TRD-60 Perfect Three: Flight of the Maita, #6

By C. D. Moulton

.Tabori R. DeSixtee and TRD-60 are built by Maita and placed on Perfect Three (HAH ) as detectives. Tab uncovers a plot by Immins to take over the empire, then finds the lost Maitan colony – and Maita Searcher.

• Language: English
• Publisher: C. D. Moulton
• Release date: Jun 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201475338

Book preview

Chapter one

My card

Tabori R. DeSixtee

Private Investigations

Code TRD60 Perfect 3

Call me Tab

Tabori R. DeSixtee, that's me. I'm a private investigator at large. That means I take any kind of case, anywhere.

Holovid/fastcom code TRD60 on the planet Perfect 3, Star Euclich (—17343), Spiral arm N, Milky Way Galaxy. My offices are right here in my home. My home is the IDmode drive ship TRD-60 and is of at-large registration – which means I don't pay taxes on any planet.

I know you've never heard of any business that doesn't pay local taxes, even though there are no empire taxes, but I once had a case where I was able to receive a diplomatic status pass plate that listed me as an ambassador from Federation Center.

You've heard of Federation Center, but you don't really know where it is or anything else. I got the pass directly from the emperor.

The emperor is a machine, but promise you won't let it get out.

Never mind. Nobody would care. Things have been running smoothly since the federation joined the empire and, if it's done by a machine and it's this good, nobody's going to destabilize the moder!

Federation Center is a pile of rocks that's covered by a machine. An asteroid. No one goes there except for a few other machines. I understand that another machine tells the emperor machine what to do.

No one gets papers from Federation Center. No living being ever has or ever will – and yes, I got all my papers legitimately.

Tabori stands for Traveling Abecedarian Basic Ordered Random Intelligence.

R stands for Robotic.

D-60 is my production number.

There's only one of me. I'm the emperor's personal little experiment.

In case you aren't familiar with the word, 'abecedarian' is a beginner in any of the learning skills. I was given a basic program that would get me by in any given situation and am meant to learn on my own.

The emperor has this idea that we're limited in our ability to develop new things by what we already know. It seems there are some pretty far-out (One of Z's expressions. He's from Terra, but more about him later – if I have time and can remember it) civilizations who were directed down a certain path, not by what they knew they could do, but by what they had proved they couldn't do. Seems you can do all sorts of things when you don't know it's impossible. For instance, it's impossible for a stun bee to fly. Its wings are too small to support its body size and weight. It doesn't know that and is a problem all over Perfect 3 as a result. They can't fly to a thousand meters or so.

Perfect 3.

This is a developed planet that was named Perfect to get people to move here. I guess it's accurate to call it Perfect 3 – if you're talking about 3 on a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is best.

I get by as a detective because you can't tell if I'm an organism or a machine. I look and feel like I'm organic and can even eat and drink along with the best of them. I have an elementizer grid inside that can process anything into its basic atoms and get rid of them later. Some things, like oxygen and other gases, I can just vent off. There's an analyzer on the grid that lets me know exactly what it was I ate.

The emperor decided not to make me like a mammal because I'd have too difficult a time getting along with the great number of mammalian societies. Ditto to reptilian. Insects were out because of some bad experiences the emperor had with an insect-evolved civilization once.

I was to be based on some little animal with tentacles, at first, but that would mean it would be very difficult for me to maneuver on level or smooth surfaces – and most civilized planets have those kinds of surfaces all over. It finally settled on an amphibian-evolved structure that resembled a being it had once encountered. (Or that is a member of the empire or something. There are thousands of cultures, so I don't know. I'm supposed to find that kind of thing for myself.) This makes it easy for me to pass myself off as any of the several sexes known – or none of them.

I also have this smooth, resilient, warm skin that shows some strange qualities that are known on heavy metal planets. Lots of those metals, such as lead and gold, are isolated in special cells in my skin. Biologically, that eliminates them as poisons from my system, while having the unfortunate effect of making it nearly impossible to scan me with anything from E-M magnetism to X-rays. It also holds a grid for a force shield that others can't detect and leaves me with an explanation of why I can go under water or in a gaseous atmosphere.

For a description of visible physical attributes, I stand just under two meters in height. I mass at 85 kilograms, have deep green eyes with both an inner transparent lid and an opaque outer lid. My ears are quite nicely shaped parabolic reflectors that swivel slightly. I have no hair, but generally resemble the reptilian Kheth or the mammalian Terrans in the general overall form known as K-form.

I have one-third webbing between my fingers and toes, a slight crest across the top of my head and a vestigial dorsal fin from the end of the crest on my lower neck to the crack of my ass. I have omnivoran teeth and a fine aquiline (!) nose.

The gills are mostly evolved away, but enough are still there for me to stay under water for a good while if I'm not too active.

