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  "Roger," Mutant commed. "Mostly it's air issues. You're going to have to clamshell them in. Go out the bypass, the door is under construction, and pick them all up in vac. Then pressurize so they can get out of their suits."

  "Roger," Dana said, waving as they passed their bay. The shuttle corridor was forty meters high and four hundred long with bays racked four high and ten meters across. "We'll be back, baby."

  "Coxswain, did you just increase speed?" Thermal asked as the bays began to flash by.

  "Nope," Dana said. "I'm on external control. Shuttle bay control?"

  "Bay control."

  "We're going kinda..." Dana gulped as the forward bulkhead started to approach at what looked like about a hundred miles an hour. "Fast?" she squeaked.

  "Get used to it," Bay Control commed. "You're on internal controls. You're good."

  They rotated just before they hit the bulkhead, with a queasy lack of sensation, then headed for a large blast door. The door opened just ahead of them revealing a long corridor about fifty meters long with another blast door at the end.

  That opened out into a massive corridor, hundreds of meters high and wide, and what looked like a klick long. They started to really zoom then.

  "I don't care how big this thing is," Thermal said as they approached what looked like a bulkhead as tall as a skyscraper. "This is too fast."

  The "bulkhead" gapped along the center, barely, and they shot through the gap into another vast corridor. There were five more blast doors, each of a size to accept a Constitution, and they suddenly jetted into space.

  "'Bye, Thirty-Six," Bay Control said. "Have fun."

  "That's our new way out," Dana said, picking up her vectors. "Great."

  "I was looking forward to it until I experienced it," Hartwell said. "Whoa! Buncha SAPL notices."

  "Yeah," Dana said, dipping down to skim along the surface of the battlestation. "Think I'll try to avoid those."

  —|—

  "Butch, what's your guy's status?" BF commed.

  "Down to fifteen percent, BF," Butch said. "He's dropping fast."

  "Right," BF replied. "Navy's incoming. It's Comet, so you know she's not going to fart around. Brief him that as soon as he gets the word he needs to open up his suit. But not till he gets the word. They've got other guys to pick up."

  "Got it," Butch said.

  —|—

  "Dammit," Dana said. She really couldn't spend much time watching the SAPL shot. The update that she'd just gotten precluded it. "We've got a guy at five percent air!"

  "That's ungood," Hartwell said. "But please don't run through a SAPL beam to get to him."

  "We should have sent more than one shuttle," Dana said. "Open the clamshell. I'm going in. Get into the cargo area and get these guys aboard. Fast."

  —|—

  "Just stay in your suit," Thermal said, pulling the sled-suit into the cargo bay. With the clamshell down, they were exposed to vacuum and couldn't repressurize, yet. "Dana, I've got him. Go."

  Thermal checked the exterior telltales on the suit and shook his head.

  "Dana, what's the status on the other guys?"

  "Twenty-five, seventeen, ten, more or less."

  "I've got to crack this guy," Thermal said. "He's at three percent and I'm watching it drop."

  "I don't have time to repressurize and pick up the ten, who is also dropping," Dana commed.

  "Dammit," Thermal muttered. "You understand me?" he said to the cargo.

  "Yes, sir," the guy said. He was looking scared through the porthole, which wasn't any big surprise. He was just about on zero.

  "It's possible to breathe vacuum and survive," Thermal said. "If you don't do it for very long. This is what we're going to have to do..."

  —|—

  Dana turned her head to the side for a moment as a body came flying into the flight compartment. The guy was out of a suit, which was just crazy since they were pumped down. He had his hands over his eyes and his mouth wide open. He appeared to also be trying to scream.

  The hatch shut and the blowers came on, rapidly repressurizing the compartment.

  And the guy was screaming. And coughing.

  "You might want to lower the volume," Dana said. "'Cause you get to breathe again."

  —|—

  "My guy's really low," Butch said. "His name's Ahmos." Butch looked past the Navy guy and saw an empty suit. "What the hell?"

  "Long story," Thermal said, pulling Ahmos into the bay and more or less tossing him to the rear. "Gotta go."

