A WORD FROM THE (HUMAN) AUTHOR ...
WHEN MOST PEOPLE HEAR THE WORD robot, they have a reflexive metal picture of
a mechanical man, all creaking joints and glowing eyes. This really wasn't
what Karel Capek had in mind when he invented the word for his play R.U.R.
soon after the First World War. His robots- Rossum's Universal Robots-were
flesh and blood, though artificially made, and identical with normal
placental-people in every way except for their complete lack of emotions. The
new word robot filled a need, and was gratefully seized by the science
fiction writers and soon mutated to be- come the mechanical man with the
steel skin. (Capek's flesh- and-blood robots are now called androids.) At the
same time, in applied engineering, robot has become an inclusive term for an
entire new family of gadgetry.
      Just as tools and weapons-hammers, saws, swords and such -are a direct
extension of man's physical abilities, robots are an extension of the higher
and more abstract functions. The robot pilot, who flies the plane for far
longer periods than the human pilot, has delicate powers of discrimination
and choice. Even the first crude models could detect and correct deviations
from level flight before a human pilot could even sense them, while the
newer, sophisticated models turn and bank the plane at the touch of a single
button. This process of sensing and deciding is what separates the robots
from the insensate machines. An alarm clock is a machine-but an automatic
clock-radio is a robot. It may not look like one, but it has the functions.
It soothes its master to sleep with soft music, then turns off the sound
until the correct time in the morning when he should be awakened. There would
be no trick at all to enlarging its field of operation. Instead of a radio
this machine could play records: Brahms at night, Sousa in the morning. And
instead of switching off at night after a fixed interval, the music could
continue playing softly until the master was completely asleep-the robot
determining this fact by a thermocouple in the bed that would detect the
lowering of body temperature that accompanies sleep. If master wished to
arise at dawn there would be no need for him to check the almanac every night
for the correct time; a simple photoelectric cell sensitive to light would
take care of that. All of these gadgets-instead of being built into a black
box-could be housed in a metal torso, the thermo-couple in the end of one
finger, the photoelectric cells in place of eyes. Instead of internal
switching it could reach out a hand to turn on the music, even pull up the
shade if need be.
      I personally feel no burning desire to have a truncated metal man
hovering over my bed at night, metal finger gently prodding my flesh and
unsleeping eyes watching for the sight of dawn. Though in essence it would
still be the same machine that now turns the music on and off for me.
      Call my attitude emotional-but don't call it exceptional. We have long
tended to anthropomorphize our mechanical devices; giving our cars names,
cursing, coaxing-and occasionally kicking-recalcitrant machines. We are even
getting used to the services of robots and are beginning to take them for
granted too. What child has not been fascinated by the moron-level robot in
the refrigerator who turns the light off when we close the door? Does the
robot always turn it off? That train of thought can keep one up nights
figuring out ways to find out.
      Have you ever ridden in one of those completely automatic elevators
they are beginning to install in the big office buildings? A single master
control starts and stops an entire bank of elevators, programming frequent
trips when the traffic is heavy and fewer in the slow periods. Passengers are
counted and the doors closed when the car is full. Speed and braking are
adjusted to the weight so that the doors will always open flush with the
floor outside. Some of the elevators even have a recorded voice
(appropriately firm) that orders the hoggish rider to stay clear of the doors
if he is preventing their closure. The elevator-controlling robot is built
into the wall and sends and receives all of its commands electronically. If
we wanted it to conform to the classic picture of a robot it would do the
same job-though perhaps not as efficiently-in the form of a machine man who
snapped its fingers at the metal operators of the cars. All of this would be
very dramatic, yet would not alter the basic robot-control situation in the
slightest.
      The robots have arrived and are here to stay, deeply entrenched already
in the arts of war and peace. A little anti-social and suicidal robot named
proximity-fuse rides in cannon shells and can't stand being next to anyone
else. If he is, he blows up. Another robot can dip the bright lights on your
car, raising them again when the other car is by, though he is a bit on the
stupid side and blinks happily up and down at brightly lit signs. Robot
telephone operators are better, cheaper and faster than human ones, though
harder to argue with. Robot parking lots have arrived that will whisk your
automobile away upon presentation of a coin, and bring it back (hopefully)
when you present the right identification. In the home, robot controlled
stoves are so commonplace that we take them for granted.
      Robots are here to stay all right-but what impact are they going to
have on our human society? Will they wreak death and destruction like Victor
Frankenstein's creation? Or will they take over the world like their
progenitors in R.U.R.? Will they be willing serfs or metal masters? Or more
subtly, will they assure our physical needs to such a degree that the human
race will wallow in slothfulness, degenerate and perish. Anything's possible,
of course; and in these stories I talk about a few of the possibilities. Some
pleasant possibilities, and some rather nasty ones, too. Take your pick...




The first creature from earth to set foot-or treads-onto the moon will be a
robot. It is in the design stage now and careful plans are being made for it
to stroll around, sample the geology, search for life forms, examine the
surface and measure the radiation of the moon. And of course send the
information home. Unlike a man, the robot will then peacefully squat down and
sit unmoving for all eternity, eye lenses staring without interest at its
home world in the sky above. This little exploration-robot is so attractive a
design that it has already caused a schism among the ranks of the scientists
as to the necessity of sending men to the moon at all. But I think there is
little doubt as to the outcome of that argument. I don't remember any ticker-
tape parades for robots. Rockets will reach the moon and the planets and,
though there will be many robots aboard, there will also be at least one man.
It will be hard to keep him alive, warm and comfortable-but he'll be there...
SIMULATED TRAINER
MARS WAS A DUSTY, FRIGID HELL. Bone dry and blood red. They trudged single
file through the ankle-deep sand, and in a monotonous duet cursed the
nameless engineer who had designed the faulty reconditioners in their
pressure suits. The bug hadn't shown during testing of the new suits. It
appeared only after they had been using them steadily for a few weeks. The
water- absorbers became overloaded and broke down. The Martian atmosphere
stood at a frigid-60°centigrade. Inside the suits, they tried to blink the
unevaporated sweat from their eyes and slowly cooked in the high humidity.
      Morley shook his head viciously to dislodge an itching droplet from his
nose. At the same moment, something rust- coloured and furry darted across his
path. It was the first Martian life they had seen. Instead of scientific
curiosity, he felt only anger. A sudden kick sent the animal flying high into
the air.
      The suddenness of the movement threw him off balance. He fell sideways
slowly, dragging his rubberised suit along an upright rock fragment of sharp
obsidian.
      Tony Bannerman heard the other man's hoarse shout in his earphones and
whirled. Morley was down, thrashing on the sand with both hands pressed
against the ragged tear in the suit leg. Moisture-laden air was pouring out in
a steaming jet that turned instantly to scintillating ice crystals. Tony
jumped over to him, trying to seal the tear with his own ineffectual gloves.
Their faceplates close, he could see the look of terror on Morley's face-as
well as the blue tinge of cyanosis.
      "Help me-help me!"
      The words were shouted so loud they rasped the tiny helmet earphones.
But there was no help. They had taken no emergency patches with them. All the
patches were in the ship at least a quarter of a mile away. Before he could
get there and back Morley would be dead.
      Tony straightened up slowly and sighed. Just the two of them in the
ship, there was no one else on Mars who could help. Morley saw the look in
Tony's eyes and stopped struggling.
      "No hope at all, Tony- I'm dead?"
      "Just as soon as all the oxygen is gone; thirty seconds at the most.
There's nothing I can do."
      Morley grated the shortest, vilest word he knew and pressed the red
EMERGENCY button set into his glove above the wrist. The ground opened up next
to him in the same instant, sand sifting down around the edges of the gap.
Tony stepped back as two men in white pressure suits came up out of the hole.
They had red crosses on the fronts of their helmets and carried a stretcher.
They rolled Morley onto it and were gone back into the opening in an instant.
      Tony stood looking sourly at the hole for about a minute, waiting until
Morley's suit was pushed back through the opening. Then the sand-covered
trapdoor closed and the desert was unbroken once more.
      The dummy in the suit weighed as much as Morley and its plastic features
even resembled him a bit. Some wag had painted black X's on the eyes. Very
funny, Tony thought, as he struggled to get the clumsy thing onto his back. On
the way back the now-quiet Martian animal was lying in his path. He kicked it
aside and it rained a fine shower of springs and gears.
      The too-small sun was touching the peaks of the saw-tooth red mountains
when he reached the ship. Too late for a burial today-it would have to wait
until morning. Leaving the thing in the airlock, he stamped into the cabin and
peeled off his dripping pressure suit.
      It was dark by that time and the things they had called the night-owls
began clicking and scratching against the hull of the ship. They had never
managed to catch sight of the night-owls; that made the sound doubly annoying.
Tony clattered the pans noisily to drown the sound of them out while he
prepared the hot evening rations. When the meal was finished and the dishes
cleared away, he began to feel the loneliness for the first time. Even the
chew of tobacco didn't help; tonight it only reminded him of the humidor of
green Havana cigars waiting for him back on earth.
      His single kick upset the slim leg of the mess table, sending metal
dishes, pans and silverware flying in every direction. They made a
satisfactory noise and he exacted even greater pleasure by leaving the mess
just that way and going to bed. They had been so close this time, if only
Morley had kept his eyes open! He forced the thought out of his mind and went
to sleep.

      In the morning he buried Morley. Then, grimly and carefully, passed the
remaining two days until blast off time. Most of the geological samples were
in and the air sampling and radiation recording meters were fully automatic.
      On the final day, he removed the recording tapes from the instruments
and carried the instruments away from the ship where they couldn't be caught
in the take off blast. Next to the instruments he piled all the extra
supplies, machinery and unneeded equipment. Shuffling through the rusty sand
for the last time, he gave Morley's grave an ironical salute as he passed.
There was nothing to do in the ship and not as much as a pamphlet left to
read. Tony passed the two remaining hours on his bunk counting the rivets in
the ceiling.
      A sharp click from the control clock broke the silence and behind the
thick partition he could hear the engines begin the warm-up cycle. At the same
time, the padded arms slipped across his bunk, pinning him down securely. He
watched the panel slip back in the wall next to him and the hypo arm slide
through, moving erratically like a snake as its metal fingers sought him out.
They touched his ankle and the serpent's tooth of the needle snapped free. The
last thing he saw was the needle slipping into his vein, then the drug blacked
him out.
      As soon as he was under, a hatch opened in the rear bulkhead and two
orderlies brought in a stretcher. They wore no suits nor masks and the blue
sky of earth was visible behind them.

      Coming to was the same as it always had been. The gentle glow from the
stimulants that brought him up out of it, the first sight of the white ceiling
of the operating room on earth.
      Only this time the ceiling wasn't visible, it was obscured by the red
face and thundercloud brow of Colonel Stregham. Tony tried to remember if you
saluted while in bed, then decided that the best thing to do was lie quietly.
      "Damn it, Bannerman, the colonel growled, "welcome back on earth. And
why did you bother coming back? With Morley dead the expedition has to be
counted a failure - and that means not one completely successful expedition to
date."
      "The team in number two, sir, how did they do...?" Tony tried to sound
cheerful.
      "Terrible. If anything, worse than your team. Both dead on the second
day after landing. A meteor puncture in their oxygen tank and they were too
busy discovering a new flora to bother looking at any meters.
      "Anyway, that's not why I'm here. Get on some clothes and come into my
office."
      He slammed out and Tony scrambled off the bed, ignoring the touch of
dizziness from the drugs. When colonels speak, lieutenants hurry to obey.
      Colonel Stegham was scowling out of his window when Tony came in. He
returned the salute and proved that he had a shard of humanity left in his
military soul by offering Tony one of his cigars. Only when they had both lit
up did he wave Tony's attention to the field outside the window.
      "Do you see that? Know what it is?"
      "Yes, sir, the Mars rocket."
      "It's going to be the Mars rocket. Right now, it's only a half-completed
hull. The motors and instruments are being assembled in plants all over the
country. Working on a crash basis the earliest estimate of completion is six
months from now.
      "The ship will be ready-only we aren't going to have any men to go in
her. At the present rate of washout there won't be a single man qualified.
Yourself included."
      Tony shifted uncomfortably under his gaze as the colonel continued.
      "This training program has always been my baby. I dreamed it up and kept
after the Pentagon until it was adapted. We knew we could build a ship that
would get to Mars and back, operated by automatic controls that would fly her
under any degree of gravity or free fall. But we needed men who could walk out
on the surface of the planet and explore it-or the whole thing would be so
much wasted effort.
      "The ship and the robot pilot could be tested under simulated flight
condition, and the bugs worked out. It was my suggestion, which was adopted,
that the men who are to go in the ship should be shaken down in the same way.
Two pressure chambers were built, simulated trainers that duplicated Mars in
every detail we could imagine. We have been running two-men teams through
these chambers for eighteen months now, trying to shake down and train them to
man the real ship out there.
      "I'm not going to tell you how many men we started with, or how many
have been casualties because of the necessary realism of the chambers. I'll
tell you this much though-we haven't had one successful simulated expedition
in all that time. And every man who has broken down or "died," like your
partner Morley, has been eliminated.
      "There are only four possible men left, yourself included. If we don't
get one successful two-man team out of you four, the entire program is a
washout."
      Tony sat frozen, the dead cigar between his fingers. He knew that the
pressure had been on for some months now, that Colonel Stegham had been
growling around like a gut-shot bear. The colonel's voice cut through his
thoughts.
      "Psych division has been after me for what they think is a basic
weakness of the program. Their feeling is that because it is a training
program the men always have it in the back of their minds that it's not for
real. They can always be pulled out of a tight hole. Like Morley was, at the
last moment. After the results we have had I am beginning to agree with Psych.
      "There are four men left and I am going to run one more exercise for
each two-man group. This final exercise will be a full dress rehearsal-this
time we're playing for keeps."
      "I don't understand, Colonel..."
      "It's simple." Stegham accented his words with a bang of his first on
the desk. "We're not going to help or pull anyone out no matter how much they
need it. This is battle training with live ammunition. We're going to throw
everything at you that we can think of-and you are going to have to take it.
If you tear your suit this time, you're going to die in the Martian vacuum
just a few feet from all the air in the world."
      His voice softened just a bit when he dismissed Tony.
      "I wish there was some other way to do it, but we have no choice now. We
have to get a crew for that ship next month and this is the only way to he
sure.
      Tony had a three-day pass. He was drunk the first day, hung-over sick
the second-and boiling mad on the third. Every man on the project was a
volunteer, adding deadly realism that was carrying the thing too far. He could
get out any time he wanted, though he knew what he would look like then. There
was only one thing to do: go along with the whole stupid idea. He would do
what they wanted and go through with it. And when he had finished the
exercise, he looked forward to hitting the colonel right on the end of his big
bulbous nose.
      He joined his new partner, Hal Mendoza, when he went for his medical.
They had met casually at the training lectures before the simulated training
began. They shook hands reservedly now, each eyeing the other with a view to
future possibilities. It took two men to make a team and either one could be
the cause of death for the other.
      Mendoza was almost the physical opposite of Tony, tall and wiry, while
Tony was as squat and solid as a bear. Tony's relaxed, almost casual manner,
was matched by the other man's seemingly tense nerves. Hal chain-smoked and
his eyes were never still.
      Tony pushed away his momentary worry with an effort. Hal would have to
be good to get this far in the program. He would probably calm down once the
exercise was under way.
      The medic took Tony next and began the detailed examination.
      "What's this?" the medical officer asked Tony as he probed with a swab
at his cheek.
      "Ouch," Tony said. "Razor cut, my hand slipped while I was shaving."
      The doctor scowled and painted on antiseptic, then slapped on a square
of gauze.
      "Watch all skin openings," he warned. "They make ideal entry routes for
bacteria. Never know what you might find on Mars."
      Tony started a protest, then let it die in his throat. What was the use
of explaining that the real trip-if and when it ever came off-would take 260
days. Any cuts would easily heal in that time, even in frozen sleep.
      As always after the medical, they climbed into their flight suits and
walked over to the testing building. On the way, Tony stopped at the barracks
and dug out his chess set and a well-thumbed deck of cards. The access door
was open in the thick wall of Building Two and they stepped through into the
dummy Mars ship. After the medics had strapped them to the bunks the simulated
frozen sleep shots put them under.

      Coming to was accompanied by the usual nausea and weakness. No realism
spared. On a sudden impulse Tony staggered to the latrine mirror and blinked
at his red-eyed, smooth-shaven reflection. He tore the bandage off his cheek
and his fingers touched the open cut with the still congealed drop of blood at
the bottom. A relaxed sigh slipped out. He had the recurrent bad dream that
some day one of these training trips would really be a flight to Mars. Logic
told him that the army would never forego the pleasure and publicity of a big
send-off. Yet the doubt, like all illogical ones, persisted. At the beginning
of each training flight, he had to abolish it again.
      The nausea came back with a swoop and he forced it down. This was one
exercise where he couldn't waste time. The ship had to be checked. Hal was
sitting up on his bunk waving a limp hand. Tony waved back.
      At that moment, the emergency communication speaker crackled into life.
At first, there was just the rustle of activity in the control office, then
the training officer's voice cut through the background noise.
      "Lieutenant Bannerman-you awake yet?"
      Tony fumbled the mike out of its clip and reported. "Here, sir."
      "Just a second, Tony," the officer said. He mumbled to someone at one
side of the mike, then came back on. "There's been some trouble with one of
the bleeder valves in the chamber; the pressure is above Mars norm. Hold the
exercise until we pump her back down."
      "Yes, sir," Tony said, then killed the mike so he and Hal could groan
about the so-called efficiency of the training squad. It was only a few
minutes before the speaker came back to life.
      "Okay, pressure on the button. Carry on as before."
      Tony made an obscene gesture at the unseen man behind the voice and
walked over to the single port. He cranked at the handle that moved the crash
shield out of the way.
      "Well, at least it's a quiet one," he said after the ruddy light had
streamed in. Hal came up and looked over his shoulder.
      "Praise Stegham for that," he said. "The last one, where I lost my
partner, was wind all the time. From the shape of those dunes it looks like
the atmosphere never moves at all."
      They stared glumly at the familiar red landscape and dark sky for a long
moment, then Tony turned to the controls while Hal cracked out the atmosphere
suits.
      "Over here-quick!"
      Hal didn't have to be called twice, he was at the board in a single
jump. He followed Tony's pointing finger.
      "The water meter-it shows the tank's only about half full."
      They fought off the plate that gave access to the tank compartment. When
they laid it aside a small trickle of rusty water ran across the deck at their
feet. Tony crawled in with a flashlight and moved it up and down the tubular
tanks. His muffled voice echoed inside the small compartment.
      "Damn Stegham and his tricks-another 'shock of landing' failure.
Connecting pipe split and the water that leaked out has soaked down into the
insulating layer; we'll never get it out without tearing the ship apart. Hand
me the goo, I'll plug the leak until we can repair it."
      "It's going to be an awfully dry month," Hal muttered while he checked
the rest of the control board.
      The first few days were like every other trip. They planted the flag and
unloaded the equipment. The observing and recording instruments were set up by
the third day, so they unshipped the theodolite and started their maps. By the
fourth day they were ready to begin their sample collecting.
      It was just at this point that they really became aware of the dust.
      Tony chewed an unusually gritty mouthful of rations, cursing under his
breath because there was only a mouthful of water to wash it down with. He
swallowed it painfully, then looked around the control chamber.
      "Have you noticed how dusty it is?" he asked.
      "How could you not notice it? I have so much of it inside my clothes I
feel like I'm living on an ant hill."
      Hal stopped scratching just long enough to take a bite of food
      They both looked around and it hit them for the first time just how much
dust was in the ship. A red coating on everything, in their food and in their
hair. The constant scratch of grit underfoot.
      "It must come in on our suits," Tony said. "We'll have to clean them off
better before coming inside."
      It was a good idea-the only trouble was that it didn't work. The red
dust was as fine as talcum powder and no amount of beating could dislodge it;
it just drifted around in a fine haze. They tried to forget the dust, just
treating it as one more nuisance Stegham's technicians had dreamed up. This
worked for awhile, until the eighth day when they couldn't close the outer
door of the air lock. They had just returned from a sample-collecting trip.
The air lock barely held the two of them plus the bags of rock samples. Taking
turns, they beat the dust off each other as well as they could, then Hal threw
the cycling switch. The outer door started to close, then stopped. They could
feel the increased hum of the door motor through their shoes, then it cut out
and the red trouble light flashed on.
      "Dust!" Tony said. "That damned red dust is in the works."
      The inspection plate came off easily and they saw the exposed gear
train. The red dust had merged into a destructive mud with the grease. Finding
the trouble was easier than repairing it. They had only a few basic tools in
their suit pouches. The big tool box and all the solvent that would have made
fast work of the job were inside the ship. But they couldn't be reached until
the door was fixed. And the door couldn't be fixed without tools. It was a
paradoxical situation that seemed very unfunny.
      It took them only a second to realize the spot they were in-and almost
two hours to clean the gears as best they could and force the door shut. When
the inner port finally opened, both their oxygen tanks read EMPTY, and they
were operating on the emergency reserves.
      As soon as Hal opened his helmet, he dropped on his bunk. Tony thought
he was unconscious until he saw that the other man's eyes were open and
staring at the ceiling. He cracked open the single flask of medicinal brandy
and forced Hal to take some. Then he had a double swallow himself and tried to
ignore the fact that his partner's hands were trembling violently. He busied
himself making a better repair of the door mechanism. By the time he had
finished, Hal was off the bunk and starting to prepare their evening meal.
      Outside of the dint, it was a routine exercise-at first. Surveying and
sampling most of the day, then a few leisure hours before retiring. Hal was a
good partner and the best chess player Tony had teamed with to date. Tony soon
found out that what he thought was nervousness was nervous energy. Hal was
only happy when he was doing something. He threw himself into the day's work
and had enough enthusiasm and energy left over to smash the yawning Tony over
the chessboard. The two men were quite opposite types and made good teammates.
      Everything looked good-except for the dust. It was everywhere, and
slowly getting into everything. It annoyed Tony, but he stolidly did not let
it bother him deeply. Hal was the one that suffered most. It scratched and
itched him, setting his temper on edge. He began to have trouble sleeping.
      And the creeping dust was slowly working its way into every single item
of equipment. The machinery was starting to wear as fast as their nerves. The
constant presence of the itching dust, together with the acute water shortage
was maddening. They were always thirsty and had only the minimum amount of
water to last until blast off. With proper rationing, it would barely be
enough.
      They quarrelled over the ration on the thirteenth day and almost came to
blows. For two days after that they didn't talk. Tony noticed that Hal always
kept one of the sampling hammers in his pocket; in turn, he took to carrying
one of the dinner knives.
      Something had to crack. It turned out to be Hal.
      It must have been the lack of sleep that finally got to him. He had
always been a light sleeper, now the tension and the dust were too much. Tony
could hear him scratching and turning each night when he forced himself to
sleep. He wasn't sleeping too well himself, but at least he managed to get a
bit. From the black hollows under Hal's bloodshot eyes it didn't look like Hal
was getting any.
      On the eighteenth day he cracked. They were just getting into their
suits when he started shaking. Not just his hands, but all over. He just stood
there shaking until Tony got him to the bunk and gave him the rest of the
brandy. When the attack was over he refused to go outside.
      "I won't... I can't!" He screamed the words. "The suits won't last much
longer, they'll fail while we're out there... I won't last any longer... we
have to go back..."
      Tony tried to reason with him. "We can't do that, you know this is a
full scale exercise. We can't get out until the twenty-eight days are up.
That's only ten more days-you can hold out until then. That's the minimum
figure the army decided on for a stay on Mars-it's built into all the plans
and machinery. Be glad we don't have to wait an entire Martian year until the
planets get back into conjunction. With deep sleep and atomic drive that's one
trouble that won't be faced."
      "Stop talking and trying to kid me along," Hal shouted. "I don't give a
flying frog what happens to the first expedition. I'm washing myself out and
this final exercise will go right with me. I'm not going crazy from lack of
sleep just because some brass-hat thinks super-realism is the answer. If they
refuse to stop the exercise when I call, it will be murder."
      He was out of his bunk before Tony could say anything and scratching at
the control board. The EMERGENCY button was there as always, but they didn't
know if it was connected this time. Or even if it were connected, if anyone
would answer. Hal pushed it and kept pushing it. They both looked at the
speaker, holding their breaths.
      "The dirty rotten... they're not going to answer the call." Hal barely
breathed the words.
      Then the speaker rasped to life and the cold voice of Colonel Stegham
filled the tiny room.
      "You know the conditions of this exercise-so your reasons for calling
had better be pretty good. What are they?"
      Hal grabbed the microphone, half-complaining, half-pleading-the words
poured out in a torrent. As soon as he started, Tony knew it would not be any
good. He knew just how Stegham would react to the complaints. While Hal was
still pleading the speaker cut him off.
      "That's enough. Your explanation doesn't warrant any change in the
original plan. You are on your own and you're going to have to stay that way.
I'm cutting this connection permanently; don't attempt to contact me again
until the exercise is over."
      The click of the opening circuit was as final as death.
      Hal sat dazed, tears on his cheeks. It wasn't until he stood up that
Tony realized they were tears of anger. With a single pull, Hal yanked the
mike loose and heaved it through the speaker grill.
      "Wait until this is over, Colonel, and I can get your pudgy neck between
my hands." He whirled towards Tony. "Get out the medical kit, I'll show that
idiot he's not the only one who can play boy scout with his damned exercises."
      There were four morphine styrettes in the kit; he grabbed one out, broke
the seal and jabbed it against his arm. Tony didn't try to stop him, in fact,
he agreed with him completely. Within a few minutes, Hal was slumped over the
table, snoring deeply. Tony picked him up and dropped him onto his bunk.
      Hal slept almost twenty hours and when he woke up some of the madness
and exhaustion was gone from his eyes. Neither of them mentioned what had
happened. Hal marked the days remaining on the bulkhead and carefully rationed
the remaining morphine. He was getting about one night's sleep in three, but
it seemed to be enough.