One other little advantage I have over organics is that I can go to the shop in my ship and be changed to look like any number of beings, so long as they're not too different from the basic bipedal K-form. We've found that many races do have that form.

I went into the detective business because I can learn so many different things about so many people.

The fastcom, code TRD60, can reach me anywhere within six or seven thousand plazsis (A hair more than a Terran lightyear) of any relay. Instantly.

I chose Perfect 3 to work from because there are four planets here (you guessed it! Perfects 1 through 4) where there's a hell of a lot of cargo transferred. It's right at the base of the spiral arm and stuff moves through here going towards galactic center and to the arms on either side, as well as this one. The system doesn't have a lot of close stars, so navigation's easy and there aren't obstacles to cause catastrophes.

They ought to outlaw those Frmthaar drives. They'll let a ship materialize inside a star and it's a mite hot for any alloys we have there. On the other hand they don't para-occupy, so they're not a nova machine.

As I was saying before I so rudely interrupted myself, I like the detective business as a learning experience. Strange things happen and someone often calls a detective about them, simply because they can't think of anyone else to call.

My first case was just after I was built. You'll get an idea about what the stun bee reference was about from it. I was starting and didn't know any of the group called The Emperor's Crew or the emperor, so couldn't have ... well, this is what happened.

I was just sitting around that morning, reading a book Emperor Maita put on TR, as I call my ship, about some planet that was being planoformed after having its orbit changed and stabilized. I was thinking the premise was interesting, but that you couldn't really move a planet's orbit without doing unbelievable damage to the place when I checked a few of the footnotes and learned it was a history, not a fiction! It had actually been done!

Like I said earlier, you let some of these people know a thing's impossible and they can't do it. They don't know, so they fly around like stun bees.

Anyhow, I got a call on the fastcom and went to the com room. I flicked on the receptor and said, Yeah? What?

There was a readout from some Kheth called Frallow who wanted me to meet him on some planet called Ternz in sector three.

I didn't know anything about sector three and had to get the coordinates from him. He refused to discuss the case until we were face to face.

You can't fastcom holovids, only printed words, so I agreed to meet him there in two galactic days. I would use standard to speak with him after I was there to arrange a meeting.

I sighed and put the book down, then instructed the ship to take me to Ternz. I was pleasantly surprised to find the specific coordinates were programmed, so I didn't have to give them. The ship explained that the emperor was once on Ternz, thus it had the information.

Oh. Yeah. The ship talks to me. It's another intelligent machine. We're actually parts of the same entity when we're linked.

Any ship from the empire can talk to you. The only difference is that TR is an independent intelligence like I am. (Sometimes a bit too independent.) Seeing we're the same being when we're linked, we're a true schizoid if there ever was one! It told me the coordinates are 20/+1/ 33871 for Ternz.

I think it's great the Kheth put that beacon up. Now we can go anywhere on three numbers. The first, 20, means the star is 20 degrees off a line established by two beacons. The +1 means level plus one plazsi or that it's one plazsi galactic north of the beacon line at galactic center plane and the 33871 means that many plazsis from galactic center, which is also located by the two beacons. If you go to the spots the coordinates identify you're within one plazsi of any point in the galaxy. It's easy to jump the last short distance along the planet's own beacon.

Like you could care less. Sorry, but that kind of information can save your hide. I know.

The IDmode drive can put you just about anywhere in an elapsed time of about a minute per plazsi. You can cross the entire galaxy in sixty some-odd days.

You don't really go between the points in real space, you see ... sorry, you couldn't care less.

What this is all about is that Perfect is at 22/-1/34230, which means the real distance is a little over 420 plazsis across 2 degrees and one plazsi south of galactic centerline. That means 9 hours of travel time, give or take a few minutes. If this Frallow character would give me some idea of what he wanted I could use the time to read up on the subject.

I'd explain about how I read it, but you'd probably get bored. Suffice it to say I can program in very complete information in very little time. Instead, I programmed in some information about Ternz.

Ternz is an M-class average planet with a mite low oxygen atmosphere and a gravity I can handle well. I weigh 82 kilos there for my 85 kilo mass. They once tried to add oxygen to the atmosphere, but it cut the carbon dioxide and the place started to over-cool, so they had to go back to where they started.

The people are basically reptilians. They've been described as looking something like what would happen if you crossed a penguin with a softshelled turtle (One of Z's little descriptive descriptions. They never mean anything to anybody but him). They stand a little more than a meter and are slow moving. Lack of oxygen. They're also very intelligent and are great electronic craftsmen.

I don't need sleep, so I learned quite a lot about the place before I got there.

I landed at a field outside Vreed, the major city, and called Frallow on the standard. Nobody ever heard of him. His channel wasn't even in operation.

