Robot Blues (34 page)

Harry nodded. “I
flew into Pandoran airspace. I’d spotted that mother of a command cruiser on my
way in, so I sort of implied that I belonged to them. Said I was on a routine
scouting mission and that I’d developed problems with the stabilizer. Now, if
you got stabilizer problems, they don’t particularly want you attempting to
make a landing on a ship in space. Oh, sure, they can tractor you in, but what
happens when you reach the docking bay?”

“I give up,” Jamil
said grimly. “What does happen?”

“Mostly they wash
what’s left of you out with a hose,” Harry said, grinning. “It can be done, but
it’s a real tricky maneuver and gives everyone a lot of tense moments. No one
likes it, and they’d much rather you make a land-based landing if possible. You
got long runways, lots of space to wobble around, and if you veer off you’ll
end up in a cornfield, not the Lord Admiral’s dining room.”

“I understand. So
you informed Pandoran air control that you had stabilizer problems.”

“Yeah. They turned
me over to the base airfield, who checked me out, but only sort of. After all,
that mother-cruiser is floating around up there and everyone knows it.”

“What do you mean,
they ‘sort of’ checked you out? Either they did or they didn’t.”

The two were
drawing near to the hangar. Ground crewmen were eyeing them curiously.

Jamil halted.

Harry pretended to
point out the interesting features of a Stiletto fighter to the Army colonel.

“They said they
were going to check with the cruiser, to verify that I was one of hers. I gotta
admit that gave
me
a few tense moments,” Harry commented, squinting into
the Pandoran sun, shading his face with his hand. “But I guess they must’ve
received verification, ‘cause they came back and said I was cleared to land.”

“What name did you
give?” Jamil asked.

“Harry Luck,” said
Harry. “Why? What name was I supposed to give?”

“You ninny!” Jamil
snorted. “The Lord Admiral was the one who gave you clearance to land. Dixter
recognized your name, of course. Otherwise you’d have been given clearance to
land on the nearest prison planet.”

“Oh, well.” Harry
shrugged, not much concerned. “As long as it worked. Anyway, the landing looked
real good. I was all over the sky. And I bet I bounced sixty meters back into
the air when I hit the ground. That’s how I got the cut on my head. I don’t
suppose many pilots could have brought that plane in—damaged like that,” he
added with simple pride.

“You mean,” Jamil
said slowly, his brain sleep-befuddled, “that you actually sabotaged the
stabilizer
before
you came in for a landing?”

“Well, sure!”
Harry returned. “I’m not
that
big a dunce. Of course, I knew that they’d
be looking for a busted stabilizer and that they better find it.... Oh.” He
paused, his face crinkled.

“Yes,” said Jamil.
“Why didn’t you fake the landing,
then
damage the stabilizer? You could
have been pretending to try to fix it.”

“Yeah,” Harry said
thoughtfully. “I see your point. It would have been a whole lot safer, huh?”

“A whole lot,”
Jamil concurred.

“I’ll remember
that.” Harry nodded to himself.

“How did you
manage to walk away from the airfield? I presume they told you to stay here.”

“Oh, yeah. They
did.” Harry grinned. “But I said I had to pee and the head of the ground crew
said he bet I did, after a landing like that. So I took off for the john, walked
in the front, out the back, and just kept on going.”

Jamil rubbed his
neck. The Pandoran sun was baking the tarmac, and him right along with it. He
would have given half of his not inconsiderable wealth (he’d been making sound
investments—with Tycho’s help) for a cool shower.

He reflected, as
he stood there, sweaty and bone-tired and miserable, on the fact that he and
Xris had spent long hours devising an intricate, complex, involved plan for
sneaking onto the base.

When all they
would’ve had to do was say they had to go pee.

He knew it was
more complicated than that, but his weary brain couldn’t handle the details. He
was far more content to be bitter over the injustice of it all.

“Where the hell’s
your damn plane?” he grumbled.

“In here. At
least, that’s where they towed it.” Harry led the way to the hangar, where he
and Jamil were met by the crew chief.

“Hey, Captain.
That was one long trip to the can.” The crew chief winked.

“I had a lot on my
mind,” Harry replied.

The crew chief
raised his eyebrows, seemed about to laugh, caught sight of Jamil’s thunderous
expression, and played it straight.

