Red Tape War by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Fiction, General
ISBN: 9780812512823
Publisher: Tom Doherty Assoc Llc
Published: 1991-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

I emergency of that type, and so, being only a Class II—and a Class IIC at that—it'll take a

couple of minutes. Patience, sir! They aren't going anywhere." General Geronimo Custer looked to heaven.

Consciousness returned rapidly to those on the deck of the Pete Rozelle, but they all felt an almost total numbness. One by one they picked themselves up. We've failed, the human Pierce thought glumly. It's incredible we weren't all electrocuted. Or would that havebeen the kinder thing? That ship's gonna fire any minute now. So things can get worse. At least I don't have to go to the bathroom anymore. Vision returned, and he got groggily to his feet. The others did the same, with the exception of Frank Poole. The android had obviously dealt his last hand. The lights were dim and intermittent, there seemed to be small electrical fires all around, and there was the overpowering odor of ozone in the air. Pierce looked around to see how the others were. The general seemed dazed but all right, and so did--Wait a minute there!

He looked frantically for Marshmallow and didn't see her, and then he looked more closely and found her, all right.

He also found that things could still get a lot worse. And they most certainly had. A thin, reedy, electronic voice came from Frank Poole. He hadn't been totally destroyed after all. "I can't move! I'm trapped in this worthless android! And you've all become giants, or I've shrunk!"

The lizard general got weakly to his feet. "Well, ah sweah! Ah feel all funny and crazy!" It looked around, spotted another form, and stared, goggle-eyed. "Wait a dad-blamed minute, sugah! What am ah doin' over theah. when ah'm heah?" "When we all touched during that charge we must have been connected somehow," Pierce guessed. "I don't understand it, but it happened." He shook his head in wonderment, feeling the unusual brush of long hair against his bare shoulders. "I'm Millard. I got shoved somehow into your body, Marshmallow. And you got shoved into the general's. And . . . ?" They both looked at the still form of the android on the floor. "I'm General Pierce, you idiot!" came Frank Poole's grating, mechanical voice. All three then looked at the form of the human Millard Fillmore Pierce, who'd stood up and was now looking around in bewilderment and wonder. "And he must be the thing!" cried the general. The form of Millard Pierce stared at them. Finally, it said, "Thing indeed! I'll have you know I'm an XB-223 navigational computer!"

Pierce gulped. "You're the computer? Then tell us what happened? And where's the energy creature?"

"I regret to say," said the computer, "that I no longer have access to the infinitely superior memory and data banks with which I could have, quite rapidly, come up with that solution. My best guess is, if we're all accounted for, the energy beings are knocked cold somewhere in my own memory core. I was brought into it when the general was so clumsy as to fall against the master console.

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