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There had been no doubt about what had to be done The OMC had gone mad, a wild, runaway consciousness It had been a sick ball of gray matter whose muscles turned every servo on the ship into a murder weapon, who stared out at theibberish at them from every vocoder

No, there had been no doubt—not with three of their number murdered—and the only wonder was that they had been allowed to destroy it

Perhaps it wanted to die, Bickel thought

And he wondered if that had been the fate of the six other Project ships which had vanished into nothingness without a trace

Did their OMCs run wild? Did their umbilicus crews fail, when it was kill or be killed?

A tear began sliding down Timberlake’s left cheek To Bickel, that was the final blow Soer returned He faced Timberlake: “What do we do now, Captain!”

The title’s irony was not lost on either of Bickel’s coht better of it If the starship Earthling could be said to have a captain (discounting an in-service Organic Mental Core), then unspoken agreeineer None of theh, had ever used the word officially

At last Timberlake met Bickel’s stare, but all he said was: “You knohy I couldn’t bring myself to do it”

Bickel continued to study Tiiven theineer? Once the umbilicus crew had numbered six—the three here plus Ship Nurse Maida Lon Blaine, Tool Specialist Oscar Lon Anderson, and Biochemist Sam Lon Scheler Now, Blaine, Anderson, and Scheler were dead—Scheler’s exploded corpse jaled by a rogue sphincter lock, and lovely Maida o

Bickel blaedy on Timberlake If the damn fool had only taken the ruthless but obvious step at the first sign of trouble! There had been plenty of warning—with the first two of the ship’s three OMCs going catatonic The seat of trouble had been obvious And the symptoms—exactly the same symptoms that had preceded the breakdown of the old Artificial Consciousness project back on earth—insane destruction of people and materiel But Tim had refused to see it Tim had blathered about the sanctity of all life

Life, hah! Bickel thought They were all of them—even the colonists down in the hyb tanks—expendable biopsy notobiotic sterility in the Moonbase “Untouched by human hands” That had been their private joke They had known their Earth-born teachers only as voices and doll-size ies on cathode screens of the base intercolass at the locks that sealed off the sterile crèche They had eed from the axolotl tanks to the padded metal claws of nursemaids that were servo extensors of Moonbase personnel, forever barred from intimate contact with those they served

Out of contact—that’s the story of our lives, Bickel thought, and the thought softened his anger at Timberlake

Tiet under Bickel’s stare

Flattery intervened “Well … we’d better do so,” he said

He had to get the, Flattery knew That was part of his job—keep the, even if they moved into open conflict That could be solved when and if it happened

Raj is right, Ti He took a deep breath, trying to shake off his sense of shame and failure … and the resentment of Bickel—damned Bickel, superior Bickel, special Bickel, the man of countless talents, Bickel upon whom their lives depended

Tilanced around at the familiar Command Central roo and twelve uely egg-shaped Four cocoon like action couches with alhly parallel in the curve of the room’s wider end Color-coded pipes and wires, dials and instru telltales spread patterned confusion against the graythe ship and its autonoanic Mental Core

Organic Mental Core, Tis of guilt and grief Not huanic Mental Core Better yet, an OMC The eupheet that the core once was a human brain in an infant monster—doomed to die We take only terminal cases since that makes the morality of the act less questionable

And noe’ve killed it

“I’ll tell you what I’ to do,” Bickel said He looked at the Accept-And-Translate board auxiliary to the trans to report back to Moonbase what’s happened” He turned from the raped panel, dropped the severed feeder tube to the deck without looking at it The tube drifted doard slowly in the ship’s quarter gravity

“We’ve no code for this … this kind of erily at theevery feature of it fronacious jaw

“I know,” Bickel said, and he stepped around Ti it clear speech”

“You can’t do that!” Tilare at Bickel’s back

“Every second’s delay adds to the tio more than a fourth of the way across the solar system” He dropped into his couch, set the cocoon to half enclose hi the transmitter into position

“You’ll be blatting it to everyone on Earth, including you-knoho!” Timberlake said

Because he half agreed with Tiain ti down on Bickel in the couch: “What specifically are you going to tell them?”

“I’m not about to mince words,” Bickel retorted He threw the trans the sequence tape “I’ to tell ’em we had to unhook the last brain from the ship’s controls … and kill it in the process”

“They’ll tell us to abort,” Timberlake said

The merest hesitation of his hands on the tape-punch keyboard told that Bickel had heard

“And what’ll you say happened to the brains?’ Flattery asked

“They went nuts,” Bickel said “I’ to report our casualties”

“That’s not precisely what happened,” Flattery said

“We’d better talk this over,” Tis of desperation

“Look, you,” Bickel said, shifting his attention to Timberlake, “you’re supposed to be crew captain on this chunk of tin and here we are drifting without any hands on the controls at all” He returned his attention to the keyboard “You think you’re qualified to tell me what to do?”

Tier Bickel defeats ht He ” But he turned away to his own couch, jacked in the teed shortly after the first ship brain had begun acting up Presently, he sank onto the couch, tested the computer circuits, and asked for course data

“The Organic Mental Cores did not go nuts,” Flattery said “You can’t …”

“As far as we’re concerned they did” Bickel threw thehum filled Com-central as the laser amplifiers built up to full potential

I could stop hiht as Bickel fed the vocotape into the transe out and clear speech is the only way

There cae was compressed and multiplied for its laser jump across the solar system

With a chopping motion that carried its own subtle betrayal of self-doubt, Bickel slapped the orange transmitter key He sank back as the trans closed dominated the ovoid room

Do so, Flattery reminded himself The rule books don’t work out here And now it’s too late to stop Bickel

It came to Flattery then that it had been too late to stop Bickel from the moment their ship left its moon orbit This direct-authoritarian-violent man (or one of his backups in the hyb tanks) held the key to the Earthling’s real purpose The rest of the for the ride