior parts are already mass-produced and those we must build ourselves are simple windings and focuses and things that aren't greatly expensive to produce. The gravitic focus amplifier is the same type of unit used on the freight floaters at the ports. They've been around for years, which is why I'm puzzled that no one thought of this before and patented it. I'm very lucky I was able to find it before that happened!

"Any questions?"

* *

"You rode the damned thing all the hell the way out here!" Kit exploded. "How can you be so damned stupid? What the hell kind of question is that?"

"You have to admit we can't observe the power cells!" Liht Keen said as snappishly. "If I knew what type they are and what size and how long they hold up under what conditions I wouldn't be asking! As for stupid, it's YOU who needs funding! I suggest you don't forget that!"

"People'll beg to give me money for a cut in this and we both the hell know it!" Kit snapped back. "You can see the space the damned cell's in so you can figure what they draw! I told you where they were! Just lift the damned lid and look and cut the crap! You have all the specifications as to the power drain and lengths in your stupid damned hand! Can you read? Krostef give me strength!"

The "potential investor" who had come along, Jit Forr, quickly stepped in. "Let's not argue personalities," he said. "I can see the car is made of stock parts – and cheap ones, at that.

"This isn't much of a warehouse. What will you require, other than standard stock parts?"

"Coils and repulsor shields," Kit replied. "Six broads sitting at a line bench can make thirty six per day. I figure on producing thirty damned six damned cars per damned day to start!"

"You have projections of only thirty people to do that?" Forr asked. "They should come in well under projected cost! You said, ummmmmm, nine hundred fifty credits to produce a vehicle that you will wholesale for, uhhhhh, twenty eight sixty three? Why that figure?"

"Because the assholes will pay that odd figure, but would be suspicious if it were an even twenty seven fifty or something," Kit replied. "You left off the twenty one centime. If its some strange figure and change we must have figured it as close as we could. The retailer will get right at five thou, which will be three thou cheaper than the only competition here. It won't cost much of damned nothin' to run and maintain the things so there ain't no damned competition! National Motors and Strong Automobiles and even little old Import Cars will be out of business in a year! We can buy all of their plants for next to nothin' and can use their labor force to top it. What the hell more could anyone ask?"

Jitt Forr was a major stockholder in Strong Automobiles as Liht Keen and Hakj Fold represented the other companies. The big battle was between Strong and National. Import was siding with National.

*

It was quite late. Tab laid back on the hotel bed to feign sleep. Jehr Nill and Pond Kard had grabbed all the stock and he had the cash to begin production. That would be immediate, as would the advertising campaign which Kit would "happen" to see about the time Tab "happened" to see Kit's ads. Kit sent everything to Tab as Tab did to him so Tab was aware Jitt Forr personally bought all of Kit's stock. TR, who had been checking on these big buyers with T6, gave them the information about them: "Jitt Forr is a majority stockholder in Strong," TR sent. "He apparently always had a man in each brokerage firm to inform him if anyone comes up with anything that could be damaging to the company and will make his own on the side, even if it means bankrupting Strong.

"Jehr Nill is National and Pond Kard is Import – same story. It's Strong against both National and Import, who would soon merge. That's the war we've heard about. I'm waiting for one of them to contact the other to gloat!"

Tab grinned. In the morning he would hire an attorney and would make the strangest will ever seen on this world, as would Kit. This was going to happen fast. It had to if the enemy were to be kept off balance enough for success. The wills would accomplish pretty much what this world needed to put them among the better worlds in the Maitan Empire. It was time these people saw the bigger picture of life as part of a galactic culture and not a closed one-world society.

In the morning Tab hired a foreman and had her hire the other workers. He put out contracts for standard parts and hired the drive builders' foreman and showed her what would be needed. She would set it up, working from the plans and blueprints Tab gave her. Then he went to the lawyer. TR had done an extensive search for the type of idealist they would need to carry on what they were going to start. The will was a big part of the plan for the ideas it would give to others.

This was to be phrased exactly and was to be registered on the empire judge machine so no one could stop the process once it was started.

Then both of the detectives could relax except for threatened lawsuits and a vicious advertising campaign, one against the other. The courts declared the drives weren't even close to being the same so no patent rights were infringed, which seemed to send Neep Tide into a fury, added to by the attitude of "screw you!" Frah Lore projected back at him.

National Motors merged with Import suddenly and attempted to then bring about a merger with Strong, but it was far too late for any of them. The worldwide demonstrations of the AGD and the NBPP caused all potentional orders on record for standard vehicles to be cancelled and left the two new companies with a six year order backlog even if they were able to make production increases of a thousand percent immediately.

Strong Automobiles closed their facilities and offered to merge with AGD, but Neep Tide said they were as damned stupid as he guessed all along to suggest it – but he would buy all their facilities at one centime on the credit. When he finally agreed to six point four centimes the deal was settled. It was barely enough to keep the stockholders from actual poverty and guaranteed employment for a good number of the people who would have lost their jobs with a permanent closing.

