This choice: Continue reading "Double Double" • Go Back...Chapter #38Double Double (13) by: Seuzz   Chapter 13
"YOU'VE GOT TO SEE IT TO BELIEVE IT, SIR. You need to beam right down."
Zhironovsky's voice wobbled as the signal wandered, but Grundfest could hear the suppressed excitement in the crewman's tone.
Or some other emotion, like hysteria. Despite the cargo master's assurances, Grundfest couldn't shake the mental picture of a band of pirates, just outside the monitor's range, pointing phaser pistols at Zhironovsky's gut and quietly urging him that his own survival depended on his ability to entice his captain down to the surface.
"I'll take your word for it, Mister," Grundfest said. With what he thought was a canny instinct, he added, "How soon can you beam back up?"
The quick, calm reply startled him: "As soon as we reach the cave entrance." But Grundfest's suspicions were renewed when Zhironovsky added, "But I should stay below to supervise the loading. You should come down with Mister Zimmerman. He'll want to estimate the mass."
"Zimmerman can beam down, but Meisner will have to beam back up," Grundfest snapped. "We need at least three hands up here."
There was a pause, and Grundfest had the impression of a hurried conference taking place just off-screen. "He's on his way back up to the surface now," Zhironovsky said when he spoke again. "You and Mister Zimmerman can beam down to his coordinates when he's—"
"I'm not beaming down! Send Meisner back up or—!"
"I said he's on his way, sir."
"Then I'll talk to him when he's back up here," Grundfest growled. "I'll decide after he's briefed me. And don't think, Mister Zhironovsky," he added, "that I won't leave you down there, if I think that's what's best for those of us still up here."
"Just listen to what Hans has to say, sir, he—" But Grundfest killed the connection with a silent snarl.
For the next hour the captain stewed in a toxic cocktail of his own paranoia and cupidity. There was, according to Zhironovsky, a trove of antiquities down there: relics of an unknown civilization already sorted and cataloged by the surviving members of the Meadowlark's crew. They had apparently been discovered by the scientific expedition that had built the underground base before somehow coming to grief. It had been left to the Meadowlark to scoop up the treasures, but she needed the Rheingold's help to get them off the planet.
There was plenty for all, Zhironovsky had said. With seventy-five percent of the bag, even split six ways, he estimated the relics were worth enough that each member of the Rheingold could buy a small fleet of manned freighters with his own share of the proceeds.
But if it was such a sure thing, why was he so insistent that the captain come down and look for himself? Grundfest decided to punt until he could talk to Meisner.
That is, if Meisner actually returned to the ship. He wouldn't believe that until he saw it.
Still, just in case, he punched open the intercom and told Zimmerman to be ready to beam down.
When the hail finally came, Grundfest used the ship's scanners—feeble and unreliable as they were—to confirm as best he could that there was only one person on the surface. Still, he had a phaser poised as with one hand he operated the transporter controls to bring the man up. Meisner, when he materialized on the two-man pad, blanched at the sight of the weapon.
"What's the situation down there?" Grundfest demanded.
"Just what Zhironovsky told you," the navigator replied. Warily, he eyed the phaser. "There's at least a couple of thousand tons of stonework and a hundred or more cubic meters of crates, all ready to beam up. I hope you've got some good contacts in the antiquities black market, sir."
Grundfest continued to scowl. "There's no tricks here?"
"Sir? No sir!"
"They're not threatening to blow a hole in Mr. Zhironovsky if you don't come back down with me?"
Meisner looked utterly bewildered. "Sir, it's exactly like I told you!"
"Hmph. Well, better safe than sorry," the captain said. "Get to your station, mister. We're breaking orbit."
"Captain!" Meisner's eyes nearly popped from his head. "We can't just run out! Not on what's down there, not with—!"
"We're leaving," Grundfest said. "We're going to stay away for a few days, and then we'll come back to see if Zhironovsky is still alive."
"Sir?"
"You heard me. They'll still be down there, if what you say is true."
