[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
Krantz told them. "Spartacus has started manufacturing drones with modified
designs. The new ones don't have carotid loops. Also their key parts have been
moved inside and protected by thickened and reinforced outer casings. It
appears that Spartacus has reinvented armor."
"Bloody hell!" Chris exclaimed. "It's sending in flying tanks."
Page 124
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
"Sounds like it," Dyer agreed in a sober voice. "Does that answer your
question?"
At that moment a second chorus of gasps and mutterings arose around the
console at which Linsay's team of officers were gathered. All the faces turned
in that direction. Linsay came through a few seconds later on one of the
screens in front of Krantz.
"It looks like what we thought might happen," Linsay declared without
preliminaries.
"Dropout?" Krantz inquired. The general nodded.
"Everywhere. They're going down like flies."
All over Janus, the whole armada of destroyers had suddenly stopped
functioning.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Paradoxical though it still seemed to many of the people involved with the
experiment, the methods being used against Spartacus up to that point had
relied to a large degree upon functions and services running within the
complex of Spartacus itself. The communications network via which the various
operations were coordinated, for example, was an integral part of the
Spartacus net; the computations performed to analyze the data obtained were
run on machines that formed part of Spartacus; Army personnel were transported
to and from operations by machines controlled by Spartacus, and the drones
used against Spartacus were commanded from programs running within the very
system that they were being used to frustrate.
This state of affairs had been allowed to persist quite deliberately to
provide a measure of Spartacus's abilities to perceive a realm of existence
external to itself and to relate causes and effects operating in that realm.
As long as Spartacus obligingly continued to sustain the rods that were
beating its own back, the scientists felt safe in concluding that the
machine's perceptions of any external reality were rudimentary. Ever since the
experiment began, Spartacus had been blindly reacting to stimuli presented by
an environment without being aware even that such a thing as an environment
could exist. To Spartacus any of the millions of programs residing within it
was much the same as any other and would be run when requested because that
was basically what Spartacus had been designed to do. The concept that one of
these programs might produce effects in a dimension outside itself, which in
turn could affect something else in that dimension which in turn could affect
it, had not taken root yet in Spartacus's evolving mind. Thus for a long time
it had continued to execute the programs that controlled the destroyers and to
register the losses of its own drones without realizing that the two were in
some way connected. But the data accumulating within its memories began to
form patterns, and the patterns began showing correlations...
Dyer and his team had discussed this possibility at great length and agreed
that sooner or later, if things ever went that far, Spartacus would put
chi-squared and chi-squared together and quit running their drones for them.
Also, if that ever happened, all of Spartacus would know about it at the same
time, so it would happen abruptly, all over Janus. They code-named the event
Dropout. Since it had been allowed for in the planning, the various military
units deployed across Janus were ready and standing by to fall back on local
control devices for the drones when it eventually did happen.
In some places the changeover to standby local control did not take place as
quickly or as smoothly as it should have, with the result that several minutes
elapsed with destroyers lying paralyzed on the ground where they had fallen.
In the brief commotion that followed, more time went by before the news got
through to the Command Room so that when at last all the destroyers were up
and running and under control again, not all of those that had been deployed
previously could be accounted for. Five had disappeared --
two cutters, two cannon and one that burned out electronics with X-rays, But
even when the news did get through, it received only scant attention.
Page 125
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
Everybody was too preoccupied with the latest development being reported from
Pittsburgh: the first of Spartacus's new models were coming into action.
The defensive line was a row of hovering destroyers positioned about twenty
feet ahead of the entrance to the shaft that gave access to the Power
Room of Pittsburgh Sector Ten. Small groups of steel-helmeted engineers waited
with their equipment at three well-spaced points behind the destroyers --
beneath the overhanging steel wall of one of the furnaces used to melt lunar
anorthosite, among the tangle of pipework that connected it to the centrifuge
plant, solidifier and grinding mill, and in front of the sulfuric acid
treatment tanks from which aluminum-bearing liquid was pumped away for
processing and separation.
Captain Leo Chesney, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, stood over the center group
and watched the half-dozen or so hostile drones that were moving toward them
from the door leading through to Sector Nine. The pattern was by now familiar.
What made this confrontation different was the type of drone they were facing,
which was unlike anything he had seen previously. Their designs
was more compact and the outlines rounded into smooth streamlined contours
with fewer parts exposed. They looked somehow more solid than before, and more
formidable. Chesney knew that they had caused a lot of excitement among the
eggheads in Downtown but he'd had to rush his unit to Sector Ten at short
notice so he didn't really know yet the reason for the uproar. He was mildly
self-conscious with the knowledge of the many eyes that were following him and
his men via the holo-viewer in the Government Center Command Room.
One of the officers in the Command Room spoke from a screen on the panel being
operated by the soldier floating anchored to a pipe fitting just in front of
him.
"They're a new type of drone that Spartacus has only just come up with, so we
don't know much more about them yet than you do. From what we can tell they're
probably functionally similar to what you've seen before but with components
repositioned for better protection and thicker skins. Use a standard attack
but don't hold back. It may take longer to knock these out than you think."
"Yes, sir," Chesney replied. Christ, he thought to himself. Could this damn
computer design its own drones too? Nobody had told him about that. They
hadn't said anything about that in the briefings at Fort Vokes. Maybe things
weren't going according to plan as the brass kept insisting they were. What
the hell had he been thinking he was trying to prove when he volunteered to
come to this crazy place anyway? Join the Space Arm and see the Universe,
they'd said. All he'd seen was the undersides of furnaces and enough pipes to
swallow the Atlantic.
An operator in the group over to his left came through on another channel.