The same sort of thing happened with NBPP and National Import Vehicles. That left only Tab and Kit to have a huge international fight, which they did with great glee. Over one hundred forty days they insulted and complained at each other through the media. Most of the media people kept trying to interject the fact both companies would never be able to fill standing orders even if they worked together and even using all the facilities of the old bankrupt companies. Others grabbed every opportunity to instigate more and more enmity. That was planned, too. T– K knew the psychology of these people very well.

There was a lot of under-the-table dealing, too. By both of them. They had to set up a specific set of circumstances, then to act at the right time and in the right way.

Neep Tide "happened" to be at a meeting of worldwide investors at the same time Frah Lore was there. They came face to face and began arguing about cheap crooks who stole patents. It ended when bystanders pulled them apart after they started brawling. As they were forcibly separated Tide swore he wouldn't rest as long as Lore was alive. Lore screamed back he felt the same and he was going to do more than threaten.

That scared those news reporters who had been instigating this trouble, but they'd gone much too far and couldn't see any way to defuse the situation now that it had come to direct violence.

Lore claimed an attempt was made on his life and Tide was almost run down by one of his own vehicles. Bystanders said the driver looked like Lore, but Lore said there was no way he would get inside of one of those AGD garbage death-traps.

Then shots were fired publicly at each of them. Pencil lasers. Deadly little things.

Meanwhile the factories were working at their maximum and the stock market was up. Almost everyone could afford the cars. Competition was keeping the price down.

Then Tide publicly challenged Lore to meet him in space to have it out once and for all. The police rushed to Lore's private pad to prevent his leaving, but were seconds too late. There was a spectacular battle in orbit, from which nothing returned to Klohr. It filled the news and everyone wondered what would happen to the companies now. Who would take over?

Then the empire judge declared them dead and made the wills public.

* * *

Tab leaned back in the pilot's chair on TR as Kit leaned back in the one on T6. They were back to their "normal" forms and the ships were linked. They were orbiting Klohr listening to the reading of the will:

I, Neep Tide, being in control of all mental facilities, do hereby decree this as my last will and testament.

Upon the declaration of my death all assets and properties of which I am possessed will be accounted. There will at that time be an issuing of stock in my company, Innovative Concepts.

These assets will be divided so any one share will be of equal value to any other share.

There will be one share issued to each person employed by my company(s) at the moment of my death.

As is known by this time, I spent a great deal of time studying through Library. I have found that most worlds in the Maitan Empire, as well as all successful worlds of the past, have always made their ways to a system where the people who worked in a place owned that place. It is an incentive to succeed that one works for oneself, not for some damned idiot like me sitting at a desk somewhere doing nothing or for a lot of `stockholders' who contribute nothing but greed.

I, therefore, decree that each employee have his one share, and that sufficient extra shares be issued in the division to ensure the continued solvency of the company, and to give each employee his own share after constant employment by the company for two tenthyars.

As the company progresses and increases its holdings, yearly shares shall be presented to each person employed by the company. These shares are to be in the form of percent of profit. The funds for those shares are to be deposited into an account and are to be paid to the employee for his certificates, plus interest, at his retirement.

Should such funds be needed for an emergency at any time, the employee may withdraw them by turning in his certificates. In the event of the death of a person employed by the company the certificates may be cashed by his heirs.

There was a lot more, but that was the drift. The object was to give the incentive of working for oneself. One appreciated the profits of his own company in addition to the basic salary. One didn't get anything unless he was an employee of the company. It wasn't socialism nor welfarism. A person could be retired by fellow employees if he didn't produce. He could then turn in any certificates he had for face value and that was that.

The final clause was an explanation of the will: "I have seen some companies in my lifetime that, upon the unexpected and/or unexplained death of an owner were awarded to and individual or collection of individuals or that were reverted to a board of directors or to major stockholders. If such a situation exists at my death this will means the one or one who brought about my demise will profit nothing. That is my final revenge!

"This is a lot easier than I thought it would be," Kit said. "We didn't have to solve anything at all. Just form a plan and go in there and do it."

"The first one was supposed to be easy," TR replied. "You two have to get used to working together."

"It was hardly more than a drill," T6 agreed. "Keep in mind that you have a lot of experience to draw on when it comes to a thing like this. It won't always be that way."

"I have a question," Kit said. "What was that about murders when we first started?"

"There were four people murdered by your big original investors to get control of the things they had when you got there. In case you didn't know they were ruined and are being exposed a little at the time now," TR answered. "The end of the wills made that part clear. No one was going to murder you and end up with the company."

"It was an unusual kind of thing," Kit agreed. "A little offbeat, as Z would say. I guess we won't get too many like that."

"You should have known Wahnee!" Tab said. "Now, SHE could come up with the screwy cases!"

