The Methuselan Circuit (32 page)

Katrina’s face wasn’t worried or frightened however, she seemed, somehow, rather content. “Hi Alexander, hi everybody how are you?”

Alexander stared at her. “Katrina are you all right?”

“I’m fine, why do you ask?” She cocked her head slightly to the side as if bemused by the question, absently munching on a handful of potato chips.

He searched for the words, but nothing came out. Everything was happening with such terribly rapidity, spiraling out of control toward such a dreadful end, that Alexander couldn’t comprehend Katrina’s unexpected attitude. “I don’t know, I thought you’d be a bit more upset at things,” he said finally. “Last time we talked you were very concerned. Are the legionaries still surrounding your house?”

“Oh that,” she smiled. “No, as soon as Dad took down the shields the legionaries left.”

“What happened then?”

“We were all sort of pissed off for a while, but it got better; it’s all good now.”

Lisa broke in, telling Alexander, “It’s the Methuselan Circuit; Lt. Mortimer must have helped Professor Strauss fine tune the psionic algorithm. It’s doing exactly what it’s supposed to do; the population is going along with it.”

Surprisingly, it was Katrina who confirmed Lisa’s conclusion. “It’s not so bad, I mean it doesn’t hurt or anything,” she said absently. She picked up a piece of paper with math equations on it. “I tested myself. Once they fine tuned the psionic beam it stopped interfering with my ability to work out problems. I’m still as smart as I was, but I don’t really care whether I get them right or not. I know the beam is affecting me, changing me, but I don’t really care.” She shrugged, and with a slight giggle, she ate another potato chip and added, “Aside from the munchies there’s not much to complain about—everything’s cool.”

“Katrina do you know anything about our families. Are they all affected?”

“Far as I know,” she nodded.

“What do we do,” Lisa asked, voicing their combined thought.

Alexander thought out loud, furiously searching for something, anything that might help them. They were running out of time. “My father was the only one other than Grand Admiral Khandar who knows about the Methuselan Circuit. What else does he know? Khandar had to have control of the Methuselan ships; he could have controlled the power flow to the circuits from the bridge and destroyed the circuits that way. We need to know what the schematics are for the restricted section, but to get in there we need a security code.”

“Oh yeah, the security code that’s what your father meant,” Katrina giggled. “He said as soon as you figured out how to get by the security protocol you would see what you had to do.”

“How do we get past the protocol,” Alexander demanded.

“Easy Seabiscuit!” she laughed, trying to calm him down as she explained. “That’s what my dad says when I get a bit too excited about something.” She dug in her pocket and produced a small slim card. It looked completely innocent, but she said, “This is what your father called a credit card—it opens up the world!” She swiped it at her terminal. “There, I uploaded it to your compad Alexander. Simply access any security coded screen, hatch lock, whatever and presto, the credit card will do the rest! Got it?”

“Got it, thanks Katrina!”

“Oh and Alexander, good luck, it’s going to be kind of a bummer if you end up stopping the beam,” she giggled. “Everyone down here is going to be pretty pissed off at the President!”

The connection terminated and Alexander immediately used his compad to get through the security protocol. It was easy. The classified area of the ship’s schematic was still on the Holo-V. All Alexander had to do was to tie his compad into the Holo-V by touching an interconnect icon. A smaller version of the Holo-V display came up on his screen. He then dragged the “credit card” icon over the area of the schematic hidden by the security protocol. It took only a few seconds and they were through. The opaque gray security screen dissolved.

“There it is,” said James.

He was right. It was now plain for all of them to see. What Alexander saw was not the Methuselan Circuit, not all of it at least. The schematic labeled the panel he saw as “Methuselan Psionic Controller.” When Alexander touched it with his finger the view expanded, and two descriptive paragraphs flashed beneath it. The first read,

“The MP Controller’s function is to be the ‘brain’ of the circuit. The Methuselan Psionic Circuit is divided into two components, the brain and the psionic converter. The brain allows the converter to be manipulated via a control board on the bridge of the Methuselan vessel or a remote console at the panel’s location. The division of the circuit into two components is clearly required because the converter is immersed in the high energy stream . . .” There was more, but the most interesting part of it all was the annotation at the bottom. The footnote was written by Professor Strauss.

That was no surprise, and it proved beyond any doubt that Professor Strauss was intimately involved with the mind control plot of the President, although there was nothing there that implicated the President. What was more disturbing was the second paragraph. It read,

“Manipulation of the psionic code has proved problematic and delayed full implementation of the psionic effect; however, it was discovered after some trial and error that this could be accomplished through socio-mathematical algorithms specific to the target species. The algorithm used to fine tune the psionic code is as follows . . .”

None of them understood the equations that followed, and they didn’t try, their attention went straight to the name at the end of the footnote—Prof. I.E. Mortimer. The realization that Lt. Mortimer was a part of the plot was devastating. “Isn’t there anyone we can trust?” Alexander said breathlessly.

“Apparently not,” Treya said grimly. “This plot goes to the highest levels of the Terran civilian government and military. The only one standing in the way of it is Commandant Augesburcke.”

“How do we know he’s not in on it too,” James asked.

“Centurion Fjallheim was promised his job,” Lisa reminded him.

“So, Augesburcke would get a promotion as well,” he retorted.

Alexander shook his head, and said, “This may be wishful thinking, but I doubt it. The Pro Consul is the only position more prestigious than the Commandant’s seat and the President already has one of his cronies there. No, we have to believe that. If we don’t, we might as well give up.”