      They had four days left to blast off when Tony found the first Martian
life. It was something about the size of a cat that crouched in the lee of the
ship, He called to Hal who came over and looked at it.
      "That's a beauty," he said, "but nowheres near as good as the one I had
on my second trip. I found this ropy thing that oozed a kind of glue. Contrary
to regulations-frankly I was curious as hell-I dissected the thing. It was a
beauty, all wheels and springs and gears, Stegham's technicians do a good job.
I really got chewed out for opening the thing, though. Why don't we just leave
this one where it is?"
      For a moment Tony almost agreed-then changed his mind.
      "That's probably just what they want-so let's finish the game their way.
I'll watch it, you get one of the empty ration cartons."
      Hal reluctantly agreed and climbed into the ship. The outer door swung
slowly and ground into place. Disturbed by the vibration, the thing darted out
towards Tony. He gasped and stepped back before he remembered it was only a
robot.
      "Those technicians really have wonderful imaginations," he mumbled.
      The thing started to run by him and he put his foot on some of its legs
to hold it. There were plenty of legs; it was like a small-bodied spider
surrounded by a thousand unarticulated legs. They moved in undulating waves
like a millipede and dragged the misshapen body across the sand. Tony's boot
crunched on the legs, tearing some off. The rest held.
      Being careful to keep his hand away from the churning legs, he bent over
and picked up a dismembered limb. It was hard and covered with spines on the
bottom side. A milky fluid was dripping from the torn end.
      "Realism," he said to himself, "those technicians sure believe in
realism."
      And then the thought hit him. A horribly impossible thought that froze
the breath in his throat. The thoughts whirled round and round and he knew
they were wrong because they were so incredible. Yet he had to find out, even
if it meant ruining their mechanical toy.
      Keeping his foot carefully on the thing's legs, he slipped the sharpened
table knife out of his pouch and bent over. With a single, swift motion he
stabbed.
      "What the devil are you doing?" Hal asked, coming up behind him. Tony
couldn't answer and he couldn't move. Hal walked around him and looked down at
the thing on the ground.
      It took him a second to understand, then he screamed.
      "It's alive! It's bleeding and there are no gears inside. It can't be
alive-if it is we're not on earth at all-we're on Mars!" He began to run, then
fell down, screaming.
      Tony thought and acted at the same time. He knew he only had one chance.
If he missed they'd both be dead. Hal would kill them both in his madness.
Balling his fist, he let swing hard as he could at the spot just under the
other man's breastplate. There was just the thin fabric of the suit there and
that spot was right over the big nerve ganglion of the solar plexus. The thud
of the blow hurt his hand-but Hal collapsed slowly to the ground. Putting his
hands under the other's arms, he dragged him into the ship.
      Hal started to come to after he had stripped him and laid him on the
bunk. It was impossible to hold him down with one hand and press the freeze
cycling button at the same time. He concentrated on holding Hal's one leg
still and pushed the button. The crazed man had time to hit Tony three times
before the needle lanced home. He dropped back with a sigh and Tony got
groggily to his feet. The manual actuator on the frozen sleep had been
provided for any medical emergency so the patient could survive until the
doctors could work on him back at base. It had proven its value.
      Then the same unreasoning terror hit him.
      If the beast were real-Mars was real.
      This was no "training exercise"-this was it. That sky outside wasn't a
painted atmosphere, it was the real sky of Mars. He was alone as no man had
ever been alone before. On a planet millions of miles from his world.
      He was shouting as he dogged home the outer airlock door, an animal-like
howl of a lost beast. He had barely enough control left to get to his bunk and
throw the switch above it. The hypodermic was made of good steel so it went
right through the fabric of his pressure suit. He was just reaching for the
hypo arm to break it off when he dropped off into the blackness.

      This time, he was slow to open his eyes. He was afraid he would see the
riveted hull of the ship above his head. It was the white ceiling of the
hospital, though, and he let the captive air out of his lungs. When he turned
his head he saw Colonel Stegham sitting by the bed.
      "Did we make it?" Tony asked. It was more of a statement than a
question.
      "You made it, Tony. Both of you made it. Hal is awake here in the other
bed."
      There was something different about the colonel's voice and it took Tony
an instant to recognize it. It was the first time he had ever heard the
colonel talk with any emotion other than anger.
      "The first trip to Mars. You can imagine what the papers are saying
about it. More important, Tech says the specimens and meter reading you
brought back are invaluable. When did you find out it wasn't an exercise?"
      "The twenty-fourth day. We found some kind of Martian animal. I suppose
we were pretty stupid not to have tumbled before that."
      Tony's voice had an edge of bitterness.
      "Not really. Every part of your training was designed to keep you from
finding out. We were never certain if we would have to send the men without
their knowledge, but there was always that possibility. Psych was sure the
disorientation and separation from earth would cause a breakdown. I could
never agree with them."
      "They were right," Tony said, trying to keep the memory of fear out of
his voice.
      "We know now they were right, though I fought them at the time. Psych
won the fight and we programmed the whole trip over on their say-so. I doubt
if you appreciate it, but we went to a tremendous amount of work to convince
you two that you were still in the training program.
      "Sorry to put you to all that trouble," Hal said. The colonel flushed a
little, not at the words but at the loosely-reined bitterness that rode behind
them. He went on as if he hadn't heard.
      "Those two conversations you had over the emergency phone were, of
course, taped and the playback concealed in the ship. Psych scripted them on
the basis of fitting any need, apparently they worked. The second one was
supposed to be the final touch of realism, in case you should start being
doubtful. Then we used a variation of deep freeze that suspends about ninety-
nine per cent of the body processes; it hasn't been revealed or published yet.
This along with anti-coagulants in the razor cut on Tony's chin covered the
fact that so much time had passed."
      "What about the ship," Hal asked. "We saw it-it was only half-
completed."
      "Dummy," the colonel said. "Put there for the public's benefit and all
foreign intelligence services. Real one had been finished and tested weeks
earlier. Getting the crew was the difficult part. What I said about no team
finishing a practice exercise was true. You two men had the best records and
were our best bets.
      "We'll never have to do it this way again, though. Psych says that the
next crews won't have that trouble; they'll be reinforced by the psychological
fact that someone else was there before them. They won't be facing the
complete unknown."
      The colonel sat chewing his lip for a moment, then forced out the words
he had been trying to say since Tony and Hal had regained consciousness.
      "I want you to understand... both of you... that I would rather have
gone myself than pull that kind of thing on you. I know how you must feel.
Like we pulled some kind of a..."
      "Interplanetary practical joke," Tony said. He didn't smile when he said
it.
      "Yes, something like that," the colonel rushed on. "I guess it was a
lousy trick-but don't you see, we had to? You two were the only ones left,
every other man had washed out. It had to be you two, and we had to do it the
safest way.
      "And only myself and three other men know what was done; what really
happened on the trip. No one else will ever know about it, I can guarantee you
that."
      Hal's voice was quiet, but cut through the still room like a sharp
knife.
      "You can be sure Colonel, that we won't be telling anybody about it."
      When Colonel Stegham left, he kept his head down because he couldn't
bring himself to see the look in the eyes of the first two explorers of Mars.




Sooner or later robots will be built that will fulfill the physical prophecies
of fiction. The human body with its binocular vision and highly placed eyes,
dextrous fingers placed at the ends of long and flexible extremities, and two-
legged motive power for any kind of terrain, will surely be used as a pattern
for the construction of robots. They will be machines that look like men-but
they will not be metal men. This is not an easy distinction to make, and an
even easier one to forget, as we do every time we strike out in anger at an
inanimate object. But robots will not be inanimate, in truth they will be
animate in every way. They will be man-shaped machines-and people will begin
to think of them as another class of mankind...

THE VELVET GLOVE

JON VENEX FITTED THE KEY INTO the hotel room door. He had asked for a large
room, the largest in the hotel, and had paid the desk clerk extra for it. All
he could do now was pray that he hadn't been cheated. He wouldn't dare
complain or try to get his money hack. He heaved a sigh of relief as the door
swung open. The room was bigger than he had expected-fully three feet wide by
five feet long. There was more than enough space to work in. He would have his
leg off in a jiffy and by morning his limp would be gone.
      There was the usual adjustable hook on the back wall. He slipped it
though the recessed ring in the back of his neck and kicked himself up until
his feet hung free of the floor. His legs relaxed with a rattle as he cut off
all power below his waist.
      The overworked leg motor would have to cool down be- fore he could work
on it, plenty of time to skim through the newspaper. With the chronic worry of
the unemployed he snapped it open at the want-ads and ran his eye down the
Help Wanted-Robot column. There was nothing for him under the Specialist
heading, even the Unskilled Labor listings were bare and unpromising. New York
was a bad town for robots this year.
      The want ads were just as depressing as usual but he could always get a
lift from the comic section. He even had a favorite strip, a fact that he
scarcely dared mention to himself-"Rattly Robot," a dull witted mechanical
clod who was continually falling over himself and getting into trouble. It was
a repellant caricature, but could still be very funny. Jon was just staffing
to read it when the ceiling light went out.
      It was ten P.M., curfew hour for robots. Lights out and lock yourself in
until six in the morning, eight hours of boredom and darkness for all except
the few night workers. But there were ways of getting around the letter of a
law that didn't concern itself with a definition of visible light. Sliding
aside some of the shielding around his atomic generator, Jon turned up the
gain. As it began to run a little hot the heat waves streamed out-visible to
him as infra-red rays. He finished reading the paper in the clear light of his
abdomen.
      With the thermocouple in the tip of his second finger left hand, he
tested the temperature of his leg. It was cool enough to work on. The
waterproof gasket stripped off easily, exposing the power leads, nerve wires
and the weakened knee joint. The wires disconnected, Jon unscrewed the knee
above the joint and carefully placed it on the shelf in front of him. With
loving care he took the replacement part from his hip pouch. It was the
product of toil, purchased with the savings from three months employment on
the Jersey pig farm.
      Jon was standing on one leg testing the new knee joint when the ceiling
fluorescent flickered and came hack on. Five-thirty already, he had just
finished in time. A shot of oil on the new bearing completed the job; he
stowed away the tools in his pouch and unlocked the door.
      The unused elevator shaft acted as a waste chute, he slipped his
newspaper through a slot in the door as he went by. Keeping close to the wall,
he picked his way carefully down the grease stained stairs. He slowed his pace
at the 17th floor as two other mechs turned in ahead of him. They were
obviously butchers or meatcutters; where the right hand should have been on
each of them there stuck out a wicked, foot long knife. As they approached the
foot of the stairs they stopped to slip the knives into the plastic sheaths
that were bolted to their chestplates Jon followed them down the ramp into the
lobby.
      The room was filled to capacity with robots of all sizes, forms and
colors. Jon Venex's greater height enabled him to see over their heads to the
glass doors that opened onto the street. It had rained the night before and
the rising sun drove red glints from the puddles on the sidewalk. Three
robots, painted snow white to show they were night workers, pushed the doors
open and came in. No one went out as the curfew hadn't ended yet. They milled
around, slowly talking in low voices.
      The only human being in the entire lobby was the night clerk dozing
behind the counter. The clock over his head said five minutes to six. Shifting
his glance from the clock Jon became aware of a squat black robot waving to
attract his attention. The powerful arms and compact build identified him as a
member of the Diger family, one of the largest groups. He pushed through the
crowd and clapped Jon on the back with a resounding clang.
      "Jon Venex! I knew it was you as soon as I saw you sticking up out of
this crowd like a green tree trunk. I haven't seen you since the old days on
Venus!"
      Jon didn't need to check the number stamped on the short one's scratched
chestplate. Alec Diger had been his only close friend during those thirteen
boring years at Orange Sea Camp. A good chess player and a whiz at Two-handed
Handball, they had spent all their off time together. They shook hands, with
the extra squeeze that means friendliness.
      "Alec, you beat-up little grease pot, what brings you to New York?"
      "The burning desire to see something besides rain and jungle, if you
must know. After you bought-out, things got just too damn dull. I began
working two shifts a day in that foul diamond mine, and then three a day for
the last month to get enough credits to buy my contract and passage back to
earth. I was underground so long that the photocell on my right eye burned out
when the sunlight hit it."
      He leaned forward with a hoarse confidential whisper, "If you want to
know the truth, I had a sixty carat diamond stuck behind the eye lens. I sold
it here on earth for two hundred credits, gave me six months of easy living.
It's all gone now, so I'm on my way to the employment exchange." His voice
boomed loud again, "and how about you?"
      "It's just been the old routine with me, a run of odd jobs until I got
side-swiped by a bus-it fractured my knee bearing. The only job I could get
with a bad leg was feeding slops to pigs. Earned enough to fix the knee-and
here I am.
      Alec jerked his thumb at a rust colored, three-foot tall robot that had
come up quietly beside him. "If you think you've got trouble take a look at
Dik here. That's no coat of paint on him. Dik Dryer, meet Jon Venex an old
buddy of mine."
      Jon bent over to shake the little Mech's hand. His eye shutters dilated
as he realized what he had thought was a coat of paint was a thin layer of
rust that coated Dik's metal body. Alec scratched a shiny path in the rust
with his finger tip. His voice was suddenly serious.
      "Dik was designed for operation in the Martian desert. It's as dry as a
fossil bone there so his skinflint company cut corners on the stainless steel.
      "When they went bankrupt he was sold to a firm here in the city. After
awhile the rust started to eat in and slow him down, they gave Dik his
contract and threw him out."
      The small robot spoke for the first time, his voice grated and
scratched. "Nobody will hire me like this, but I can't get repaired until I
get a job." His arms squeaked and grated as he moved them. "I'm going by the
Robot Free Clinic again today, they said they might be able to do something."
      Alec Diger rumbled in his deep chest. "Don't put too much faith in those
people. They're great at giving out tenth-credit oil capsules or a little free
wire-but don't depend on them for anything important."
      It was six now, the robots were pushing through the doors into the
silent streets. They joined the crowd moving out, Jon slowing his stride so
his shorter friends could keep pace. Dik Dryer moved with a jerking, irregular
motion, his voice as uneven as the motion of his body.
      "Jon-Venex, I don't recognize your family name. Something to do-with
Venus-perhaps."
      "Venus is right, Venus Experimental-There are only twenty-two of us in
the family. We have water-proof, pressure resistant bodies for working down on
the ocean bottom. The basic idea was all right, we did our part, only there
wasn't enough money in the channel dredging contract to keep us all working. I
bought out my original contract at half price and became a free robot."
      Dik vibrated his rusted diaphragm. "Being free isn't all it should be. I
some-times wish the Robot Equality Act hadn't been passed. I would just 1-love
to be owned by a nice rich company with a machine shop and a-mountain of
replacement parts."
      "You don't really mean that Dik," Alec Diger clamped a heavy black arm
across his shoulders. "Things aren't perfect now, we know that, but it's
certainly a lot better than the old days. We were just hunks of machinery
then, used twenty- four hours a day until we were worn out and then thrown in
the junk pile. No thanks, I'll take my chances with things as they are."
      Jon and Alec turned into the employment exchange, saying good-by to Dik
who went on slowly down the street. They pushed up the crowded ramp and joined
the line in front of the registration desk. The bulletin board next to the
desk held a scattering of white slips announcing job openings. A clerk was
pinning up new additions.
      Venex scanned them with his eyes, stopping at one circled in red.

      ROBOTS NEEDED IN THESE CATEGORIES. APPLY
      AT ONCE TO CHAINJET, LTD., 1219 BROADWAY
            Fasten
            Flyer
            Atomniel
            Filmer
            Venex