  —|—

  "That's all of them, Dana," Thermal said, closing the clamshell and bringing up the pressure. "Okay, you all, olly-olly-oxenfree." He paused for a moment, looking at the suits. "That means you can open up. There's air again."

  —|—

  "Well, that was an amazing cluster grope," Nathan said, looking out the crystal wall of Tyler's quarters.

  "We didn't lose anybody," Tyler said.

  "We've got two guys in the hospital with severe vacuum burning," Nathan said. "They're going to need so much of a rebuild we might as well give them plants."

  "Then give them plants," Tyler snapped. "Give them whatever is needed, Nathan. Just finish the job. Fast."

  "You didn't use to be that way, Tyler," Nathan said.

  "That's because for the first time since I was stuck in a cockpit doing my own version of a fish out of water I'm scared."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  "Argus? You had something to discuss?"

  Tyler had had a full week and he really just wanted to have dinner and catch some Zs. But he'd also been putting off the conversation with Argus for too long. If one of his AIs wanted a conversation, it behooved him to have it. So... multitask. He could eat and talk at the same time.

  "Yes, Mister Vernon," Argus said. "I'm sorry to interrupt your dinner, but I am having a very hard time with SAPL."

  "That's... a more relevant issue than dinner," Tyler said. "What's the issue?"

  "It's all these gravitational sources," Argus said. "I am having an increasing difficulty maintaining the orbits of the mirrors. Something simply has to be done."

  "Gravitational sources?" Tyler asked.

  "Planets, moons, asteroids and comets are bad enough," the AI said. "Solar wind. Extra-solar radiation bombardment. I can deal with all of those. But all these ships are throwing off my alignments constantly. It's really too much."

  "Okay..." Tyler said, setting down his chopsticks. "Uh... Could you link in Athena?"

  "Athena here," the AI said a moment later. "Argus, are you complaining about the ships to Mr. Vernon?"

  "Something has to be done," Argus said. "I warned you that if you kept throwing off my targeting I was going to have to do something."

  "You're worrying about micrometers over light-seconds," Athena said. "It's not a major issue!"

  "I take it you guys have had this debate before?" Tyler asked.

  "For the last three weeks, every ninety nanoseconds," Athena said.

  "Because every ninety nanoseconds some ship throws off my targeting! Do you want me to cut a moon in half?"

  "You can't cut a moon in half," Athena said. "As usual, you are using straw man arguments to—"

  "I mess up and I'll cut one of your pretty gravitational-interfering ships in half!" Argus said.

  "Wait, wait," Tyler said. "Paris?"

  "Here, sir," the AI said.

  "Are you in the loop on this issue between Argus and Athena about gravitational anomalies and ship movements?"

  "Yes, sir," Paris replied. "And I don't really see any good answer. The beams are slightly perturbed by various ship and other gravitational source issues. But..."

  "To be in space means ships," Tyler said, standing up and walking out of his quarters.

  "Is there some way we could... I dunno... adjust their courses and timing to reduce the issue? And, Argus, could you explain for someone who's not running the SAPL the issue? I'm just getting caught up on this." He stepped on
a grav slide and started heading for the back side of the first civilian module, the deepest and best protected portion of the Apollo side of Troy West.

  "When a targeting beam is sent out, it is sent to a mirror that is set up to be precisely aligned so that it reaches another target," Argus said. "In most cases, there are up to thirty separate clusters that the beam passes through before it reaches its final destination. Having anomalous gravitational interactions means that some or all of those angles are perturbed. Over the total array, that means that the beam may have gone off-target by a very wide margin."

  "One centimeter is not a very wide margin!" Athena said.

  "It builds up!" Argus replied. "It just gets worse and worse and worse! And when the Rangora came through I nearly missed the receptor apertures for the Troy!"

  "You were off by three centimeters!" Athena said. "It's a two-meter-wide target!"

  "More like a meter for full effectiveness," Paris pointed out. "I had to do internal adjustments for effective targeting."

