John Brunner by A Planet of Your Own Page B

callous super-organism like
the Zygra Company. She clenched her fists and turned
towards the observation dome, through which access was gained to the interior
of the main station. She was meticulously careful not to indicate that she had
noticed them; if her contract was going to be voided, the moment must be
delayed still another few minutes, until she had taken some necessary
precautions.
    For instance, if the computer was under
orders to refuse compliance with her commands the moment she waved—in the terms
of the contract, signaled or attempted to signal to someone who wasn't an
employee—all hell might break loose; there would be no more booming warnings
when she touched a part of the automatic machinery, nor opportunities to
justify her actions with legal precedents. She would simply be treated as a saboteur and the machines would defend themselves.
    Her
mind raced. Those men would need food, showers, clothing, perhaps medical
attention, so she had to isolate the autochef , the
domestic services and the medicare unit from the
central control. But in order to gain access they would have to be allowed aboard
the main station, so she must find a reason to keep the computer from blocking
their path ....
    Geoffrey Kotilal versus Astronaut Ambulance Company, 2094!
Where the ambulance pilot, en route to a
disaster already attended by three rival firms, had declined to rescue a lone spaceman who'd lacked a guarantee of payment, and had been held
negligent on the grounds that "the duty of any person in space to save the
life or attempt to save the life of any other person in space is paramount
above considerations of remuneration."
    Stretching
it a bit to apply it to rescue operations on a planetary surface, since it specified "in space" . . . But—
    She
whistled. Hadn't it been ruled, in McGillicuddy and
Kropotkin versus Callisto Methane Derivatives, 2106, that interplanetary space included any solid body not
possessed of its own independent jurisdiction? As of this moment, therefore,
the whole planet Zygra counted as an asteroid.
    She
was driving her nails so deep into her palms that it hurt. A tremendous wave of
excitement had gripped her. A sort of drunkenness was making her sway. There
was no time to examine this crazy notion of hers in detail; she would just have
to make the latest and wildest of all her gambles, and trust that her memory,
or some later precedent superseding those she had studied, wouldn't blast a
hole in hei plan.
    Feverishly she ran to get tools and attacked
the various automatic devices she was most likely to need. She couldn't think
of any better excuse to repair the medicare unit than
the one she had already used—suspected malfunction—but the computer, though it
generated an aura of puzzlement and distrust, didn't actually argue until the
greater part of the job was finished.
    Then,
firmly, it slammed the front panel of the master monitor control unit and
reported its own ignorance of any fault in that system. Kynance bit her lip. She had hoped to add at least one of the really crucial control
circuits to the list of those she had isolated from the computer before she
rendered the job effectively permanent by disconnecting the circuit-restorers
in the central maintenance block. But—well, at any minute now that ridiculous
bladder-and-stick boat might come bobbing up to the station's hull, and she would have to concede a showdown.
    She
ran to the circuit-restorer, uttered her little piece about suspected
malfunction, and cut off its power. On a casuistic legal basis, she could
justify this because anyone attempting manual repairs to circuits like these
risked being fried with several hundred volts.
    The
central computer was now half-paralyzed, but the services necessary to make
fife tolerable, if not comfortable, were all removed from its jurisdiction and
under manual control. Anything else?
    She
forced herself to stand rock-still for half a minute, surveying everything in
sight, then decided