I was about to get pissed when I remembered the fastcom transmission. I ran it through the emperor's computer (I have access. Almost nobody else does). The call was made. There was definite identification for the charge.

So there!

I checked into the Vreed Royale hotel to be shown to my room on the fourth floor. As soon as the servo left I opened the valise I carried and took out the little corresponder I carried to reach the ship. I can broadcast directly, but it's better to have something in my hand if they have some kind of surveillance device in the room. While I use the handset I can use my built-in sensors to find any such bugs.

I chose the Royale because the fastcom call originated at their facilities. I didn't say I was a P.I., but they would know that from placing the call. What they don't know is that I have the best trace in the galaxy. The emperor himself.

I set the ship to tracing any other little charges Frallow made in the past few planet's days and went to the bar where I ordered pure grain alcohol with citric and ascorbic acid derivatives.

There were no Kheth in the place.

There were no Immins around, which was damned unusual. Anytime you had major trouble, you usually found Immins.

A Bentan came through, but the only customers who stayed were some oversized frogs and some of the Ternz. No one paid any attention to me, so I went out and strolled around a bit, then went back to the room. There was a bug planted in the handset and two more in other parts of the room since I left earlier. I left them as though I didn't know they were there and laid on the bed to feign sleep. It was a few minutes over two hours later the ship told me there were three beings it couldn't identify trying to get on board through the emergency hatch. It was going to let them into the airlock, then close them in until I got there.

I decided to wait until morning. It would let them begin to panic and it would seem normal for me to walk around and ask some questions before deciding I'd been had by some practical joker.

The ship also informed me Frallow had never checked out of the Royale, but that he was dropped from the register. If he'd skipped on the bill they would've made a stink at the port facility and he wouldn't be allowed off the planet. Curious.

I waited and got a bit of a late start so I could time getting to the ship pretty close to midday. That would allow my guests to enjoy their very cramped quarters awhile longer.

I checked out of the hotel, made some sharp remarks about jokers and went back to the ship. I acted as if I didn't know they were in there and took off. I noticed I was being followed.

Chapter two

I moved away from Ternz slowly, allowing the other ship to follow easily. When I broke into IDmode I released a snake, which is a torpedo that sends a signal. A follower will often take the wrong signal and you can get away from the tail (Another one of those Terran terms). I broke into standard mode to find the other ship was right behind.

Right.

I acted as though I didn't know they were there, threw out a scan pattern, then went to pick up some debris. I then popped back into Idmode. That would make them think I'd left something there. They would go nuts trying to figure why I left something, and worse, trying to think what it could be.

It wouldn't be any fun trying to find my path when I left so suddenly and I was damned well going to throw out several snakes. It must have worked this time because they didn't show up when I popped out again.

I went to Khee, as it only took a few hours and I was sure none of these people would care to go to the old federation base planet. I sat down on an island base and waited. There was soon a muted banging sound from the emergency hatch. I had the ship drop the cover so I could find the three beings in the hatch. One was unconscious and the other two weren't far from it.

I had no idea what they were, so I had the ship scan and send the information to the emperor's computers. The emperor soon identified them as Acnians. I read the information as it came in from Empire Center:

Ac – 104/-2/27916: Space travelers, not much contact. Government: unknown

Semi-mammalian

No further information

It can be assumed  these people are aggressive, but not shown to be hostile. No information.

I sent a query to the computer about the strange coordinates and was assured they really were from a planet as far toward galactic center as was known.

The three I had were being held by holder bands carrying a stasis field. They looked much alike, were a bit less than two meters in height and would mass about 72 kilos each. They had rough-looking leathery skin and coarse hair across the shoulders that formed a mane from the top of the head flowing to the lower part of the shoulder blades. I wondered why they were called only semi-mammalian until I saw he faceted eyes and the short antennae on the foreheads. There were no ears, but the antennae had cilia that could detect sound, possibly better than enclosed ears, though I wondered how well they handled direction of source.

I offered water to them that they were going to try to refuse, but they really were hurting for water and food. They accepted and, when I brought it, they tried to hypnotize me! It would have worked if I were organic.

I was going to be a big puzzle to them. They would've found someone against whom they had no such power.

I spoke in federation, as they obviously didn't understand Maitan. That shows how out of reach they actually were. Maitan is spoken almost everywhere now.

They were going to bluff me out, but I told them I'd turn them over to the machines here on Khee and they would find themselves in pretty tough shape. The machines would read their minds directly. That shook them and I was glad they didn't know the emperor would almost never allow the use of the mind machines without permission of the subject. It only has three or four rigid rules and that's one of them.

Their names were Iano, Rollo and Zorno and they were supposed to be opening new trade routes for Ac. I wasn't about to believe something that transparent and told them to try again. One didn't break into a private ship to open trade routes. I didn't mention Frallow or the problems on Ternz. Best to wait.