"Close-up scan shows no carotids, sir. View being relayed on channel two." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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Krantz told them. "Spartacus has started manufacturing drones with modified
designs. The new ones don't have carotid loops. Also their key parts have been
moved inside and protected by thickened and reinforced outer casings. It
appears that Spartacus has reinvented armor."
"Bloody hell!" Chris exclaimed. "It's sending in flying tanks."
Page 124
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
"Sounds like it," Dyer agreed in a sober voice. "Does that answer your
question?"
At that moment a second chorus of gasps and mutterings arose around the
console at which Linsay's team of officers were gathered. All the faces turned
in that direction. Linsay came through a few seconds later on one of the
screens in front of Krantz.
"It looks like what we thought might happen," Linsay declared without
preliminaries.
"Dropout?" Krantz inquired. The general nodded.
"Everywhere. They're going down like flies."
All over Janus, the whole armada of destroyers had suddenly stopped
functioning.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Paradoxical though it still seemed to many of the people involved with the
experiment, the methods being used against Spartacus up to that point had
relied to a large degree upon functions and services running within the
complex of Spartacus itself. The communications network via which the various
operations were coordinated, for example, was an integral part of the
Spartacus net; the computations performed to analyze the data obtained were
run on machines that formed part of Spartacus; Army personnel were transported
to and from operations by machines controlled by Spartacus, and the drones
used against Spartacus were commanded from programs running within the very
system that they were being used to frustrate.
This state of affairs had been allowed to persist quite deliberately to
provide a measure of Spartacus's abilities to perceive a realm of existence
external to itself and to relate causes and effects operating in that realm.
As long as Spartacus obligingly continued to sustain the rods that were
beating its own back, the scientists felt safe in concluding that the
machine's perceptions of any external reality were rudimentary. Ever since the
experiment began, Spartacus had been blindly reacting to stimuli presented by
an environment without being aware even that such a thing as an environment
could exist. To Spartacus any of the millions of programs residing within it
was much the same as any other and would be run when requested because that
was basically what Spartacus had been designed to do. The concept that one of
these programs might produce effects in a dimension outside itself, which in
turn could affect something else in that dimension which in turn could affect
it, had not taken root yet in Spartacus's evolving mind. Thus for a long time
it had continued to execute the programs that controlled the destroyers and to
register the losses of its own drones without realizing that the two were in
some way connected. But the data accumulating within its memories began to
form patterns, and the patterns began showing correlations...
Dyer and his team had discussed this possibility at great length and agreed
that sooner or later, if things ever went that far, Spartacus would put
chi-squared and chi-squared together and quit running their drones for them.
Also, if that ever happened, all of Spartacus would know about it at the same
time, so it would happen abruptly, all over Janus. They code-named the event
Dropout. Since it had been allowed for in the planning, the various military
units deployed across Janus were ready and standing by to fall back on local
control devices for the drones when it eventually did happen.
In some places the changeover to standby local control did not take place as
quickly or as smoothly as it should have, with the result that several minutes
elapsed with destroyers lying paralyzed on the ground where they had fallen.
In the brief commotion that followed, more time went by before the news got
through to the Command Room so that when at last all the destroyers were up
and running and under control again, not all of those that had been deployed
previously could be accounted for. Five had disappeared --
two cutters, two cannon and one that burned out electronics with X-rays, But
even when the news did get through, it received only scant attention.
Page 125
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
Everybody was too preoccupied with the latest development being reported from
Pittsburgh: the first of Spartacus's new models were coming into action.
The defensive line was a row of hovering destroyers positioned about twenty
feet ahead of the entrance to the shaft that gave access to the Power
Room of Pittsburgh Sector Ten. Small groups of steel-helmeted engineers waited
with their equipment at three well-spaced points behind the destroyers --
beneath the overhanging steel wall of one of the furnaces used to melt lunar
anorthosite, among the tangle of pipework that connected it to the centrifuge
plant, solidifier and grinding mill, and in front of the sulfuric acid
treatment tanks from which aluminum-bearing liquid was pumped away for
processing and separation.
Captain Leo Chesney, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, stood over the center group
and watched the half-dozen or so hostile drones that were moving toward them
from the door leading through to Sector Nine. The pattern was by now familiar.
What made this confrontation different was the type of drone they were facing,
which was unlike anything he had seen previously. Their designs
was more compact and the outlines rounded into smooth streamlined contours
with fewer parts exposed. They looked somehow more solid than before, and more
formidable. Chesney knew that they had caused a lot of excitement among the
eggheads in Downtown but he'd had to rush his unit to Sector Ten at short
notice so he didn't really know yet the reason for the uproar. He was mildly
self-conscious with the knowledge of the many eyes that were following him and
his men via the holo-viewer in the Government Center Command Room.
One of the officers in the Command Room spoke from a screen on the panel being
operated by the soldier floating anchored to a pipe fitting just in front of
him.
"They're a new type of drone that Spartacus has only just come up with, so we
don't know much more about them yet than you do. From what we can tell they're
probably functionally similar to what you've seen before but with components
repositioned for better protection and thicker skins. Use a standard attack
but don't hold back. It may take longer to knock these out than you think."
"Yes, sir," Chesney replied. Christ, he thought to himself. Could this damn
computer design its own drones too? Nobody had told him about that. They
hadn't said anything about that in the briefings at Fort Vokes. Maybe things
weren't going according to plan as the brass kept insisting they were. What
the hell had he been thinking he was trying to prove when he volunteered to
come to this crazy place anyway? Join the Space Arm and see the Universe,
they'd said. All he'd seen was the undersides of furnaces and enough pipes to
swallow the Atlantic.
An operator in the group over to his left came through on another channel.
"Close-up scan shows no carotids, sir. View being relayed on channel two." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]