      Jon rapped excitedly on Alec Diger's neck. "Look there, a job in my own
specialty-I can get my old pay rate! See you back at the hotel tonight-and
good luck in your job hunting."
      Alec waved good-by. "Let's hope the job's as good as you think, I never
trust those things until I have my credits in my hand."
      Jon walked quickly from the employment exchange, his long legs eating up
the blocks. Good old Alec, he didn't believe in anything he couldn't touch.
Perhaps he was right, but why try to be unhappy. The world wasn't too bad this
morning- his leg worked fine, prospects of a good job-he hadn't felt this
cheerful since the day he was activated.
      Turning the corner at a brisk pace he collided with a human coming from
the opposite direction. Jon had stopped on the instant, but there wasn't time
to jump aside. The fat man jarred against him and fell to the ground. From the
height of elation to the depths of despair in an instant-he had injured a
human being!
      He bent to help the man to his feet, but the other would have none of
that. He evaded the friendly hand and screeched in a high pitched voice.
      "Officer, officer-police... help! I've been attacked-a mad robot...
help!"
      A crowd was gathering-staying at a respectful distance- but making an
angry muttering noise. Jon stood motionless, his head reeling at the enormity
of what he had done. A policeman pushed his way through the crowd.
      "Seize him officer, shoot him down... he struck me... almost killed
me..." The man shook with rage, his words thickening to a senseless babble.
      The policeman had his .75 recoilless revolver out and pressed against
Jon's side.
      "This man has charged you with a serious crime, grease-can. I'm taking
you into the stationhouse-to talk about it." He looked around nervously,
waving his gun to open a path through the tightly packed crowd. They moved
back grudgingly, with murmurs of disapproval.
      Jon's thoughts swirled in tight circles. How did a catastrophe like this
happen, where was it going to end? He didn't dare tell the truth, that would
mean he was calling the man a liar. There had been six robots power-lined in
the city since the first of the year. If he dared speak in his own defense
there would be a jumper to the street lighting circuit and a seventh burnt out
hulk in the police morgue.
      A feeling of resignation swept through him, there was no way out. If the
man pressed charges it would mean a term of penal servitude, though it looked
now as if he would never live to reach the court. The papers had been whipping
up a lot of anti-robe feeling, you could feel it behind the angry voices, see
it in the narrowed eyes and clenched fists. The crowd was slowly changing into
a mob, a mindless mob as yet, but capable of turning on him at any moment.
      "What's goin' on here...?", it was a booming voice, with a quality that
dragged at the attention of the crowd.
      A giant cross-continent freighter was parked at the curb. The driver
swung down from the cab and pushed his way through the people. The policeman
shifted his gun as the man strode up to him.
      "That's my robot you got there Jack, don't put any holes in him!" He
turned on the man who had been shouting accusations. "Fatty here, is the
world's biggest liar. The robot was standing here waiting for me to park the
truck. Fatty must be as blind as he is stupid, I saw the whole thing. He
knocks himself down walking into the robe, then starts hollering for the
cops."
      The other man could take no more. His face crimson with anger he rushed
toward the trucker, his fists swinging in ungainly circles. They never landed,
the truck driver put a meaty hand on the other's face and seated him on the
sidewalk for the second time.
      The onlookers roared with laughter, the power-lining and the robot were
forgotten. The fight was between two men now, the original cause had slipped
from their minds. Even the policeman allowed himself a small smile as he
holstered his gun and stepped forward to separate the men.
      The trucker turned towards Jon with a scowl.
      "Come on you aboard the truck-you've caused me enough trouble for one
day. What a junkcan!"
      The crowd chuckled as he pushed Jon ahead of him into the truck and
slammed the door behind them. Jamming the starter with his thumb he gunned the
thunderous diesels into life and pulled out into the traffic.
      Jon moved his jaw, but there were no words to come out. Why had this
total stranger helped him, what could he say to show his appreciation? He knew
that all humans weren't robe-haters, why it was even rumored that some humans
treated robots as equals instead of machines. The driver must be one of these
mythical individuals, there was no other way to explain his actions.
      Driving carefully with one hand the man reached up behind the dash and
drew out a thin, plastikoid booklet. He handed it to Jon who quickly scanned
the title, "Robot Slaves In a World Economy." by Philpott Asimov II.
      "If you're caught reading that thing they'll execute you on the spot.
Better stick it between the insulation and your generator, you can always burn
it if you're picked up.
      "Read it when you're alone, it's got a lot of things in it that you know
nothing about. Robots aren't really inferior to humans, in fact they're
superior in most things. There is even a little history in there to show that
robots aren't the first ones to be treated as second class citizens. You may
find it a little hard to believe, but human beings once treated each other
just the way they treat robots now. That's one of the reasons I'm active in
this movement-sort of like the fellow who was burned helping others stay away
from the fire."
      His smile was friendly, the whiteness of his teeth standing out against
the rich ebony brown of his features.
      "I'm heading towards US-1, can I drop you anywheres on the way?"
      "The Chainjet Building please-I'm applying for a job." They rode the
rest of the way in silence. Before he opened the door the driver shook hands
with Jon.
      "Sorry about calling you Junkcan, but the crowd expected it." He didn't
look back as he drove away.
      Jon had to wait a half hour for his turn, but the receptionist finally
signalled him towards the door of the interviewer's room. He stepped in
quickly and turned to face the man seated at the transplastic desk, an upset
little man with permanent worry wrinkles stamped in his forehead. The little
man shoved the papers on the desk around angrily, occasionally making crabbed
little notes on the margins. He flashed a birdlike glance up at Jon.
      "Yes, yes, be quick. What is it you want?"
      "You posted a help wanted notice, I-"
      The man cut him off with a wave of his hand. All right let me see your
ID tag... quickly, there are others waiting."
      Jon thumbed the tag out of his waist slot and handed it across the desk.
The interviewer read the code number, then began running his finger down a
long list of similar figures. He stopped suddenly and looked sideways at Jon
from under his lowered lids.
      "You have made a mistake, we have no opening for you."
      Jon began to explain to the man that the notice had requested his
specialty, but he was waved to silence. As the interviewer handed back the tag
he slipped a card out from under the desk blotter and held it in front of
Jon's eyes. He held it there for only an instant, knowing the written message
was recorded instantly by the robot's photographic vision and eidetic memory.
The card dropped into the ash try and flared into embers at the touch of the
man's pencil-heater.
      Jon stuffed the ID tag back into the slot and read over the message on
the card as he walked down the stairs to the street. There were six lines of
typewritten copy with no signature.
      To Venex Robot: You are urgently needed on a top secret company project.
There are suspected informers in the main office, so you are being hired in
this unusual manner. Go at once to 787 Washington Street and ask for Mr.
Coleman.
      Jon felt an immense sensation of relief. For a moment there, he was sure
the job had been a false lead. He saw nothing unusual in the method of hiring.
The big corporations were immensely jealous of their research discoveries and
went to great lengths to keep them secret-at the same time resorting to any
means to ferret out their business rivals' secrets. There might still he a
chance to get this job.
      The burly bulk of a lifter was moving back and forth in the gloom of the
ancient warehouse stacking crates in ceiling high rows. Jon called to him, the
robot swung up his forklift and rolled over on noiseless tires. When Jon
questioned him he indicated a stairwell against the rear wall.
      "Mr. Coleman's office is down in back, the door is marked." The lifter
put his fingertips against Jon's ear pick-ups and lowered his voice to the
merest shadow of a whisper. It would have been inaudible to human ears, but
Jon could hear him easily, the sounds being carried through the metal of the
other's body.
      "He's the meanest man you ever met-he hates robots, so be ever so
polite. If you can use "sir" five times in one sentence you're perfectly
safe."
      Jon swept the shutter over one eye tube in a conspiratorial wink, the
large mech did the same as he rolled away. Jon turned and went down the dusty
stairwell and knocked gently on Mr. Coleman's door.
      Coleman was a plump little individual in a conservative purple and
yellow business suit. He kept glancing from Jon to the Robot General Catalog
checking the Venex specifications listed there. Seemingly satisfied he slammed
the book shut.
      "Gimme your tag and back against that wall to get measured."
      Jon laid his ID tag on the desk and stepped towards the wall. "Yes sir,
here it is sir." Two "sirs" on that one, not bad for the first sentence. He
wondered idly if he could put five of them in one sentence without the man
knowing he was being made a fool of.
      He became aware of the danger an instant too late. The current surged
through the powerful electromagnet behind the plaster flattening his metal
body helplessly against the wall. Coleman was almost dancing with glee.
      "We got him Druce, he's mashed flatter than a stinking tin-can on a
rock, can't move a motor. Bring that junk in here and let's get him ready."
      Druce had a mechanic's coveralls on over his street suit end a tool box
slung under one arm. He carried a little black metal can at arm's length,
trying to get as far from it as possible. Coleman shouted at him with
annoyance.
      "That bomb can't go off until it's armed, stop acting like a child. Put
it on that grease-can's leg and quick!"
      Grumbling under his breath Druce spot welded the metal flanges of the
bomb onto Jon's leg a few inches above his knee. Coleman tugged at it to be
certain it was secure, then twisted a knob in the side and pulled out a
glistening length of pin. There was a cold little click from inside the
mechanism as it armed itself.
      Jon could do nothing except watch, even his vocal diaphragm was locked
by the magnetic field. He had more than a suspicion however that he was
involved in something other than a "secret business deal." He cursed his own
stupidity for walking blindly into the situation.
      The magnetic field cut off and he instantly raced his extensor motors to
leap forward. Coleman took a plastic box out of his pocket and held his thumb
over a switch inset into its top.
      "Don't make any quick moves junk-yard, this little transmitter is keyed
to a receiver in that bomb on your leg. One touch of my thumb, up you go in a
cloud of smoke and come down in a shower of nuts and bolts." He signalled to
Druce who opened a closet door. "And in case you want to be heroic, just think
of him."
      Coleman jerked his thumb at the sodden shape on the floor; a filthily
attired man of indistinguishable age whose only interesting feature was the
black bomb strapped tightly across his chest. He peered unseeingly from red-
rimmed eyes and raised the almost empty whiskey bottle to his mouth. Coleman
kicked the door shut.
      "He's just some Bowery bum we dragged in, Venex, but that doesn't make
any difference to you, does it? He's human- and a robot can't kill anybody!
That rummy has a bomb on him tuned to the same frequency as yours, if you
don't play ball with us he gets a two-foot hole blown in his chest."
      Coleman was right, Jon didn't dare make any false moves. All of his
early mental training as well as Circuit 92 sealed inside his brain case would
prevent him from harming a human being. He felt trapped, caught by these
people for some unknown purpose.
      Coleman had pushed back a tarpaulin to disclose a ragged hole in the
concrete floor, the opening extended into the earth below. He waved Jon over.
      "The tunnel is in good shape for about thirty feet, then you'll find a
fall. Clean all the rock and dirt out until you break through into the storm
sewer, then come back. And you better be alone. If you tip the cops both you
and the old stew go out together-now move.
      The shaft had been dug recently and shored with packing crates from the
warehouse overhead. It ended abruptly in a wall of fresh sand and stone. Jon
began shoveling it into the little wheelbarrow they had given him.
      He had emptied four barrow loads and was filling the fifth when he
uncovered the hand, a robot's hand made of green metal. He turned his
headlight power up and examined the hand closely, there could be no doubt
about it. These gaskets on the joints, the rivet pattern at the base of the
thumb meant only one thing, it was the dismembered hand of a Venex robot.
      Quickly, yet gently, he shoveled away the rubble behind the hand and
unearthed the rest of the robot. The torso was crushed and the power circuits
shorted, battery acid was dripping from an ugly rent in the side. With
infinite care Jon snapped the few remaining wires that joined the neck to the
body and laid the green head on the barrow. It stared at him like a skull, the
shutters completely dilated, but no glow of life from the tubes behind them.
      He was scraping the mud from the number on the battered chestplate when
Druce lowered himself into the tunnel and flashed the brilliant beam of a
hand-spot down its length.
      "Stop playing with that junk and get digging-or you'll end up the same
as him. This tunnel has gotta be through by tonight."
      Jon put the dismembered parts on the barrow with the sand and rock and
pushed the whole load back up the tunnel, his thoughts running in unhappy
circles. A dead robot was a terrible thing, and one of his family too. But
there was something wrong about this robot, something that was quite
inexplicable, the number on the plate had been "17," yet he remembered only
too well the day that a water-shorted motor had killed Venex 17 in the Orange
Sea.
      It took Jon four hours to drive the tunnel as far as the ancient granite
wall of the storm sewer. Druce gave him a short pinch bar and he levered out
enough of the big blocks to make a hole large enough to let him through into
the sewer.
      When he climbed back into the office he tried to look casual as he
dropped the pinch bar to the floor by his feet and seated himself on the pile
of rubble in the corner. He moved around to make a comfortable seat for
himself and his fingers grabbed the severed neck of Venex 17.
      Coleman swiveled around in his chair and squinted at the wall clock. He
checked the time against his tie-pin watch, with a grunt of satisfaction he
turned back and stabbed a finger at Jon.
      "Listen you green junk-pile, at 1900 hours you're going to do a job, and
there aren't going to be any slip ups. You go down that sewer and into the
Hudson River. The outlet is under water, so you won't be seen from the docks.
Climb down to the bottom and walk 200 yards north, that should put you just
under a ship. Keep your eyes open, but don't show any lights! About halfway
down the keel of the ship you'll find a chain hanging.
      "Climb the chain, pull loose the box that's fastened there to the hull
and bring it back here. No mistakes-or you know what happens."
      Jon nodded his head. His busy fingers had been separating the wires in
the amputated neck. When they had been straightened and put into a row he
memorized their order with one flashing glance.
      He ran over the color code in his mind and compared it with the
memorized leads. The twelfth wire was the main cranial power lead, number six
was the return wire.
      With his precise touch he separated these two from the pack and glanced
idly around the room. Druce was dozing on a chair in the opposite corner,
Coleman was talking on the phone, his voice occasionally rising in a petulant
whine. This wasn't interfering with his attention to Jon-and the radio switch
still held tightly in left hand.
      Jon's body blocked Coleman's vision, as long as Druce stayed asleep he
would be able to work on the head unobserved. He activated a relay in his
forearm and there was a click as the waterproof cover on an exterior socket
swung open. This was a power outlet from his battery that was used to operate
motorized tools and lights underwater.
      If Venex 17's head had been severed for less than three weeks he could
reactivate it. Every robot had a small storage battery inside his skull, if
the power to the brain was cut off the battery would provide the minimum
standby current to keep the brain alive. The robe would be unconscious until
full power was restored.
      Jon plugged the wires into his arm-outlet and slowly raised the current
to operating level. There was a tense moment of waiting, then 17's eye
shutters suddenly closed. When they opened again the eye tubes were glowing
warmly. They swept the room with one glance then focused on Jon.
      The right shutter clicked shut while the other began opening and closing
in rapid fashion. It was International code- being sent as fast as the
solenoid could be operated. Jon concentrated on the message.
      Telephone-call emergency operator-tell her "signal 14" help will-The
shutter stopped in the middle of a code group, the light of reason dying from
the eyes.
      For one instant Jon knew panic, until he realized that 17 had
deliberately cut the power. Druce's harsh voice rasped in his ear.
      "What you doing with that? None of your funny robot tricks, I know your
kind, plotting all kinds of things in them tin domes." His voice trailed off
into a stream of incomprehensible profanity. With sudden spite he lashed his
foot out and sent 17's head crushing against the wall.
      The dented, green head rolled to a stop at Jon's feet, the face staring
up at him in mute agony. It was only Circuit 92 that prevented him from
injuring a human. As his motors revved up to send him hurtling forward the
control relays clicked open. He sank against the debris, paralyzed for the
instant. As soon as the rush of anger was gone he would regain control of his
body.
      They stood as if frozen in a tableau. The robot slumped backward, the
man leaning forward, his face twisted with unreasoning hatred. The head lay
between them like a symbol of death.
      Coleman's voice cut through the air of tenseness like a knife.
      "Druce, stop playing with the grease-can and get down to the main door
to let Little Willy and his Junk-brokers in. You can have it all to yourself
afterward."
      The angry man turned reluctantly, but pushed out of the door at
Coleman's annoyed growl. Jon sat down against the walls, his mind sorting out
the few facts with instantaneous precision. There was no room in his thoughts
for Druce, the man had become just one more factor in a complex problem.
      Call the emergency operator-that meant this was no local matter,
responsible authorities must be involved. Only the government could be behind
a thing as major as this. Signal 14-that implied a complex set of
arrangements, forces that could swing into action at a moment's notice. There
was no indication where this might lead, but the only thing to do was to get
out of here and make that phone call. And quickly. Druce was bringing in more
people, junk-brokers, whatever they were. Any action that he took would have
to be done before they returned.
      Even as Jon followed this train of logic his fingers were busy. Palming
a wrench, he was swiftly loosening the main retaining nut on his hip joint. It
dropped free in his hand, only the pivot pin remained now to hold his leg on.
He climbed slowly to his feet and moved towards Coleman's desk.
      "Mr. Coleman, sir, it's time to go down to the ship now, should I leave
now, sir?"
      Jon spoke the words slowly as he walked forward, apparently going to the
door, but angling at the same time towards the plump man's desk.
      "You got thirty minutes yet, go sit-say...!"
      The words were cut off. Fast as a human reflex is, it is the barest
crawl compared to the lightning action of electronic reflex. At the instant
Coleman was first aware of Jon's motion, the robot had finished his leap and
lay sprawled across the desk, his leg off at the hip and clutched in his hand.
      "You'll kill yourself if you touch the button!"
      The words were part of the calculated plan. Jon bellowed them in the
startled man's ear as he stuffed the dismembered leg down the front of the
man's baggy slacks. It had the desired effect, Coleman's finger stabbed at the
button but stopped before it made contact. He stared down with bulging eyes at
the little black box of death peeping out of his waistband.
      Jon hadn't waited for the reaction. He pushed backward from the desk and
stopped to grab the stolen pinch-bar off the Moor. A mighty one-legged leap
brought him to the locked closet; he stabbed the bar into the space between
tie door and frame and heaved.
      Coleman was just starting to struggle the bomb out of his pants when the
action was over. The closet open, Jon seized the heavy strap holding tie
second bomb on the rummy's chest and snapped it like a thread. He threw the
bomb into Coleman's corner, giving the man one more thing to worry about. It
had cost him a leg, but Jon had escaped the bomb threat without injuring a
human. Now he had to get to a phone and make that call.
      Coleman stopped tugging at the bomb and plunged his hand into the desk
drawer for a gun. The returning men would block the door soon, the only other
exit from the room was a frosted-glass window that opened onto the mammoth bay
of the warehouse.
      Jon Venex plunged through the window in a welter of flying glass. The
heavy thud of a recoiless .75 came from the room behind him and a foot long
section of metal window frame leaped outward. Another slug screamed by the
robot's head as he scrambled toward the rear door of the warehouse.
      He was a bare thirty feet away from the back entrance when the giant
door hissed shut on silent rollers. All the doors would have closed at the
same time, the thud of running feet indicated that they would be guarded as
well. Jon hopped a section of packing cases and crouched out of sight.
      He looked up over his head, where there stretched a webbing of steel
supports, crossing and recrossing until they joined the flat expanse of the
roof. To human eyes the shadows there deepened into obscurity, but the infra-
red from a network of steam pipes gave Jon all the illumination he needed.
      The men would be quartering the floor of the warehouse soon, his only
chance to escape recapture or death would be over their heads. Besides this,
on the ground he was hampered by the loss of his leg. In the rafters he could
use his arms for faster and easier travel.
      Jon was just pulling himself up to one of the topmost cross beams when a
hoarse shout from below was followed by a stream of bullets. They tore through
the thin roof, one slug clanged off the steel beam under his body. Waiting
until three of the newcomers had started up a nearby ladder, Jon began to
quietly work his way towards the back of the building.
      Safe for the moment, he took stock of his position. The men were spread
out through the building, it could only be a matter of time before they found
him. The doors were all locked and-he had made a complete circuit of the
building to be sure-there were no windows that he could force. If he could
call the emergency operator the unknown friends of Venex 17 might come to his
aid. This, however, was out of the question. The only phone in the building
was on Coleman's desk. He had traced the leads to make sure.
      His eyes went automatically to the cables above his head. Plastic
gaskets were set in the wall of the building, through them came the power and
phone lines. The phone line! That was all he needed to make a call.
      With smooth, fast motions he reached up and scratched a section of wire
bare. He laughed to himself as he slipped the little microphone out of his
left ear. Now he was half deaf as well as half lame-he was literally giving
himself to this cause. He would have to remember the pun to tell Alec Diger
later, if there was a later. Alec had a profound weakness for puns.
      Jon attached jumpers to the mike and connected them to the bare wire. A
touch of the ammeter showed that no one was on the line. He waited a few
moments to be sure he had a dial tone then sent the eleven carefully spaced
pulses that would connect him with the local operator. He placed the mike
close to his mouth.
      "Hello operator. Hello operator. I cannot hear you so do not answer.
Call the emergency operator-signal 14, I repeat-signal 14."
      Jon kept repeating the message until the searching men began to approach
his position. He left the mike connected-the men wouldn't notice it in the
dark but the open line would give the unknown powers his exact location. Using
his fingertips he did a careful traverse on an I beam to an alcove in the
farthest corner of the room. Escape was impossible, all he could do was stall
for time.
      "Mr. Coleman, I'm sorry I ran away." With the volume on hill his voice
rolled like thunder from the echoing walls.
      He could see the men below twisting their heads vainly to find the
source.
      "If you let me come back and don't kill me I will do your work. I was
afraid of the bomb, but now I am afraid of the guns." It sounded a little
infantile, but he was pretty sure none of those present had any sound
knowledge of robotic intelligence.
      "Please let me come back... sir!" He had almost forgotten the last word,
so he added another "Please, sir!" to make up. Coleman needed that package
under the boat very badly, he would promise anything to get it. Jon had no
doubts as to his eventual fate, all he could hope to do was mark time in the
hopes that the phone message would bring aid.
      "Come on down, I won't be mad at you-if you follow directions." Jon
could hear the hidden anger in his voice, the unspoken hatred for a robe who
dared lay hands on him.
      The descent wasn't difficult, but Jon did it slowly with much apparent
discomfort. He hopped into the center of the floor-leaning on the cases as if
for support. Coleman and Druce were both there as well as a group of hard-eyed
newcomers. They raised their guns at his approach but Coleman stopped them
with a gesture.
      "This is my robe boys, I'll see to it that he's happy."
      He raised his gun and shot Jon's remaining leg off. Twisted around by
the blast Jon fell helplessly to the floor. He looked up into the smoking
mouth of the .75.
      "Very smart for a tin-can, but not smart enough. We'll get the junk on
the boat some other way, some way that won't mean having you around under
foot." Death looked out of his narrowed eyes.
      Less than two minutes had passed since Jon's call. The watchers must
have been keeping 24 hour stations waiting for Venex 17's phone message.
      The main door went down with the sudden scream of torn steel. A whippet
tank crunched over the wreck and covered the group with its multiple pom-poms.
They were an instant too late, Coleman pulled the trigger.
      Jon saw the tensing trigger finger and pushed hard against the floor.
His head rolled clear but the bullet tore through his shoulder. Coleman didn't
have a chance for a second shot, there was a fizzling hiss from the tank and
the riot ports released a flood of tear gas. The stricken men never saw the
gas-masked police that poured in from the street.
      Jon lay on the floor of the police station while a tech made temporary
repairs on his leg and shoulder. Across the room Venex 17 was moving his new
body with evident pleasure.
      "Now this really feels like something! I was sure my time was up when
that land slip caught me. But maybe I ought to start from the beginning." He
stamped across the room and shook Jon's inoperable hand.
      "The name is Wil Counter-4951L3, not that that means much any more. I've
worn so many different bodies that I forget what I originally looked like. I
went right from factory-school to a police training school-and I have been on
the job ever since-Force of Detectives, Sergeant Jr. grade, Investigation
Department. I spend most of my time selling candy bars or newspapers, or
serving drinks in crumb joints. Gather information, make reports and keep tab
on guys for other departments.
      "This last job-and I'm sorry I had to use a Venex identity, I don't
think I brought any dishonor to your family-I was on loan to the Customs
department. Seems a ring was bringing uncut junk-heroin-into the country. F.
B. I. tabbed all the operators here, but no one knew how the stuff got in.
When Coleman, he's the local big-shot, called the agencies for an underwater
robot, I was packed into a new body and sent running.
      "I alerted the squad as soon as I started the tunnel, but the damned
thing caved in on me before I found out what ship was doing the carrying. From
there on you know what happened.
      "Not knowing I was out of the game the squad sat tight and waited. The
hop merchants saw a half million in snow sailing back to the old country so
they had you dragged in as a replacement. You made the phone call and the
cavalry rushed in at the last moment to save two robots from a rusty grave."
      Jon, who had been trying vainly to get in a word, saw his chance as Wil
Counter turned to admire the reflection of his new figure in a window.
      "You shouldn't be telling me those things-about your police
investigations and department operations. Isn't this in- formation supposed to
be secret? Specially from robots!"
      "Of course it is!" was Wil's airy answer. "Captain Edgecombe-he's the
head of my department-is an expert on all kinds of blackmail. I'm supposed to
tell you so much con- fidential police business that you'll have to either
join the department or be shot as a possible informer." His laughter wasn't
shared by the bewildered Jon.
      "Truthfully Jon, we need you and can use you. Robes that can think fast
and act fast aren't easy to find. After hearing about the tricks you pulled in
that warehouse the Captain swore to decapitate me permanently if I couldn't
get you to join up. Do you need a job? Long hours, short pay-but guaranteed to
never get boring."
      Wil's voice was suddenly serious. "You saved my life Jon-those snowbirds
would have left me in that sandpile until all hell froze over. I'd like you
for a mate, I think we could get along well together." The gay note came back
into his voice, "And besides that, I may be able to save your life some day-I
hate owing debts."
      The tech was finished, he snapped his tool box shut and left. Jon's
shoulder motor was repaired now, he sat up. When they shook hands this time it
was a firm clasp. The kind you know will last awhile.
      Jon stayed in an empty cell that night. It was gigantic compared to the
hotel and barrack rooms he was used to. He wished that he had his missing legs
so he could take a little walk up and down the cell. He would have to wait
until the morning. They were going to fix him up then before he started the
new job.
      He had recorded his testimony earlier and the impossible events of the
past day kept whirling around in his head. He would think about it some other
time, right now all he wanted to do was let his overworked circuits cool down,
if he only had something to read, to focus his attention on. Then, with a
start, he remembered the booklet. Everything had moved so fast that the
earlier incident with the truckdriver had slipped his mind completely.
      He carefully worked it out from behind the generator shielding and
opened the first page of Robot Slaves in a World Economy. A card slipped from
between the pages and he read the short message on it.

      PLEASE DESTROY THIS CARD AFTER READING

      If you think there is truth in this book and would like to hear more,
come to Room B, 107 George St. any Tuesday at 5 P.M.

      The card flared briefly and was gone. But he knew that it wasn't only a
perfect memory that would make him remember that message.




There is no real reason why robots cannot be designed to do anything that a
man might do. For those whose minds are constructed that way, and who think
first of the male function when the word man is mentioned, it should be stated
that parthenogenesis has already been induced mechanically in mammals. Nor
should extra-uterine growth of fertilized ova in a suitable medium be beyond
the scope of scientific achievement. Though artificial construction of the
ovum itself, with the proper DNA chains, seems now to be so difficult as to
border on the verge of impossibility.
      Mankind can still perform these functions adequately and pleasurably,
without any outside aid. But there are numbers of other jobs that men do that
they would be only too willing to turn over to the robots. No one really sets
out in life with the ambition to be a garbage collector, though this is an
important and essential function of civilization. Proof of this position's
lack of desirability can be seen by the fact that it is always the poorest and
most underprivileged groups who staff the lower ranks of the department of
sanitation. A look at your garbageman will quickly tell you which social group
is at the bottom of the pecking order in your community.
      Undoubtedly robots will be garbagemen and boiler cleaners, physical
laborers and harvest hands. They will also fill the more hazardous positions.
Underwater obstacles will be removed from swift-flowing channels by them, and
they will repair atomic generators in radioactive rooms that would be instant
death to a human being.
      They might also have a function in law enforcement...

