glow. As the pillar of fire rose, the shock rippled out through the
rest of the city, destroying the neat symmetry. The fire quickly fell
back but spread into a firestorm that raced across the shattered city
and consumed it. In a matter of seconds the wall was scorched black as
before, the map destroyed.
"Artoo, please run an analysis on the atmosphere in here," Lando
said.
Threepio reported the results. "Oxygen five per-cent--oxygen eight
percent--oxygen eleven percentre would you make up your mind?" the
droid asked, clanging Artoo on the dome with his working arm.
"It's not him, Threepio," said Lobot. "The ship is restoring the
chamber to its status before the fire, for the next demonstration." He
looked to Lando. "These are history lessons. Something terrible
happened to the Qella city that was under this sign."
"Maybe this is our first clue about what happened to them," Lando
said.
"But there's something else going on, too. Artoo, what's the oxygen
component now?"
The answer, relayed through Threepio, was fifteen percent.
"Son of a-- Lobot, Threepio, you stay here. Artoo, come with me.
There's something we have to check."
"Where are you going?"
"Back to chamber one, express lane. Sit tight--it won't be so long.
We won't be sight-seeing this time."
The patrol frigate Bloodprice bore the colors of the Prakith navy and
the crest of Governor Foga Brill. Both were more prominent than the
sigil of the Imperial Moff for Sector 5, which was consigned to the
armor panel above the frigate's chin turrets.
The displays mirrored the allegiances felt by Captain Ors Dogot and his
crew of nearly four hundred. The officers owed their commissions and
their postings to Brill, not to Grand Moff Gann. It was Brill who
collected the commission fees and the annual posting assessments.
It was Brill who paid off favors to wealthy families with command ranks
that drew pay in goods and gold instead of Prakith scrip.
The specialists and ratings, draftees all, owed the security of their
families to Brill's promise of the protection of the Red Police for the
daughters and wives of those who protected his power with their
lives.
To be drafted into the navy was a far better thing than to be drafted
into the slit mines or the foundries, or to be one of the hundreds
rousted nightly from the riverbanks in Prall and Skoth to dig their own
graves.
Graft and fear were inferior flavors of fealty, but they were the best
Foga Brill could command, and they sufficed.
"Course change maneuver complete, Captain," the navigator reported in a
clear, loud voice. "Now heading nine-zero, mark, negative four-five,
mark, two-two at deep patrol standard."
"Towmaster, report," said Dogot.
The listening array Bloodprice towed behind it on deep patrol was a
hundred times longer than the ship itself. It was a spiderweb of
passive antenna cables, tiny noiseless amplifiers, steering jets, and
tension vanes, with a drag gondola the size of a troop transport at the
end of the antenna's main cable. The three crew members in the gondola
had the difficult job of flying the array through the turn when
Bloodprice changed heading.
If there was too little tension, the elements could tangle, or the
whole array could tear itself apart in what the manuals called dynamic
destabilization and tow crews called tail whip. If there was too much
tension through the turn, the likely result was an overstrain
disconnect and a two-hour delay for the recapture procedure.
The towmaster on Bloodprice's last patrol had allowed two
disconnects.
Along with the gondola crew, he had spent the last half of the patrol
in the brig, awaiting the return to Prakith and a court-martial on a
charge of treasonable incompetence.
So it was with great relief that his replacement announced, "The array
"Very well," said Dogot. "Lieutenant Sojis, you are master of the
bridge. I will be in my quarters, working on crew reviews. Inform
Yeoman Cligot that she is to report to me there immediately."
"Yes, Captain."
When the portal closed after Lando and Artoo, Lobot watched,
fascinated, as the smoke thinned and disappeared, the scar faded and
vanished.
Even the tiny white bits of soot smudging the outside of his faceplate
seemed to evaporate. He watched on his suit monitor as the temperature
plummeted thirty degrees, to the slightly chilly norm for the
vagabond.
"Pardon me, Master Lobot--" "Yes, Threepio, what is it?" Lobot said
automatically, still distracted.
"I was wondering, sir, if you could tell me--do droids meet the
conditions of the test?"
Lobot'S head snapped around. "What did you say?"
"The test of intelligence," Threepio repeated. "Am I sentient, like
you, or simply another work of great ingenuity, like this ship?"