"Well, I think this goody-goody job is done, and I think maybe it will give the people a few ideas. It should last," TR said. "I'll be waiting for you on Perfect Three, T Six!"

TR flashed, and was gone.

"We'll see who's waiting for who!" T6 replied as it flashed into TTH mode.

"Waiting for WHOM," Kit corrected, stretching back in a very organic-looking way.

Featuring Kurk

Kurk is the next continuing character. He is from another plane and is terrifying when you first see him. His laugh is used as a weapon. After a few minutes, you know he really could be as dangerous as he first seems, but he's also a very basic good guy. He is called the Empire's Main Stud. Women of many races are drawn to him.

Kurk isn't featured alone in any shorts. This is a chapter from What Now?, which features Kurk and Kit/T6.

"This may well be a VERY strange one," Kit mused. "The old Krofpth Empire was right on the dome. It wasn't anywhere near this area of the galaxy, large as it was. I wonder where they got the emergency signal.... T Six?"

"Yo?" T6 replied.

"Are they using straight Krofpth or is it another of the languages?" Kit asked.

"Yep! Straight from Library unabridged classic Krofpth," T6 answered. "If it had been anything else I think I wouldn't have answered it. Not personally. I would've called Fleet. I'm calling Maita to ask what we should do. There's a lot more oddity to this every second. The closer, the odder it gets."

"We should go right on in," Kurk suggested. "It's a call for help on an emergency beacon. Someone needs help – or did when that signal was sent out. We can call Fleet or Hospital when and if they're needed. Maybe it's something fairly simple that we can handle without anybody else. Maybe all they need is Hospital (A planet that was exactly that and that had ships to go anywhere in the galaxy at a moment's notice if an emergency arose)."

"Maita's gone with Z and Thing on some new adventure and says for us to handle it ourselves. Tab had to go to some place to meet somebody for the agency and can't help," T6 replied. "Well, Kurk! You've worked with all of us now and you've worked with Maita and Thing. If this is something new and interesting it'll be our first chance to work as only the three of us! Most of what Kit and I do is with the whole crew or with Tab and the agency so we pool our ideas before we act, okay?"

"In other words don't go running amok through this until we decide if we know what's going on," Kurk said with a wide grin. "Agreed. I think we can work together very well. I've gotten a feel for the way you operate with the Gretschiim thing."

They came in close to a system a quick visual probe showed as having eleven planets, two of which were in the life zone. There were two very large planets with large moons that could also support life.

"Can you triangulate exactly where the signals are coming from?" Kit asked. "IF they're still being sent, of course. There's always the chance the signals were sent years ago and the cause of the emergency has rendered our arrival incidental and irrelevant as no one survived."

"Yo! From geostationary orbit over the fourth planet," T6 replied. "There seems to be activity of a civilization on the fourth planet. Signals. I'm doing spectra.... There's quite a little civilization there. A mix of some advanced and a lot of pre-industrial societies. The world is more than two thirds water, as reasonably comfortable as wet M three planets generally are for Swaz, Kheth, Terrans and Plutons – also for robots designed in those patterns. It has a stable oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere and is lushly forested. There are six continent-sized land masses along with several thousands of islands of all sizes. There's evidence of some fairly large cities, all on two tropical through temperate zones continents. The more advanced types of pollution and such are there, naturally.

"There's some small bit of ocean travel as well as land travel. Perhaps there's some near-rocket travel, but nothing greatly advanced so far as I can detect. We've found civilizations before that have primitive space travel before they have ... but they don't have any air traffic I can see. They don't have simple television or radio – but the beacon is using focused gravitics to make the aid call. It's also in a high stable orbit.

"None of this adds up! There isn't evidence a.... How strange! I wonder if they've detected us?

"They couldn't have! I would've detected their scans and we can't be seen with telescopes from this distance! Not through an atmosphere!"

"What happened?" Kurk asked.

"The transmissions stopped!" T6 answered. "This is weird! Maybe they have some kind of psy power they can use to see us?"

"T Six, back away from the system a plazsi or so," Kit suggested. "Come back inward in jumps of a light day. Check the way their transmissions have changed over the period of a year to see if there's some kind of pattern that would indicate an automated response."

They felt the mental twist that dropping into and out of TTH dimensional drives caused when it interfered with natural electrical flow in the brain.

"There isn't any transmission here," T6 said. "We'll move in to see when it starts again. I see what Kit was saying."

"They turn the damned thing on and off," Kurk said. "How can they do that? Radio controls? Who would turn an emergency distress signal off? Why? Why turn it on again?"

"It would seem they're doing exactly that," T6 replied. "Maybe they think it'll conserve power, though those Krofpth signals would operate for centuries after the star burned out."

They waited for another few hours with forty or so jumps to determine the timing of the beacon's transmissions.

