Far-out Show (9781465735829) (39 page)

Handed the newspaper, the on-screen Nerber
moved it close to his face and said, “This substance is not
familiar to me so if I learn all about it I maybe can offer those
on my superior home planet new options for marking down
information.”

He rubbed a page between the fingers of one
hand to feel the texture, then rubbed a hand flat against the page
to test its smoothness. “It is light but flexible. Thin, but strong
enough to hold its shape. An interesting substance but surely
inferior or we would be using it on Ormelex.”

Taylor gave him a sideways glance but said
nothing when Nerber conspicuously sniffed at the pages.

“It has some faint odors but none that I
recognize or that I can identify. Maybe one of the zerpies
searching the inhabitants’ information sources will identify what
it might be and I can become more of a hero by confirming that. I
could do that since I now have some of it in my grasp so I know
better than any other Ormelexian what it looks, feels, and smells
like. Well, except for any other contestants who might meet an
inhabitant possessing some. Of course under
The Far-Out Show
rules I am not allowed to know how many of the others arrived
intact and fully functional or what they are doing.”

He turned his head and listened to the pages.
He jerked them away when a breeze rustled the tops of the pages
that were barely standing upright. “It makes sounds!”

Once he identified the sound source though he
was fascinated, shaking the pages to cause it again. “Ah, those
sounds may happen when it bends or moves. They are not signals it
is picking up or generating itself. Items on Ormelex are superior
because they would do more than just make noises when moved around
or made into other shapes.”

He pulled the pages close to his face and
flicked his tongue at it a bit several times without making
contact. “For a full report on its sensual properties I should
taste it but doing that when I will return it to an alien
inhabitant is going too far.” He moved the paper back to arm’s
length.

Hasley freeze-framed the image of Nerber’s
head and asked, “Did either of you see that item, whatever it is,
that’s attached to his hat among Nerber’s things when you secretly
searched his quarters before we came through the snaggiewarp?”

“No, but it doesn’t look like anything you’d
bother to hide,” Feedle said. “How long has it been part of his
costume?”

Lacrat looked up from the small monitor on
the console and said, “From the first views we have from Wilburps
after they arrived down there. Same sort of nothing special thing
in the same spot on that head covering.” He then keyed instructions
into the system.

“It must be something he found down there and
liked so he made an attachment to it. Too bad, we need to warn him
that if it’s a local material we can’t risk bringing it up with him
in the transporter system. We don’t know enough about the qualities
of the local stuff to risk it. If it mixed in with him and ruined
him we’d never hear the end of it,” Hasley said.

Lacrat said, “Be sure to give him that
warning. I had Wilburps do a secret
zick-zip
scan of it. It
doesn’t register. It doesn’t seem dangerous or important but it
also isn’t anything we can tell all about so we need to be careful
of it.”

“Or
zick-zip
scans don’t work on this
planet,” Feedle said.

“I can’t rule that out. Those depend on
certain energies working in predictable ways and we don’t know
enough about the conditions here yet,” Hasley said.

“It doesn’t cause our regular equipment
problems and he favors it so we’ll let him keep it until it’s time
to bring him up,” Feedle said. “Problem solved. Matter closed.”

A musical tone sounded. They all turned their
chairs to face the view-screen. Feedle stopped the edited material
while Hasley checked a small monitor on the console and said, “It's
our trusty pilot. It must be time to move us behind their
moon.”

Eroder, an older male with blunted head
spikes like a crew cut, appeared on the screen from the helm.

“Is there a problem, Eroder?” Hasley
asked.

“I'm moving us as planned. There was a
problem with the engine but I hope it's only a minor glitch. I'll
move us out of sight of the planet surface and then do a complete
diagnostic.”

“Understood. Keep us informed.” Hasley pushed
a button and the screen went blank.

Lacrat reminded the others, “We need to
decide what to do with Zemgas and Rumpsy. They came this far with
us to be contestants but refused to go to the surface after they
heard what happened to Zipper during his transfer down. I mean they
literally heard it, not just heard about it.”