Taken aback, Lobot looked away from the droid's waiting face as he
groped for an answer. "Ah--Threepio, you know, most droids are built
to have self-aware artificial intelligence. Especially third-degree
droids like yourself."
"But that must be something different than sentience," Threepio said.
"Otherwise, the Senate of the New Republic would not consist solely of
organics, served by droids."
"It is different," Lobot said, as gently as he could.
"Artificial intelligence is programming. Wipe a droid's memory and it
disappears. Replace it with different programming and a translator
becomes a tutor, or a med droid becomes a chem droid."
"I understand, sir," said Threepio; he was quiet for a long moment.
"Then can you tell me how it feels to be sentient? How is it different
from what I feel?"
"I'm not sure that I can say," Lobot replied slowly.
"Perhaps it is a thing that you just know, because you are an organic
and not a machine? Perhaps if I were sentient, I would not need to ask
you these questions. I would know who I was."
Lobot said nothing for a time. "What do you think, Threepio?" he
asked at last.
"I do not know, Master Lobot," the droid said.
"But I have noticed that when someone speaks of memory wipes, I am
seized by an inexplicable panic."
"I don't find that inexplicable," said Lobot.
"Really, sir?"
"Self-preservation is an elementary part of self-awareness--even
artificial self-awareness. It's the part of us that feels that
awareness which matters to us," Lobot said. "I expect you would give
that up"--he pointed at Threepio's immobile arm--"to keep your
programming intact. As I would surrender this"--he pointed through his
faceplate at his neural interface--"to preserve my consciousness."
"I do not recall having this reaction when I was younger, sir,"
Threepio said. "Why, I have seen many droids of my acquaintance taken
for memory wipes. I felt nothing but gratitude that their masters
cared enough for their well-being to schedule proper mainte
nance."
The droid cocked his head. "My own maintenance record, I'm afraid, is
something of a horror. It's a miracle that I can still function at
all."
Lobot mused on that answer for a while. "Just out of curiosity,
Threepio, have you thought about asking other droids what they think
about this?"
"Yes, Master Lobot," Threepio said. "But they seemed not to understand
the question. Why, one even had the ill manners to call me a
computational defective with deviant specifications. Can you
imagine?"
"I know something of such prejudice," said Lobot, then sighed. "I
questions would seem to be worth revisiting when some time has
passed."
"Thank you, Master Lobot," said Threepio. "I will do so."
Except for blind spots caused by Bloodprice and the drag gondola, the
towed array could scan several light-hours in every direction. As the
outermost of Prakith's three concentric spheres of defense, the first
purpose of the deep patrol was to detect possible military threats long
before they could come near the planet. For that reason, the ship's
patrol route took it through the most likely final staging areas for an
attack on Prakith, outside the range of its ground-based and orbiting
sensors.
But an equally important purpose was to intercept and claim as a prize
any merchant or private vessel unwary enough to pass within reach.
Ship seizures were not only an obligation, but an opportunity. A rich
enough prize could advance the entire crew to a better post. And every
deep patrol captain knew stories of other captains who had come home
with a prize rich enough to earn the favor of Foga Brill himself.
So when Captain Dogot was called away from his examinations of the new
female crew members and saw the size of the contact on the optical
displays, he quickly forgave the interruption. "What identification
have you made?" he asked, peering over the shoulder of the security
master.
"None so far," said the officer. "The image is too crude, and the
target is silent in all spectral bands except the optical."
"Interrogate the navigation transponder."
"There is no transponder response at that location."
"Range?"
"Three-point-eight light-hours--nearly at the limit of detection."
Captain Dogot weighed the possibilities. A warship of that size would
be more than a match for a patrol frigate. He would need
reinforcements from the inner fleet. But a freighter of that size
would be a prize of the first rank, and one he would much prefer not to
share with other captains.
For a brief moment he considered cutting the array adrift, rather than
allowing the hour necessary to reel it in. Abandoning the array would
ensure that Bloodprice was the first ship to reach the target. But if
the contact proved spurious, or the target escaped, the loss of the
array--or even any substantial damage to it--would cost him his post,
if not his life.
"Bring in the array," Captain Dogot ordered. "Prepare the ship for
hyperspace. Notify patrol command that we are in pursuit of an
unidentified contact, vector zero-nine-one, zero-six-six,
zero-five-three."