"Okay! They turn it on for five of their hours every fifth day," T6 said. "The message is a flat call for aid in the old Krofpth language and codes on four separate emergency channels at once. It's not a simple basic call signal, but it doesn't contain any vast information, either. It's just – there."

"But that doesn't make sense!" Kit cried. "Why would anyone only send a call for emergency aid for a few hours every few days? Either they're in trouble or they're not!"

"The first thing we're going to do is make a VERY cautious approach to the planet," T6 replied. "We're gonna find out what the people are like and what stage they're in, then we're gonna find exactly where and why that stupid transmission is coming from."

"Why it's coming from?" Kurk asked with his toothy grin. "You've blown your logic circuits! I have an idea it's some kind of artifact someone learned to turn on and off. They're probably trying to find out what it is themselves. It's something that's in an orbit it's been in for centuries and they've recently located something in an old escape pod or cave or something that turns it on and off and are trying to find out what the thing they've found is for. It's probably got a full set of instructions with it, but no one can read them."

"So why not sit out here and argue about it?" Kit said with heavy sarcasm. "That way we won't have to actually DO anything!"

The mood was much lighter suddenly, though none of them knew why.

TR approached the planet only to confirm the races didn't have space travel. They didn't have atmospheric travel at all. They had some sort of steam engines running industry and large trains. There were apparently a few steam driven cars on rough roads. They were in an early iron age technologically, but their civilization seemed even more backward than that from what they could see with the scanners. The society would be somewhat rigidly controlled, judging by the building patterns. They knew how to discern psychological implications of patterns after more than three centuries of study by University (Another specialized planet that was just that).

"It seems they're still in the animal power stage for the most part," Kit noted. "T Six, send out some floaters for the language and for some closeups of that society. The way it's laid out says it's not at all advanced into science. We'll find the source of the transmissions while the probes are down there."

"And don't start telling us how Maita will raise hell about using the probes!" Kurk threw in. "You always have that stupid argument and you always use the damned thing anyway!"

The probe was like a helmet that was placed on the subject's head (Or whatever passed for a head on the being in question) where it "read" the entire contents of the mind, recording everything. The floater with the probe, usually taken on some person who was either asleep or anesthetized, is taken aboard one of the ships where it's edited, leaving only language and customs. The edited probe is then recorded on small diamond-like crystals that are fitted into sockets of the organic members of the crew. In the case of Kurk and Z the sockets were placed on the ears where the fine crystal would appear as minor decoration. The wearer of the crystal had immediate use of the language as the sockets were wired directly to specific areas of the brain. As Z already knew and Kurk was rapidly learning some forms of speech used different muscles in different ways than they were used to so could cause some pain and rapid tiring at first.

T6 launched automatic floaters then searched the standard geostationary orbital positions, soon finding the broadcasting satellite.

"You can almost feel the age of that thing!" Kurk said in awe. "Can you detect how long it's been here, T Six? Use some of your fancy lab tests. I'd say it's been there since the Krofpth Empire days – a quarter of a million years!"

"Let me gather some of the detritus that's been building up around those antennae for analysis," T6 replied. "The Krofpth really built things. This thing's been in space and was fairly protected. It's got a dependable self-correcting orbital engine. It derives power directly from light and stores it in that lower container. The cells have some metals that slowly decay so I can place the time since the thing was manufactured to within a thousand years or so. It's apparently an ejected emergency beacon that was left when a ship crashed onto the planet below. There's, therefore, an information storage section under the cells. We can get in there and read the whole mess if we have to. If it's been there a long enough time I'm sure the thing had to correct orbit at least once. There'll be records of that.

"Ah! I have it!"

They waited while T6 ran a thorough analysis with the atomic elementizer grids.

"Great exploding galaxies!" T6 suddenly cried. "That thing's been there for two hundred fifty three thousand years! Kurk was right! It was put there while the Krofpth Empire was – but they were never in this area! Not even close!"

"We may assume that some kind of exploratory ship crashed on the planet leaving the beacon in orbit – no," Kit suggested. "It didn't crash. They placed the satellite in that orbit and set up the accumulators, fixed the four channels, recorded a message that's being broadcast simultaneously in two radio bands and two gravitics bands. They had to set up the energy tracers and fix them on the star. They.... We'll have to see. There are no relays so none of it would ever reach back to the old Kropfth Empire areas. Perhaps they didn't even have ... they didn't! They took some kind of device to the planet with them to activate the satellite – then didn't activate it until now!"

"I see why you call yourself a detective," Kurk said. "Very deductive. What we're left with is a race down there who haven't the ability to build a radio, but who use a sending device a quarter of a million years old to start and stop that thing at will?"

"All we can do is wait until the probe floaters are back," T6 replied. "I suspect that, strange as it seems, much of that IS what happened. This is going to be interesting – if not far more!"

"Contact Library," Kit suggested. "There's an Inktan named Keralt there doing research for Maita. Tell him to look for any indications of lost ships back about that time. Maybe there'll be some kind of record. See if anyone sent a colony ship out that didn't come back or something. There MUST be some kind of record! Those people put everything in Library!"

