Far-out Show (9781465735829) (42 page)

“What do you want?” Feedle demanded
angrily.

“What we were promised will suffice,” Icetop
said. “Less than that creates problems.”

“Why haven’t you sent the message assuring
our increased reward to the home office as you said you would,
Hasley,” Yelpam asked.

“Never you mind, get out of here and make
yourselves useful,” Feedle shouted as she jumped to her feet to
stand nose to nose with Yelpam in a threatening move. That lost its
effect when he stepped onto her feet and shoved her hard - so she
sat down in an undignified flop.

Hasley slid over in his chair to get between
Feedle and Yelpam as he said, “In case you haven’t noticed, things
have been a little hectic, guys. I’ll get to that when I can.
First-most things go in the first places.”

“Empty containers make the most noise but
empty promises cause the most bad news,” Icetop said. “If we can’t
trust you, why would we be there when you need to trust us?”

Icetop and Yelpam left.

Feedle jumped up to go after them, muttering
to herself.

“He had a weapon and was ready and willing to
use it,” Hasley said to her without trying to block her.

“I could take him,” she insisted
belligerently.

“Only by surprise in a dark hallway when he
was carrying a big burden,” Hasley disagreed. “From now on I’d be
worried about being the one ambushed and removed from the roster of
the living though. You probably won’t even know which of the
several candidates did you in.”

“What does this all mean, Hasley?” Lacrat
asked.

“That we just made enemies out of important
crew members,” Hasley answered. “There’s the
them
that
includes all the various techs and the
us
that number three.
The captain and the balky contestants I’d expect to stay neutral.
The numerical odds are against us. Even more reason to be nice to
everyone but keep our backs to the wall.”

“Couldn’t we smooth things out by sending the
messages to make sure they get the increased reward shares as you
promised them?” Lacrat asked.

“Don’t be naïve and silly, Lacrat. We don’t
give away rewards for not doing what we want them to, we only
talk-talk nonsense like that,” Hasley said.

“I’m not confident about the odds. In my
analysis the bottom-most lineage is that we producers may or may
not be more important to using the stored show material for maximum
profit once we’re there, but the techs are far more important to
anyone onboard getting home alive.”

“They won’t rebel because if they do we can
get them publicly executed when we get home,” Feedle said.

“Which assumes we all get home alive. There
are no guarantees about that and they can probably find more ways
to terminate us than we can imagine doing to them,” Lacrat said.
“Plus they don’t have to openly rebel to ruin us, they only need to
arrange for signals we want to restrict to certain groups to reach
others. They don’t even have to touch us directly, they can let
others do the dirty work. The really
vipsig mermin
for them
would be to get us home just in time for us to be the centers of
attention at three public executions.” He left the room.

“Can we trust him?” Feedle asked, nodding
after Lacrat.

“Even less than before but neither of us ever
fully trusts any of the others,” Hasley said.

“I’m glad we agree about that.”

A full wall of
Whizybeam
’s program
edit room was multiple view-screens with a single large control
console. The rest of the decor was bright but plain. Scenes of the
ship seen from a higher orbit hovering just behind Earth’s moon,
and Earth seen from lunar orbit were on different screens. Several
different scenes of Nerber on Earth were on other screens. Svenly
and Venrik sat facing the console in the only chairs, as Hasley,
Feedle, and Lacrat entered and stood behind the chairs.

“Ah, you want the news,” Venrik said. “The
rumor is that the Power Players will likely take a controlling
interest in A.D.U. for the increased money and clout.”

“So they've shown the first episode and it's
a hit,” Feedle said in a tone that said this is what she had
predicted.

“Official word from A.D.U. is that it didn't
flop. Word from your guy inside is that it’s a monster hit,” Svenly
said.

“It pays to pay to have friends with eyes and
ears open in as many places of consequence as possible,” Hasley
agreed.

Feedle shrugged, “Successful producers take
good care of the techs and office workers with access, then they
get the essential inside dope on what everyone else is saying and
planning while keeping their own operations securely private. It's
essential in order to pick the safest path through the tangle of
ego traps, twists hidden in fine print among the boring details,
and supposed understandings of business deals.”