The navigation master turned at his station. "But, sir, the last
coordinate for the contact is zero-five-five."
"I am sure you are mistaken," Dogot said evenly.
"Communications master, send the message as I instructed.
Patrol command will want to send additional ships to support us.
Navigation master, what would an error of two degrees over this
distance mean?"
"The, uh--the ships would be hours away at sub-light, but too close to
safely microjump." Understanding belatedly came to his eyes, and he
glanced down at his console. "Yes, sir, zero-five-three. Thank you
for catching my error before it had any undesirable consequences."
"Sleeping on the job again, I see. Did you know that you snore like a
power saw in ironwood?"
Lando's voice, sharp and clear in the helmet's comm speakers, startled
a dozing Lobot awake. He looked up to find Lando and Artoo back in
chamber 21, the portal quickly closing behind them. Lando was holding
his helmet under his arm and grinning broadly.
"Lando--what are you doing?"
"Master Lando, have you gone mad?" Threepio demanded in alarm. "You
must replace your helmet immediately, or you'll suffocate!"
"I've had it off for most of an hour now," said Lando. "Didn't you
wonder how anything could burn in an atmosphere that was ninety percent
nitrogen and carbon dioxide?"
"It seems I did not have the necessary data to wonder," said Lobot.
"And I was thinking about other things."
"Well, the answer is, it can't," said Lando. "What I had to find out
was whether it was just this room that had been oxygen-enriched."
"And it apparently wasn't."
"No. Something happened while we were sleeping.
Every chamber back to number one now has a breathable atmosphere. Go
on, take your helmet off--try it."
The air was cold, dry, and sweet in Lobot's lungs.
He looked at Lando in puzzlement. "Why should this be?"
"You said it first--this ship isn't out to harm' us. It was expecting
visitors."
"But we took a wrong turn after we entered," Lobot said thoughtfully,
scratching his bald head with vigor.
"We weren't supposed to be wandering through the weapons system, which
has its own specific environmental needs. We were supposed to be going
through the museum."
"Which was in cold storage until we arrived," said Lando. "It makes
perfect sense. Oxygen is highly reactive--a reducing agent. Keeping
the oxygen pressure low and the carbon dioxide high protects the ship
from fire, the exhibits from corrosion. Imperial Star Destroyers flood
key equipment compartments with an N-CO2 mixture before going into
battle."
"Then what happened to all the carbon dioxide that was in the air?
Scrubbers?"
"The original and best kind," Lando said. "The ship breathed it in,
locked up the carbon, and gave back the oxygen. Lobot, don't you
see?
This ship is alive."
On Captain Dogot's orders, the Bloodprice began charging its primary
ion cannon battery immediately after exiting hyperspace.
There would be no negotiations, no warning shots, no demands for
surrender. Dogot did not intend to allow the captain of the intruding
vessel any latitude at all.
Unless a closer look at the target showed it to be a friendly, or a
warship of cruiser class or heavier, Dogot intended to use the big guns
quickly. The talking could begin after his gunners had disabled the
other ship.
"Target acquired," called the gunnery master.
"Twenty seconds to full charge."
"Target is confirmed unknown," called the senior analyst. "Design
class is unknown. Estimated displacement class, gamma-plus. Detecting
no weapons ports forward."
"Target real velocity is
fifty-two meters per second," called the
navigation master. "Target closing velocity is one thousand, eight
hundred sixteen meters per second."
Captain Dogot studied the image on his command display. It seemed
almost too good to believe--a huge, unarmed and unprotected vessel
barely crawling through space. "Are there any other Prakith vessels on
the board?"
"Showing the light cruiser Gorath and the destroyer Tobay approximately
twenty million kilometers astern," said the navigation master. "They
won't be here for a while."
"Very well," Dogot said. "Then we must do what we can ourselves.
Gunnery master, you may fire when ready. Ion batteries only--I want
that ship disabled, not destroyed. Troop master, prepare your units
for boarding--" Lando and Lobot had both temporarily shed their contact
suits to stretch, scratch, and even scrub away their accumulated
annoyances, sacrificing some of their precious water to restore a
measure of dignity and comfort.
The convenience of the waste management facilities in the suits alone