"I doubt it," Kurk said. "What I see as having happened is that something happened to the drive or the control computers or even the moder itself. They found themselves near here when they were able to come back to N space. Maybe they didn't have the power to go back so figured the rate of expansion of the Krofpth Empire and set the thing to operate automatically at some later date. Something happened to the timer sequence and it only recently started the calls."

"There's a very good chance we'll never know, but the floaters are on their way back now," T6 replied. "I have good visuals and a good bit of other information. From what I've learned it's not a very pretty life down there. It's that phase of life that's bloody and mean. They have lots of castles all over the place and huge slum areas near the small elite parts of the cities. I can see that from up here. There will be a few tyrant-type landowners who live in pure luxury and the rest will be serfs. Almost slaves.

"I'll make crystals for you, Kurk. The language isn't much like anything I've found at Library. Definitely no obvious roots to Kropfth."

They waited again, then the crystal popped onto the tray. Kurk placed it, then studied it carefully for awhile.

"Hmm. It's a time much like Tlorg was like before Maita decided to ask them into the empire," Kurk deduced slowly. "It's what Z calls medieval. Life is cheap. Lords and kings, most of them a lot like the Countess Toot (Book five: _Now_ _You See It – Now You Don't_ ) and those of that ilk. Vicious, cruel, self-important.

"I see they have a small belief in magic and wizards. The priests are very powerful, but only within the class? Caste? "There isn't much carryover from one part of society into another. There's a strong class system with no way to get from one class to another. That's one hell of a lot of stagnation to build into a society. Ninety eight percent hopelessness."

"Hah! Would Z love THIS one!" T6 said. "He loves to go into these sordid times so he can play magician. YOU know that, Kurk. You were his demon on Tlorg."

"I AM a demon," Kurk said smugly. "These people are mammals. Can you make Kit into one of them?"

"Now wait a damned minute!" T6 cried. "We're NOT going to interfere with them!"

"If we're to find how that beacon is working and why we are," Kit pointed out. "I don't plan to interfere. We'll simply go in there, find our answers and get back out. We don't have to interfere, but we have to know what this is and we have to tell Kropfth about their beacon out here.

"I see they believe in demons, but no one's ever actually seen one. All the crystals indicate the subject knew someone who knew someone else who had this seventh cousin twice removed who knew someone who disappeared and was found torn to pieces – obviously by a demon. The priests solemnly pronounced that it was demons, there wasn't any other explanation so it was demons. Take it on faith."

"There's something very strange about that faith bit," T6 replied cautiously. "What? No one actually believes ... in it? What is it for, then? Why have priests and demons if no one will believe in them?

"Take demons on faith, but you have no faith?"

"If there's anything I'm good at it's being a demon," Kurk agreed. "After all, I are one! We can stay up here to locate where the signal comes from to activate the satellite. If it self-activates we can turn it off and go away after determining why it's here in the first place. If they're turning it on from down there we show up as a wizard and his demon. It'll be sorta hard for them to not believe in demons when there's one staring them in the face!

"Fair enough?"

"Seems a likely way to handle it to me!" Kit replied. "As I said before, this one's going to be interesting if nothing else!"

"And YOU'RE the ones who're explaining this crap to Maita!" T6 cried, but they knew it was as excited about this as they were. They all loved adventure. That was built into Kit and T6 and was why Kurk decided to join the crew in the first place. Their words and arguments were more for a way to pass time while they waited for the thing to be turned on again than for anything else. They were destined to go aground as soon as they found the thing. They wouldn't consider leaving with the puzzle not even investigated. It would be against all their natures.

"You two review the Tlorg thing through Z's and Tom's tapes and through Thing's concise reports," T6 suggested. "Also, you might review the Klemmr thing Tab handled (Book twelve: _Happy Birthday_ ). Maita's reports go without saying."

"Then why say it?" Kit asked.

"To irritate you," T6 replied quickly. "I'll make a floater into a shield thing like Tab used on Klemmr. It'll keep me in touch plus I'll send out other floaters as I deem necessary. The satellite will turn on, one way or another, in a little over three more days so we'll hang around in orbit and wait to gather information about what's really going on down there.

"I detect a strange reading on the energy scales from that sort of pyramid near the port city near the mouth of the large river. They don't have the form or the amount at their disposal so what we want will be there."

"So knock it off with the description of a place that only you can see," Kurk said. "What we'll need to know is on these crystals to some extent. It seems you only got the lower classes, though. They know the higher class language, but we don't know much of anything about what actually takes place inside of those castles. If we're to be wizard and demon we'll have to know more."

"Bitch, bitch, bitch!" T6 shot back. "You sure as hell get picky sometimes! I work my diodes off and all I get is a bunch of stupid complaints!"

