Free John Brunner by A Planet of Your Own

largest integrated
automatic system in the known galaxy, but for precisely that reason the Zygra Company had chosen to incorporate in it tried and
true devices, not ones which lacked adequate field-tests.
    The
impact was so unexpected she had difficulty fixing it in her mind as real, rather than wishful thinking. She made what
comparisons she could in an attempt to convince herself. Suppose, for instance,
two centuries previous, it had been necessary to build a transport system
across hostile territory-say an African desert. By then, there were hovercraft,
monorails, flying mules and so forth to choose from; nuclear power reactors,
linear induction motors, fuel-cells, and a number of other possible power
sources had been known.
    But
the decision would almost certainly have been for conventional diesel
locomotives hauling conventional trains on steel rails of a type already
familiar for a hundred and fifty years or more. In other words, the automatics
controlling Zygra were to faster-than-light starships
as a railroad to a nuclear power-station.
    Which
left her in approximately the position of someone trying to stop a diesel
locomotive with sheer ingenuity: a tough
problem, but not beyond a solution.
    Self-preservation
came first, though. Actual interference would have to wait.
    Even the simplest of her
necessary tasks—rigging remote extensions for the central alarm—was tricky, not
because she couldn't take precautions against infringing the contract, but
because so many things that sprang to mind for the purpose, simply weren't
available.
    She
could say to the recording machines, "In my opinion j the alarms are inadequate to comply with the conditions of my
employment—von Hagen and Machetti versus Ice V Con- | struction Company of Titan, 2119: 'Ceteris paribus the ex- 1 perience of employees in the field carries more
weight than ] predictions by even the most up-to-date
computers not at the ] site of operations.' "
    But
she couldn't make a qua-space signal relay out of Zy-gran wood and old plastic food-boxes.
    Somehow she managed to jury-rig her alarm
switches. Heartened, she tackled the self-fatiguing plate on the medicare cabinet, exchanging it for a proper seal
impervious to anything but a carbide-tooth saw. During that job, she established
that the station's central computers were indeed well primed with legal
information. The moment she touched the plasma pipe, a warning about her
contract dinned into her ears. She waited till it was over, then quoted Lyon et Marseilles versus Hossein again, and tried a second approach. This time the computer didn't raise any
objections.
    Wonderful!
How about a less directly applicable precedent? She thought hard for ten
minutes and settled on Yukinawa , dos Passos and Szerelmy versus Ge Nuclear Fusion Monopoly, 2087: "Modifications to
automatic machinery which improve its function without detriment to the
purposes of the proprietor do not constitute grounds for voiding a contract of
employment."
    At this point she had a feeling she detected
a somewhat unhappy grinding sound in the machinery below the deck on which she
stood. A grim smile flitted over her face. The computer's experience obviously
didn't include supervisors of her stamp.
    Later,
for the sake of company, it might be fun to rig some vocal-communication
circuits with the central computer—no substitute for another human being, but
better than nothing.
    Although
the harvest was over, the area surrounding the main station was still swarming
with undersized pelts. It was also, and not by coincidence, at present the largest area of open water on the planet. The
solar tide which had drawn the pelts to their rendezvous with the starship had
submerged several hundred square miles which ordinarily counted as land by Zygran standards: slimy mudflats and patches of silt
temporarily anchored by unconsumed bondroots .
    But
as the waterlevel subsided, so the pelts, and their
herding monitors, and the coating-station and all the