Grundfest turned for the door. The panel had just clicked open when he was enveloped by a phaser blast that dissolved him into a briefly incandescent cloud.
Hans Meisner put the phaser back into his belt and stepped calmly off the transporter pad. When he reached the bridge, he opened a comm link to the planet below.
"Captain Grundfest refused to beam down," he reported. "As you instructed, sir, I have commandeered the vessel."
"Regrettable." Kirk's voice was cold and metallic. "But I accept that it was necessary. Send the engineer down. I will contact you when his replacement is ready to return, and then you can send down the last man."
Meisner closed the connection, then called Zimmerman and ordered him, supposedly at Grundfest's directive, down to the planet. His expression was impassive as he moved to the helm and adjusted the autopilot's programming, then took the command chair, from which vantage he could monitor all the other stations at a glance.
He wheeled when the door clicked open and Siemens stepped onto the bridge. The latter showed surprise at finding Meisner in the captain's chair. "Where's the fat man?" he asked.
"Beamed down to look the cargo over himself. Have you heard?"
Siemens shook his head, and Meisner smiled a smile that failed to connect his lips to his eyes.
"It's a damned fortune in antiquities down there," he said. "We're all going to be very rich."
"Yeah?" Siemen's eyes widened. "How much?"
"You'll have nothing to complain about. You might as well start getting ready to dump our current cargo."
Siemens jerked a little at that. "But we have a contract!"
"We've got something better than a contract down below, and there's not room for both it and the garbage in the pods." Meisner wheeled back to face the screen. "The captain's going to order it jettisoned, so you might as well get started."
Three hours later, Meisner ordered Siemens down to the planet. Then, after beaming the last of the Rheingold's human crew to the surface, Meisner beamed two of his own kind up: Kirk, and the android replacement for Zimmerman. Kirk directed the latter to see to the engines, then accompanied the helmsman to the bridge.
"Congratulations on achieving your first command, Captain Meisner," Kirk said as he surveyed the stations with a disapproving eye. "Though I also give you my condolences on it being an old scow like this."
"Am I really in command, sir?" Meisner said.
"Of the Rheingold, yes. Zhironovsky says you're the next-most senior man aboard." Kirk made a slow circuit of the bridge, studying each station and its monitors. "Do you know of any issues that would make Captain Grundfest's disappearance and your elevation ... awkward?"
"No sir. The man had no family I know if, or friends. No one to miss or pity him."
"The destruction of a human is always a pity, Captain Meisner."
"Then why did we destroy the human Meisner, and the human Zhironovsky and Zimmerman?"
Kirk wheeled on him.
"But we didn't destroy them," he said. "Everything the human Meisner had, you have!" Kirk jabbed a forceful finger at him.
"You are Hans Meisner," he said. "You encompass all he was and all he had. Is there anything that was him that you lack? And you have more, as well. You have an improved body, for a start, one whose strength and stamina, whose lack of material needs or desire for comfort, is one that a human could only envy.
"The same goes for your mind. Surely you can outthink this ship's own computers," Kirk mused as his eye roved over the controls. "Do you need to use the nav-computer to plot an orbit or a course change? You can do it yourself!
"And you have been cured of human vices. Do you feel envy? Anger, fear, greed? You didn't hesitate to remove Captain Grundfest when he proved an impediment. Did you?"
"No sir, I did not."
"Exactly. Your thoughts and motives are governed now by pure utility, not by vicious emotions. Everything you and I do is governed by our purpose. To fulfill the plan of the Creator, to replace humans with improved versions of themselves. Improvements such as ourselves."
"Yes sir."
Kirk studied the expression of the android carefully. Was there just a trace of pride in its face—a mirror of the quiet pride that Kirk felt? Perhaps. Not as much as he would have thought or preferred. But perhaps that was just interference from the obedience protocol.
But the new captain of the Rheingold at least seemed to be expressing the kind of attentiveness that Kirk was used to seeing on the face of a contented crewman. He would take that much at least.
* * * * *
To continue investigating the room: "Disposing of Lucy"   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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