The Methuselan Circuit (31 page)

Alexander didn’t swing at the Golkos, but Khandar kept the two heads together. He explained, “They can’t eavesdrop through the interference. Now we can talk.”

“You’re willing to talk,” Alexander asked, unconvinced of the Golkos boy’s sincerity. He stayed on his guard.

“Yes,” he said evenly, and the aggression left his eyes. Shaking his head vigorously, he snapped, “It’s hard not to hate you, I’ve been doing it so long, but I am indebted to you and your family. If it weren’t for your father, my father would have died by an assassin’s blaster instead of in a duel.” His luminous eyes turned red for a moment; a sure sign of anger. “Don’t get me wrong—we Golkos hate to be indebted to anyone; it’s almost as bad as a blood oath. Still, to get me out of that debt I have to help you. What do you need?”

“Your father knew how to destroy the Methuselan Circuit,” Alexander said quickly. “He did it in Methuselan space. How did he do it?”

“Why, what is it about this circuit that makes you want to destroy it?”

“The Grand Admiral didn’t tell you,” Alexander asked, surprised that Khandar should be ignorant of it.

“My father would not talk about his time in Methuselan space—he gave me the secret for destroying this circuit in case it was used against the Golkos Empire. What does it do?”

Alexander explained the Methuselan vessel at the core of the Academy was really a mining vessel designed to siphon off the energy of civilized worlds. “The Methuselan Circuit is a psionic amplifier, sort of like a mechanical Scythian brain, only it makes the population cooperative. The President of Pan America wants to use it to promote his Gaian agenda. If he succeeds Terra will—” Alexander stopped. He’d never considered the point. Exactly what would Terra become? It was obvious that the Gaian plot to use the Methuselan Circuit was diabolical, but exactly what would the Gaian world be like? It took Khandar only a second to make that mental leap, and his smile grew positively feral—like a hyena standing over a maimed and helpless animal.

“The vaunted Terrans will lose all of their bravado and become sheep,” Khandar laughed. “Why would I want to prevent that? What’s the point? It’s an opportunity for Golkos to regain its rightful place in the Galaxy—as the pre-eminent empire of the Galactics!”

“Do you think the Chem would allow that?” Alexander retorted angrily, reminding Khandar of their age old Galactic rivals—and their betters. Glowering at the Golkos boy, Alexander thrust his face inches from the lean alien face. “Think about it Khandar, even if the President is successful, even if the Chem forget their bond with Terrans, this is one ship. The Methuselan Circuit can control Terra but how about the Terran colonies; how about the Fleet and the Legions? The President wants Terran society to obey him; he doesn’t want Terrans conquered. He could just as easily make the Methuselan Circuit whip Terrans into a bloodlust—then we’d finish what we started when we defeated Golkos before!” He took a deep breath, seeing Khandar reconsidering his opinion. Alexander heaped on one more thing, and he didn’t care whether he was being vicious or not. “Last time we beat you Alexander Galaxus made your father the leader of Golkos; he let Golkos retain her honor and her standing. Do you think this President would do the same? If he’s willing to do such terrible things to his own citizens what do you think he’ll do to a rival culture?”

“You have a point,” Khandar admitted. “I know enough about Terran history to know what your people are capable of. You can be the most cruel people imaginable, but on occasion you can be selflessly noble—I’ve never fathomed it. My father taught me to respect that particular paradox.”

“So you’ll tell me how to destroy the Methuselan Circuit?”

“I can only assume that my father destroyed the other circuits for the reason you stated,” the Golkos boy frowned. He bit his lip. Then he explained, “The secret is in simplicity, as is usually the case. The Methuselan Circuit is designed to handle vast amounts of energy and convert them into psionic waves. To do so the energy must be channeled into the circuit in a steady stream. My father found that by pulsing the energy flow he could get the Circuit to break down. When it loses its cohesion the energy flowing into it takes care of the rest.” He stopped and said emphatically, “That’s what I know. We’re square.”

Alexander nodded, satisfied.

Khandar handed him back his Rosary. “Here, you’re going to need this.” Looking at his chronometer the Golkos boy smiled, “There’s still five minutes left!”

He swung his bang stick at Alexander.

By the time the door opened and Centurion Fjallheim put a stop to their fight, Alexander was tingling all over. To his satisfaction, Khandar took an equally brutal beating. The centurion dismissed them, saying sternly, “You are both going to be part of the same Legion. Whether you like each other or not is immaterial; as soldiers you need to put your talent and knowledge together. You need to become more than the sum of your parts. That’s what makes the Service so strong; that’s what keeps the peace. I hope you both learned something tonight!”

Alexander did learn something, but he was certain it was not what Centurion Fjallheim intended. The centurion warned Alexander and Khandar before they left, “Don’t take the Tube back—it’s prohibited. The President’s convoy is at berth in it. Apparently, the President is going to make an address to Terra tomorrow; word has it that he’ll make it from the bridge of the
Iowa
,” he shook his head as if he didn’t approve of it. Almost to himself, he murmured, “No official has ever done that. Only Alexander Galaxus did that. It’s almost, and I hate to say this—I shouldn’t say it as a centurion—but as a Citizen of Terra,” he scowled so deeply that Alexander thought he was going to curse. Instead, he spat angrily, “It’s a desecration; a desecration of every Terran that died to build this empire!” Alexander watched the centurion closely; was he having second thoughts? To his disappointment, Fjallheim took a deep breath and closed his eyes. When he opened them he was in full control of himself. “I am an officer of the Terran Empire and a slave to duty. You two will be constrained as such—some day. Enjoy this night gentleman; it may be your last on this station.”