“I sympathize with their fear of that
transport system,” Hasley said. “After what happened to Zipper I
wouldn't use it either. Especially not starting the move sitting
inside that booth thing which some of the techs suspect is what
messied up so badly and made things go wrong for Zipper. You won’t
get me using the system for any reason maybe even after the techs
figure out what happened and fix it. But the show's not nearly as
exciting with only one guy down there doing challenges.”

“Maybe one of others will come around if we
keep reminding them of the ego rewards to be had. They're too late
to be the first Ormelexian to walk on another planet but they could
still make history as the winner of the first challenge show to
take place there,” Feedle said.

“Forget it, they won't risk it,” Lacrat said.
“In the future we need to only accept contestants who really don't
much care about surviving as long as they get to be planetary
heroes for a few days. These two came across that way when the risk
was theoretical but now they’re not about to accept any assurances
about the safety of this ship’s equipment no matter how long I say
it has been in regular use without a problem.”

Feedle said, “I'm in favor of not telling the
A.D.U. guys about this format change for as long as possible. We
can coast along on the wild adventures of Nerber and his zerpy
Wilburps. Once the audience knows there'll only be one contestant
which means no down-to-the-last-effort struggles, the ratings will
drop
kersplinketty plunkaboo
- and our futures with
them.”

At the musical tone Hasley checked the
console's monitor. “An update from the transmission and reception
technicians.” He tapped a button on the console. Venrik, a young
male with only one ring of spikes on his head, and Svenly, an older
female with a permanently sad facial expression and long, droopy
head spikes, appeared on the screen sitting in the ship’s program
edit room.

Venrik said, “A.D.U. confirms receiving that
last packet of edited material in good condition.”

Svenly asked, “Do we have more of a reply to
them than the standard message received signal?”

Hasley checked with the others – who shake
their heads no. He answered, “Just the routine message for now,
Svenly.”

Svenly nodded, pushed a button and the screen
blanked.

“What realistic options do we have in dealing
with contestants who balk at continuing to be used?” Hasley
asked.

“We can't force them to continue. We can't
even get them down there without their cooperation. Not even if we
don’t use that booth thing again since it’s not essential. That was
convenient so we could shoot the contestant full of calming drugs
if we wanted to but Nerber seems not to be affected by those
anyway. Tied up or drugged up contestants don't make for good
shows,” Lacrat commented.

“It'd be a major nuisance to force them to do
it but I'm sure we could either buy them off or deal with the bad
publicity in other ways if necessary if we did that,” Feedle
disagreed.

Lacrat laid it out. “It'd be expensive to
beam them home now with the way-way-faster-than-light system we use
for our messages but that system's also untested with bodies so
they'd be crazy to try it. We can put them into dormancy in the
back room until we get home but that uses a lot of energy we might
need.”

“Plus, the dormancy system has problems too,”
Hasley reminded them. “I guess that at least if you're dormant and
the system fails you die without knowing what happened.”

Feedle shuttered at the memory. “Unlike
Zipper whose screams made it clear he knew just what was happening
as he was reduced to molecules that wouldn't be put back
together.”

“We're gonna make trouble with A.D.U. about
that since they vouched for all the equipment they provided,”
Hasley promised.

“We need to consider what to do with the
recording of Zipper's transfer though,” Feedle said. “Every
gruesome second of it's in our data storage. It's terrible for him
but it'd be a real audience pleaser. That scream is an instant
classic.”

Hasley made a cautioning gesture, “Except
that it would send the message that all guarantees about the safety
of planetary exploration are worthless since the equipment's not
reliable. A message the governors definitely and strongly don't
want to have anybody send. I say we secure that recording and keep
mum about even having it for now. Later we'll see what the
governors will pay for the only copy of it.”

“For now I've confined the balkers to their
quarters and I’ve deactivated their zerpies. That should hold
things,” Lacrat said.

