Operation Omina by Starr Roland

Author:Starr, Roland [Starr, Roland]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Venture Press
Published: 2017-04-10T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

The flight control room didn’t seem any different to Vonner when he entered. There was a guard just inside the doorway, but the man merely glanced at him and made no effort to stop him. Vonner’s eyes went first to the forward scanner screen, and he saw Omina as before, but the planet seemed to have moved to the right of the screen, and Vonner knew that Bardo had succeeded in changing the course of the ship, if only slightly. Bardo was standing by the flight computer, and there were two technicians with him, working inside the highly complex instrument. Bardo looked up as Vonner approached, and grinned as if nothing had happened between them.

“You’re just in time to see the course change, Max,” Bardo said, and it was obvious that he suspected nothing of Vonner’s true mental attitude. “How are you feeling now? I was going to have you blasted out into space, where you could no longer pose a threat to me, but the doc assured me that reverse processing would cure you of any resistance. I’m glad. It wouldn’t have pleased me to kill anyone.”

“Adah has told me something about what’s happened,” Vonner said mildly.

“And of course you bear me no grudge because of it,” Bardo went on. “I trusted in the fact that a woman in love will do anything to save her man, and it looks as if I were right. I’ve had the entire crew reverse-processed, and then the key men have been re-processed to slightly different patterns, insuring their complete cooperation and loyalty. Even if you were able to resist me, Max, you wouldn’t find anyone to help you.”

“Then why the guards around the ship?” Vonner asked.

“Just a precaution.” Bardo smiled. “You would have done the same thing if you’d been in my shoes.”

“I’d like to know why you mutinied in the first place.” Vonner kept his tone deceptively mild, and watched Bardo’s intent face without showing his interest. “Adah told me I was the captain, and although I can’t remember what the situation was, I’m sure I’m the kind of man who would have listened to any observation concerning the ship’s general security.”

“Now that you’re normal and unprocessed with your captain’s cassette, you can see the sense of the situation,” Bardo told him. “That’s why I couldn’t tell you what I discovered while you were still captain. Your duty patterns wouldn’t let you doubt the computers. If I had come to you with the tale that the computers were giving you a false reading, you would have thrown me out of your office. You would have continued on the present course and crashed into Omina. As a matter of fact, the emergency signal that Farrell received just as I decided to take over the ship was about altering the ship’s course considerably, and in the direction I had already worked out to be the correct one. Since you ended your resistance, I’ve had Marr work out the new course to check

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