ARM OF THE LAW

IT WAS A BIG, COFFIN SHAPED plywood box that looked like it weighed a ton.
This brawny type just dumped it through the door of the police station and
started away. I looked up from the blotter and shouted at the trucker's
vanishing back.
      "What the hell is that?"
      "How should I know," he said as he swung up into the cab. "I just
deliver, I don't X-ray, 'em. It came on the morning rocket from earth is all I
know." He gunned the truck more than he had to and threw up a billowing cloud
of dried dust.
      "Jokers," I growled to myself. 'Mars is full of Jokers."
      When I went over to look at the box I could feel the dust grate between
my teeth. Chief Craig must have heard the racket because he came out of his
office and helped me stand and look at the box.
      "Think it's a bomb?" he asked in a bored voice.
      "Why would anyone bother-particularly with a thing this size? And all
the way from earth."
      He nodded agreement and walked around to look at the other end. There
was no sender's address anywhere on the outside. Finally we had to dig out the
crowbar and I went to work on the top. After some prying it pulled free and
fell off.
      That was when we had our first look at Ned. We all would have been a lot
happier if it had been our last look as well. If we had just put the lid back
on and shipped the thing back to earth! I know now what they mean about
Pandora's Box.
      But we just stood there and stared like a couple of rubes. Ned lay
motionless and stared back at us.
      "A robot!" the chief said.
      "Very observant; it's easy to see you went to the police academy."
      "Ha ha! Now find out what he's doing here."
      I hadn't gone to the academy, but this was no handicap to my finding the
letter. It was sticking up out of a thick book in a pocket in the box. The
Chief took the letter and read it with little enthusiasm.
      "Well, well! United Robotics have the brainstorm that... robots,
correctly used will tend to prove invaluable in police work... they want us to
co-operate in a field test... robot enclosed is the latest experimental model;
valued at 120,000 credits."
      We both looked back at the robot, sharing the wish that the credits had
been in the box instead of it. The Chief frowned and moved his lips through
the rest of the letter. I wondered how we got the robot out of its plywood
coffin.
      Experimental model or not, this was a nice looking hunk of machinery. A
uniform navy-blue all over, though the outlet cases, hooks and such were a
metallic gold. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to get that effect. This
was as close as a robot could look to a cop in uniform, without being a joke.
All that seemed to be missing was the badge and gun.
      Then I noticed the tiny glow of light in the robot's eye lenses. It had
never occurred to me before that the thing might be turned on. There was
nothing to lose by finding out.
      "Get out of that box," I said.
      The robot came up smooth and fast as a rocket, landing two feet in front
of me and whipping out a snappy salute.
      "Police Experimental Robot, serial number XPO-456-934B reporting for
duty, sir."
      His voice quivered with alertness and 1 could almost hear the humming of
those taut cable muscles. He may have had a stainless steel hide and a bench
of wires for a brain-but he spelled rookie cop to me just the same. The fact
that he was man-height with two arms, two legs and that painted-on uniformed
helped. All I had to do was squint my eyes a bit and there stood Ned the
Rookie Cop. Fresh out of school and raring to go. I shook my head to get rid
of the illusion. This was just six feet of machine that boffins and brain-boys
had turned out for their own amusement.
      "Relax, Ned," I said. He was still holding the salute. "At ease. You'll
get a hernia of your exhaust pipe if you stay so tense. Anyways, I'm just the
sergeant here. That's the Chief of Police over there."
      Ned did an about face and slid over to the Chief with that same greased-
lightning motion. The Chief Just looked at him like something that sprang out
from under the hood of a car, while Ned went through the same report routine.
      "I wonder if it does anything else beside salute and report," the Chief
said while he walked around the robot, looking it over like a dog with a
hydrant.
      "The functions, operations and responsible courses of action open to the
Police Experimental Robots are outlined on pages 184 to 213 of the manual."
Ned's voice was mufiled for a second while he half-dived back into his case
and came up with the volume mentioned. "A detailed breakdown of these will
also be found on pages 1035 to 1267 inclusive."
      The Chief, who has trouble reading an entire comic page at one sitting,
turned the 6-inch thick book over in his hands like it would maybe bite him.
When he had a rough idea of how much it weighed and a good feel of the binding
he threw it on my desk.
      "Take care of this," he said to me as he headed towards his office. "And
the robot too. Do something with it." The Chiefs span of attention never was
great and it had been strained to the limit this time.
      I flipped through the book, wondering. One thing I never have had much
to do with is robots, so I know just as much about them as any Joe in the
street. Probably less. The book was filled with pages of fine print, fancy
mathematics, wiring diagrams and charts in nine colors and that kind of thing.
It needed close attention. Which attention I was not prepared to give at the
time. The book slid shut and I eyed the newest employee of the city of
Nineport.
      "There is a broom behind the door. Do you know how to use it?"
      "Yes, sir."
      "In that case you will sweep out this room, raising as small a cloud of
dust as possible at the same time."
      He did a very neat job of it.
      I watched 120,000 credits' worth of machinery making a tidy pile of
butts and sand and wondered why it had been sent to Nineport. Probably because
there wasn't another police force in the solar system that was smaller or more
unimportant than ours. The engineers must have figured this would be a good
spot for a field test. Even if the thing blew up, nobody would really mind.
There would probably be someone along some day to get a report on it. Well,
they had picked the right spot all right. Nineport was just a little bit
beyond nowhere.
      Which, of course, was why I was there. I was the only real cop on the
force. They needed at least one to give an illusion of the wheels going
around. The Chief, Aloazo Craig, had just enough sense to take graft without
dropping the money. There were two patrolmen. One old and drunk most of the
time. The other so young he still had diaper rash. I had ten years on a
metropolitan force, earthside. Why I left is nobody's damn business. I have
long since paid for any mistakes I made there by ending up in Nineport.
      Nineport is not a city, it's just a place where people stop. The only
permanent citizens are the ones who cater to those on the way through. Hotel
keepers, gamblers, whores, bar-keeps, and the rest.
      There is a spaceport, but only some freighters come there. To pick up
the metal from some of the mines that are still working. Some of the settlers
still came in for supplies. You might say that Nineport was a town that just
missed the boat. In a hundred years I doubt if there will be enough left
sticking out of the sand to even tell where it used to be. I won't be there
either, so I couldn't care less.
      I went back to the blotter. Five drunks in the tank, an average night's
haul. While I wrote them up Fats dragged in the sixth one.
      "Locked himself in the ladies' john at the spaceport and resisting
arrest," he reported.
      "D and D. Throw him in with the rest."
      Fats steered his limp victim across the floor, matching him step for
dragging step. I always marveled at the way Fats took care of drunks, since he
usually had more under his belt than they had. I have never seen him falling
down drunk or completely sober. About all he was good for was keeping a
blurred eye on the lockup and running in drunks. He did well at that. No
matter what they crawled under or on top of, he found them. No doubt due to
the same shared natural instincts.
      Fats clanged the door behind number six and weaved his way back in.
"What's that?" he asked, peering at the robot along the purple beauty of his
nose.
      "That is a robot I have forgotten the number his mother
      gave him at the factory so we will call him Ned. He works here now.
      "Good for him! He can clean up the tank after we throw the bums out."
      "That's my job," Billy said coming in through the front door. He
clutched his nightstick and scowled out from under the brim of his uniform
cap. It is not that Billy is stupid, just that most of his strength has gone
into his back instead of his mind.
      "That's Ned's job now because you have a promotion. You are going to
help me with some of my work."
      Billy came in very handy at times and I was anxious that the force
shouldn't lose him. My explanation cheered him because he sat down by Fats and
watched Ned do the floor.
      That's the way things went for about a week. We watched Ned sweep and
polish until the station began to take on a positively antiseptic look. The
Chief, who always has an eye out for that type of thing, found out that Ned
could file the odd ton of reports and paperwork that cluttered his office. All
this kept the robot busy, and we got so used to him we were hardly aware he
was around. I knew he had moved the packing case into the storeroom and fixed
himself up a cozy sort of robot dormitory-coffin. Other than that I didn't
know or care.
      The operation manual was buried in my desk and I never looked at it. If
I had, I might have had some idea of the big changes that were in store. None
of us knew the littlest bit about what a robot can or cannot do. Ned was
working nicely as a combination janitor-fileclerk and should have stayed that
way. He would have too if the Chief hadn't been so lazy. That's what started
it all.
      It was around nine at night and the Chief was just going home when the
call came in. He took it, listened for a moment, then hung up.
      "Greenback's liquor store. He got held up again. Says to come at once.
      "That's a change. Usually we don't hear about it until a month later.
What's he paying protection money for if China Joe ain't protecting? What's
the rush now?"
      The Chief chewed his loose lip for awhile, finally and painfully reached
a decision.
      "You better go around and see what the trouble is."
      "Sure," I said reaching for my cap. "But no one else Is around, you'll
have to watch the desk until I get back."
      "That's no good," he moaned. "I'm dying from hunger and sitting here
isn't going to help me any.
      "I will go take the report," Ned said, stepping forward and snapping his
usual well-greased salute.
      At first the Chief wasn't buying. You would think the water cooler came
to life and offered to take over his job.
      "How could you take a report?" he growled, putting the wise-guy water
cooler in its place. But he had phrased his little insult as a question so he
had only himself to blame. In exactly three minutes Ned gave the Chief a
summary of the routine necessary for a police officer to make a report on an
armed robbery or other reported theft. From the glazed look in Chief's
protruding eyes I could tell Ned had quickly passed the boundaries of the
Chief's meager knowledge.
      "Enough!" the harried man finally gasped. "If you know so much why don't
you make a report?"
      Which to me sounded like another version of "If you're so damned smart
why ain't you rich?" which we used to snarl at the brainy kids in grammar
school. Ned took such things literally though, and turned towards the door.
      "Do you mean you wish me to make a report on this robbery?"
      "Yes," the Chief said just to get rid of him, and we watched his blue
shape vanish through the door.
      "He must be brighter than he looks," I said. 'He never stopped to ask
where Greenback's store is."
      The Chief nodded and the phone rang again. His hand was still resting on
it so he picked it up by reflex. He listened for a second and you would have
thought someone was pumping blood out of his heel from the way his face turned
white.
      "The holdup's still on," he finally gasped. "Greenback's delivery boy is
on the line-calling back to see where we are. Says he's under a table in the
back...
      I never heard the rest of it because I was out the door and into the
car. There were a hundred things that could happen if Ned got there before me.
Guns could go off, people hurt, lots of things. And the police would be to
blame for it all- sending a tin robot to do a cop's job. Maybe the Chief had
ordered Ned there, but clearly as if the words were painted on the windshield
of the car, I knew I would be dragged     into it. It never gets very warm on
Mars, but I was sweating.
      Nineport has fourteen traffic regulations and I broke all of them before
I had gone a block. Fast us I was, Ned was faster. As I turned the corner I
saw him open the door of Greenback's store and walk in. I screamed brakes in
behind him and arrived just in time to have a gallery seat. A shooting gallery
at that.
      There were two holdup punksf one behind the counter making like a clerk
and the other lounging off to the side. Their guns were out of sight, but
blue-coated Ned busting through the door like that was too much for their
keyed up nerves. Up came both guns like they were on strings and Ned stopped
dead. I grabbed for my own gun and waited for pieces of busted robot to come
flying through the window.
      Ned's reflexes were great. Which I suppose is what you should expect of
a robot.
      "DROP YOUR GUNS, YOU ARE UNDER ARREST."
      He must have had on full power or something, his voice blasted so loud
my ears hurt. The result was just what you might expect. Both torpedoes let go
at once and the air was filled with flying slugs. The show windows went out
with a crash and I went down on my stomach. From the amount of noise I knew
they both had recoilless .50's. You can't stop one of those slugs. They go
right through you and anything else that happens to be in the way.
      Except they didn't seem to be bothering Ned. The only notice he seemed
to take was to cover his eyes. A little shield with a thin slit popped down
over his eye lenses. Then he moved in on the first thug.
      I knew he was fast, but not that fast. A couple of slugs jarred him as
he came across the room, but before the punk could change his aim Ned had the
gun in his hand. That was the end of that. He put on one of the sweetest
hammer locks I have ever seen and neatly grabbed the gun when it dropped from
the limp fingers. With the same motion that slipped the gun into a pouch he
whipped out a pair of handcuffs and snapped them on the punks's wrists.
      Holdupnik number two was heading for the door by then, and I was waiting
to give him a warm reception. There was never any need. He hadn't gone halfway
before Ned slid in front of him. There was a thud when they hit that didn't
      even shake Ned, but gave the other a glazed look. He never even knew it
when Ned slipped the cuffs on him and dropped him down next to his partner.
      I went in, took their guns from Ned, and made the arrest official. That
was all Greenback saw when he crawled out from behind the counter and it was
all I wanted him to see. The place was a foot deep in broken glass and smelled
like the inside of a Jack Daniels bottle. Greenback began to howl like a wolf
over his lost stock. He didn't seem to know any more about the phone call than
I did, so I grabbed ahold of a pimply looking kid who staggered out of the
storeroom. He was the one who had made the calls.
      It turned out to be a matter of sheer stupidity. He had worked for
Greenback only a few days and didn't have enough brains to realize that all
holdups should be reported to the protection boys instead of the police. I
told Greenback to wise up his boy, as look at the trouble that got caused.
Then pushed the two ex-holdup men out to the car. Ned climbed in back with
them and they clung together like two waifs in a storm. The robot's only
response was to pull a first aid kit from his hip and fix up a ricochet hole
in one of the thugs that no one had noticed in the excitement.
      The Chief was still sitting there with that bloodless look when we
marched in. I didn't believe it could be done, but he went two shades whiter.
      "You made the pinch," he whispered. Before I could straighten him out a
second and more awful idea hit him. He grabbed a handful of shirt on the first
torpedo and poked his face down. "You with China Joe," he snarled.
      The punks made the error of trying to be cute so the Chief let him have
one on the head with the open hand that set his eyes rolling like marbles.
When the question got asked again he found the right answer.
      "I never heard from no China Joe. We just hit town today and-"
      "Freelance, by God," the Chief sighed and collapsed into his chair.
"Lock 'em up and quickly tell me what in hell happened."
      I slammed the gate on them and pointed a none too steady finger at Ned.
      "There's the hero," I said. "Took them on single-handed, rassled them
for a fall and made the capture. He is a one-robot tornado, a power for good
in this otherwise evil community. And he's bullet-proof too." I ran a finger
over Ned's broad chest. The paint was chipped by the slugs, but the metal was
hardly scratched.
      'This is going to cause me trouble, big trouble," the Chief wailed.
      I knew he meant with the protection boys. They did not like punks
getting arrested and guns going off without their okay. But Ned thought the
Chief had other worries and rushed in to put them right. "There will be no
trouble. At no time did I violate any of the Robotic Restriction Laws, they
are part of my control circuits and therefore fully automatic. The men who
drew their guns violated both robotic and human law when they threatened
violence. I did not injure the men-merely restrained them."
      It was all over the Chief's head, but I liked to think I could follow
it. And I had been wondering how a robot- a machine-could be involved in
something like law application and violence. Ned had the answer to that one
too.
      "Robots have been assuming these functions for years. Don't recording
radar meters pass judgment on human violation of automobile regulations? A
robot alcohol detector is better qualified to assess the sobriety of a
prisoner than the arresting officer. At one time robots were even allowed to
make their own decisions about killing. Before the Robotic Restriction Laws
automatic gun-pointers were in general use. Their final development was a
self-contained battery of large antiaircraft guns. Automatic scan radar
detected all aircraft in the vicinity. Those that could not return the correct
identifying sigual had their courses tracked and computed, automatic fuse-
cutters and loaders readied the computer-aimed guns-which were fired by the
robot mechanism."
      There was little I could argue about with Ned. Except maybe his college-
professor vocabulary. So I switched the attack.
      "But a robot can't take the place of a cop, it's a complex human job."
      "Of course it is, but taking a human policeman's place is not the
function of a police robot. Primarily I combine the functions of numerous
pieces of police equipment, integrating their operations and making them
instantly available. In addition I can aid in the mechanical processes of law
enforcement. If you arrest a man you handcuff him. But if you order me to do
it, I have made no moral decision. I am just a machine for attaching handcuffs
at that point..."
      My raised hand cut off the flow of robotic argument. Ned was hipped to
his ears with facts and figures and I had a good idea who would come off
second best in any continued discussion. No laws had been broken when Ned made
the pinch, that was for sure. But there are other laws than those that appear
on the books.
      "China Joe is not going to like this, not at all," the Chief said,
speaking my own thoughts.
      The law of Tooth and Claw. That's one that wasn't in the law books. And
that was what ran Nineport. The place was just big enough to have a good
population of gambling joints, bawdy houses and drunk-rollers. They were all
run by China Joe. As was the police department. We were all in his pocket and
you might say he was the one who paid our wages. This is not the kind of
thing, though, that you explain to a robot.
      "Yeah, China Joe."
      I thought it was an echo at first, then realized that someone had eased
in the door behind me. Something called Alex. Six feet of bone, muscle and
trouble. China Joe's right hand man. He imitated a smile at the Chief who sank
a bit lower in his chair.
      "China Joe wants you should tell him why you got smart cops going around
and putting the arm on people and letting them shoot up good liquor. He's
mostly angry about the hooch. He says that he had enough guff and after this
you should-"
      "I am putting you under Robot Arrest, pursuant to article 46, paragraph
19 of the revised statutes....
      Ned had done it before we realized he had even moved. Right in front of
our eyes he was arresting Alex and signing our death warrants.
      Alex was not slow. As he turned to see who had grabbed him, he had
already dragged out his cannon. He got one shot in, square against Ned's
chest, before the robot plucked the gun away and slipped on the cuffs. While
we all gaped like dead fish, Ned recited the charge in what I swear was a
satisfied tone.
      "The prisoner is Peter Rakjomskj, alias Alex the Axe, wanted in Canal
City for armed robbery and attempted murder. Also wanted by local police of
Detroit, New York and Manchester on charges of...."
      "Get it off me!" Alex howled. We might have too, and everything might
have still been straightened out if Benny Bug hadn't heard the shot. He popped
his head in the front door just long enough to roll his eyes over our little
scene.
      "Alex... they're puffin' the arm on Alex!"
      Then he was gone and when I hit the door he was nowhere in sight. China
Joe's boys always went around in pairs. And in ten minutes he would know all
about it.
      "Book him," I told Ned. "It wouldn't make any difference if we let him
go now. The world has already come to an end."
      Fats came in then, mumbling to himself. He jerked a thumb over his
shoulder when he saw me.
      "What's up? I see little Benny Bug come out of here like the place was
on fire and almost get killed driving away?"
      Then Fats saw Alex with the bracelets on and turned sober in one second.
He just took a moment to gape, then his mind was made up. Without a trace of a
stagger he walked over to the Chief and threw his badge on the desk in front
of him.
      "I am an old man and I drink too much to be a cop. Therefore I am
resigning from the force. Because if that is whom I think it is over there
with the cuffs on, I will not live to be a day older as long as I am around
here."
      "Rat." The Chief growled in pain through his clenched teeth. "Deserting
the sinking ship. Rat."
      "Squeak," Fats said and left.
      The Chief was beyond caring at this point. He didn't blink an eye when I
took Fats' badge off the desk. I don't know why I did it, perhaps I thought it
was only fair. Ned had started all the trouble and I was just angry enough to
want him on the spot when it was finished. There were two rings on his chest
plate, and I was not surprised when the badge pin fitted them neatly.
      "There, now you are a real cop." Sarcasm dripped from the words. I
should have realized that robots are immune to sarcasm. Ned took my statement
at face value.
      "This is a very great honor, not only for me but for all robots. I will
do my best to fulfill all the obligations of the office." Jack Armstrong in
tin underwear. I could hear the little motors in his guts humming with joy as
he booked Alex.
      If everything else hadn't been so bad I would have enjoyed that. Ned had
more police equipment built into him than Nineport had ever owned. There was
an ink pad that snapped out of one hip, and he efficiently rolled Alex's
fingertips across it and stamped them on a card. Then he held the prisoner at
arm's length while something clicked in his abdomen. Once more sideways and
two instant photographs dropped out of a slot. The mug shots were stuck on the
card, arrest details and such inserted. There was more like this, but I forced
myself away. There were more important things to think about
      Like staying alive.
      "Any ideas Chief?"
      A groan was my only answer so I let it go at that. Billy, the balance of
the police force, came in then. I gave him a quick rundown. Either through
stupidity or guts he elected to stay, and I was proud of the boy. Ned locked
away the latest prisoner and began sweeping up.
      That was the way we were when China Joe walked in.
      Even though we were expecting it, it was still a shock. He had a bunch
of his toughest hoods with him and they crowded through the door like an
overweight baseball team. China Joe was in front, hands buried in the sleeves
of his long mandarin gown. No expression at all on his Asiatic features. He
didn't waste time talking to us, just gave the word to his own boys.
      "Clean this place up. The new police Chief will be here in a while and I
don't want him to see any bums hanging around."
      It made me angry. Even with the graft I like to feel I'm still a cop.
Not on a cheap punk's payroll. I was also curious about China Joe. Had been
ever since I tried to get a line on him and never found a thing. I still
wanted to know.
      "Ned, take a good look at that Chinese guy in the rayon bathrobe and let
me know who he is.
      My, but those electronic circuits work fast. Ned shot the answer back
like a straight man who had been rehearsing his lines for weeks.
      "He is a pseudo-oriental, utilizing a natural sallowness of the skin
heightened with dye. He is not Chinese. There has also been an operation on
his eyes, scars of which are still visible. This has been undoubtedly done in
an attempt to conceal his real identity, but Bertillon measurements of his
ears and other features make identity positive. He is on the Very Wanted list
of Interpol and his real name is..."
      China Joe was angry, and with a reason.
      "That's the thing... that big-mouthed tin radio set over there. We heard
about it and we're talking care of it!"
      The mob jumped aside then or hit the deck and I saw there was a guy
kneeling in the door with a rocket launcher. Shaped anti-tank charges, no
doubt. That was my last thought as the thing let go with a "whoosh."
      Maybe you can hit a tank with one of those. But not a robot. At least
not a police robot. Ned was sliding across the floor on his face when the back
wall blew up. There was no second shot. Ned closed his hand on the tube of the
bazooka and it was so much old drainpipe.
      Billy decided then that anyone who fired a rocket in a police station
was breaking the law, so he moved in with his club. I was right behind him
since I did not want to miss any of the fun. Ned was at the bottom somewhere,
but I didn't doubt he could take care of himself.
      There were a couple of muffled shots and someone screamed. No one fired
after that because we were too tangled up. A punk named Brooklyn Eddie hit me
on the side of the head with his gunbutt and I broke his nose all over his
face with my fist

      There is a kind of a fog over everything after that. But I do remember
it was very busy for awhile.
      When the fog lifted a bit I realized I was the only one still standing.
Or leaning rather. It was a good thing the wall was there.
      Ned came in through the street door carrying a very bashed looking
Brooklyn Eddie. I hoped I had done all that. Eddie's wrists were fastened
together with cuffs. Ned laid him gently next to the heap of thugs-who I
suddenly realized all wore the same kind of handcuffs. I wondered vaguely if
Ned made them as he needed them or had a supply tucked away in a hollow leg or
something.
      There was a chair a few feet away and sitting down helped. Blood was all
over everything and if a couple of the hoods hadn't groaned I would have
thought they were corpses. One was, I noticed suddenly. A bullet had caught
him in the chest, most of the blood was probably his.
      Ned burrowed in the bodies for a moment and dragged Billy out. He was
unconscious. A big smile on his face and the splintered remains of his
nightstick still stuck in his fist. It takes very little to make some people
happy. A bullet had gone through his leg and he never moved while Ned ripped
the pants leg off and put on a bandage.
      "The spurious China Joe and one other man escaped in a car," Ned
reported.
      "Don't let it worry you," I managed to croak. "Your batting average
still leads the league."
      It was then I realized the Chief was still sitting in his chair, where
he had been when the bruhaha started. Still slumped down with that glazed
look. Only after I started to talk to him did I realize that Alonzo Craig,
Chief of Police of Nineport, was now dead.
      A single shot. Small caliber gun, maybe a .22. Right through the heart
and what blood there had been was soaked up by his clothes. I had a good idea
where the gun would be that fired that shot. A small gun, the kind that would
fit in a wide Chinese sleeve.
      I wasn't tired or groggy any more. Just angry. Maybe he hadn't been the
brightest or most honest guy in the world. But he deserved a better end than
that. Knocked off by a two-bit racket boss who thought he was being crossed.
      Right about then I realized I had a big decision to make. With Billy out
of the fight and Fats gone I was the Nineport police force. All I had to do to
be clear of this mess was to walk out the door and keep going. I would be safe
enough.
      Ned buzzed by, picked up two of the thugs, and hauled them off to the
cells.
      Maybe it was the sight of his blue back or maybe I was tired of running.
Either way my mind was made up before I realized it. I carefully took off the
Chief's gold badge and put it on in place of my old one.
      "The new Chief of Police of Nineport," I said to no one in particular.
      "Yes, sir," Ned said as he passed. He put one of the prisoners down long
enough to salute, then went on with his work. I returned the salute.
      The hospital meat wagon hauled away the dead and wounded. I took an evil
pleasure in ignoring the questioning stares of the attendants. After the doc
fixed the side of my head, everyone cleared out. Ned mopped up the floor. I
ate ten aspirin and waited for the hammering to stop so I could think what to
do next

      When I pulled my thoughts together the answer was obvious. Too obvious.
I made as long a job as I could of reloading my gun.
      "Refill your handcuff box, Ned. We are going out."
      Like a good cop he asked no questions. I locked the outside door when we
left and gave him the key.
      "Here. There's a good chance you will be the only one left to use this
before the day is over.
      I stretched the drive over to China Joe's place just as much as I could.
Trying to figure if there was another way of doing it. There wasn't. Murder
had been done and Joe was the boy I was going to pin it on. So I had to get
him.
      The best I could do was stop around the corner and give Ned a briefing.
      "This combination bar and hookshop is the sole property of he whom we
will still call China Joe until there is time for you to give me a rundown on
him. Right now I got enough distractions. What we have to do is go in there,
find Joe and bring him to justice. Simple?"
      "Simple," Ned answered in his sharp Joe-college voice. But wouldn't it
be simple to make the arrest now, when he is leaving in that car, instead of
waiting until he returns?" The car in mention was doing sixty as it came out
of the alley ahead of us. I only had a glimpse of Joe in the back seat as it
tore by us.
      "Stop them!" I shouted, mostly for my own benefit since I was driving. I
tried to shift gears and start the engine at the same time, and succeeded in
doing exactly nothing.
      So Ned stopped them. It had been phrased as an order. He leaned his head
out of the window and I saw at once why most of his equipment was located in
his torso. Probably his brain as well. There sure wasn't much room left in his
head when that cannon was tucked away in there.
      A .75 recoilless. A plate swiveled back right where his nose should have
been if he had one, and the big muzzle pointed out. It's a neat idea when you
think about it. Right between the eyes for good aiming, up high, always ready.
      The BOOM BOOM almost took my head off. Of course Ned was a perfect shot-
so would I be with a computer for a brain. He had holed one rear tire with
each slug and the car flap-flapped to a stop a little ways down the road. I
climbed out slowly while Ned sprinted there in seconds flat. They didn't even
try to run this time. What little nerve they had left must have been shattered
by the smoking muzzle of that .75 poking out from between Ned's eyes. Robots
are neat about things like that so he must have left it sticking out
deliberate. Probably had a course in psychology back in robot school.
      Three of them in the car, all waving their hands in the air like the
last reel of a western. And the rear floor covered with interesting little
suitcases.
      Everyone came along quietly.
      China Joe only snarled while Ned told me that his name really was
Stantin and the Elmira hot seat was kept warm all the time in hopes he would
be back. I promised Joe Stantin I would be happy to arrange it that same day.
Thereby not worrying about any slip-ups with the local authorities. The rest
of the mob would stand trial in Canal City.
      It was a very busy day.
      Things have quieted down a good deal since then. Billy is out of the
hospital and wearing my old sergeant's stripes. Even Fats is back, though he
is sober once in a while now and has trouble looking me in the eye. We don't
have much to do because in addition to being a quiet town this is now an
honest one.
      Ned is on foot patrol nights and in charge of the lab and files days.
Maybe the Policeman's Benevolent wouldn't like that, but Ned doesn't seem to
mind. He touched up all the bullet scratches and keeps his badge polished. I
know a robot can't be happy or sad-but Ned seems to be happy.
      Sometimes I would swear I can hear him humming to himself. But, of
course, that is only the motors and things going around.
      When you start thinking about it, I suppose we set some kind of
precedent here. What with putting on a robot as a full-fledged police officer.
No one ever came around from the factory yet, so I have never found out if
we're the first or not.
      And I'll tell you something else. rm not going to stay in this broken
down town forever. I have some letters out now, looking for a new job.
      So some people are going to be very surprised when they see who their
new Chief of Police is after I leave.




Like human slaves or serfs, robots will not need-from the point of view of
their masters, anyway-any unnecessary education. A serf "needs" to know only
such information as relates to fanning, and how to do what he's told-fast.
Anything more is pointless, and potentially dangerous, since it tends to raise
such nasty questions as, is this the way it should be? And next thing you
know, faithful Wamba Is studing out ways to burn down the manor house and
sharpening his sickle meaningfully... It's too soon to know if robots would
react the same way, but they, too, will only "know" what they have to-expense
alone would see to that.
Yet some robots will have to have access to Information that they have no
immediate need for. For example, a robot librarian would need a well-stocked
memory just to answer a simple question....