“Yes, sir. Is
there anything wrong, sir?”

“No,” said Harry
breezily, glancing around the empty hangar. “I was just looking for my
Claymore. Is she fixed?”

“Why, yes, sir.
You must have walked right past it. We had it fixed not long after you left. A
busted stabilizer controller. And you must’ve sucked a bird into your number
two engine on the way down. We hauled the Claymore out to the tarmac.”

“Which one?”

“We only have one
tarmac, sir.” The crew chief walked to the hangar entrance. “It’s right over .
. . mmmmm. Now, that’s odd.”

“What’s odd.
Chief?” Jamil demanded.

The crew chief was
gazing at the tarmac in puzzlement. “The Claymore, Colonel. It should be right
over there. Hell, it
was
right over there. Not an hour ago!”

Harry squinted,
took a good look, shook his head. “It’s not there now.”

Jamil felt the
beginnings of a splitting headache.

“I was gone for a
little while,” the crew chief said. “Turning in my daily report. Just a minute.
I’ll ask the guys.” He disappeared back into the hangar. They heard his voice. “Hey,
any of you fellows see what they did with that Claymore?”

“It took off,” was
the answer.

“What’d he say?”
Harry asked.

“He said it took
off,” Jamil repeated.

“But I’m the
pilot.” Harry was baffled.

“Apparently not
anymore,” Jamil replied.

“Son of a bitch.”
Harry swore. “Some bastard stole my plane!” He thought a moment, then said, “Xris
isn’t going to be happy about this, is he?”

“Oh, sure,” Jamil
snapped. “Xris is going to hop around singing and dancing when he hears this
one! There’ll be an investigation. Which is just
all
we need. Not to
mention the fact that it cost us a year’s profits to find and refit that
Claymore and ... Oh, skip it!” He massaged his pounding temples.

“Yeah. You’re
right.” Harry considered the implications, then, face flushed, he tromped into
the hangar to angrily confront the flustered crew chief. “What the hell did you
guys do with my plane?”

Jamil should have
gone with him, but he didn’t. He stood in the hot sun, his head pounding,
staring at the empty place on the shimmering tarmac.

And he wondered
just exactly when the command cruiser was going to fall out of the skies and
smash down on top of them. Everything else had gone wrong. There was nothing
left except that.

Which only went to
prove that, by nature, Jamil was an optimist.

This is the third
time; I hope good luck lies in odd numbers.

William Shakespeare,
The Merry Wives of Windsor,
Act 5

Xris found a hoverjeep
parked on the tarmac near the air traffic control building. He was in the act
of climbing into it; the MPs were scrambling in behind, when they were accosted
by Tess. She cast an amazed look at the MPs, then confronted Xris.

“Excuse me,
Captain Kergonan,” she said mildly. Lowering her voice, she added in a furious
undertone, “But just where the hell do you think you’re going? Where’s Grant?
You’re supposed to be watching him!”

“Grant’s not
important. I had word that the ro—”

“Just a minute,”
Tess interrupted him. Turning to the MPs, she said, “Thank you, gentlemen, but
we can handle this. Return to your post.”

The MPs saluted,
departed, walked across the tarmac to stand guard at the rent-a-plane.

“You know that
no one
is supposed to know about the robot,” Tess said angrily.

“Yeah, well, I
think the whole damn base is about to find out about the robot, Captain
Strauss,” Xris returned, settling down into the driver’s seat. He switched on
the ignition. “The robot’s missing. It popped out of its case and escaped. My
guess is that it’s wandering around the base somewhere.”

She stared at him,
stunned.

“You want to get
in?” Xris shouted over the roar of the engine.

Wordlessly, Tess
circled around the jeep, climbed in next to Xris. The air jets lifted the jeep
off the ground.

The comm tickled
the inside of his ear. Xris answered, yelling, “Quong? You find it?”

“Huh? Found what?
This ain’t the Doc, Xris. It’s me. Harry.”

“Look, Harry,
whatever it is, it can wait. I—”

“No, it can’t!
Some bastard stole my bomber, Xris. Our bomber. The Claymore.” Harry was
plaintive. “Someone flew off with it and it wasn’t me.”