“It's not surprising that the first episode
would get good ratings. A.D.U. would hype the show so at least
every Ormelexian would know about it,” Lacrat said.

“Another friend reports that, as expected,
they juiced up what we sent to stretch it and make it more like
everything else being shown,” Venrik commented.

“They demand that programs be original but
not very much so. They're afraid to lose audience share for a short
time to find out if really different stuff would get big ratings,”
Feedle said shaking her head.

“One A.D.U. insider says they expected to
have to stretch what they got a lot but more has been coming
through than we know about,” Svenly reported.

“Okay. About that,” Hasley said. “It turns
out that this ship has a few extras built-in that we're not
supposed to know about. Those include a program to send the
continuous feed from any zerpies on the planet surface directly to
A.D.U., bypassing us. We're not supposed to know that's happening
or be able to access it. Nerber and Wilburps, the only zerpy being
affected now, almost certainly don't know about it.”

“Can they do that? Legally I mean,” Venrik
asked.

“That'll be a long lawyers fight later. The
point for now is that they were doing it until we raised
objections,” Feedle said.

“By that she means we found and altered the
program ourselves. Now the feed comes specially coded only to us.
We record it and edit it in our office. We then send on enough to
keep A.D.U. thinking there are technical problems with the program,
the hardware, or the long distance the messages have to travel,”
Hasley noted. “Now that you guys know about this we’ll let you
access, monitor, and edit that feed.”

Lacrat said, “We're interested in mentions of
what they're using the new material for but this is important, you
mustn’t say anything to anybody about us finding or altering their
system. If A.D.U. learns about this there'll be major problems.
That means the prospects for us to squeeze more money from them for
the additional material that by technical flukes we recorded but
their program didn't send on to them get lost in a maze of legal
questions. Understand?”

“None of us can even talk about this outside
this room and our work room,” Hasley said. “Those are the only
guaranteed secret-intercept-free areas of the ship.”

Venrik and Svenly nodded that they got
it.

“Every crew member's contract gives him a
share of any bonuses or extras so we all benefit if this doesn't
get out until we have contracts signed with whichever distribution
company makes us the best offer,” Feedle reminded them.

“Okay, show me the new edited bit that we're
going to send home next,” Lacrat requested.

Venrik keyed in code. All the screens
blanked, then came back as a composite view of Nerber with Adam and
Edith Parker in their living room as the hamster scampered across
the floor and Nerber jumped up onto the sofa holding Wilburps and
squealing, “Is that what?” Adam looked astonished but grabbed up
the hamster.

The screens blanked then come back with a
repeat of that visual but with newly dubbed audio.

Nerber now said, “What an interesting fuzzy
thing that it seems you are familiar with so I am not startled by
it, only showing how agile my kind can be.”

“You are clearly a superior type. I am
impressed by your vigor,” Adam now commented.

“I'll stay and review the whole package and
then have them send it on,” Feedle assured the other producers.

* * *

Back in the producers’ office Hasley and
Lacrat settled into their chairs. Lacrat tapped a button on the
console

Eroder promptly appeared on the screen from
the control room and said, “Guys, we need to talk. The strain of
staying just out of clear sight of the planet behind the edge of
their moon has revealed engine damage we apparently sustained
coming through the snaggiewarp.”

“How much damage, Eroder?” Hasley asked, not
convinced yet that he needed to worry but prepared to conclude that
in a hurry if he got really bad news.

“Enough that I'm having trouble keeping us
aloft. Before long we may have to land to try to make repairs. That
may have to be either on this moon or even on the planet
itself.”

“So that's why we stayed farther out in view
of the planet for longer than we had planned when we took our first
good views of the place and sent Nerber and his zerpy down,” Hasley
said.

“That's it. I was just finding the problems
and learning what the ship would and wouldn't do. At first I wasn't
sure we'd even be able to get back here behind their moon.”

