Medusa: A Tiger by the Tail Read Free

avoided—but wiser heads than mine will be needed.” He paused. “Good luck, my enemy,” he added sincerely, then broke the connection.
    He sat there, just staring at the blank console, for several minutes. You have not considered all the implications …
    He was missing something. Morah had been too casual, too sure of himself. One piece, one vital piece, remained. Perhaps it would be found on Medusa. It had to be.
    Mirror, mirror …
    He didn’t want to go back into that room. Death waited there, death not only for himself but for millions more at the least.
    I’m of two minds about this …
    Morah’s attitude, now—was it bluff and bravado? Would he pull something? Or was he serious in his hard confidence?
    Would I lie to you?
    Sighing, he rose from his chair and walked back to the lab cubicle attached to the rear of the picket ship.
    2
    The door to the cubicle he generally called his lab opened for him and then hissed closed with a strange finality. The entire module was attached to the picket ship, but was internally controlled by its own computer. Everything was independent of the ship if need be—power, air, and air-filtration systems, it even had its own food synthesizer. The door was, of necessity, also an airlock; the place was essentially a container with a universal interlock, carried in a space freighter and then eased into its niche in the picket ship by a small tug. Since the module did not have its own propulsion system, it was definitely stuck there until its securing seals were released and it could be backed out by a tug.
    The controlling computer recognized only him, and would be resistant to any entry attempt by another—and lethal should the intruder succeed. The trouble was, he knew, the computer had been specially programmed for this mission by the Security Police, and not all that programming was directed toward his safety, survival, and comfort.
    “You were not gone very long this time,” the computer remarked through speakers in the wall. It sounded surprised.
    “There wasn’t much to do,” he told it, sounding tired. “And even less I could do.”
    “You made a call to one of the space stations in the Warden Diamond,” it noted, “on a scrambler circuit. Why? And who did you call?”
    “I’m not answerable to you—you’re a machine!” he snapped, then got hold of himself a bit. “That is why the two of us, and not you alone, are on this mission.”
    “Why didn’t you use me for the call? It would have been simple.”
    “And on the record,” he noted. “Let us face it, my cold companion, you do not work for me but for Security.”
    “But so do you,” the computer noted. “We both have the same job to do.”
    He nodded absently. “I agree. And you probably have never comprehended why I’m needed at all. But I’ll tell you why, my synthetic friend. They don’t trust you any more than they trust me, for one thing. They fear thinking machines, which is why we never developed the type of organic robot the aliens use. Or, rather, we did once—and lived to regret it.”
    “They would be superior,” the computer responded thoughtfully. “But be that as it may, as long as they control my programming and restrict my self-programming, I’m not a threat to them.”
    “No, but that’s not really why I’m here. Left to your own devices—pardon the pun—you would simply carry out the mission literally, with no regard for consequences or politics or psychology. You would deliver information even if doing so meant the loss of billions of lives. I, on the other hand, can subjectively filter those findings and weigh more factors than the bare mission outline. And that’s why they trust me more than you—even though they hardly trust me, which is why you are here. We guard and check one another. We’re not partners, you know—we are actually antagonists.”
    “Not so,” the computer responded. “You and I both have the same mission from the same source. It is not our