“That still doesn’t show us what to do,” James said, and his comment brought them all back to the schematic. Alexander traced his finger from the Psionic Controller through the power cables to the Psionic Converter. The Converter was a disk that completely blocked the tunnel through which the energy stream flowed. The energy stream entered the converter on one side but when it exited it did so in a noticeably different phase. From there it was a short ten meter trip to the exterior ring antennae that transmitted the psionic beam to the planet.

The Converter itself was embedded in the walls of the tunnel and the tunnel itself was heavily shielded. However, there was an access tube to the converter, albeit a small one. It was simply a maintenance tunnel designed to allow a replacement Converter to be installed. One end ran from the Converter to an entrance hatch in the Tube but the other end ran to the exterior hull at the aft of the ship. A hatch opened just behind the ring antennae.

“Let’s look at this logically,” Alexander said. “We need to alter the energy stream. That has to be done between the Capacitor and the Psionic Converter,” he followed the energy stream with his finger, “but the stream itself is inside the shielded tunnel with no way for us to get to it.”

“We can get to the Converter itself,” James pointed out. “We could take a blaster from the armory and access the maintenance tube. Then we could shoot at the Converter, adding pulses of energy to it until it vaporizes.”

Lisa frowned and pointed out, “There’s no direct access to the Convertor, it’s insulated but I think you’re on the right track. If we can find a way to introduce a pulsing blaster beam into the energy stream that might be enough to destroy the Converter.”

“So how do we get the blaster beam in the power stream?”

“Through here,” Treya said. She pointed out a series of small exhaust ports. “Every ship has exhaust ports designed to automatically open in the case of an emergency. If the energy stream became too large these ports will open and relieve the pressure.”

“That would destroy the Converter,” James said.

“Better to destroy the Converter than destroy the ship,” she explained. “Remember, the Methuselans manufactured these Converters; they would have had spares.”

“All right, how do we do that,” Alexander asked.

“By sending a false signal to the pressure sensors in the energy conduit,” Lisa told him. She pointed out four of them. “I can override the signal; the rest should be automatic.”

“So all Alexander has to do is to be waiting one of the exhaust ports with a blaster. When it opens he shoots the blaster into the energy stream,” James began.

Treya finished, “Although the blaster isn’t that powerful by itself it will disrupt the energy flow. If Khandar is right that should make the material in the Psionic Converter lose cohesion.”

“Then it will vaporize,” Lisa ended.

“What will happen when it vaporizes,” James asked, suddenly concerned. “Will it explode?”

They all looked at Alexander. He ran his hands through his hair, grumbling, “I’m still stuck on the part where I space-walk outside the ship—in space mind you—with a stolen blaster to an exhaust port somewhere on the exterior of the ship.”

“You are the best zooter out of the four of us—it’s not even close Alexander.”

“What about a suit?”

Treya patted him on the back. “We all have the emergency fields in our uniforms; they’re good for twelve hours. With any luck, you’ll only need twelve minutes.”

Alexander swallowed hard. “I suppose at 0300 we break into the armory.”

CHAPTER 25: Out and About

At 0230 Alexander and James got ready to slip out of the dormitory. The plan was for Treya and Lisa to stay behind and tap into the Academy security system. They were by far the most computer literate of the group and with the ‘credit card’ supplied by Alexander’s father they hoped to open doors, monitor the Academy security system and otherwise direct or keep an eye on the boys. They ran into problems almost at once.

Centurion Fjallheim restricted all cadets to quarters which meant the dormitory doors were locked. This would have been an easy thing to work around had he not posted legionaries at each dormitory entrance. If that wasn’t enough, the centurion, who obviously was a cadet in a previous life, suspected this would not be enough to keep his charges in line. He made it the personal responsibility of the senior flight leaders to keep the peace.

Midshipman Emily Brandt had no sense of humor. She accumulated no personal demerits in her seven year career at the Academy and was not about to start now. She ordered head counts every two hours.

James brought up the schematics for the dormitory, saying, “I used to sneak out of the house through the attic almost every night. We don’t really have an attic here, but the air ducts and power conduits run through the structure between decks. We have about twenty inches of open space to zoot around in—it’s zero-G.”

“Can we get this done in two hours?” Alexander was kind of claustrophobic. He didn’t really want to go zooting around between the floors in such cramped spaces.

“We’ll have to,” James said, mapping out the quickest path to the armory and saving it onto the compads embedded in their uniforms. After downloading the armory route he mapped the way to the exterior maintenance hatch closest to the exhaust ducts. That done, he said, “Let’s go; we’re wasting time.”

“Wait,” exclaimed Lisa. “Get back in your bunks both of you!”

“Why,” James asked, already unlatching a ceiling panel.

“What is it; is someone coming?”

“No, I’ve got an idea. Now get into your bunks and pull your covers up as if you’re sleeping.” Neither boy understood, but Lisa meant business so they did what she said anyway. Taking out her compad, she began taking images of them from every angle. “I’m going to make holograms of you in bed; hopefully, they’ll be good enough for the headcount if you’re not back in time. Now hold on, this will only take a minute.”

They tried to stay perfectly still as she photographed them. It took several minutes, because the better the images the better the hologram, but after what seemed an eternity she was finished. Glad to be able to do something, he and James leapt out of their bunks. James finished removing the ceiling panel and poked his head up, shining a flashlight into the darkness.

“Wow, it’s pretty tight up here but I think we can manage.”

That didn’t make Alexander feel any better, but he didn’t really have any choice. James pulled himself in. He slipped into the void like an eel. It looked strange until Alexander thought about it. The space in between decks was zero-G, so he got progressively lighter the further he went. “Come on Alexander, I see a way to squirm through!”