Feedle remembered something to pass along.
“By the way, Svenly tells me our crew techs have compromised
A.D.U.’s system to send secret coded messages only they could
receive and decode. He gives special credit to Molten for
imagineering the way around their setup.”

Hasley gloated, “Yeah, now the same hardware
can send those secret messages to them and the
Bang-Boom
home base or, with the push of a few buttons, send them only to our
guys while leaving A.D.U. unable to detect or decode them.
Sugariness. Molten is also ready to turn on the scrambler to mess
up the system of sound detectors that would let the A.D.U. guys
hear every word said anywhere on the whole ship which they somehow
forgot to tell us about.”

“Their techs would get to giggle every time
one of us let out a loud
vuprup
or
kensidmif
his
cimgim
,” Lacrat said.

“For now we can’t safely remove the many
detectors but we can make the signals they send useless and
annoying as
fliggrow
, Halsey said. “Maybe once they detect
what we’re doing they’ll turn off the system and stop draining our
energy storage on devices intended to work against us.”

“What's the word on Icetop and Yelpam?”
Feedle asked.

“I’m meeting with them shortly to ask them to
consider switching from mechanical tech crew members and become
contestants,” Lacrat said. “You can sit in and pressure, tempt, or
cajole them if you want.”

The musical tone sounded. Lacrat and Feedle
looked toward the door, their frowns saying they weren’t expecting
a visitor.

Hasley said, “This should be Biccup. He asked
me for a private meeting with us so I said sure.”

“He was operating the transport system when
Zipper, uh, went missing. Is this about that?” Lacrat asked.

“I wondered the same thing but the only way
to find out is to hear what he has to say,” Halsey said.

“I don’t have the stomach for any whining so
let me go do other things,” Feedle said. She left by the one door
as Halsey touched a button that opened the other door for
Biccup.

The technician was male, short and stocky,
with unusually small feet for his species – close to what most
humans would describe as normal sized. His head was covered with a
random mix of head spikes of three different lengths which gave him
a perpetually disheveled look.

Lacrat sat back to lend moral support but he
would only move to intervene if this turned too pathetic.

“What’s the problem, Biccup?” Hasley asked
without preamble to move this to a quick resolution.

“A pair of things I noticed and thought you
should be aware of but maybe wouldn’t want in the records for now,”
Biccup said.

Hasley thought,
Let’s get to the point and
not waste time on how distressed you feel
. He asked. “Is this
about you losing Zipper during his transfer?”

“I didn’t lose him, the transport system
did,” Biccup said with a shrug. “Nothing I could do about that
since you guys said the system was ready to use and I shouldn’t run
any tests to check it out. And it worked okay with Nerber. He’s my
first point but my second point is sort of about the second guy’s
thing. Too late to do Zipper any good, I did take a close look at
the system. I think I’ve found why it messed up. It’s an elementary
design flaw which means it’s simple to fix. The only safe way to
make sure it’ll work right now though is to test it. I’d have to
transport something down and back. Maybe the next contestant? It’s
ready for the test right now. Should I run a test or two.”

It took Hasley a moment to react. He had been
braced to deal with a problem but faced only a simple question
instead.

“Uh, okay, Biccup. You’ve becomes the local
expert on the transport system so if you think you’ve made it safe
to use that’s good. We’d all feel safer if all the systems were
well tested before we used them. There’s no better way to check out
a technical system that to use it and see what happens.”

“You’re babbling, Hasley. Is that an okay to
test or a no?” Biccup asked to move this along.

“No. I mean yes, test the system” Hasley
said. “But only use something we can afford to lose and won’t have
to worry much about if it gets to the planet but you can’t bring it
back. Something that won’t be obvious to any inhabitants that see
it as an item of interest from a superior world.”

“Understood.”

“What was your other point? The one about
Nerber,” Lacrat asked when it seemed Hasley had forgotten what had
been said earlier.