"Stick it in your compchips!" Kit snarled. "Get a floater down there and get us what we have to know you pile of reject overused parts!"

"Sheesh, what a grouch!" T6 replied innocently. "It so happens I have three servo floaters down there right now doing precisely that. I might decide to let you extract the necessary information for yourself you mechanized excuse for a mechanized excuse!"

"My-my!" Kurk said lightly. "And you say we organic types can't get along! Could you two keep it down? You're giving me a headache."

"You give me a pain, too!" Kit put in. "It's substantially lower on the anatomy, though."

"If you two juvenile idiots will knock it off I'll process the vast amounts of information my floaters have brought back," T6 said.

"I'll have you know that we are both MATURE idiots!" Kurk sniffed haughtily. "I've told you at least ten million times not to exaggerate! Vast, indeed!"

"T Six always makes vast projections from half-vast data," Kit quipped.

The crystal dropped onto the tray and Kurk inserted it.

"You'll see that I've combined the information of the first crystal with the new information on this one," T6 said. "There are some interesting points. The formal actions are quite different from the informal. All of it's highly stylized."

"The elite don't have too much else to do," Kit agreed. "Their wizards are either laughed at or greatly feared, I see."

"With me along as a demon and familiar I imagine we'll be respected and feared," Kurk replied. "If they try that kind of bribery stuff with me they'll learn what fear is! You can tell they never knew any real demons or they wouldn't have a bunch of legends about bribing us."

"I think seeing those legends alive and in person could pretty well destroy this society," T6 warned. "You can't do it."

"We'll handle it," Kurk replied. "Look at the way the elite consider their fellows. They think very literally that they're chosen of their gods and the peasants are less than the beasts of burden. How can a race actually think that way?"

"Quite a few of them usually do in this stage of development," Kit answered. "Maybe we can effect some changes for the better. These people have the ability to become something better. They once were, I think."

"I'll go to the medbox shop for modification," Kit said. "We might as well be ready."

"You hold it right the hells there you sorry excuse for a tin tyrant!" T6 snapped. "We don't have any idea yet if we're even GOING down there! I'm willing to go along with this crap, but only if we have to. That's the deal!"

"Oh, we've decided that we have to," Kurk replied. "We've eliminated everything that would indicate we won't have to go aground."

"WE'VE eliminated? Where do you get this WE crap, paleface?" T6 cried.

"What?" Kurk asked. "If there's anything you can't call me it's paleface! If you've bothered to notice I'm a blacker black than even exists in this plane!"

"It's one of Z's jokes," Kit answered. "There was once a race on Earth called the Amerinds, a dark skinned, dark haired people. These people were at war with those like Z, pale skin and light hair. These were called the Europeans. The Amerinds were referred to as 'Redskins' while the white Europeans were called 'Palefaces' due to the contrasts in racial coloration.

"There was a television and film series about a friendship between one of the Amerinds and one of the Europeans. They would adventure together over the entire western part of the American continent, always a team. The joke was that one time the two friends found themselves suddenly surrounded by a thousand Amerind warriors whereupon the European turned to his Amerind friend, saying, 'It appears that we are in very serious trouble, my friend,' at which time the Amerind looked at his friend and replied, 'Where do you get this 'WE' crap, paleface?'"

"Now you're repeating Z's stupid jokes?" T6 cried. "I think I'm losing control!"

"Well, you never had it you mobile mechanical maniac!" Kit pointed out. "I'll do the basic modification bit now."

"Hah! Guess who controls what you'll be like when you come back out of there?" T6 sneered. "Get into the shop! We'll see who wins this little battle!"

They continued with the insult game, but T6 was ready and willing to modify Kit before it ever started. They would've found any excuse to go aground on this world to try to alleviate the cruelties. Maita hadn't programmed Kit to ignore such excesses, compassion was learned by T6 from Rimalt and Kurk was always ready to fight anything he saw as unfair. He was the classic fan of the underdog (That's one of the Terran's expressions. The crew didn't know what an underdog was, but found the expression was clear enough to most).

It was more than two hours later before Kit came from the medshop as a Rhaid, as the people called themselves. He was now five feet eight inches tall, was rather humanoid, dark brown skin with very blond hair and had very green eyes. His hair was worn neck-length as was the fashion among the elite and he had various gold rings and bracelets. A large gold medallion with his power symbol in the center was worn around his neck. The symbol contained a very large emerald, the most sought-after of the precious stones on Rhaid. He wore long purple robes with power symbols woven through the cloth in gold thread and leather sandals with gold buckles on the straps with a large ruby on each buckle.

"Not an unattractive people," T6 said. "Kurk will be his own horrendous self. Glare for them a lot, Kurk. Laugh at things – that'll scare a few centimeters from their growth! (Kurk's laugh could curdle the blood of a very strong person of most races.)

"Now we wait until we see where the signal comes from down there – like we don't know."