Xris knew. He knew
exactly what had happened. He didn’t know how or why he knew. It was one of
those flashes of intuition that come sometimes, striking suddenly and
unexpectedly like lightning from a cloudless sky. He felt the bolt sizzling
behind his eyeballs.

“Did you talk to
the air traffic control?”

“Yes.”

“What did they
say? Who was pilot?” Xris waited tensely.

“Pilot? What’s
going on?” Tess shook him by the arm.

He waved his hand
to quiet her. “What did you say, Harry? I didn’t hear.”

“The computer on
board the Claymore performed the takeoff. And that’s really weird, Xris,
because I had shut the computer down during that phony landing. Control refused
to give it permission, but the spaceplane flew off anyway. They sent a couple
of fighters up to try to force it back down, but whoever is flying that plane
has balls.”

After meeting
Grant, Xris would have voted, odds on, against it. Apparently he’d misjudged
the little gray man.

Harry continued, “The
computer didn’t pay any attention. The Claymore just kept going.”

“Did they shoot
the plane down?”

“Shoot what plane
down?” Tess demanded, exasperated.

“No,” Harry
answered. “The
King James
gave orders not to shoot. The fighters fired
one of those tracking missiles into it and let it go. And you want to know
another weird thing? They scanned the bomber and found a life-form aboard. But
they couldn’t establish contact with whoever it was.”

“Shit,” Xris said with
feeling, and he struck the two sides of the jeep’s steering mechanism. The
entire left side crumpled beneath the blow of his cybernetic hand. His right
hand hurt like hell.

“What do we do,
boss?”

“Hold on a minute.
I’ve got to think.”

“You have three seconds
to tell me what’s going on,” Tess said grimly, “or I
will
shoot you.”

Xris stared out
over the tarmac. Harry and Jamil, standing near the hangar, were two small
figures distorted by the heat waves roiling up from the red surface. He should
have known. But Grant seemed so meek and compliant....

“Jeffrey Grant
found the robot,” Xris told Tess. “He took it on board our Claymore bomber and
flew off with it.”

Tess regarded him
warily. “You’re joking.”

Xris shook his
head.

“This is some sort
of ploy to make me give him back his machine, isn’t it?” Tess said hopefully.

Xris continued to
shake his head.

“All right. Let’s
suppose for a minute that this is on the level.” Tess was trying very hard to
remain calm. “Why would the man do such a crazy thing? Does he plan to take the
robot to Harsch?”

“No,” said Xris. “He
plans to save its life.”

“Save it— Someone
told him about the bomb. Great!” Tess said bitterly. “That’s just wonderful!”
Flinging open the door, she started to jump out.

Xris tried to stop
her. “Wait till I set the hoverjeep down! You’ll break your neck.”

Tess ignored him.
Leaping nimbly over the side, she dropped to the ground, set off at a run
toward the air traffic control building.

Xris swung the
jeep around, caught up with Tess. Driving the jeep in front of her, he slammed
on the brakes. The air jets shut down. The jeep plunked to the ground.

“Remember me?” he
shouted. “I’m the guy who’s supposed to deliver this robot to Harsch!”

Tess was breathing
fast, her face flushed. “Tell me— did that pilot of yours really fake a
crash-landing in a Claymore?”

“Yes.”

“Is he that smart?
Or that stupid?”

“You don’t want to
know the answer. Either way, he’s the best damn pilot in the galaxy.”

She considered,
then nodded her head. “Fine. Meet me at the hangar. Be ready to fly.”

She turned,
started off. Xris jumped out of the jeep, followed.

“Wait just a
goddamned minute, Captain! I’m not in this man’s Army. I admit I screwed up
taking this job. Boy!” Xris shook his head “Did I screw up! And I’m willing to
take the robot to Harsch—”

“You’re willing to
get paid!” she cut in.

“Damn right. I’ve
earned it. But this is more than I bargained—”

“Darlene,” Tess
said loudly, clearly. She frowned, concentrating. “Your Adonian friend
mentioned the name Darlene. Could that be Darlene Mohini? Major Mohini? There
are a lot of people who’d like to know where she is.”

Xris glared at
her.

“Let go of my arm,
Captain”—Tess lifted her chin— “and carry out your orders.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Xris
said coldly. Straightening, with a snap, he saluted. “Go to hell, ma’am.”

Turning on his
heel, he left her.