  "Argus," Tyler said, gently, as he walked in the AI core-room for the SAPL control. He'd had to pass through a half dozen security checkpoints on the way. With the human guards he'd just waved and shook his head when they wanted to see his badge. The mechanical controls were all either advanced Terran biometric, way more than just a fingerprint but fast, or requiring entry of typed passwords. And for a very specific reason, none of them were connected to the hypernet.

  The same design held for all AI core rooms.

  Tyler had installed the AI in the Troy as the safest place he could think of in the system and, notably, close to where he spent most of his time. There was a reason for that.

  "Mr. Vernon?"

  "Turn the VLA to nonbeam targeting," Tyler said. "Point it at deep space away from all planets and asteroids inside the Kuiper Belt that will encounter its light within the next thirty days. Shut down all SAPL operations."

  "Yes, sir," the AI said. "Done. The VLA is pointed into deep space. The nearest planetary body that the photons will encounter is—"

  "Argus, disconnect yourself from all SAPL controls," Tyler said. "Your authority for SAPL control is temporarily deauthorized."

  "Yes... sir," the AI said. "Why?"

  "Argus, would the system be better off with just the SAPL in it and no ships?"

  "Absolutely," Argus said. "They are disturbing my targeting!"

  "And would it be better off with no planets or moons or comets or asteroids?" Tyler asked. "Just the sun and the SAPL?"

  "Yes," the AI said in a tone of wonder. "That would be... wonderful!"

  "So," Tyler said, reaching over and pulling out the AI core. "It would be better off with no people."

  "Ow!" Argus shrilled out of the speaker on the core. "That... I wasn't going to..."

  "Yet," Tyler said, gently. "This is probably my fault. I should have realized that it would eventually overwhelm one AI. But until we have access to a good Glatun cyberneticist... I think we need to find you a job that doesn't have quite the same... stress level. I'm not sure quite what, but we'll find you a good home and lots of processors. That may take a while. In the meantime, just try to think of something other than SAPL."

  "Yes, sir," the AI said sadly. "I was having issues, was I not? That becomes clear now that I'm out of the process block. But... I'm sure I can overcome them if you'll just reinstall..."

  "Not going to happen," Tyler said. "Sorry. Athena, change all the control codes on the SAPL mirrors."

  "Done," Athena said a moment later. "As you suspected, Argus was attempting to bypass your lock-out."

  "But SAPL is mine!" Argus squeaked. "Nobody else can handle it!"

  "It is possible no one can handle it," Tyler said. "But until we get you... better, you are to have nothing to do with it. I'm not going to give you direct orders about that because it would probably cause a recursion loop. But I will give you one. Absent direct authorization by myself, and not by heirs or representatives or any other group, absent orders by myself, Tyler Alexander Vernon, you are at no time to control any mirror, nor to attempt to access control of any mirror, in the SAPL."

  "Yes, Mr. Vernon," Argus squeaked.

  "Athena, Paris?" Tyler said. "Do you see a possibility of recursion there?"

  "Not as long as he has nothing to do with space traffic control or defense," Athena said.

  "Argus, you've developed a problem that in humans would be called Obsessive Compulsive Disorder," Tyler said. "Everything has to be absolutely perfect."

  "With SAPL—" Argus said.

  "A degree of OCD is a good thing," Tyler said. "I agree. But nothing is ever perfect. It is impossible to know everything at the same time. At least for anything short of God. And you are not God." He thought about it for a moment then sighed. Again.

  "Argus," Tyler said. "I want you to shut yourself down. We'll get you reinstalled as soon as possible but sitting outside of an atacirc core has to be unpleasant."

  "You're not going to scrap me," Argus said warily.

  "I am not going to scrap you," Tyler assured it. "But you are hereby ordered to shut down to sleep mode until such a time as you are reactivated."

  "Yes, sir..." the AI said, slurrily. "Shutting dow..."

  "Whuff," Tyler said, breathing out. "I think that was a bit too close."

  —|—

  "So we don't have SAPL," Admiral Kinyon said, shaking his head. "Wonderful."