“What about the orbiting zerpies?” Lacrat
asked.

“They're both doing a good job,” Eroder
confirmed. “The one moves out far enough to send and receive
messages from home when their moon or their planet blocks the
direct path but stays out of sight from the planet most of the
time. The other has to stay at the edge of the moon to send and
receive messages to and from Wilburps but we raise and lower its
orbit and move it around the moon's circumference to keep it from
being too obvious by always being at one spot.”

“Wilburps says the inhabitants spotted
something up here and are watching closely for anything unusual,”
Hasley said.

“That zerpy was made to look like a chunk of
rock so it's not obvious that it's a transmission satellite but
it's important. Without it we can only send messages home for the
small part of each rotation of this planet when our position here
behind their moon is directly facing the snaggiewarp,” Eroder
pointed out.

“But the fact that the rock is close to the
moon but not crashing onto it or continuing on by has probably
focused attention on it,” Lacrat suggested.

“Nerber reported that the inhabitants are in
a state of high alert and fear about alien presences. That would be
us. They're organizing their defenses,” Hasley reported.

“Thanks for finally sharing that bit of
important news! We don't know what kind of weapons they have but
now I know I may have to dodge them?” Eroder was more than a bit
annoyed.

“Relax, Eroder, we're hidden behind the moon.
They only think there's a rock in a strange orbit up here,” Hasley
said.

“Sorry, Hasley, but he has a right to know
that Wilburps reported it was the ship, not the satellite that was
first spotted and set off the alarm among the inhabitants,” Lacrat
said. “It turns out too that, as we found when we got here, they
have units able to reach and orbit their moon since there are
several doing that at lower orbits than our own right now.”

“Maybe I was happier not knowing all that,”
Eroder growled.

“Unavoidable reality confirmation,” Lacrat
said.

“More lousy defective equipment problems,”
Eroder grumbled.

“Which part now,” Hasley asked.

“The orbiting zerpy back then. At first that
wasn’t focusing right and was ignoring a lot of the signals coming
from down there. I kept the ship out where it was visible from down
there longer than I planned to make it easier for the techs to
correct the
ninxy
zerpy’s problems since it was essential to
your plans - which is when the engine problems started. Well, we
can't change things just by wishing it. We do what we can, which
means especially to prod Yelpam and Icetop to figure out how to fix
the engines.”

Hasley gestured a farewell and disconnected.
Feedle entered and took her seat as the screen went blank.

Hasley challenged the others, “What do we
tell A.D.U. in order to turn this into an opportunity?”

“Every chance we get we want to exaggerate
the dangers we're facing and complain that the equipment they gave
us is defective and untested, not the state of the art they
claimed,” Feedle. “We need to be doing that no matter what else
happens.”

“We may not be exaggerating the dangers that
much though,” Lacrat told her. “Eroder just told us that the ship
is damaged so there's a for sure real chance that we'll be stranded
here.”

“More reason to complain about the faulty
equipment and that we're not making enough of the profit from this
operation. We took advantage of losing Zipper to make the point to
them that these aren’t just theoretical dangers.
Mitzelfinkeldork!
We always knew there were theoretical
dangers but they're actual for all of us now,” Feedle grumbled.

Hasley admonished her. “Language, Feedle! We
can't let our fear distract us, we need to think clearly. The techs
are working on the engines and they're ace problem-solvers. Our job
is to deal with the guys at home so the whole crew will be properly
rewarded with the maximum profit for our collective efforts when
they get us there intact. Definitely we want to play up the dangers
we're facing. Maybe we want to start playing up the uncertainty
about the outcome, building up the idea that we could all be lost
and the show cut short.”

Feedle replied, “We know a lot of the nervous
talk at A.D.U. and the Power Players as they worry about bad
reactions among the masses to the hype they generated. We need to
remind ourselves that A.D.U. only owns the show until they toss out
the current contract. When they do that - and their history
suggests they’ll do that as soon as they think it puts them at any
disadvantage - we can sell the rights to the show to the
competition. Think big.”