"It'll come from the pyramid," Kurk agreed. "I've got this one figured out. That pyramid will be old beyond belief. It's now a temple of some sort or a powerful sacred shrine. It was originally designed to house the artifacts of the ship that landed here, one of which they've learned to turn on and off. It's used in some religious ceremony now.

"T Six, have you been able to trace the race? They aren't Krofpth, I know. Those people are reptilian. Is there a record of them at Library?"

"Keralt reported there're records of various missing ships at that approximate time. The moders weren't clse to the greatest so far as dependability, it seems, so some were lost," T6 reported. "I've direct-accessed a hell of a lot of information. The language doesn't seem to have any roots in any of those races that fit the general type. I took a small sample of skin from one of the subjects for the probe that I've done complete genetic analysis on. There's no match on Library, which is not surprising. Most survey ships that went out had only Krofpth on board.

"There's a lot of random information at Library that we don't have time to look through so it might all be there. Keralt will keep looking in his spare time. There are a lot of things that were deliberately hidden in Library. The Krofpth DID have a fairly large military, which means all kinds of silly secrecy things in those earlier times of the empire. It won't necessarily be easy to find now."

"As that thing broadcasts in exact Krofpth we have a race that must have evolved naturally here, then," Kit pondered. "Very interesting. They've ... T Six! What did the Krofpth have that would last this long in an atmosphere? A quarter million years?"

"I see," Kurk said. "That pyramid. It had to be some special material."

"They had various alloys that would probably make it," T6 agreed. "I can analyze that structure when we're down there. It could be a number of things. What puzzles me the most is what power source they had that survived this long onplanet! I don't see anything like solar collectors – which couldn't survive a thousand years at best in an atmosphere, anyhow! The instability of their material is what makes them work at all."

"You said you detected some weird kind of power usage there at their pyramid?" Kurk asked. "Is it being used all the time or only when the signal is sent or some other schedule?"

"Yo!" T6 replied. "Constant, so far as I can tell."

"So much of a draw that it...." Kurk began. "That much time simply couldn't be any type of nuclear device could it?"

"Not unless there was changing of the fuel several times," Kit said. "We can be certain that didn't happen. The language tells us none of the original party survived. These aren't related to the Krofpth, either. T Six showed that with genetic print identification – not to mention the fact that reptiles don't evolve into mammals in a lousy quarter of a million years."

"We can only surmise," T6 said. "That's a waste of time, I think. It can be interesting though. We have time to waste so we can make up a scenario or two. It'll pass the time.

"I say the ship left this satellite here, then landed on the planet to try to locate where home was only to discover home wasn't anywhere they could hope to return to, tried to establish a society here, but died out for some reason. They made the pyramid thing to endure for the time when the Krofpth came this far knowing they had no hope of contact in their lifetimes. The satellite started automatically at a preset signal. Perhaps our own gravitics when we put the relays out here a few years ago started it. It could be reactive response to a specific gravitic frequency or something.

"Kit?"

"It was obviously a colony ship," Kit began. "They had the materials to build that pyramid and they definitely had that satellite aboard. Everything is standard practice. The only difference was that for some reason the ship couldn't leave the planet again. The people perished, leaving the artifacts as we find them. It's very possible our own relays started the satellite's transmissions. It will be a circuit that reacts to a wide band of the gravitics we use for fastcom.

"Kurk?"

"Maybe some of both scenarios," Kurk replied. "I think maybe we don't have enough information to make any realistic guesses. I think I'm an organic so I'd better get some rest. We might be busy for quite some time when this starts.

"T Six, please wake me when the transmissions start again if I'm not already awake at the time."

"Yo!" T6 answered. "Now tell us what you really think about our little scenarios."

"They're too far away from the old empire for one thing," Kurk answered. "The satellite didn't broadcast on our frequencies for another so it's not at all likely our frequencies would trigger anything. There's something about the power in the pyramid that does NOT fit. It's too long. We don't have the information. It's that simple. It's a waste of time to make all these theories without some information to base something on."

"There's that," T6 agreed.

Kurk slept awhile, then was awake again to practice some of the actions and to learn to speak the language without much tiring of the muscles needed. Finally T6 announced the signals had started again. There was a direct radio signal from the pyramid to start it.

"I expected it when I saw all those people going toward the pyramid," T6 said, showing the scene spy floaters concealed in trees near the pyramid broadcast to them. There were around a hundred people who approached the place in a procession. Their leaders were dressed in bright colors and wore elaborate headdresses. There were four who walked two to each side of the fifth, who was dressed in red cloth woven with gold.

"Religious," Kit noted. "Four priests of the second rank and their leader. Only the leader went inside, you'll note, while the four stood guard at the entrance. The people are of the elite, you'll also notice. No commoners."

"He made quite a show of entering, of opening the portal," Kurk said. "I'd deduce he got his priestly power by opening it in the first place. He found something inside that ... there it is! Look at the top block!"