THE ROBOT WHO WANTED TO KNOW

THAT WAS THE TROUBLE WITH Filer 13B-445-K, he wanted to know things that he
had just no business knowing. Things that no robot should be interested in-
much less investigate. But Filer was a very different type of robot.
      The trouble with the blonde in tier 22 should have been warning enough
for him. He had hummed out of the stack room with a load of books, and was
cutting through tier 22 when he saw her bending over for a volume on the
bottom shelf.
      As he passed behind her he slowed down, then stopped a few yards further
on. He watched her intently, a strange glint in his metallic eyes.
      As the girl bent over her short skirt rode up to display an astonishing
length of nylon-clad leg. That it was a singularly attractive leg should have
been of no interest to a robot-yet it was. He stood there, looking, until the
blonde turned suddenly and noticed his fixed attention.
      "If you were human, Buster," she said, "I would slap your face. But
since you are a robot, I would like to know what your little photon-filled
eyes find so interesting?"
      Without a microsecond's hesitation, Filer answered, "Your seam is
crooked." Then he turned and buzzed away.
      The blonde shook her head in wonder, straightened the offending
stocking, and chalked up another credit to the honor of electronics.
      She would have been very surprised to find out what Filer had been
looking at. He had been staring at her leg. Of course he hadn't lied when he
answered her-since he was incapable of lying-but he had been looking at a lot
more than the crooked seam. Filer was facing a problem that no other robot had
ever faced before.
      Love, romance, and sex were fast becoming a passionate interest for him.
      That this interest was purely academic goes without saying, yet it was
still an interest. It was the nature of his work that first aroused his
curiosity about the realm of Venus.
      A Filer is an amazingly intelligent robot and there aren't very many
being manufactured. You will find them only in the greatest libraries, dealing
with only the largest and most complex collections. To call them simply
librarians is to demean all librarians and to call their work simple. Of
course very little intelligence is required to shelf books or stamp cards, but
this sort of work has long been handled by robots that are little more than
wheeled IBM machines. The cataloging of human information has always been an
incredibly complex task. The Filer robots were the ones who finally inherited
this job. It rested easier on their metallic shoulders than it ever had on the
rounded ones of human librarians.
      Besides a complete memory, Filer had other attributes that are usually
connected with the human brain. Abstract connections for one thing. If he was
asked for books on one subject, he could think of related books in other
subjects that might be referred to. He could take a suggestion, pyramid it
into a category, then produce tactile results in the form of a mountain of
books.
      These traits are usually confined to homo sapiens. They are the things
that pulled him that last, long step above his animal relatives. If Filer was
more human than other robots, he had only his builders to blame.
      He blamed no one-he was just interested. All Filers are interested, they
are designed that way. Another Filer, 9B-367-0, librarian at the university in
Tashkent, had turned his interest to language due to the immense amount of
material at his disposal. He spoke thousands of languages and dialects, all
that he could find texts on, and enjoyed a fine reputation in linguistic
circles. That was because of his library. Filer 13B, he of the interest in
girls' legs, labored in the dust filled corridors of New Washington. In
addition to all the gleaming new microfiles, he had access to tons of ancient
printed-on-paper books that dated back for centuries.
      Filer had found his interest in the novels of that by-gone time.
      At first he was confused by all the references to love and romance, as
well as the mental and physical suffering that seemed to accompany them. He
could find no satisfactory or complete definition of the terms and was
intrigued. Intrigue led to interest and finally absorption. Unknown to the
world at large, he became an authority on Love.
      Very early in his interest, Filer realized that this was the most
delicate of all human institutions. He therefore kept his researches a secret
and the only records he had were in the capacious circuits of his brain. Just
about the same time he discovered that he could do research in vivo to
supplement the facts in his books. This happened when he found a couple locked
in embrace in the zoology section.
      Quickly stepping back into the shadows, Filer had turned up the gain on
his audio pickup. The resulting dialogue he heard was dull to say the least. A
grey and wasted shadow of the love lyrics he knew from his books. This
comparison was interesting and enlightening.
      After that he listened to male-female conversations whenever he had the
opportunity. He also tried to look at women from the viewpoint of men, and
vice versa. This is what had led him to the lower-limb observation in tier 22.
      It also led him to his ultimate folly.
      A researcher sought his aid a few weeks later and fumbled out a thick
pile of reference notes. A card slid from the notes and fell unnoticed to the
floor. Filer picked it up and handed it back to the man who put it away with
mumbled thanks. After the man had been supplied with the needed books and
gone, Filer sat back and reread the card. He had only seen It for a split
second, and upside down at that, but that was all he needed. The image of the
card was imprinted forever in his brain. Filer mused over the card and the
first glimmerings of an idea assailed him.
      The card had been an invitation to a masquerade ball. He was well
acquainted with this type of entertainment-it was stock-in-trade for his dusty
novels. People went to them disguised as various romantic figures.
      Why couldn't a robot go, disguised as people?
      Once the idea was fixed in his head there was no driving it out. It was
an un-robot thought and a completely un-robot action. Filer had a glimmering
of the first time that he was breaking down the barrier between himself and
the mysteries of romance. This only made him more eager to go. And of course
he did.
      Of course he didn't dare purchase a costume, but there was no problem in
obtaining some ancient curtains from one of the storerooms. A book on sewing
taught him the technique and a plate from a book gave him the design for his
costume. It was predestined that he go as a cavalier.
      With a finely ground pen point he printed an exact duplicate of the
invitation on heavy card stock. His mask was part face and part mask, it
offered no barrier to his talent or technology. Long before the appointed date
he was ready. The last days were filled with browsing through stories about
other masquerade balls and learning the latest dance steps.
      So enthused was he by the idea, that he never stopped to ponder the
strangeness of what he was doing. He was just a scientist studying a species
of animal. Man. Or rather woman.

      The night finally arrived and he left the library late with what looked
like a package of books and of course wasn't. No one noticed him enter the
patch of trees on the library grounds. If they had, they would certainly never
have connected him with the elegant gentleman who swept out of the far side a
few moments later. Only the empty wrapping paper bore mute evidence of the
disguise.
      Filer's manner in his new personality was all that might be expected of
a superior robot who has studied a role to perfection. He swept up the stairs
to the hall, three at a time and tendered his invitation with a flourish. Once
inside he headed straight for the bar and threw down three glasses of
champagne, right through a plastic tube to a tank in his thorax. Only then did
he let his eye roam over the assembled beauties. It was a night for love.
      And of all the women in the room, there was only one he had eyes for.
Filer could see instantly that she was the belle of the ball and the only one
to approach. Could he do anything else in memory of 50,000 heroes of those
long-forgotten books?
      Carol Ann van Damm was bored as usual. Her face was disguised, but no
mask could hide the generous contours of her bosom and flanks. All her usual
suitors were there, dancing attendance behind their dominoes, lusting after
her youth and her father's money. It was all too familiar and she had trouble
holding back her yawns.
      Until the pack was courteously but irrevocably pushed aside by the wide
shoulders of the stranger. He was a lion among wolves as he swept through them
and faced her.
      "This is our dance," he said in a deep voice rich with meaning. Almost
automatically she took the proffered hand, unable to resist this man with the
strange gleam in his eyes. In a moment they were waltzing and it was heaven.
His muscles were like steel yet he was light and graceful as a god.
      "Who are you?" she whispered.
      Your prince, come to take you away from all this," he murmured in her
ear.
      "You talk like a fairy tale," she laughed.
      "This is a fairy tale, and you are the heroine."
      His words struck fire from her brain and she felt the thrill of an
electric current sweep through her. It had, just a temporary short circuit.
While his lips murmured the words she had wanted to hear all her life into her
ear, his magic feet led her through the great doors onto the balcony. Once
there words blended with action and hot lips burned against hers. 102 degrees
to be exact, that was what the thermostat was set at.
      "Please," she breathed, weak with this new passion, "I must sit down."
He sat next to her, her hands in his soft yet viselike grip. They talked the
words that only lovers know until a burst of music drew her attention.
      "Midnight," she breathed. 'Time to unmask, my love." Her mask dropped
off, but he of course did nothing. "Come, come," she said. "You must take your
mask off too."
      It was a command and of course as a robot he had to obey. With a
flourish he pulled off his face.
      Carol Ann screamed first, then burned with anger.
      "What sort of scheme is this, you animated tin can? Answer."
      "It was love dear one. Love that brought me here tonight and sent me to
your arms." The answer was true enough, though Filer couched it in the terms
of his disguise.
      When the soft words of her darling came out of the harsh mouth of the
electronic speaker Carol Ann screamed again. She knew she had been made a fool
of.
      "Who sent you here like this, answer. What is the meaning of this
disguise, answer. ANSWER! ANSWER! you articulated pile of cams and rods!"
      Filer tried to sort out the questions and answer them one at a time, but
she gave him no time to speak.
      "It's the filthiest trick of all time, sending you here disguised as a
man. You a robot. A nothing. A two-legged IBM machine with a victrola
attached. Making believe you're a man when you're nothing but a robot."
      Suddenly Filer was on his feet, the words crackling and mechanical from
his speaker.
      "I'm a robot."
      The gentle voice of love was gone and replaced by that of mechanical
despair. Thought chased thought through the whirling electronic circuits of
his brain and they were all the same thought.
      I'm a robot-a robot-I must have forgotten I was a robot-what can a robot
be doing here with a woman- a robot can't kiss a woman-a woman can't love a
robot- yet she said she loved me-yet I'm a robot-a robot.
      With a mechanical shudder he turned from the girl and clanked away. With
each step his steel fingers plucked at his clothes and plastic flesh until
they came away in shards and pieces. Fragments of cloth marked his trail away
from the woman and within a hundred paces he was as steel-naked as the day he
was built. Through the garden and down to the street he went, the thoughts in
his head going in ever tighter circles.
      It was uncontrolled feedback and soon his body followed his brain. His
legs went faster, his motors whirled more rapidly, and the central lubrication
pump in his thorax churned like a mad thing.
      Then, with a single metallic screech, he raised both arms and plunged
forward. His head hit a corner of a stair and the granite point thrust into
the thin casing. Metal grounded to metal and all the complex circuits that
made up his brain were instantly discharged.
      Robot Filer 13B-445-K was quite dead.
      That was what the report read that the mechanic sent In the following
day. Not dead, but permanently impaired, to be disposed of. Yet, strangely
enough, that wasn't what this same man said when he examined the metallic
corpse.
      A second mechanic had helped in the examination. It was he who had spun
off the bolts and pulled out the damaged lubrication pump.
      "Here's the trouble," he had announced. "Malfunction in the pump. Piston
broke, jammed the pump, the knees locked from lack of oil-then the robot fell
and shorted out his brains."
      The first mechanic wiped grease off his hands and examined the faulty
pump. Then he looked from it to the gaping hole in the chest.
      "You could almost say he died of a broken heart."
      They both laughed and he threw the pump into the corner with all the
other cracked, dirty, broken and discarded machinery.




Overswing is a human tendency. When a new driver sees the car veering from a
straight line he twists the wheel back to correct the turn-but twists too far.
The car turns in the opposite direction and the process is repeated, The
automobile wiggles down the road like a snake, constantly correcting but never
correct.
Overswing is also characteristic of human institutions. Periods of morale
licentiousness are followed by those of puritan harshness.
Overswing is a trait of machines too, and Is hidden behind such terms as
undamped oscillation and negative feedback.
Robots are humanoid machines and there Is a very good chance that they will be
struck by this same malfunction. Individually, it is easily correctable. A
single robot with difficulties will be noticed and repaired. But what can be
done if the malfunction is inherent in the mechanism-and all the machines have
the same malfunction? Can It even be noticed, much less corrected?
Robots are already well-entrenched in the operations of society and the
administering of our laws. Robot clerks tick off the fines paid and send out
summonses to defaulters. Robot accountants check income tax returns and
respond with a rapidly flashing light to small errors and exaggerations. Robot
eyes and sensitive detectors guard the security of our prisons. Robot voting
machines accept our secret ballot and tally the results.
Is it not within the realm of possibility that robots will be handed more and
more functions of government and administration, until there are no more to be
given them- because they will have them all...?

I SEE YOU

THE JUDGE WAS IMPESSIVE IN his black robes, and omniscient in the chromium
perfection of his skull. His voice rolled like the crack of doom; rich and
penetrating.
      "Carl Tritt, this court finds you guilty as charged. On 218, 2423 you
did willfully and maliciously steal the payroll of the Marcrix Corporation, a
sum totaling 318,000 cr., and did attempt to keep these same credits as your
own. The sentence is twenty years."
      The black gavel fell with the precision of a pile driver and the sound
bounced back and forth inside Carl's head. Twenty years. He clamped bloodless
fingers on the steel bar of justice and looked up into the judge's electronic
eyes. There was perhaps a glint of compassion, hut no mercy there. The
sentence had been passed and recorded in the Central Memory. There was no
appeal.
      A panel snapped open In the front of the judge's bench and exhibit "A"
slid out on a soundless piston. 318,000 or., still in their original pay
envelopes. The judge pointed as Carl slowly picked it up.
      "Here is the money you stole-see that it is returned to the proper
people."
      Carl shuffled out of the courtroom, the package clutched weakly to his
chest, sunk in a sodden despair. The street outside was washed with a golden
sunlight that he could not see, for his depression shadowed It with the
deepest gloom.
      His throat was sore and his eyes burned. If he had not been an adult
male citizen, age 25, he might have cried. But 25-year-old adult males do not
cry. Instead he swallowed heavily a few times.
      A twenty-year sentence - It couldn't be believed. Why me?
      Of all the people in the world why did he have to receive a sentence
severe as that? His well-trained conscience instantly shot back the answer.
Because you stole money. He shied away from that unpleasant thought and
stumbled on.
      Unshed tears swam in his eyes and trickled back into his nose and down
his throat. Forgetting in his misery where he was, he choked a bit. Then spat
heavily.
      Even as the saliva hit the spotless sidewalk, a waste can twenty feet
away stirred into life. It rotated on hidden wheels and soundlessly rolled
towards him. In shocked horror Carl pressed the back of his hand to his mouth.
Too late to stop what was already done.
      A flexible arm licked out and quickly swabbed the sidewalk clean. Then
the can squatted like a mechanical Buddha while a speaker rasped to life in
its metal insides. A tinny metallic voice addressed Carl.
      "Carl Tritt, you have violated Local Ordinance #bd-14-668 by
expectorating on a public sidewalk. The sentence is two days. Your total
sentence is now twenty years and two days."
      Two other pedestrians had stopped behind Carl, listening with gaping
mouths as sentence was passed. Carl could almost hear their thought. A
sentenced man. Think of that! Over twenty years sentence! They bugged their
eyes at him in a mixture of fascination and distaste.
      Carl rushed away, the package clutched to his chest and his face flushed
red with shame. The sentenced men on video had always seemed so funny. How
they fell down and acted bewildered when a door wouldn't open for them.
      It didn't seem so funny now.
      The rest of that day crept by in a fog of dejection. He had a vague
recollection of his visit to the Marcrix Corporation to return his stolen
money. They had been kind and understanding, and he had fled in embarrassment.
All the kindness in the world wouldn't reprieve his sentence.
      He wandered vaguely in the streets after that, until he was exhausted.
Then he had seen the bar. Bright lights with a fog of smoke inside, looking
cheery and warm. Carl had pushed at the door, and pushed again, while the
people inside had stopped talking and turned to watch him through the glass.
Then he had remembered the sentence and realized the door wouldn't open. The
people inside had started laughing and he had run away. Lucky to get off
without a further sentence.
      When he reached his apartment at last he was sobbing with fatigue and
unhappiness. The door opened to his thumb and slammed behind him. This was a
refuge at last.
      Until he saw his packed bags waiting for him.
      Carl's video set hummed into life. He had never realized before it could
be controlled from a Central. The screen stayed dark but the familiar voder
voice of Sentence Control poured out.
      "A selection of clothing and articles suitable for a sentenced man has
been chosen for you. Your new address is on your bags. Go there at once."
      It was too much. Carl knew without looking that his camera and his books
and model rockets-the hundred other little things that meant something to him-
were not included in those bags. He ran into the kitchen, forcing open the
resisting door. The voice spoke from a speaker concealed above the stove.
      "What you are doing is in violation of the law. If you stop at once your
sentence will not be increased."
      The words meant nothing to him, he didn't want to hear them. With
frantic fingers he pulled the cupboard open and reached for the bottle of
whiskey in the back. The bottle vanished through a trap door he had never
noticed before, brushing tantalizingly against his fingers as it dropped.
      He stumbled down the hall and the voice droned on behind him. Five more
days sentence for attempting to obtain alcoholic beverages. Carl couldn't have
cared less.
      The cabs and buses wouldn't stop for him and the sub-slide turnstile
spat his coin back like something distasteful. In the end he tottered the long
blocks to his new quarters, located in a part of town he had never known
existed.
      There was a calculated seediness about the block where he was to stay.
Deliberately cracked sidewalks and dim lights. The dusty spiderwebs that hung
in every niche had a definitely artificial look about them. He had to climb
two flights of stairs, each step of which creaked with a different note, to
reach his room. Without turning the light on he dropped his bags and stumbled
forward. His shins cracked against a metal bed and he dropped gratefully into
it. A blissful exhaustion put him to sleep.
      When he awoke in the morning he didn't want to open his eyes. It had
been a nightmare, he tried to tell himself, and he was safely out of it now.
But the chill air in the room and the gray light filtering through his lids
told him differently. With a sigh he abandoned the fantasy and looked around
at his new home.
      It was clean-and that was all that could be said for it. The bed, a
chair, a built-in chest of drawers-these were the furnishings. A single
unshielded bulb hung from the ceiling. On the wall opposite him was a large
metal calendar sign. It read: 20 years, 5 days, 17 hours, 25 minutes. While he
watched the sign gave an audible click and the last number changed to 24.
      Carl was too exhausted by the emotions of the previous day to care. The
magnitude of his change still overwhelmed him. He settled back onto the bed in
a half daze, only to be jolted up by a booming voice from the wall.
      "Breakfast is now being served in the public dining room on the floor
above. You have ten minutes." The now familiar voice came this time from a
giant speaker at least 5 feet across, and had lost all of its tinny quality.
Carl obeyed without thinking.
      The meal was drab but filling. There were other men and women in the
dining room, all very interested in their food. He realized with a start that
they were sentenced too. After that he kept his own eyes on his plate and
returned quickly to his room.
      As he entered the door the video pickup was pointing at him from above
the speaker. It followed him like a gun as he walked across the room. Like the
speaker, it was the biggest pickup he had ever seen; a swiveled chrome tube
with a glass eye on its end as big as his fist. A sentenced man is alone, yet
never has privacy.
      Without preliminary warning the speaker blasted and be gave a nervous
start.
      "Your new employment begins at 1800 hours today, here is the address." A
card leaped out of a slot below the calendar sign and dropped to the floor.
Carl had to bend over and scratch at its edges to pick it up. The address
meant nothing to him.
      He had hours of time before he had to be there, and nothing else to do.
The bed was nearby and inviting, he dropped wearily onto it.
      Why had he stolen that damned payroll? He knew the answer. Because he
had wanted things he could never afford on a telephone technician's salary. It
had looked so tempting and fool proof. He damned the accident that had led him
to it. The memory still tortured him.

      It had been a routine addition of lines in one of the large office
buildings.
      When he first went there he had been by himself, he would not need the
robots until after the preliminary survey was done. The phone circuits were in
a service corridor just off the main lobby. His pass key let him in through
the inconspicuous door and he switched on the light. A maze of wiring and
junction boxes covered one wall, leading to cables that vanished down the
corridor out of sight. Carl opened his wiring diagrams and began to trace
leads. The rear wall seemed to be an ideal spot to attach the new boxes and he
tapped it to see if it could take the heavy bolts. It was hollow.
      Carl's first reaction was disgust. The job would be twice as difficult
if the leads had to be extended. Then he felt a touch of curiosity as to what
the wall was there for. It was just a panel he noticed on closer inspection,
made up of snap-on sections fitted into place. With his screwdriver he pried
one section out and saw what looked like a steel grid supporting metal plates.
He had no idea of what their function was, and didn't really care now that his
mild curiosity had been settled. After slipping the panel back into place he
went on with his work. A few hours later he looked at his watch, then dropped
his tools for lunch.
      The first thing he saw when he stepped back into the lobby was the bank
cart.
      Walking as close as he was, Carl couldn't help but notice the two guards
who were taking thick envelopes from the cart and putting them into a bank of
lockers set into the wall. One envelope to each locker, then a slam of the
thick door to seal it shut. Besides a momentary pang at the sight of all that
money Carl had no reaction.
      Only when he came back from lunch did he stop suddenly as a thought
struck him. He hesitated a fraction of a moment, then went on. No one had
noticed him. As he entered the corridor again he looked surreptitiously at the
messenger who was opening one of the lockers. When Carl had closed the door
behind him and checked the relative position of the wall with his eyes he knew
he was right.
      What he had thought was a metal grid with plates was really the backs of
the lockers and their framework of supports. The carefully sealed lockers in
the lobby had unguarded backs that faced into the service corridor.
      He realized at once that he should do nothing at the time, nor act in
any way to arouse suspicion. He did, however, make sure that the service
robots came in through the other end of the corridor that opened onto a
deserted hallway at the rear of the building where he had made a careful
examination of the hail. Carl even managed to make himself forget about the
lockers for over six months.
      After that he began to make his plans. Casual observation at odd times
gave him all the facts he needed. The lockers contained payrolls for a number
of large companies in the building. The bank guards deposited the money at
noon every Friday. No envelopes were ever picked up before one P.M. at the
earliest. Carl noticed what seemed to be the thickest envelope and made his
plans accordingly.
      Everything went like clockwork. At ten minutes to twelve on a Friday he
finished a job he was working on and left. He carried his toolbox with him.
Exactly ten minutes later he entered the rear door of the corridor without
being seen. His hands were covered with transparent and nearly invisible
gloves. By 12:10 he had the panel off and the blade of a long screwdriver
pressed against the back of the selected locker; the handle of the screwdriver
held to the bone behind his ear. There was no sound of closing doors so he
knew the bank men had finished and gone.
      The needle flame of his torch ate through the steel panel like soft
cheese. He excised a neat circle of metal and pulled it free. Beating out a
smoldering spot on the money envelope, he transferred it to another envelope
from his toolbox. This envelope he had addressed to himself and was already
stamped. One minute after leaving the building he would have the envelope in
the mail and would be a rich man.
      Carefully checking, he put all the tools. and the envelope back into his
toolbox and strode away. At exactly 12:35 he left through the rear corridor
door and locked it behind him. The corridor was still empty, so he took the
extra seconds to jimmy the door open with a tool from his pocket. Plenty of
people had keys to that door, but it didn't hurt to widen the odds a bit.
      Carl was actually whistling when he walked out into the street.
      Then the peace officer took him by the arm.
      "You are under arrest for theft," the officer told him in a calm voice.
      The shock stopped him in his tracks and he almost wished it had stopped
his heart the same way. He had never planned to be caught and never considered
the consequences. Fear and shame made him stumble as the policeman led him to
the waiting car. The crowd watched in fascinated amazement.
      When the evidence had been produced at his trial he found out, a little
late, what his mistake had been. Because of the wiring and conduits in the
corridor it was equipped with infra-red thermo-couples. The heat of his torch
had activated the alarm and an observer at Fire Central had looked through one
of their video pickups in the tunnel. He had expected to see a short circuit
and had been quite surprised to see Carl removing the money. His surprise had
not prevented him from notifying the police. Carl had cursed fate under his
breath.

      The grating voice of the speaker cut through Carl's bad tasting
memories.
      "1730 hours. It is time for you to leave for your employment."
      Wearily, Carl pulled on his shoes, checked the address, and left for his
new job. It took him almost the full half hour to walk there. He wasn't
surprised in the slightest when the address turned out to be the Department of
Sanitation.
      "You'll catch on fast," the elderly and worn supervisor told him. "Just
go through this list and kind of get acquainted with it. Your truck will be
along in a moment."
      The list was in reality a thick volume of lists, of all kinds of waste
materials. Apparently everything in the world that could be discarded was in
the book. And each item was followed by a key number. These numbers ran from
one to thirteen and seemed to be the entire purpose of the volume. While Carl
was puzzling over their meaning there was the sudden roar of a heavy motor. A
giant robot-operated truck pulled up the ramp and ground to a stop near them.
      "Garbage truck," the supervisor said wearily. "She's all yours."
      Carl had always known there were garbage trucks, but of course he had
never seen one. It was a bulky, shining cylinder over twenty metres long. A
robot driver was built into the cab. Thirty other robots stood on foot-steps
along the sides.
      The supervisor led the way to the rear of the truck and pointed to the
gaping mouth of the receiving bin.
      "Robots pick up the garbage and junk and load it in there," he said.
"Then they press one of these here thirteen buttons keying whatever they have
dumped into one of the thirteen bins inside the truck. They're just plain
lifting robots and not too brainy, but good enough to recognize most things
they pick up. But not all the time. That's where you come in, riding along
right there."
      The grimy thumb was now aiming at a transparent-walled cubicle that also
projected from the back of the truck. There was a padded seat inside, facing a
shelf set with thirteen buttons.
      "You sit there, just as cozy as a bug in a rug I might say, ready to do
your duty at any given moment. Which is whenever one of the robots finds
something it can't identify straight off. So it puts whatever it is into the
hopper outside your window. You give it a good look, check the list for the
proper category if you're not sure, then press the right button and in she
goes. It may sound difficult at first, but you'll soon catch onto the ropes."
      "Oh, it sounds complicated all right," Carl said, with a dull feeling in
his gut as he climbed into his turret, "But I'll try and get used to it."
      The weight of his body closed a hidden switch in the chair, and the
truck growled forward. Carl scowled down unhappily at the roadway streaming
out slowly from behind the wheels, as he rode into the darkness, sitting in
his transparent boil on the back-side of the truck.
      It was dull beyond imagining. The garbage truck followed a programmed
route that led through the commercial and freightways of the city. There were
few other trucks moving at that hour of the night, and they were all robot
driven. Carl saw no other human being. He was mug as a bug. A human flea being
whirled around inside the complex machine of the city. Every few minutes the
truck would stop, the robots clatter off, then return with their loads. The
containers dumped, the robots leaped back to their foot-plates, and the truck
was off once more.
      An hour passed before he had his first decision to make. A robot stopped
in mid-dump, ground its gears a moment, then dropped a dead cat into Carl's
hopper. Carl stared at it with horror. The cat stared back with wide,
sightless eyes, its lips drawn back in a fierce grin. It was the first corpse
Carl had ever seen. Something heavy had dropped on the cat, reducing the lower
part of its body to paper-thinness. With an effort he wrenched his eyes away
and jerked the book open.
      Castings... Cast Iron.... Cats (dead)... Very, very much dead. There was
the bin number. Nine. One bin per life. After the ninth life-the ninth bin. He
didn't find the thought very funny. A fierce jab at button 9 and the cat
whisked from sight with a last flourish of its paw. He repressed the sudden
desire to wave back.
      After the cat boredom set in with a vengeance. Hours dragged slowly by
and still his hopper was empty. The truck rumbled forward and stopped. Forward
and stop. The motion lulled him and he was tired. He leaned forward and laid
his head gently on the list of varieties of garbage, his eyes closed.
      "Sleeping is forbidden while at work. This is warning number one."
      The hatefully familiar voice blasted from behind his head and he started
with surprise. He hadn't noticed the pickup and speaker next to the door. Even
here, riding a garbage truck to eternity, the machine watched him. Bitter
anger kept him awake for the duration of the round.
      Days came and went after that in a gray monotony, the large calendar on
the wall of his room ticking them off one by one. But not fast enough. It now
read 19 years, 322 days, 8 hours, 16 minutes. Not fast enough. There was no
more interest in his life. As a sentenced man there were very few things he
could do in his free time. All forms of entertainment were closed to him. He
could gain admittance-through a side door-to only a certain section of the
library. After one futile trip there, pawing through the inspirational texts
and moral histories, he never returned.