“What do you mean sir,” they asked together.

“I mean that the President is not here for an idle tour of the station,” Fjallheim said evenly. “For whatever reason, he is thinking very seriously of moving the working seat of government here. The Praetorian Legion is already moving into quarters. Our legionary Storm Marines have already redeployed to Luna.”

“What will happen to the Academy?”

The centurion shrugged as if it didn’t concern him. “There is plenty of hangar space on Luna. I shouldn’t wonder that we’ll be redeployed there to finish out the year. It won’t be so different; plenty of room for firing ranges on the Moon!” He looked at them with hard eyes. “Prepare for change, Cadets, but if you have any mischievous plans—you know, pranks on other flights or such things—this is likely your last night to accomplish them. Tomorrow you’ll be on Luna and the Station will be irrevocably remote—dismissed!”

Khandar frowned and stopped. He looked at his chronometer then at Alexander. “I will plan a raid on Alpha Flight at 0300, that’s five hours from now. It will cause quite a stir.”

Alexander nodded, “Thanks Khandar and good luck!”

The Golkos nodded and left, “I’ve got to let everyone else know what we’re doing! Good luck Alexander!”

Alexander hurried back to his dormitory as fast as he could. When he arrived they were waiting for him. He explained the situation, summing up by saying, “We’ve got until 0300 to come up with a game plan. If they do move us out tomorrow we won’t have another chance.”

Lisa led him to one of the dormitory Holo-V’s. She brought up the schematics for the station—the students were encouraged to try and use their classroom knowledge to help learn things about the Methuselan ship, and a surprising number of discoveries were made by young, fresh and energetic minds. “This is a real time display of the power distribution grid for the station,” she centered on the area where the Methuselan Circuit was. The display didn’t show the circuit itself, but it was clear that a tremendous amount of energy flowed into the area. “This is the key,” she told them, pointing out a large pulsing blue reservoir of energy. “This is a huge capacitor. It’s similar in structure to blaster capacitors in that it stores energy until it’s needed.”

Treya chimed in, “With a blaster capacitor all the energy is released at once, but in this capacitor watch what it does,” she touched the exit flow, a line of steady blue brilliance. Numbers appeared above the flow. They were a representation of energy and the numbers stayed constant. There was no variation at all. “Even for superluminal engines there is a variation in the energy stream—there is none in this, none at all.”

“It’s a perfect energy flow,” Lisa agreed.

Alexander scowled. “Can we change it; can we alter the flow to cause it to pulse like Grand Admiral Khandar did?”

“This is beyond our technology,” Lisa said, and Alexander’s face fell.

“What regulates the capacitor, maybe we can shut the flow off to it and it will then affect the main flow?”

Lisa pointed out the area around the capacitor and shook her head. “No, they needed this to be fool proof so the capacitor is insulated from all other systems on the ship. It uses the excess energy fed to it through the main conduit to power itself, sort of like the accessory equipment on an engine. They don’t have their own power sources; they are parasitic to the engine itself.”

“There’s only two ways to alter the flow,” Treya said soberly. “We would have to either affect the main flow of power into the capacitor or affect the energy stream between the capacitor and the Methuselan Circuit. To affect the capacitor, we’d have to shut down the station for at least an hour. The capacitor is so large that it can keep feeding the Methuselan Circuit for that long even with no more power feeding it.”

Alexander touched the area on the other end of the capacitor, hoping it might reveal something else. The image grew to show the energy stream close up. It flowed through a zero-G tube into an opaque gray area. Lisa explained, “The Circuit is in the gray area; it’s classified. There’s no way around the protocol, not without the proper security clearance.”

“If we had a clearance would that help?”

“It would let us see the connections between the energy stream and the Methuselan Circuit but that’s all.”

“I’ve seen the connections,” Alexander said, confused. “They were ordinary power cable connections. There wasn’t anything I saw that could handle this kind of load. If power like this flowed through those cables they’d fry immediately.”

“No it’s not,” he insisted, and he leaned over their shoulders pointing at the diagram. “It’s exactly like the HAM radios my dad and I built—it’s about the only hobby he has, he gets to complain about things with other Unioneers all over the world!”

“Get to the point James,” Lisa told him.

“Look, the power stream is just like the electricity flowing into a tuner which in turn controls the vibration of a crystal—that’s what codes the message. The thing is, that doesn’t take much power. The real power is used to send the signal not to create it.”

“So the Methuselan Circuit encodes the psionic wave but all this power we’re worrying about is only there to transmit it,” Alexander said. “Why then does the power have to be so even?”

“Simple,” James shrugged. “If your power source is spotty it affects the signal. The better your power source the farther you can send your signal.”

“This is a psionic signal,” Treya reminded them. “Think of the Scythians, the reason they can’t project their thoughts on other or even to each other over anything but short distances is all a power problem. They have the correct signals in their brains, but they don’t have the power to project.”

Alexander scratched his head. “Wait a minute, if the circuit I saw was built to withstand vast amounts of energy then why was it hooked up to normal conduits? Plus, there was no shielding around it. If it was transforming so much energy into a coherent psionic beam it would have been buried deep in shielding—that couldn’t have been the Methuselan Circuit I saw.”

They gawked at each other in stunned silence.

CHAPTER 24: Everything is Cool

As they sat there in the bitter realization that one of the few things they took as a truth was in fact wrong, Alexander’s compad started to beep. He had an incoming message. Glumly, he took it out. Katrina’s face appeared. His first thought was how to tell her that they were no closer to solving the problem; in fact they were further from the truth.