The tip of the pyramid was beginning to glow a dull reddish, then got brighter and brighter until it was too bright to look directly at.

"This satellite is broadcasting a microwave power beam to the pyramid!" T6 exclaimed. "The satellite's basically a power accumulator that happened to have an emergency beacon aboard. We have to get into that pyramid or I'll blow a few fuses from curiosity!"

"The high priest is in there throwing switches," Kit suggested. "He's learned which ones get results so he's built some kind of ritual around it. Maybe we can use this in some way to do something positive with these people. I think one thing's fairly sure now. We damned well have to get down there! That thing's dangerous! That's too much power for some primitive priest to be in charge.... T Six! What's happening to all that power? Great exploding galaxies! What will happen when that power reaches saturation of the storage facilities?"

"If it's going into unprotected storage or if that priest has turned off the automatic regulators that thing's going to blast a tremendous section of that world apart when it overloads too much," T6 replied. "Maybe that's why it cuts off after a certain time. The cells fill and an emergency cut-off cuts in, shutting the whole system down."

"Then what uses all that power so they can replenish it?" Kurk asked. "Is there steady type of leakage causing your readings or is it because there's something down there actually using that much power? It's a hell of a lot to use in only a few lousy days!

"Do you see what I'm getting at?"

"Yo!" T6 replied. "You two get into the hold. I'll make a floater with a beam that's too intense to look at to take you to their little ceremony in a few minutes. I've placed one of the people at the ceremony on the probe. No one even noticed she was gone so I'll have more information. You need a plan – and fast! There's nothing on this planet that could use the power being input there! The whole damned planet couldn't use it!"

"We'll appear, saying we were called from some never-never land by the sacred pyramid and demand to know who dares to trifle with powers of such a wizard as I happen to be," Kit said. "My personal demon will be there with me to show them I'm not their regular assembly line wizard so they'd better pay attention. We'll go right into the pyramid to learn what there is in there."

"I want to see what that power's being used on!" Kurk said. "We can handle that ridiculous priest I suppose, but that won't necessarily solve any of our problems. We'll have to establish authority at once, then start giving orders before they regain any balance. We won't know what we can do until we know what's inside that pyramid. We'll have to be commoners, you know."

"Commoners? Why?" T6 asked.

"Because the elite would stick together. They wouldn't fear each other, but a commoner with the powers we're going to exhibit will scare them into reacting. We have to control that reaction very carefully or this will turn into just what we don't want. We don't want the elite to start repressing the commoners anymore than they are at present. We certainly don't want to precipitate any attacks by one segment on another. The elite will tend to strike out from habit. It's what has always kept the commoners in their place."

"I take it we're going to throw all caution to the stars and interfere with this culture in any way we choose?" T6 asked. "I don't think I like this!"

"Call Maita," Kurk suggested. "I'll talk to it."

T6 called Emperor Maita, explained their situation, then turned it over to Kurk. Kurk said he thought the only real hope these people could have was if they could do something to change the direction they were going. What they had was worse than stagnation, it was regression. If it didn't change soon this race was doomed. The decadence of the elite was extreme.

"Remember, Maita," Kurk finished, "this is the kind of thing you and your original crews did. Sometimes it's the only thing that can work. This culture's become so rigidly stagnated with that stupid class system it'll never be able to break out on its own effort."

Maita told Kit and T6 that Kurk was probably right. The people on Rhaid were doomed by their own natures if something wasn't done so they were to decide what would be most effective among themselves and were to act according to those decisions. Kurk had been asked to join the crew for the very real reason he would tend to view things from a new angle. It was something the original crew had forgotten, though they were trying to regain their old selves and ways of thinking with what they were doing – a puzzle for T6 and crew to wonder about.

"If we don't do anything they're lost," Kurk pointed out. "If we fail it will be because we didn't move the society. The worst we can do to them is what's already happening here so we can't do any real damage."

Maita agreed. That was Kurk's value. Take his lead.

"We might as well get started, then!" Kit said, climbing on the floater. "Right or wrong, here we come!

"This is going to be one ceremony that none of those people down there are ever going to forget for one second!"

Afterword

This is put together because people who like SciFi, sometimes with a minimal bit of fantasy thrown in (but explained as trickery or a different slant on natural processes) can see how I have developed characters who are, I hope, distinct. My first "favorite" character was Thing, then the Golems, then Kurk.

I decided to not write further in the series. It's a matter of looking for a new slant on things. I believe my limitation is in feeling that changing a location or name of a character is a dodge that makes for dullness. My new slants are in things like Iggy. They can carry a short, but are not enough for an entire book.

I hope you enjoy my characters. I tend to like most of them. - C. D. Moulton

(I am living in Panama' now. Everyone calls me "CD" here, because I was in music and those are my initials, for Charles David)

my works are available in print from www.lulu.com/maitaman or as e-books in most outlets and at www.smashwords.com/profile/view/maitaman