      Each night he went to work. After returning he slept as long as he
could. After that he just lay on his bed, smoking his tiny allotment of
cigarettes, and listening to the seconds being ticked off his sentence.
      Carl tried to convince himself that he could stand twenty years of this
kind of existence. But a growing knot of tension in his stomach told him
differently.
      This was before the accident. The accident changed everything.
      A night like any other night. The garbage truck stopped at an industrial
site and the robots scuffled out for their loads. Nearby was a cross-country
tanker, taking on some liquid through a flexible hose. Carl gave it bored
notice only because there was a human driver in the cab of the truck. That
meant the cargo was dangerous in some way, robot drivers being forbidden by
law from handling certain loads. He idly noticed the driver open the door and
start to step out. When the man was halfway out he remembered something,
turned back and reached for it
      For a short moment the driver brushed against the starter button. The
truck was in gear and lurched forward a few feet. The man quickly pulled away-
but it was too late.
      The movement had been enough to put a strain on the hose. It stretched-
the supporting arm bent-then it broke free from the truck at the coupling. The
hose whipped back and forth, spraying greenish liquid over the truck and the
cab, before an automatic cut-out turned off the flow.
      This had taken only an instant. The driver turned back and stared with
horror-widened eyes at the fluid dripping over the truck's hood. It was
steaming slightly.
      With a swooshing roar it burst into fire, and the entire front of the
truck was covered with flame. The driver Invisible behind the burning curtain.
      Before being sentenced Carl had always worked with robot assistance. He
knew what to say and how to say it to get instant obedience. Bursting from his
cubicle he slapped one of the garbage robots on its metal shoulder and shouted
an order. The robot dropped a can it was emptying and ran at full speed for
the truck, diving into the flames.
      More important than the driver, was the open port on top of the truck.
If the flames should reach it the entire truck would go up-showering the
street with burning liquid.
      Swathed in flame, the robot climbed the ladder on the truck's side. One
burning hand reached up and flipped the self-sealing lid shut. The robot
started back down through the flames, but stopped suddenly as the fierce heat
burned at its controls. For a few seconds it vibrated rapidly like a man in
pain, then collapsed. Destroyed.
      Carl was running towards the truck himself, guiding two more of his
robots. The flames still wrapped the cab, seeping in through the partly open
door. Thin screams of pain came from inside. Under Carl's directions one robot
pulled the door open and the other dived in. Bent double, protecting the man's
body with its own, the robot pulled the driver out. The flames had charred his
legs to shapeless masses and his clothes were on fire. Carl beat out the
flames with his hands as the robot dragged the driver clear.
      The instant the fire had started, automatic alarms had gone off. Fire
and rescue teams plunged toward the scene. Carl had just put out the last of
the flames on the unconscious man's body when they arrived. A wash of foam
instantly killed the fire. An ambulance jerked to a stop and two robot
stretcher-bearers popped out of it. A human doctor followed. He took one look
at the burned driver and whistled.
      "Really cooked!"
      He grabbed a pressurized container from the stretcher-bearer and sprayed
jelly-like burn dressing over the driver's legs. Before he had finished the
other robot snapped open a medical kit and proffered it. The doctor made quick
adjustments on a multiple syringe, then gave the injection. It was all very
fast and efficient.
      As soon as the stretcher-bearers had carried the burned driver into the
ambulance, it jumped forward. The doctor mumbled instruction to the hospital
into his lapel radio. Only then did he turn his attention to Carl.
      "Let's see those hands," he said.
      Everything had happened with such speed that Carl had scarcely noticed
his burns. Only now did he glance down at the scorched skin and feel sharp
pain. The blood drained from his face and he swayed.
      "Easy does it," the doctor said, helping him sit down on the ground.
"They're not as bad as they look. Have new skin on them in a couple of days."
His hands were busy while he talked and there was the sudden prick of a needle
in Carl's arm. The pain ebbed away.
      The shot made things hazy after that. Carl had vague memories of riding
to the hospital in a police car. Then the grateful comfort of a cool bed. They
must have given him another shot then because the next thing he knew it was
morning.
      That week in the hospital was like a vacation for Carl. Either the staff
didn't know of his sentenced status or it didn't make any difference. He
received the same treatment as the other patients. While the accelerated
grafts covered his hands and forearms with new skin, he relaxed in the luxury
of the soft bed and varied food. The same drugs that kept the pain away
prevented his worry about returning to the outside world. He was also pleased
to hear that the burned driver would recover.
      On the morning of the eighth day the staff dermatologist prodded the new
skin and smiled. "Good job of recovery, Tritt," he said.
      "Looks like you'll be leaving us today. I'll have them fill out the
forms and send for your clothes."
      The old knot of tension returned to Carl's stomach as he thought of what
waited for him outside. It seemed doubly hard now that he had been away for a
few days. Yet there was nothing else he could possibly do. He dressed as
slowly as he could, stretching the free time remaining as much as possible.
      As he started down the corridor a nurse waved him over. "Mr. Skarvy
would like to see you-in here."
      Skarvy. That was the name of the truck driver. Carl followed her into
the room where the burly driver sat up in bed. His big body looked strange
somehow, until Carl realized there was no long bulge under the blankets. The
man had no legs.
      "Chopped 'em both off at the hips," Skarvy said when he noticed Carl's
gaze. He smiled. "Don't let it bother you. Don't bother me none. They planted
the regen-buds and they tell me in less than a year I'll have legs again, good
as new. Suits me fine. Better than staying in that truck and frying." He
hitched himself up in the bed, an intense expression on his face.
      "They showed me the films Fire Central made through one of their pick-
ups on the spot. Saw the whole thing. Almost upchucked when I saw what I
looked like when you dragged me out." He pushed out a meaty hand and pumped
Carl's. "I want to thank you for doing what you done. Taking a chance like
that." Carl could only smile foolishly.
      "I want to shake your hand," Skarvy said. "Even if you are a sentenced
man."
      Carl pulled his hand free and left. Not trusting himself to say
anything. The last week had been a dream. And a foolish one. He was still
sentenced and would be for years to come. An outcast of society who never left
it.
      When he pushed open the door to his drab room the all too-familiar voice
boomed out of the speaker.
      "Carl Tritt. You have missed seven days of your work assignment, in
addition there is an incomplete day, only partially worked. This time would
normally not be deducted from your sentence. There is however precedent in
allowing deduction of this time and it will be allowed against your total
sentence." The decision made, the numbers clicked over busily on his calendar.
      "Thanks for nothing," Carl said and dropped wearily on his bed. The
monotonous voder voice went on, ignoring his interruption.
      "In addition, an award has been made. Under Sentence Diminution
Regulations your act of personal heroism, risking your own life to save
another's, is recognized as a pro-social act and so treated. The award is
three years off your sentence."
      Carl was on his feet, staring unbelievingly at the speaker. Was it some
trick? Yet as he watched the calendar mechanism ground gears briefly and the
year numbers slowly turned over. 18... 17... 16... The whirring stopped.
stopped.
      Just like that. Three years off his sentence. It didn't seem possible-
yet there were the numbers to prove that it was.
      "Sentence Control!" he shouted. 'Listen to me! What happened? I mean how
can a sentence be reduced by this award business? I never heard anything about
it before?"
      "Sentence reduction is never mentioned in public life," the speaker said
flatly. "This might encourage people to break the law, since threat of
sentence is considered a deterrent. Normally a sentenced person is not told of
sentence reduction until after their first year. Your case however is
exceptional since you were awarded reduction before the end of said year."
      "How can I find out more about sentence reduction?" Carl asked eagerly.
      The speaker hummed for a moment, then the voice crackled out again.
"Your Sentence Advisor is Mr. Prisbi. He will advise you in whatever is to be
done. You have an appointment for 1300 hours tomorrow. Here is his address."
      The machine clicked and spat out a card. Carl was waiting for it this
time and caught it before it hit the floor. He held it carefully, almost
lovingly. Three years off his sentence and tomorrow he would find out what
else he could do to reduce it even more.

      Of course he was early, almost a full hour before he was due. The robot-
receptionist kept him seated in the outer office until the exact minute of his
appointment. When he heard the door lock finally click open he almost jumped
to it. Forcing himself to go slow, he entered the office.
      Prisbi, the Sentence Advisor, looked like a preserved fish peering
through the bottom of a bottle. He was dumpy fat, with dead white skin and
lumpy features that had been squeezed up like putty from the fat underneath.
His eyes were magnified pupils that peered unblinkingly through eyeglass
lenses almost as thick as they were wide. In a world where contact lenses were
the norm, his vision was so bad it could not be corrected by the tiny lenses.
Instead he wore the heavy-framed, anachronistic spectacles, perched insecurely
on his puffy nose.
      Prisbi did not smile or say a word when Carl entered the door. He kept
his eyes fixed steadily on him as he walked the length of the room. They
reminded Carl of the video scanners he had grown to hate, and he shook the
idea away.
      "My name is..." he began.
      "I know your name, Tritt," Prisbi rasped. The voice seemed too coarse to
have come from those soft lips. "Now sit down in that chair-there." He jerked
his pen at a hard metal chair that faced his desk.
      Carl sat down and immediately blinked away from the strong lights that
focused on his face. He tried to slide the chair back, until he realized it
was fastened to the floor. He just sat then and waited for Prisbi to begin.
      Prisbi finally lowered his glassy gaze and picked up a file of papers
from his desk. He riffled through them for a full minute before speaking.
      "Very strange record, Tritt," he finally grated out. Can't say that I
like it at all. Don't even know why Control gave you permission to be here.
But since you are-tell me why."
      It was an effort to smile but Carl did. "Well you see, I was awarded a
three year reduction in sentence. This is the first I ever heard of sentence
reduction. Control sent me here, said you would give me more information."
      "A complete waste of time," Prisbi said, throwing the papers down onto
the desk. "You aren't eligible for sentence reduction until after you've
finished your first year of sentence. You have almost ten months to go. Come
back then and I'll explain. You can leave."
      Carl didn't move. His hands were clenched tight in his lap as he fought
for control. He squinted against the light, looking at Prisbi's unresponsive
face.
      "But you see I have already had sentence reduction. Perhaps that's why
Control told me to come-"
      "Don't try and teach me the law," Prisbi growled coldly. "I'm here to
teach it to you. All right I'll explain. Though it's of absolutely no value
now. When you finish your first year of sentence-a real year of work at your
assigned job-you are eligible for reduction. You may apply then for other work
that carries a time premium. Dangerous jobs such as satellite repair, that
take two days off your sentence for every day served. There are even certain
positions in atomics that allow three days per day worked, though these are
rare. In this way the sentenced man helps himself, learns social
consciousness, and benefits society at the same time. Of course this doesn't
apply to you yet."
      "Why not?" Carl was standing now, hammering on the table with his still
tender hands. "Why do I have to finish a year at that stupid, made-work job?
It's completely artificial, designed to torture, not to accomplish anything.
The amount of work I do every night could be done in three seconds by a robot
when the truck returned. Do you call that teaching social consciousness?
Humiliating, boring work that-"
      "Sit down Tritt," Prisbi shouted in a high, cracked voice. Don't you
realize where you are? Or who I am? I tell you what to do. You don't say
anything to me outside of yes, sir or no, sir. I say you must finish your
primary year of work, then return here. That is an order."
      "I say you're wrong," Carl shouted. "I'll go over your head-see your
superiors-you just can't decide my life away like that!"
      Prisbi was standing now too, a twisted grimace splitting his face in a
caricature of a smile. He roared at Carl.
      "You can't go over my head or appeal to anyone else-I have the last
word! You hear that? I tell you what to do. I say you work-and you're going to
work. You doubt that? You doubt what I can do?" There was a bubble of froth on
his pale lips now. "I say you have shouted at me and used insulting language
and threatened me, and the record will bear me out!"
      Prisbi fumbled on his desk until he found a microphone. He raised it,
trembling, to his mouth and pressed the button.
      "This is Sentence Advisor Prisbi. For actions unbecoming a sentenced man
when addressing a Sentence Advisor, I recommend Carl Tritt's sentence be
increased by one week."
      The answer was instantaneous. The Sentence Control speaker on the wall
spoke in its usual voder tones. "Sentence approved. Carl Tritt, seven days
have been added to your sentence, bringing it to a total of sixteen years
      The words droned on, but Carl wasn't listening. He was staring down a
red tunnel of hatred. The only thing he was aware of in the entire world was
the pasty white face of Advisor Prisbi.
      "You... didn't have to do that," he finally choked out. "You don't have
to make it worse for me when you're supposed to be helping me." Sudden
realization came to Carl. "But you don't want to help me, do you? You enjoy
playing God with sentenced men, twisting their lives in your hands-"
      His voice was drowned out by Prisbi's, shouting into the microphone
again... deliberate insults...recommend a month be added to Carl Tritt's
sentence... Carl heard what the other man was saying. But he didn't care any
more. He had tried hard to do it their way. He couldn't do it any longer. He
hated the system, the men who designed it, the machines that enforced it. And
most of all he hated the man before him, who was a summation of the whole
rotten mess. At the end, for all his efforts, he had ended up in the hands of
this pulpy sadist. It wasn't going to be that way at all.
      "Take your glasses off," he said in a low voice.
      "What's that... what?" Prisbi said. He had finished shouting into the
microphone and was breathing heavily.
      "Don't bother," Carl said reaching slowly across the table. "I'll do it
for you." He pulled the man's glasses off and laid them gently on the table.
Only then did Prisbi realize what was happening. No was all he could say, in a
sudden out-rush of breath.
      Carl's fist landed square on those hated lips, broke them, broke the
teeth behind them and knocked the man back over his chair onto the floor. The
tender new skin on Carl's hand was torn and blood dripped down his fingers. He
wasn't aware of it. He stood over the huddled, whimpering shape on the floor
and laughed. Then he stumbled out of the office, shaken with laughter.
      The robot-receptionist turned a coldly disapproving, glass and steel,
face on him and said something. Still laughing he wrenched a heavy light stand
from the floor and battered the shining face in. Clutching the lamp he went
out into the hall.
      Part of him screamed in terror at the enormity of what he had done, but
just part of his mind. And this small voice was washed away by the hot wave of
pleasure that surged through him. He was breaking the rules-all of the rules-
this time. Breaking out of the cage that had trapped him all of his life.
      As he rode down in the automatic elevator the laughter finally died
away, and he wiped the dripping sweat from his face. A small voice scratched
in his ear.
      "Carl Tritt, you have committed violation of sentence and your sentence
is hereby increased by..."
      "Where are you!" he bellowed. "Don't hide there and whine in my ear.
Come out!" He peered closely at the wall of the car until he found the glass
lens.
      "You see me, do you?" he shouted at the lens. "Well I see you too!" The
lamp stand came down and crashed into the glass. Another blow tore through the
thin metal and found the speaker. It expired with a squawk.
      People ran from him in the street, but he didn't notice them. They were
just victims the way he had been. It was the enemy he wanted to crush. Every
video eye he saw caught a blow from the battered stand. He poked and tore
until he silenced every speaker he passed. A score of battered and silent
robots marked his passage.
      It was inevitable that he should be caught. He neither thought about
that or cared very much. This was the moment he had been living for all his
life. There was no battle song he could sing, he didn't know any. But there
was one mildly smutty song he remembered from his school days. It would have
to do. Roaring it at the top of his voice, Carl left a trail of destruction
through the shining order of the city.
      The speakers never stopped talking to Carl, and he silenced them as fast
as he found them. His sentence mounted higher and higher with each act.
      "...making a total of two hundred and twelve years, nineteen days
and..." The voice was suddenly cut off as some control circuit finally
realized the impossibility of its statements. Carl was riding a moving ramp
towards a freight level. He crouched, waiting for the voice to start again so
he could seek it out and destroy it. A speaker rustled and he looked around
for it.
      "Carl Tritt, your sentence has exceeded the expected bounds of your life
and is therefore meaningless..."
      "Always was meaningless," he shouted back. "I know that now. Now where
are you? I'm going to get you!" The machine droned on steadily.
      "...in such a case you are remanded for trial. Peace officers are now in
their way to bring you in. You are ordered to go peacefully or... GLILRK..."
The lamp stand smashed into the speaker.
      "Send them," Carl spat into the mass of tangled metal and wire. "I'll
take care of them too."
      The end was preordained. Followed by the ubiquitous eyes of Central,
Carl could not run forever. The squad of officers cornered him on a lower
level and closed in. Two of them were clubbed unconscious before they managed
to get a knockout needle into his flesh.

      The same courtroom and the same judge. Only this time there were two
muscular human guards present to watch Carl. He didn't seem to need watching,
slumped forward as he was against the bar of justice. White bandages covered
the cuts and bruises.
      A sudden humming came from the robot judge as he stirred to life. "Order
in the court," he said, rapping the gavel once and returning it to its stand.
"Carl Tritt, this court finds you guilty..."
      "What, again? Aren't you tired of that sort of thing yet?" Carl asked.
      "Silence while sentence is being passed," the judge said loudly and
banged down again with the gavel. "You are guilty of crimes too numerous to be
expiated by sentencing. Therefore you are condemned to Personality Death.
Psychosurgery shall remove all traces of this personality from your body,
until this personality is dead, dead, dead."
      "Not that," Carl whimpered, leaning forward and stretching his arms out
pleadingly towards the judge. "Anything but that"
      Before either guard could act, Carl's whimper turned to a loud laugh as
he swept the judge's gavel off the bench. Turning with it, he attacked the
astonished guards. One dropped instantly as the gavel caught him behind the
ear. The other struggled to get his gun out-then fell across the first man's
limp body.
      "Now judge," Carl shouted with happiness, "I have the gavel, let's see
what I do!" He swept around the end of the bench and hammered the judge's
sleek metal head into a twisted ruin. The judge, merely an extension of the
machinery of Central Control, made no attempt to defend itself.
      There was the sound of running feet in the hall and someone pulled at
the door. Carl had no plan. All he wanted to do was remain free and do as much
damage as long as the fire of rebellion burned inside of him. There was only
the single door into the courtroom. Carl glanced quickly around and his
technician's eye noticed the access plate set in the wall behind the judge. He
twisted the latch and kicked it open.
      A video tube was watching him from a high corner of the courtroom, but
that couldn't be helped. The machine could follow him wherever he went anyway.
All he could do was try and stay ahead of the pursuit. He pulled himself
through the access door as two robots burst into the courtroom.
      "Carl Tritt, surrender at once. A further change has been... has been...
Carl... carl... ca..."
      Listening to their voices through the thin metal door, Carl wondered
what had happened. He hazarded a look. Both robots had ground to a halt and
were making aimless motions. Their speakers rustled, but said nothing. After a
few moments the random movements stopped. They turned at the same time, picked
up the unconscious peace officers, and went out. The door closed behind them.
Carl found it very puzzling. He watched for some minutes longer, until the
door opened again. This time it was a tool-hung repair robot that trundled in.
it moved over to the ruined judge and began dismantling it.
      Closing the door quietly, Carl leaned against its cool metal and tried
to understand what had happened. With the threat of immediate pursuit removed,
he had time to think.
      Why hadn't he been followed? Why had Central Control acted as if it
didn't know his whereabouts? This omnipotent machine had scauning tubes in
every square inch of the city, he had found that out. And it was hooked into
the machines of the other cities of the world. There was no place it couldn't
see. Or rather one place.
      The thought hit him so suddenly he gasped. Then he looked around him. A
tunnel of relays and controls stretched away from him, dimly lit by glow
plates. It could be-yes it could be. It had to be.
      There could be only one place in the entire world that Central Control
could not look-inside its own central mechanism. Its memory and operating
circuits. No machine with independent decision could repair its own thinking
circuits. This would allow destructive negative feedback to be built up. An
impaired circuit could only impair itself more, it couldn't possibly repair
itself.
      He was inside the brain circuits of Central Control. So as far as that
city-embracing machine knew he had ceased to be. He existed nowhere the
machine could see. The machine could see everywhere. Therefore he didn't
exist. By this time all memory of him had been probably erased.
      Slowly at first, then faster and faster, he walked down the corridor.
      "Free!" he shouted. "Really free-for the first time in my life. Free to
do as I want, to watch the whole world and laugh at them!" A power and
happiness flowed through him. He opened door after door, exulting in his new
kingdom.
      He was talking aloud, bubbling with happiness. "I can have the repair
robots that work on the circuits bring me food. Furniture, clothes-whatever I
want. I can live here just as I please-do what I please." The thought was
wildly exciting. He threw open another door and stopped, rigid.
      The room before him was tastefully furnished, just as he would have done
it. Books, paintings on the walls, soft music coming from a hidden record
player. Carl gaped at it. Until the voice spoke behind him.
      "Of course it would be wonderful to live here," the voice said. "To be
master of the city, have anything you want at your fingertips. But what makes
you think, poor little man, that you are the first one to realize that? And to
come here. And there is really only room for one you know."
      Carl turned slowly, very slowly, measuring the distance between himself
and the other man who stood behind him in the doorway, weighing the chances of
lashing out with the gavel he still clutched-before the other man could fire
the gun he held in his hand.
In the Interplanetary age robots will be as much an essential and commonplace
of life as the kitchen sink is to the atomic age. But while being waited upon
by his mechanical servants, man will find that he has to do a little serving
in return. Mechanics are needed to attend to the most automatic airplanes.
Automatic lighthouses must be installed and serviced. This need will not die
out. Spaceships will have to find their way through their dark spatial ocean,
just as surely any other ship that ever sailed a terrestrial sea. Navigation
will be ultra-refined and automated-but it will still be navigation. And it
will need the assistance of fixed reference points. Beacons will be needed.
And beacons, no matter how solidly constructed, will occasionally fall into...

THE REPAIRMAN

THE OLD MAN HAD THAT LOOK of intense glee on his face that meant someone was
in for a very rough time. Since we were alone, it took no great feat of
intelligence to figure it would be me. I talked first, bold attack being the
best defense and so forth.
      "I quit. Don't bother telling me what dirty job you have cooked up,
because I have already quit and you do not want to reveal company secrets to
me."
      The grin was even wider now and he actually chortled as he thumbed a
button on his console. A thick legal document slid out of the delivery slot
onto his desk.
      "This is your contract," he said. "It tells how and when you will work.
A steel-and-vanadium-bound contract that you couldn't crack with a molecular
disruptor."
      I leaned out quickly, grabbed it and threw it into the air with a single
motion. Before it could fall, I had my Solar out and, with a wide-angle shot,
burned the contract to ashes.
      The Old Man pressed the button again and another contract slid out on
his desk. If possible, the smile was still wider now.
      "I should have said a duplicate of your contract - like this one here."
He made a quick note on his secretary plate.
      "I have deducted 13 credits from your salary for the cost of the
duplicate - as well as a 100-credit fine for firing a Solar inside a
building."
      I slumped, defeated, waiting for the blow to land. The Old Man fondled
my contract.
      "According to this document, you can't quit. Ever. Therefore I have a
little job I know you'll enjoy. Repair job. The Centauri beacon has shut down.
It's a Mark III beacon..."
      "What kind of beacon?" I asked him. I have repaired hyperspace beacons
from one arm of the Galaxy to the other and was sure I had worked on every
type or model made. But I had never heard of this kind.
      "Mark III," the Old Man repeated with sly humor. "I never heard of it
either until Records dug up the specs. They found them buried in the back of
their oldest warehouse. This was the earliest type of beacon ever built - by
Earth, no less. Considering its location on one of the Proxima Centauri
planets, it might very well be the first beacon."
      I looked at the blueprints he handed me and felt my eyes glaze with
horror. "It's a monstrosity! It looks more like a distillery than a beacon -
must be at least a few hundred meters high. I'm a repairman, not an
archeologist. This pile of junk is over 2000 years old. Just forget about it
and build a new one.
      The Old Man leaned over his desk, breathing into my face. "It would take
a year to install a new beacon - besides being too expensive - and this relic
is on one of the main routes. We have ships making fifteen-light-year detours
now."
      He leaned back, wiped his hands on his handkerchief and gave me Lecture
Forty-four on Company Duty and My Troubles.
      "This department is officially called Maintenance and Repair, when it
really should be called trouble-shooting. Hyperspace beacons are made to last
forever - or damn close to it. When one of them breaks down, it is never an
accident, and repairing the thing is never a matter of just plugging in a new
part."
      He was telling me - the guy who did the job while he sat back on his fat
paycheck in an air-conditioned office.
      He rambled on. "How I wish that were all it took! I would have a fleet
of parts ships and junior mechanics to install them. But it's not like that at
all. I have a fleet of expensive ships that are equipped to do almost anything
- manned by a bunch of irresponsibles like you."
      I nodded moodily at his pointing finger.
      "How I wish I could fire you all! Combination space-jockeys, mechanics,
engineers, soldiers, con-men and anything else it takes to do the repairs. I
have to browbeat, bribe, blackmail and bulldoze you thugs into doing a simple
job. If you think you're fed up, just think how I feel. But the ships must go
through! The beacons must operate!"
      I recognized this deathless line as the curtain speech and crawled to my
feet. He threw the Mark III file at me and went back to scratching in his
papers. Just as I reached the door, he looked up and impaled me on his finger
again.
      "And don't get any fancy ideas about jumping your contract. We can
attach that bank account of yours on Algol II long before you could draw the
money out."
      I smiled, a little weakly, I'm afraid, as if I had never meant to keep
that account a secret. His spies were getting more efficient every day.
Walking down the hall, I tried to figure a way to transfer the money without
his catching on - and knew at the same time he was figuring a way to outfigure
me.
      It was all very depressing, so I stopped for a drink, then went on to
the spaceport.