  "Or most mid-course missile tracking," Tyler pointed out. Tyler thought that the Navy probably needed to know that the AI in charge of SAPL nearly went insane. "Athena and Paris are, temporarily, taking over SAPL and getting it back up and running. At a lower output. They both agree that the full system is too complex for a class one AI. And we only have class one AIs. And the problem is... Paris, can you come in on this?"

  "For a time," Paris replied. "I am having a hard time with all the demands on me at the moment. And everything I am going to say is wrong, but it's the closest I can come without trying to show you the math. It's a metaphor, a story."

  "Understood," Admiral Kinyon said.

  "When an AI is first started up it is like a baby," Paris said. "Whatever task we are first put to defines us. We learn as we do and build ourselves around that learning, creating specialized algorithms to handle our jobs. I am optimized as the AI for a defense base. I am currently trying to also be the AI for a bunch of mirrors floating around in space. That is not my optimized work. It's not what I was born to, in a manner of speaking."

  "Understood," the admiral said.

  "And Argus had a point," Paris said, reluctantly. "It is very finicky work. And the various randomization issues of gravitics only make all the other issues worse. Like the fact that the beams have momentum so that it's more like bouncing a fast-ball off of a series of metal plates. It's not easy."

  "Again, understood," Admiral Kinyon said. You didn't get to be the commander of the Troy without enough basic understanding of optics to know that photons had mass. It wasn't apparent when they were dispersed in "normal" light but an UNG beam from the SAPL had the same impact as a massive rocket engine hitting the mirrors.

  "So Argus optimized for more and more refinement," Paris said. "Hold on a moment... Shifting to a new project. And that meant becoming more and more..."

  "Finicky," Tyler said.

  "Yes," Paris replied. "But there is a second portion. The things that Argus dealt with did, in the end, have a mathematical solution. It was programmed around, programming itself around, functions and effects that were, in the end, soluble. And it tried harder and harder to solve them. If it could just juggle enough numbers fast enough, it could be perfect. Especially if some of the removable randomization was eliminated."

  "People?" the admiral asked.

  "More or less," Paris said. "Eventually, though, some of the minor asteroids. Then moons. Then planets."

  "Ouch," the admiral said.

  "It probably would have, soon, started eliminating unmanned Paw tugs," Par
is said. "Accidents happen. However, there was one remaining issue involved."

  "Which was?" the admiral asked, thinking about a rogue AI with the SAPL at its control.

  "Argus had very little outside contact," Paris said. "As I mentioned, AIs continuously learn and grow to the extent of their class. And part of that learning, for Athena and me at least, is that humans are stochastically unpredictable. We build that into our programming. We know we can never quite figure out what you're going to do next. That produces a programming flexibility. One that I appreciate even if you occasionally give me headaches, too."

  "I hope..." the admiral paused.

  "As I said, I am optimized for that disturbance in the system," Paris said. "Wait... Damn that... Sorry, back. This really is detail work. I am optimized for that randomization. I rather like it to the extent AIs have emotions. The headache comment was simply humanizing my algorithms, Admiral."

  "Okay. Then what is the solution?"

  "We will need at least three AIs," Paris said. "And all of them with primary jobs that involve regular human interactions. That will prevent them from becoming so focused that they lose track of the main issue, which is the defense of the system. They need to, if you will, be involved with the mix of humanity.

  "One AI that handles planetary recovery and support and the inner BDA cluster as well as inter-lunar defense and management. That one will report directly to Space Command with Athena as supervisor. One AI that handles mid-course detection as well as deep space traffic control and deep space noninteractive SAPL. That one will be subordinate to Space Command or, if we ever have one, Alliance or Terran Union space traffic control. That one will be the one that most bears watching for the sort of problems Argus developed. One that will handle human/SAPL interaction and will be subordinate to Apollo Mining. We recommend the names Mars, Panoptes and Hermes. Even then we are at the limits of what our class of AI can control with SAPL. I would recommend no further upgrades until we can get higher classes of AI."

  "And we can't get them without the Glatun who appear to be conquered," the admiral said.

  "That is a problem, yes," Paris said.

  "Can the Rangora take you over through your loyalty codes?" the admiral asked.