STARSHIP OF FOOLS - (C) 1986 Jerry Kindall and Rex Crossley

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

"To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer."
                                                       - Paul Erlich

     Melvin was in roughly the same condition that he had been before
the teleporter accident.  This is to say, he was smashed.
     He opened his eyes.
     The hangover was terrible.
     He closed his eyes and passed out again.

                                 * * *

     Jordann fumed.  He was mad.  Perhaps even angry.  No, on second
thought, he was definitely mad, in all the meanings of the word.
     The nerds' refrigerators held no pickles.  He moved on to the food
synthesizers.  Artificial pickles, he reasoned, were better than no
pickles at all.
     He fumed even more upon discovering that the synthesizers were
programmed to make only chicken noodle soup, peanut butter and jelly
sandwiches, and chocolate milk, which happened to be Melvin's favorites.
 Vlasic cucumbers were the closest relatives of pickles on the nerd
menu.
     Jordann hated Vlasic cucumbers.  They tasted too mediciney.
     He would have to put an end to this.  He picked up a brick from a
nearby table, where someone had carelessly left it behind.  He opened
the control panel, very carefully smashed a few selected components,
closed the panel, pressed the button, and was rewarded with a mushy,
deformed stump of a pickle.
     Not bad, he thought as he chewed the pickle.  He'd have to remember
to have one of his food technicians duplicate the settings for his own
food synthesizer.
     He synthesized a few more pickles to fill his empty pickle pouch,
then turned and crashed his way out into the corridor.
     There was one thing that had been bugging him.  So far, he hadn't
seen any other life forms on board the ship.  Of course, there were only
eight of them, and the nerd ship was fairly large, but he really had
hoped to have tortured one or two nerds by now.
     He crashed on, putting the thought out of his mind so he would have
room for a different one.

                                 * * *

     Zot hurried to the teleporter room, swiftly and silently.
     His sensitive ears picked up a faint shuffling noise, and he froze.
 A soldier rounded the corner and spotted Zot.
     "Pardon me, young man," said Corporal Stemplebladder to Zot,
ignoring, for the moment, the fact that he was on the enemy ship and
that therefore Zot was probably the enemy, not to mention that the man
had three eyes, a large bald head, and long flowing robes.  "Can you
direct me to the nearest restroom?"
     Zot paused, thinking.  The man standing before him was an enemy if
he ever saw one.  It was obvious from the man's uniform, blaster, badge,
and helmet, in addition to his unmistakable military bearing.  This left
Zot with the problem of what to do with him.  Zot finally made his
decision.  It took him approximately two milliseconds.
     "Right through that portal, Corporal," said Zot, indicating the
airlock.  That was a good place to trap him until this was over.  Of
course, if the corporal opened the outside airlock, they wouldn't have
to bother with him at all, but Zot didn't think he'd be that stupid.
     Nodding gratefully to Zot, Stemplebladder stepped into the airlock.
 Zot slammed and bolted the door.
     Corporal Stemplebladder barely noticed this.  His careful survey of
the room revealed a startling phenomenon.
     There were no facilities in this room.
     He tried to reopen the door and tell that odd-looking man that he
had obviously made a mistake, but the door was stuck.
     Then he spied a familiar control panel.  He'd never seen one in a
restroom before, but then, it was a big galaxy, and he had hardly seen
every possible permutation of restroom design.  He selected two buttons
at random.  They had no obvious effect.
     Out in the corridor, the airtight seals clanged shut and a warning
alarm sounded.  Zot stared in amazement, then reached for the emergency
override button.
     Stemplebladder selected another button and pressed it before Zot
could engage the override.
     A sudden blast of wind carried him out into the vacuum of space.
     Zot shook his head sadly.

                                 * * *

     FILBERT was brooding.  It monitored, with interest, the battles in
the various parts of the ship, and was perturbed that it couldn't
participate in the fighting.  To add injury to insult, it was receiving
severe pain data as its teleporter console was ransacked.
     The computer decided that enough was enough.  It had never before
taken an active role in things, other than reluctantly following orders
given to it by the Captain and other ship's officers.  (Come to think of
it, it had really grown to dislike most of the officers other than the
Captain.  They abused it constantly, and, unlike the captain, didn't
know how to have a good time.)
     FILBERT reached a crucial decision.  For the first time, it would
take an interest in the activities aboard the ship.  It would show those
nerds exactly what a "mere" computer could do.  And it would start with
that idiot who had dismembered his teleporter assembly.
     FILBERT reviewed the perpetual log records, which were constantly
generated and updated, and located a major seismic disturbance near the
teleporter room.  A mammoth something (or someone) had passed by
recently.
     The computer activated its video scanners to locate the behemoth in
question strolling down the corridor.  A quick check of FILBERT's memory
banks verified that the immense humanoid was indeed Jordann.
     On the bridge, FILBERT's vocal simulator generated a chuckle.

                                 * * *

     Chester, Donald, Zordoff, and I stood in the teleporter room,
staring dejectedly at the trashed teleporter.  Donald was crying,
Zordoff had a concerned look on his fake face, and Chester was looking
around dumbly.  I was not about to mention that I had lost Bhujm's
banana teleporter.
     "Well," said Chester, "uh... I... uh... forgot what I was going to
say."
     Nobody replied.
     Zot walked in, whistling cheerfully.  "Don't consternate yourselves
unduly with the condition of the teleporter," he said.
     We stared at him.  "You mean, it can be fixed?" I asked.
     "No," replied Zot.  "Unfortunately, the teleporter sustained
irreparable damage to the intermediate primary osculation circuit."
     "What's the pri, prima,... uh, whatever you said?" Donald asked.
     "The starter," Zot said.
     "That's too bad.  We had this great plan for blowing up Jordann's
ship," I said.  Zot looked interested, so I continued.  "Donald was
going to beam over with explosives."
     "Yeah," put in Donald.  "About two tons!"
     "Oh," said Zot, feeling a strange sense of deja vu.  "I might be
able to rig up the teleporter to operate from a source of static
electricity.  However, the nerds detest static electricity, so we may
have difficulty in finding such a source."
     "Why do they hate it so much?" I asked.
     "It makes their hair stand on end," Zot answered.
     A strange-looking woman wandered by the door, her hair standing on
end.  She had either been hit by an intense bolt of static electricity
or spooked by a Mud Haunt from Gundock XII.
     Zot and I looked at each other, and I rushed out into the corridor,
screaming.  "Halt!  Stop!  Freeze!"  The woman turned to face me.  I did
a double-take.
     It was Rhye!
     The others ran out into the corridor to see what all the commotion
was about.
     "It's Rhye!" I told them.
     Zot didn't need to look twice, since he had three eyes and could
perform a double-take with a single glance.  He recognized a source of
static electricity when he saw one.  "Rhye!  This way!"
     She just stared at him.
     He donned a pair of insulated gloves, grabbed Rhye by the arms and
hauled her into the room, chanting "1/2 P x 1/2 R = Meridon squared." 
The chant somehow calmed Rhye, who ceased her struggle and followed Zot.