      By the time the ship was serviced, I had a course charted. The nearest
beacon to the broken-down Proxima Centauri Beacon was on one of the planets of
Beta Circinus and I headed there first, a short trip of only about nine days
in hyperspace.
      To understand the importance of the beacons, you have to understand
hyperspace. Not that many people do, but it is easy enough to understand that
in this non-space the regular rules don't apply. Speed and measurements are a
matter of relationship, not constant facts like the fixed universe.
      The first ships to enter hyperspace had no place to go - and no way to
even tell if they had moved. The beacons solved that problem and opened the
entire universe. They are built on planets and generate tremendous amounts of
power. This power is turned into radiation that is punched through into
hyperspace. Every beacon has a code signal as part of its radiation and
represents a measurable point in hyperspace. Triangulation and quadrature of
the beacons works for navigation - only it follows its own rules. The rules
are complex and variable, but they are still rules that a navigator can
follow.
      For a hyperspace jump, you need at least four beacons for an accurate
fix. For long jumps, navigators use as many as seven or eight. So every beacon
is important and every one has to keep operating. That is where I and the
other troubleshooters came in.
      We travel in well-stocked ships that carry a little bit of everything;
only one man to a ship because that is all it takes to operate the overly
efficient repair machinery. Due to the very nature of our job, we spend most
of our time just rocketing through normal space. After all, when a beacon
breaks down, how do you find it?
      Not through hyperspace. All you can do is approach as close as you can
by using other beacons, then finish the trip in normal space. This can take
months, and often does.
      This job didn't turn out to be quite that bad. I zeroed on the Beta
Circinus beacon and ran a complicated eight-point problem through the
navigator, using every beacon I could get an accurate fix on. The computer
gave me a course with an estimated point-of-arrival as well as a built-in
safety factor I never could eliminate from the machine.
      I would much rather take a chance of breaking through near some star
than spend time just barreling through normal space, but apparently Tech knows
this, too. They had a safety factor built into the computer so you couldn't
end up inside a sun no matter how hard you tried. I'm sure there was no
humaneness in this decision. They just didn't want to lose the ship.

      It was a twenty-hour jump, ship's time, and I came through in the middle
of nowhere. The robot analyzer chuckled to itself and scanned all the stars,
comparing them to the spectra of Proxima Centauri. It finally rang a bell and
blinked a light. I peeped through the eyepiece.
      A last reading with the photocell gave me the apparent magnitude and a
comparison with its absolute magnitude showed its distance. Not as bad as I
had thought-a six-week run, give or take a few days. After feeding a course
tape into the robot pilot, I strapped into the acceleration tank and went to
sleep.
      The time went fast. I rebuilt my camera for about the twentieth time and
just about finished a correspondence course in nucleonics. Most repairmen take
these courses. They have a value in themselves, because you never know what
bit of odd information will come in handy. Not only that, the company grades
your pay by the number of specialties you can handle. All this, with some oil
painting and free-fall workouts in the gym, passed the time. I was asleep when
the alarm went off that announced planetary distance.
      Planet two, where the beacon was situated according to the old charts,
was a mushy-looking, wet kind of globe. I worked hard to make sense out of the
ancient directions and finally located the right area. Staying outside the
atmosphere,
      I sent a flying Eye down to look things over. In this business, you
learn early when and where to risk your own skin. The Eye would be good enough
for the preliminary survey.
      The old boys had enough brains to choose a traceable site for the
beacon, equidistant on a line between two of the most prominent mountain
peaks. I located the peaks easily enough and started the Eye out from the
first peak and kept it on a course directly toward the second. There was a
nose and tail radar in the Eye and I fed their signals into a scope as an
amplitude curve. When the two peaks coincided, I spun the Eye controls and
dived the thing down.
      I cut out the radar and cut in the nose orthicon and sat back to watch
the beacon appear on the screen.
      The image blinked, focused - and a great damn pyramid swam into view. I
cursed and wheeled the Eye in circles, scanning the surrounding country. It
was flat, marshy bottom land without a bump. The only thing within a ten-mile
circle was this pyramid - and that definitely wasn't my beacon.
      Or was it?
      I dived the Eye lower. The pyramid was a crude-looking thing of
undressed stone, without carvings or decorations. There was a shimmer of light
from the top and I took a closer look at it. On the peak of the pyramid was a
hollow basin filled with water. When I saw that, something clicked in my mind.
      Locking the Eye in a circular course, I dug through the Mark III plans -
and there it was. The beacon had a precipitating field and a basin on top of
it for water; this was used to cool the reactor that powered the monstrosity.
If the water was still there, the beacon was still there - inside the pyramid.
The natives, who, of course, weren't even mentioned by the idiots who
constructed the thing, had built a nice heavy, thick stone pyramid around the
beacon.
      I took another look at the screen and realized that I had locked the Eye
into a circular orbit about twenty feet above the pyramid. The summit of the
stone pile was now covered with lizards of some type, apparently the local
life-form. They had what looked like throwing sticks and arbalasts and were
trying to shoot down the Eye, a cloud of arrows and rocks flying in every
direction.
      I pulled the Eye straight up and away and threw in the control circuit
that would return it automatically to the ship.
      Then I went to the galley for a long, strong drink. My beacon was not
only locked inside a mountain of handmade stone, but I had managed to irritate
the things who had built the pyramid. A great beginning for a job and one
clearly designed to drive a stronger man than me to the bottle.
      Normally, a repairman stays away from native cultures. They are poison.
Anthropologists may not mind being dissected for their science, but a
repairman wants to make no sacrifices of any kind for his job. For this
reason, most beacons are built on uninhabited planets. If a beacon has to go
on a planet with a culture, it is usually built in some inaccessible place.
      Why this beacon had been built within reach of the local claws, I had
yet to find out. But that would come in time. The first thing to do was to
make contact. To make contact, you have to know the local language.
      And, for that, I had long before worked out a system that was foolproof.
      I had a pryeye of my own construction. It looked like a piece of rock
about a foot long. Once on the ground, it would never be noticed, though it
was a little disconcerting to see it float by. I located a lizard town about a
thousand kilometers from the pyramid and dropped the Eye. It swished down and
landed at night in the bank of the local mud wallow. This was a favorite spot
that drew a good crowd during the day. In the morning, when the first
wallowers arrived, I flipped on the recorder.
      After about five of the local days, I had a sea of native conversation
in the memory bank of the machine translator and had tagged a few expressions.
This is fairly easy to do when you have a machine memory to work with. One of
the lizards gargled at another one and the second one turned around. I tagged
this expression with the phrase, "Hey, George!" and waited my chance to use
it. Later the same day, I caught one of them alone and shouted "Hey, George!"
at him. It gurgled out through the speaker in the local tongue and he turned
around.
      When you get enough reference phrases like this in the memory bank, the
MT brain takes over and starts filling in the missing pieces. As soon as the
MT could give a running translation of any conversation it heard, I figured it
was time to make a contact.
      I found him easily enough. He was the Centuarian version of a goat-boy -
he herded a particularly loathsome form of local life in the swamps outside
the town. I had one of the working Eyes dig a cave in an outcropping of rock
and wait for him.
      When he passed next day, I whispered into the mike:
      "Welcome, O Goat-boy Grandson! This is your grandfather's spirit
speaking from paradise." This fitted in with what I could make out of the
local religion.
      Goat-boy stopped as if he'd been shot. Before he could move, I pushed a
switch and a handful of the local currency, wampun-type shells, rolled out of
the cave and landed at his feet.
      "Here is some money from paradise, because you have been a good boy."
Not really from paradise-I had lifted it from the treasury the night before.
"Come back tomorrow and we will talk some more," I called after the fleeing
figure. I was pleased to notice that he took the cash before taking off.
      After that, Grandpa in paradise had many heart-to-heart talks with
Grandson, who found the heavenly loot more than he could resist. Grandpa had
been out of touch with things since his death and Goat-boy happily filled him
in.
      I learned all I needed to know of the history, past and recent, and it
wasn't nice.
      In addition to the pyramid being around the beacon, there was a nice
little religious war going on around the pyramid.
      It all began with the land bridge. Apparently the local lizards had been
living in the distant swamps when the beacon had been built, but the builders
hadn't thought much of them. They were a low type and confined to a distant
continent. The idea that the race would develop and might reach this continent
never occurred to the beacon mechanics. Which is, of course, what happened.
      A little geological turnover, a swampy land bridge formed in the right
spot, and the lizards began to wander up beacon valley. And found religion. A
shiny metal temple out of which poured a constant stream of magic water-the
reactor-cooling water pumped down from the atmosphere condenser on the roof.
The radioactivity in the water didn't hurt the natives. It caused mutations
that bred true.
      A city was built around the temple and, through the centuries, the
pyramid was put up around the beacon. A special branch of the priesthood
served the temple. All went well until one of the priests violated the temple
and destroyed the holy waters. There had been revolt, strife, murder and
destruction since then. But still the holy waters would not flow. Now armed
mobs fought around the temple each day and a new band of priests guarded the
sacred fount.
      And I had to walk into the middle of that mess and repair the thing.
      It would have been easy enough if we were allowed a little mayhem. I
could have had a lizard fry, fixed the beacon and taken off. Only "native
life-forms" were quite well protected. There were spy cells on my ship, all of
which I hadn't found, that would cheerfully rat on me when I got back.
      Diplomacy was called for. I sighed and dragged out the plasti-flesh
equipment.
      Working from 3D snaps of Grandson, I modeled a pass-sable reptile head
over my own features. It was a little short in the jaw, me not having one of
their toothy mandibles, but that was all right. I didn't have to look exactly
like them, just something close, to soothe the native mind. It's logical. If I
were an ignorant aborigine of Earth and I ran into a Spican, who looks like a
two-foot gob of dried shellac, I would immediately leave the scene. However,
if the Spican was wearing a suit of plastiflesh that looked remotely humanoid,
I would at least stay and talk to him. This was what I was aiming to do with
the Centaurians.
      When the head was done, I peeled it off and attached It to an attractive
suit of green plastic, complete with tail. I was really glad they had tails.
The lizards didn't wear clothes and I wanted to take along a lot of electronic
equipment. I built the tail over a metal frame that anchored around my waist.
Then I filled the frame with all the equipment I would need and began to wire
the suit.
      When it was done, I tried it on in front of a full-length mirror. It was
horrible but effective. The tail dragged me down in the rear and gave me a
duck-waddle, but that only helped the resemblance.
      That night I took the ship down into the hills nearest the pyramid, an
out-of-the-way dry spot where the amphibious natives would never go. A little
before dawn, the Eye hooked onto my shoulders and we sailed straight up. We
hovered above the temple at about 2,000 meters, until it was light, then
dropped down.
      It must have been a grand sight. The Eye was camouflaged to look like a
flying lizard, sort of a cardboard pterodactyl, and the slowly flapping wings
obviously had nothing to do with our flight. But it was impressive enough for
the natives. The first one that spotted me screamed and dropped over on his
back. The others came running. They milled and mobbed and piled on top of one
another, and by the time I had landed in the plaza fronting the temple the
priesthood arrived.
      I folded my arms in a regal stance. "Greetings, O noble servers of the
Great God," I said. Of course I didn't say it out loud, just whispered softly
enough for the throat mike to catch. This was radioed back to the MT and the
translation shot back to a speaker in my jaws.
      The natives chomped and rattled and the translation rolled out almost
instantly. I had the volume turned up and the whole square echoed.
      Some of the more credulous natives prostrated themselves and others fled
screaming. One doubtful type raised a spear, but no one else tried that after
the pterodactyl-eye picked him up and dropped him in the swamp. The priests
were a hard-headed lot and weren't buying any lizards in a poke; they just
stood and muttered. I had to take the offensive again.
      "Begone, O faithful steed," I said to the Eye, and pressed the control
in my palm at the same time.
      It took off straight up a bit faster than I wanted; little pieces of
wind-torn plastic rained down. While the crowd was ogling this ascent, I
walked through the temple doors.
      "I would talk with you, O noble priests," I said.
      Before they could think up a good answer, I was inside.
      The temple was a small one built against the base of the pyramid. I
hoped I wasn't breaking too many taboos by going in, I wasn't stopped, so it
looked all right. The temple was a single room with a murky-looking pool at
one end. Sloshing in the pool was an ancient reptile who clearly was one of
the leaders. I waddled toward him and he gave me a cold and fishy eye, then
growled something.
      The MT whispered into my ear, "Just what in the name of the thirteenth
sin are you and what are you doing here?"
      I drew up my scaly figure in a noble gesture and pointed toward the
ceiling. "I come from your ancestors to help you. I am here to restore the
Holy Waters."
      This raised a buzz of conversation behind me, but got no rise out of the
chief. He sank slowly into the water until only his eyes were showing. I could
almost hear the wheels turning behind that moss-covered forehead. Then he
lunged up and pointed a dripping finger at me.
      "You are a liar! You are no ancestor of ours! We will-"
      "Stop!" I thundered before he got so far in that he couldn't back out.
"I said your ancestors sent me as emissary-I am not one of your ancestors. Do
not try to harm me or the wrath of those who have Passed On will turn against
you."
      When I said this; I turned to jab a claw at the other priests, using the
motion to cover my flicking a coin grenade toward them. It blew a nice hole in
the floor with a great show of noise and smoke.
      The First Lizard knew I was talking sense then and immediately called a
meeting of the shamans. It, of course, took place in the public bathtub and I
had to join them there. We jawed and gurgled for about an hour and settled all
the major points.
      I found out that they were new priests; the previous ones had all been
boiled for letting the Holy Waters cease. I explained that I was there only to
help them restore the flow of the waters. They bought this, tentatively, and
we all heaved out of the tub and trickled muddy paths across the floor. There
was a bolted and guarded door that led into the pyramid proper. While it was
being opened, the First Lizard turned to me.
      "Undoubtedly you know of the rule," he said. "Because the old priests
did pry and peer, it was ordered henceforth that only the blind could enter
the Holy of Holies." I'd swear he was smiling, if thirty teeth peeking out of
what looked like a crack in an old suitcase can be called smiling.
      He was also signaling to him an underpriest who carried a brazier of
charcoal complete with red-hot irons. All I could do was stand and watch as he
stirred up the coals, pulled out the ruddiest iron and turned toward me. He
was just drawing a bead on my right eyeball when my brain got back in gear.
      "Of course," I said, "blinding is only right. But in my case you will
have to blind me before I leave the Holy of Holies, not now. I need my eyes to
see and mend the Fount of Holy Waters. Once the waters flow again, I will
laugh as I hurl myself on the burning iron."
      He took a good thirty seconds to think it over and had to agree with me.
The local torturer sniffled a bit and threw a little more charcoal on the
fire. The gate crashed open and I stalked through; then it banged to behind me
and I was alone in the dark.
      But not for long-there was a shuffling nearby and I took a chance and
turned on my flash. Three priests were groping toward me, their eye-sockets
red pits of burned flesh. They knew what I wanted and led the way without a
word.
      A crumbling and cracked stone stairway brought us up to a solid metal
doorway labeled in archaic script MARK III BEACON - AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
The trusting builders counted on the sign to do the whole job, for there
wasn't a trace of a lock on the door. One lizard merely turned the handle and
we were inside the beacon.
      I unzipped the front of my camouflage suit and pulled out the
blueprints. With the faithful priests stumbling after me. I located the
control room and turned on the lights. There was a residue of charge in the
emergency batteries, just enough to give a dim light. The meters and
indicators looked to be in good shape; if anything, unexpectedly bright from
constant polishing.
      I checked the readings carefully and found just what I had suspected.
One of the eager lizards had managed to open a circuit box and had polished
the switches inside. While doing this, he had thrown one of the switches and
that had caused the trouble.
      Rather, that had started the trouble. It wasn't going to be ended by
just reversing the water-valve switch. This valve was supposed to be used only
for repairs, after the pile had been damped. When the water was cut off with
the pile in operation, it had started to overhead and the automatic safeties
had dumped the charge down the pit.
      I could start the water again easily enough, but there was no fuel left
in the reactor.
      I wasn't going to play with the fuel problem at all. It would be far
easier to install a new power plant. I had one in the ship that was about a
tenth the size of the ancient bucket of bolts and produced at least four times
the power. Before I sent for it, I checked over the rest of the beacon. In
2000 years, there should be some sign of wear.
      The old boys had built well, I'll give them credit for that. Ninety per
cent of the machinery had no moving parts and had suffered no wear whatever.
Other parts they had beefed up, figuring they would wear, but slowly. The
water-feed pipe from the roof, for example. The pipe walls were at least three
meters thick-and the pipe opening itself no bigger than my head. There were
some things I could do, though, and I made a list of parts.
      The parts, the new power plant and a few other odds and ends were chuted
into a neat pile on the ship. I checked all the parts by screen before they
were loaded in a metal crate. In the darkest hour before dawn, the heavy-duty
Eye dropped the crate outside the temple and darted away without being seen.
      I watched the priests through the pryeye while they tried to open it.
When they had given up, I boomed orders at them through a speaker in the
crate. They spent most of the day sweating the heavy box up through the narrow
temple stairs and I enjoyed a good sleep. It was resting inside the beacon
door when I woke up.
      The repairs didn't take long, though there was plenty of groaning from
the blind lizards when they heard me ripping the wall open to get at the power
leads. I even hooked a gadget to the water pipe so their Holy Waters would
have the usual refreshing radioactivity when they started flowing again. The
moment this was all finished, I did the job they were waiting for.
      I threw the switch that started the water flowing again.
      There were a few minutes while the water began to gurgle down through
the dry pipe. Then a roar came from outside the pyramid that must have shaken
its stone walls. Shaking my hands once over my head, I went down for the eye-
burning ceremony.
      The blind lizards were waiting for me by the door and looked even
unhappier than usual. When I tried the door, I found out why-it was bolted and
barred from the other side.
      "It has been decided," a lizard said, "that you shall remain here
forever and tend the Holy Waters. We will stay with you and serve your every
need."
      A delightful prospect, eternity spent in a locked beacon with three
blind lizards. In spite of their hospitality, I couldn't accept.
      "What-you dare interfere with the messenger of your ancestors!" I had
the speaker on full volume and the vibration almost shook my head off.
      The lizards cringed and I set my Solar for a narrow beam and ran it
around the door jamb. There was a great crunching and banging from the junk
piled against it, and then the door swung free. I threw it open. Before they
could protest, I had pushed the priests out through it.
      The rest of their clan showed up at the foot of the stairs and made a
great ruckus while I finished welding the door shut. Running through the
crowd, I faced up to the First Lizard in his tub. He sank slowly beneath the
surface.
      "What lack of courtesy!" I shouted. He made little bubbles in the water.
"The ancestors are annoyed and have decided to forbid entrance to the Inner
Temple forever; though, out of kindness, they will let the waters flow. Now I
must return-on with the ceremony!"
      The torture-master was too frightened to move, so I grabbed out his hot
iron. A touch on the side of my face dropped a steel plate over my eyes, under
the plastiskin. Then I jammed the iron hard into my phony eye-sockets and the
plastic gave off an authentic odor.
      A cry went up from the crowd as I dropped the iron and staggered in
blind circles. I must admit it went off pretty well.
      Before they could get any more bright ideas, I threw the switch and my
plastic pterodactyl sailed in through the door. I couldn't see it, of course,
but I knew it had arrived when the grapples in the claws latched onto the
steel plates on my shoulders.
      I had got turned around after the eye-burning and my flying beast hooked
onto me backward. I had meant to sail out bravely, blind eyes facing into the
sunset; instead, I faced the crowd as I soared away, so I made the most of a
bad situation and threw them a snappy military salute. Then I was out in the
fresh air and away.
      When I lifted the plate and poked holes in the seared plastic, I could
see the pyramid growing smaller behind me, water gushing out of the base and a
happy crowd of reptiles sporting in its radioactive rush. I counted off on my
talons to see if I bad forgotten anything.
      One: The beacon was repaired.
      Two: The door was sealed, so there should be no more sabotage,
accidental or deliberate.
      Three: The priests should be satisfied. The water was running again, my
eyes had been duly burned out, and they were back in business. Which added up
to-
      Four: The fact that they would probably let another man in, under the
same conditions, if the beacon conked out again. At least I had done nothing,
like butchering a few of them, that would make them antagonistic toward future
ancestral messengers.
      I stripped off my tattered lizard suit back in the ship, very glad that
it would be some other repairman who'd get the job.
Man may some day outgrow his interest In war, but don't hold your breath. The
combative urge was such a strong factor in scaling the evolutionary ladder
that it cannot be easily put aside; and while the idea of war may terrify us
and disgust us, the prehistoric bodies we wear still react enthusiastically
when the drums roil and the cannons rumble by. As witness our present
situation-we watch with fascinated interest as all sorts of ingenious and
dedicated people work up the weapons that can, if That Button ever gets
pushed, wipe us all from this planet.
Should this not happen, man will very likely cheerfully export his wars to the
rest of the galaxy. If the alien races encountered are not warlike enough to
fight back .
too bad for them. And if there aren't enough aliens around to fight, man will
just have to fight his oldest enemy. Himself. Of course, his companions, the
robots, will fight as well. And it's all too clear that in some ways a robot
would be a perfect soldier-less destructible, more efficient at destruction...
and, of course, you can build in the killer-instinct...

SURVIVAL PLANET

"BUT THIS WAR WAS FINISHED years before I was born! How can one robot torpedo
- fired that long ago - still be of any interest?"
      Dall the Younger was overly persistent - it was extremely lucky for him
that Ship-Commander Lian Stane, both by temperament and experience, had a
tremendous reserve of patience.
      "It has been fifty years since the Greater Slavocracy was defeated - but
that doesn't mean eliminated," Commander Stane said. He looked through the
viewport of the ship, seeing ghostlike against the stars the pattern of the
empire they had fought so long to destroy. "The Slavocracy expanded unchecked
for over a thousand years. Its military defeat didn't finish it, just made the
separate worlds accessible to us. We are still in the middle of that
reconstruction, guiding them away from a slave economy.
      "That I know all about," Dall the Younger broke in with a weary sigh.
"I've been working on the planets since I came into the force. But what has
that got to do with the Mosaic torpedo that we're tracking? There must have
been a billion of them made and fired during the war. How can a single one be
of interest this much later?"
      "If you had read the tech reports," Stane said, pointing to the thumb-
thick folder on the chart table, "you would know all about it." This advice
was the closest the Commander had ever come to censure. Dall the Younger had
the good grace to flush slightly and listen with applied attention.
      "The Mosaic torpedo is a weapon of space war, in reality a robot-
controlled spaceship. Once directed it seeks out its target, defends itself if
necessary, then destroys itself and the ship it has been launched against by
starting the uncontrollable cycle of binding-energy breakdown."
      I never realized that they were robot-operated," Dall said. "I thought
robots had an ingrained resistance to killing people?"
      "In-built rather than ingrained would be more accurate," Stane said
judiciously. "Robotic brains are just highly developed machines with no
inherent moral sense. That is added afterwards. It has been a long time since
we built man-shaped robots with human-type brains. This is the age of the
specialist, and robots can specialize far better than men ever could. The
Mosaic torpedo brains have no moral sense - if anything they are psychotic,
overwhelmed by a death wish. Though there are, of course, controls on how much
they can kill. All the torpedoes ever used by either side had mass detectors
to defuse them when they approached any object with planetary mass, since the
reaction started by a torpedo could just as easily destroy a world as a ship.
You can understand our interest when in the last months of the war, we picked
up a torpedo fused only to detonate a planet. All the data from its brain was
filed and recently interpreted. The torpedo was aimed at the fourth planet of
the star we are approaching now."
      "Anything on the record about this planet?" Dall asked. "Nothing. It is
an unexplored system-at least as far as our records are concerned. But the
Greater Slavocracy knew enough about this planet to want to destroy it. We are
here to find out why."
      Dall the Younger furrowed his brow, chewing at the idea. "Is that the
only reason?" he finally asked. "Since we stopped them from wiping out this
planet, that would be the end of it, I should think."
      "It's thinking like that that shows why you are the low-ranker on this
ship," Gunner Arnild snapped as he came in. Arnild had managed to grow old in
a very short-lived service, losing in the process, his patience for everything
except his computers and guns. "Shall I suggest some of the possibilities that
have occurred even to me? Firstly - any enemy of the Slavocracy could be a
friend of ours. Or conversely, there may be an enemy here that threatens the
entire human race, and we may need to set off a Mosaic ourselves to finish the
job the Slavers started. Then again, the Slavers may have had something here -
like a research center - that they would rather have destroyed than let us
see. Wouldn't you say that any one of these would make the planet worth
investigating?"
      "We shall be in the atmosphere within twenty hours," Dall said as he
vanished through the lower hatch. "I have to check the lubrication on the
drive gears.
      "You're too easy on the kid," Gunner Arnild said, staring moodily at the
approaching star, already dimmed by the forward filters.
      "And you're too hard," Stane told him. "So I guess it evens out. You
forget he never fought the Slavers."
      Skimming the outer edges of the atmosphese of the fourth planet, the
scout ship hurled itself through the measured length of a helical orbit,, then
fled back into the safety of space while the ship's robot brain digested and
made copies of the camera and detector instrument recordings. The duplicates
were stored in a message torp, and only when the torp had started hack to base
did Commander Stane bother personally to examine the results of their survey.
      "We're dispensable now," he said, relaxing. "So the best thing we can do
is to drop down and see what we can stir up." Arnild grunted agreement, his
index fingers unconciously pressing invisible triggers. They leaned over the
graphs and photographs spread out on the table. Dall peered between their
shoulders and flipped through the photographs they tossed aside. He was first
to speak.
      "Nothing much there, really. Plenty of water, a big island continent -
and not much else."
      "Nothing else is detectable," Stane added, ticking off the graphs one by
one. "No detectable radiation, no large masses of metal either above or below
ground, no stored energy. No reason for us to be here."
      "But we are," Arnild growled testily. "So let's touch down and find out
more first hand. Here's a good spot," he tapped a photograph, then pushed it
into the enlarger. "Could be a primitive hut city, people walking around,
smoke."
      "Those could be sheep in the fields," Dall broke in eagerly. "And boats
pulled up on the shore. We'll find out something there."
      "I'm sure we will," Commander Stane said. "Strap in for landing."
      Lightly and soundlessly the ship fell out of the sky, curving in a
gentle arc that terminated at the edge of a grove of tall trees, on a hill
above the city. The motors whined to a stop and the ship was silent.
       "Report positive on the atmosphere," Dall said, checking off the
analyzer dials.
      "Stay at the guns, Arnild," Commander Stane said. "Keep us covered, but
don't shoot unless I tell you to."
      "Or unless you're dead," Arnild said with complete lack of emotion.
      "Or unless I'm dead," Stane answered him, in the same toneless voice.
"In which case you will assume command."
      He and Dall buckled on planet kits, cycled through the lock and sealed
it behind them. The air was soft and pleasantly warm, filled with the
freshness of growing plants.
      "Really smells good after that canned stuff," Dall said. "You have a
great capacity for stating the obvious." Arnild's voice rasped even more than
usual when heard through the bone conductor phones. "Can you see what's going
on in the village?"
      Dall fumbled his binoculars out. Commander Stane had been using his
since they left the ship. "Nothing moving," Stane said. "Send an Eye down
there."
      The Eye whooshed away from the ship and they could follow its slow swing
through the village below. There were about a hundred huts, simple pole-and-
thatch affairs, and the Eye carefully investigated every one.
      "No one there," Arnild said, as he watched the monitor screen. "The
animals are gone too, the ones from the aerial pic."
      "The people can't have vanished," Dall said. "There are empty fields in
every direction, completely without cover. And I can see smoke from their
fires."
      "The smoke's there, the people aren't," Arnild said testily. "Walk down
and look for yourself."
      The Eye lifted up from the village and drifted back towards the ship. It
swung around the trees and came to a sudden stop in mid-air.
      "Hold it!" Arnild's voice snapped in their ears. "The huts are empty.
But there's someone m the tree you're standing next to. About ten metres over
your heads!"
      Both men controlled a natural reaction to look up. They moved out a bit,
where they would be safe from anything dropped from above.
      "Far enough," Arnild said. "I'm shifting the Eye for a better look."
They could hear the faint drone of the Eye's motors as it changed position.
      "It's a girl. Wearing some kind of fur outfit. No weapons that I can
see, but some kind of a pouch hanging from her waist. She's just clutching
onto the tree with her eyes closed. Looks like she's afraid of falling."
      The men on the ground could see her dimly now, a huddled shape against
the straight trunk.
      "Don't bring the Eye any closer," Commander Stane said.
      "But turn the speaker on. Hook my phone into the circuit."
      "You're plugged in."
      "We are friends... Come down... We will not hurt you." The words boomed
down from the floating speaker above their heads.
      "She heard it, but maybe she can't understand Esperanto," Arnild said.
"She just hugged the tree harder while you were talking."
      Commander Stane had had a good command of Slaver during the war, he
groped in his memory for the words, doing a quick translation. He repeated the
same phrase, only this time in the tongue of their defeated enemies.
      "That did something, Commander," Arnild reported. "She jumped so hard
she almost fell off. Then scooted up a couple of branches higher before she
grabbed on again."
      "Let me get her down, sir," Dall asked. "I'll take some rope and climb
up after her. It's the only way. Like getting a cat out of a tree."
      Stane pushed the thought around. "It looks like the best answer," he
finally said. "Get the light-weight 200-metre line and the climbing irons out
of the ship. Don't take too long, it'll be getting dark soon."
      The irons chunked into the wood and Dall climbed carefully up to the
lower limbs. Above him the girl stirred and he had a quick glimpse of the
white patch of her face as she looked down at him. He started climbing again
until Arnild's voice snapped at him.
      "Hold it! She's climbing higher. Staying above you."
      "What'll I do, Commander?" Dall asked, settling himself in the fork of
one of the big branches. He felt exhilarated by the climb, his skin tingling
slightly with sweat. He mapped open his collar and breathed deeply.
      "Keep going. She can't climb any higher than the top of the tree."
      The climbing was easier now, the branches smaller and closer together.
He went slowly so as not to frighten the girl into a misstep. The ground was
out of sight, far below. They were alone in their own world of leaves and
swaying boughs, the silver tube of the hovering Eye the only reminder of the
watchers from the ship. Dall stopped to tie a loop in the end of the rope,
doing it carefully so the knot would hold. For the first time since they had
started on this mission he felt as if he was doing a full part. The two old
warhorses weren't bad shipmates, but they oppressed him with the years of
their experience. But this was something he could do best and he whistled
softly through his teeth with the thought.
      It would have been possible for the girl to have climbed higher, the
branches could have held her weight. But for some reason she had retreated out
along a branch. Another, close to it, made a perfect handhold, and he shuffled
slowly after her.
      "No reason to be afraid," he said cheerfully, and smiled. "Just want to
get you down safely and back to your friends. Why don't you grab onto this
rope?"
      The girl just shuddered and backed away. She was young and good to look
at, dressed only in a short, fur kilt. Her hair was long, but had been combed
and caught back of her head with a thong. The only thing that appeared alien
about her was her fear. As he came closer he could see she was drenched with
it. Her legs and arms shook with a steady vibration. Her teeth were clamped
into her whitened lips and a thin trickle of blood reached to her chin. He
hadn't thought it possible that human eyes could have stared so widely, or
have been so filled with desperation.
      "You don't have to be afraid," he repeated, stopping just out of reach.
The branch was thin and springy. If he tried to grab her they might both be
bounced off it. He didn't want any accidents to happen now. Slowly puffing the
rope from the coil, Dall tied it about his waist, then made a loop around the
next branch. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the girl stir and look around
wildly.
      "Friends!" he said, trying to calm her. He translated it into Slaver,
she had seemed to understand that before. "Noi'r venn!"
      Her mouth opened wide and her legs contracted. The scream was terrible
and more like a tortured animal's cry than a human voice. It confused him and
he made a desperate grab. It was too late.
      She didn't fall. With all her strength she hurled herself from the limb,
jumping towards the certain death she preferred to his touch. For a heartbeat
she seemed to hang, contorted and fear-crazed, at the apex of her leap, before
gravity clutched hold and pulled her crashing down through the leaves. Then
Dall was falling too, grabbing for nonexistent handholds.
      The safety line he had tried held fast. In a half-daze he worked his way
back to the trunk and fumbled loose the knots. With quivering precision he
made his way hack to the ground. It took a long time and a blanket was drawn
over the deformed thing in the grass before he reached it. He didn't have to
ask if she was dead.
      "I tried to stop her. I did my best." There was a slight touch of
shrillness to Dall's voice.
      "Of course, Commander Stane told him, as he spread out the contents of
the girl's waist pouch. "We were watching with the Eye. There was no way to
stop her when she decided to jump."
      "No need to talk Slaver to her either -" Arnild said, coming out of the
ship. He was going to add something, but he caught Commander Stane's direct
look and shut his mouth. Dali saw it too.
      "I forgot!" the young man said, looking back and forth at their
expressionless faces. "I just remembered she had understood Slaver. I didn't
think it would frighten her. It was a mistake maybe, but anyone can make a
mistake! I didn't want her to die..."
      He clamped his trembling jaws shut with an effort, and turned away.
      "You better get some food started," Commander Stane told him. As soon as
the port had closed he pointed to the girl's body. "Bury her under the trees.
I'll help you.
      It was a brief meal, none of them were very hungry. Stane sat at the
chart table afterward pushing the hard green fruit around with his forefinger.
"This is what she was doing in the tree - why she couldn't pull the vanishing
act like the others. Picking fruit. She had nothing else in the pouch. Our
landing next to the tree and trapping her was pure accident." He glanced at
Dall's face, then turned quickly away
      "It's too dark to see now, do we wait for morning?" Arnild asked. He had
a hand gun disassembled on the table, adjusting and oiling the parts.
      Commander Stane nodded. "It can't do any harm - and it's better than
stumbling around in the dark. Leave an Eye with an infra-red projector and
filter over the village and make a recording. Maybe we can find out where they
all went."
      "I'll stay at the Eye controls," Dall said suddenly. "I'm not... sleepy.
I might find something out."
      The Commander hesitated for a moment, then agreed. "Wake me if you see
anything. Otherwise, get us up at dawn."
      The night was quiet and nothing moved in the silent village of huts. At
first light Commander Stane and Dall walked down the hill, an Eye floating
ahead to cover them. Arnild stayed behind in the locked ship, at the controls.
      "Over this way, sir," Dall said. "Something I found during the night
when I was making sweeps with the Eye."
      The pit edges had been softened and rounded by the weather, large trees
grew on the slopes. At the bottom, projecting from a pool of water, were the
remains of rusted machinery.
      "I think they're excavation machines," Dall said. "Though it's hard to
tell, they've been down there so long."
      The Eye dropped down to the bottom of the pit and nosed close to the
wreckage. It sank below the water and emerged after a minute, trailing a wet
stream.
      "Digging machines, all right," Arnild reported. "Some of them turned
over and half buried, like they fell in the hole. And all of them Slaver
built."
      Commander Stane looked up intently. "Are you sure?" he asked.
      "Sure as I can read a label."
      "Let's get on to the village," the Commander said, chewing thoughtfully
at the inside of his cheek.
      Dali the Younger discovered where the villagers had gone. It was really
no secret, they found out in the first hut they entered. The floor was made of
pounded dirt, with a circle of rocks for a fireplace. All the other contents
were of the simplest and crudest. Heavy, unfired clay pots, untanned furs,
some eating utensils chipped out of hard wood. Dall was poking through a heap
of woven mats behind the fireplace when he found the hole.
      "Over here, sir!" he called.
      The opening was almost a metre in diameter and sank into the ground at
an easy angle. The floor of the tunnel was beaten as hard as the floor of the
hut.
       "They must be hiding out in there," Commander Stane said. "Flash a
light down and see how deep it is."
      There was no way to tell. The hole was really a smooth walled tunnel
that turned at a sharp angle five metres inside the entrance. The Eye swooped
down and hung, humming, above the opening.
      "I took a look in some of the other huts," Arnild said from the ship.
"The Eye found a hole like this in every one of them. Want me to take a look
inside?"
      "Yes, but take it slowly," Commander Stane told him. "If there are
people hiding down there we don't want to frighten them more. Drift down and
pull back if you find anything."
      The humming died as the Eye floated down the tunnel and out of sight.
      "Joined another tunnel," Arnild reported. "And now an-other junction.
Getting confused...don't know if I can get it back the way I sent it in."
      "The Eye is expendable," the Commander told him. "Keep going."
      "Must be dense rock around... signal is getting weaker and I have a job
holding control. A bigger cavern of some sort... wait! There's someone! Caught
a look at a man going into one of the side tunnels."
      "Follow him," Stane said.
      "Not easy," Arnild said after a moment's silence. "Looks like a dead
end. A rock of some kind blocking the tunnel. He must have rolled it back and
blocked the passage after he went by. I'll back out... Blast!"
      "What's wrong?"
      "Another rock behind the Eye - they've got it trapped in that hunk of
tunnel. Now the screen's dead, and all I can get is an out-of-operation
signal!" Arnild sounded exasperated and angry.
      "Very neat," Commander Stane said. "They lured it in, trapped it - then
probably collapsed the roof of the tunnel. These people are very suspicious of
strangers and seem to have a certain efficiency at getting rid of them."
      "But why?" Dall asked, frankly puzzled, looking around at the crude
construction of the hut. "What do these people have that the Slavers could
have wanted so badly? It's obvious that the Slavers put a lot of time and
effort into trying to dig down there. Did they ever find what they were
looking for? Did they try to destroy this planet because they had found it -
or hadn't found it?"
      "I wish I knew," Commander Stane said glumly. "It would make my job a
lot easier. We'll get a complete report off to HQ - maybe they have some
ideas."
      On the way back to the ship they noticed the fresh dirt in the grove of
trees. There was a raw empty hole where the girl had been buried. The ground
had been torn apart and hurled in every direction. There were slash marks on
the trunks of the trees, made by sharp blades... or giant claws. Something or
somebody had come for the girl, dug up her body and vented a burning rage on
the ground and the trees. A crushed trail led to an opening between the roofs
of one of the trees. It slanted back and down, its dark mouth as enigmatic and
mysterious as the other tunnels.
      Before they retired that night, Commander Stane made a double check that
the ports were locked and all the alarm circuits activated. He went to bed but
didn't sleep. The answer to the problem seemed tantalizingly obvious, hovering
just outside his reach. There seemed to be enough facts here to draw a
conclusion from. But what? He drifted into a fitful doze without finding the
answer.
      When he awoke the cabin was still dark, and he had the feeling something
was terribly wrong. What had awakened him? He groped in his sleep-filled
memories. A sigh. A rush of air. It could have been the cycling of the air
lock. Fighting down the sudden fear he snapped on the lights and pulled his
gun from the bedside rack. Arnild appeared, yawning and blinking in the
doorway.
      "What's going on?" he asked.
      "Get Dall - I think someone came into the ship."
      "Gone out is more like it," Arnild snuffed. "Dall's not in his bunk."
      "What!"
      He ran to the control room. The alarm circuit had been turned off. There
was a piece of paper on the control console. The Commander grabbed it up and
read the single word written on it. He gaped as comprehension struck him, then
crushed the paper in his convulsive fist.
      "The fool!" he shouted. "The damned young fool! Break out an Eye. No,
two! I'll work the duplicate controls!"
      "But what's happened?" Arnild gaped. "What's young Dall done?"
      "Gone underground. Into the tunnels. We have to stop him!"
      Dall was nowhere in sight, but the lip of the tunnel under the trees was
freshly crumbled.
      "I'll take an Eye down there," Commander Stane said. "You take another
one down the next nearest entrance. Use the speakers. Tell them that we are
friends, in Slaver."
      "But - you saw what reaction the girl had when Dall told her that."
Arnild was puzzled, confused.
      "I know what happened," Stane snapped. "But what other choice do we
have? Now get on with it!"
      Arnild started to ask another question, but the huddled intensity of the
Commander at the controls changed his mind. He sent his own Eye rocketing
towards the village.
      If the people hiding in the maze of tunnels heard the message, they
certainly didn't believe it. One Eye was trapped m a dead-end tunnel when the
opening behind it suddenly filled with soft dirt. Commander Stane tried nosing
the machine through the dirt, but it was firmly trapped and held. He could
hear thumpings and digging as more dirt was piled on top.
      Arnild's Eye found a large underground chamber, filled with huddled and
frightened sheep. There were none of the natives there. On the way out of this
cavern the Eye was trapped under a fall of rocks.
      In the end, Commander Stane admitted defeat. "It's up to them now, we
can't change the end one way or another."
      "Something moving in the grove of trees, Commander," Arnild said
sharply. "Caught it on the detector, but it's gone now."
      They went out hesitantly with their guns pointed, under a reddened dawn
sky. They went, half-knowing what they would find, but fearful to admit it
aloud while they could still hope.
      Of course there was no hope. Dall the Younger's body lay near the tunnel
mouth, out of which it had been pushed. The red dawn glinted from red blood.
He had died terribly.
      "They're fiends! Animals!" Arnild shouted. "To do that to a man who only
wanted to help them. Broke his arms and legs, scratched away most of his skin.
His face-nothing left.. "The aging gunner choked out a sound that was half
gasp, half sob. "They ought to be bombed out, blown up! Like the Slavers
started..." He met the Commander's burning stare and fell silent.
      "That's probably just how the Slavers felt," Stane said. "Don't you
understand what happened here?"
      Arnild shook his head dumbly.
      "Dall had a glimpse of the truth. Only he thought it was possible to
change things. But at least he knew what the danger was. He went because he
felt guilty for the girl's death. That was why he left the note with the word
slaves on it, in case he didn't come back."
      "It's really quite simple," he said wearily, leaning back against a
tree. "Only we were looking for something more complex and technical. When it
wasn't really a physical problem, but a social one we were facing. This was a
Slaver planet, set up and organized by the Slavers to fit their special
needs."
      "What?" Arnild asked, still confused.
      "Slaves. They were constantly expanding, and you know that their style
of warfare was expensive on manpower. They needed steady sources of supply and
must have created them. This planet was one answer. Made to order in a way. A
single, lightly forested continent, with few places for the people to hide
when the slave ships came. They planted a nucleus, gave the people simple and
sufficient sources of food, but absolutely no technology. Then they went away
to let them breed. Every few years they would come back, take as many slaves
as they needed, and leave the others to replenish the stock. Only they
reckoned without one thing."
      Arnild's numbness was wearing off. He understood now.
      "The adaptability of mankind," he said.
      "Of course. The ability - given enough time-to adapt to almost any
extreme of environment. This is a perfect example. A cut-off population with
no history, no written language-just the desire to survive. Every few years
unspeakable creatures drop out of the sky and steal their children. They try
running away, but there is no place to run. They build boats, but there is no
place to sail to. Nothing works..."
      "Until one bright boy digs a hole, covers it up and hides his family in
it. And finds out it works."
      "The beginning," Commander Stane nodded. "The idea spreads, the tunnels
get deeper and more elaborate when the Slavers try to dig them out. Until the
slaves finally win."
      This was probably the first planet to rebel successfully against the
Greater Slavocracy. They couldn't be dug out. Poison gas would just kill them
and they had no value dead. Machines sent after them were trapped like our
Eyes. And men who were foolish enough to go down..." He couldn't finish the
sentence, Dall's body was stronger evidence than words could ever be.
      "But the hatred?" Arnild asked. "The way the girl killed herself rather
than be taken."
      "The tunnels became a religion," Stane told him. "They had to be, to be
kept in operation and repair during the long gap of years between visits by
the Slavers. The children had to be taught that the demons come from the skies
and salvation lies below. The opposite of the old Earth religions. Hatred and
fear were implanted so everyone, no matter how young, would know what to do if
a ship appeared. There must be entrances everywhere. Seconds after a ship is
sighted the population can vanish underground. They knew we were Slavers since
only demons come from the sky."
      "Dall must have guessed part of this. Only he thought he could reason
with them, explain that the Slavers were gone and that they didn't have to
hide any more. That good men come from the skies. But that's heresy, and by
itself would be enough to get him killed. If they ever bothered to listen."
      They were gentle when they carried Dall the Younger back to his ship.
      "It'll be a job trying to convince these people of the truth." They
paused for a moment to rest. "I still don't understand though, why the Slavers
wanted to blow the planet up.
      "There too, we were looking for too complex a motive," Commander Stane
said. "Why does a conquering army blow up buildings and destroy monuments when
it is forced to retreat? Just frustration and anger, old human emotions. If I
can't have it, you can't either. This planet must have annoyed the Slavers for
years. A successful rebellion that they couldn't put down. They kept trying to
capture the rebels since they were incapable of admitting defeat at the hands
of slaves. When they knew their war was lost, destruction of this planet was a
happy vent for their emotions. I noticed you feeling the same way yourself
when you saw Dall's body. It's a human reaction."
      They were both old soldiers, so they didn't show their emotions too much
when they put Dall's corpse into the special chamber and readied the ship for
takeoff.
      But they were old men as well, much older since they had come to this
planet, and they moved now with old men's stiffness.




There aren't many really talented Inventors or perfectionists in the human
population, but it doesn't take many to keep things humming right along. The
Wright brothers made the first powered flight in 1903, and less than forty-
five years later airplanes were in production with a wingspan greater than the
total distance of this first flight, not to mention the size of the plane.
Homo sapiens is a born improver. Everything keeps getting bigger and bigger
and better and better.
This applies to war too. Space wars only give an illusion of being bigger and
better than other wars, no doubt due to the gigantic size of the field of
action. But they can be frustrating because so few people can be involved and
blown up at the same time. Sooner or later, in spite of all the forces of
enlightenment, war will return to battered old Mother Earth. Different groups
will find important things to differ about, and very logically, differences of
opinion will be settled in the tried and true manner-by combat.
Of course the robots will help since by this time, after so much training,
they will be getting very good at the game themselves. This robot
participation will take away a great amount of the pleasure gained from hand-
to-hand combat, but a perfecting trend cannot be stopped. As long as one side
gets a little bit ahead, the other side has to rush to catch up.
Until in the end we will have global warfare of a truly majestic sort, where
the entire surface of the planet, the air and the seas will be a single
gigantic batt1eground...


WAR WITH THE ROBOTS

ONLY THE SLIGHTEST VIBRATION could be felt through the floor of the hurtling
monorail car. There was no sensation of motion since the rushing tunnel walls
could not be seen though the windowless sides. The riders, all of them in
neatly pressed uniforms with buttons and decorations shining, swayed slightly
in their seats on the turns, wrapped in their own thoughts and mumbled
conversations. Above them, thousands of feet of solid rock sealed them off
from the war. At an effortless one-hundred and fifty miles an hour the car
rushed General Pere and his staff to their battle stations.
      When the alarm screamed the driver clamped the brakes full on and
reversed his motors. There was not enough time. At full speed the metal bullet
tore into the barrier of rocks and dirt that blocked the tunnel. Steel plates
crushed and crumpled as the car slammed to a halt. All the lights went out;
and in the empty silence that followed the ear-shattering clamor of the crash
only a faint moaning could be heard.
      General Pere pushed himself up from the chair, shaking his head in an
effort to clear it, and snapped on his flash. The beam nervously danced the
length of the car, gleaming on settling dust motes and lighting up the
frightened white faces of his staff.
      "Casualty report, verbal," he told his adjutant, his voice pitched low
so that no quaver might be heard. It is not easy to be a general when you are
only nineteen years old. Pere forced himself to stand still while the metal
back of the adjutant robot moved swiftly up the aisle.
      The seats were well anchored and faced to the rear, so it was hopeful
that there would not be too many casualties. Behind the backs of the last
chairs was a rubble of dirt that had burst in through the destroyed nose. The
driver was undoubtedly dead under it, which was all for the best. It saved the
trouble of a court-martial.
       "One killed, one missing in action, one wounded, total active strength
of unit now seventeen." The adjutant dropped the salute and stood at
attention, waiting further orders. General Pere nervously chewed his lip.
      Missing-in-action meant the driver. Presumed dead, damn well dead. The
"one killed" was the new captain from Interceptor Control, who had had the bad
luck to be leaning out of his chair at the time of the accident. His neck had
been cracked on the edge of the chair and his head now hung down at a
sickening angle. The moaning must be the wounded man, he had better check on
that first. He stamped down the aisle and shined his light on the sallow,
sweatbeaded face of Colonel Zen.
      "My arm, sir," the Colonel gasped. "I was reaching out when we crashed,
my arm whipped back and hit the metal edge. Broken I think. The pain..."
      "That's enough, Colonel," Pere said. A little too loudly, because the
man's fear was beginning to touch him too. There were footsteps in the aisle
and his second-in-command, General Natia, joined him.
      "You've had the standard first aid course, General," Pere said. 'Bandage
this man and then report to me."
      "Yes, sir," General Natia said, her voice echoing that same note of
fear.
      Damn all, Pere thought, she should know that's no way for a general to
act. We can't let the troops know we're afraid-even if we are. He made no
allowance for the fact that General Natia was a woman, and just eighteen.
      Once his staff had been attended to he turned his mind to the problems
at hand. Some of the tension eased as he sorted out all the factors. Problem
solving was his speciality, and he had been selected for it before birth. Gene
analysis had chosen the best DNA chain from his parents' sperm-and-ovum bank.
This, and subsequent training, had fitted him perfectly for command. With the
instantaneous reflexes of youth, he was a formidable opponent on the
battlefield and looked forward to a successful career of at least four or five
years before retirement.
      For a man who would soon be directing a global conflict this problem was
childishly simple.
      "Communications?" he snapped, and pointed his finger at the Signal Corps
Major. There was an automatic authority in his voice now, in marked contrast
to his boyish crewcut and freckles.
      "None, sir," the officer said, saluting. "Whatever blocked the tunnel
knocked out the land lines as well. I've tried with the field phone but the
wires are dead."
      "Does anyone know how far we are from HQ?" he asked, raising his voice
so that all the officers in the car could hear him.
      "I'll have it... in a second, sir," one of them said, a grey haired
colonel from Computor Corps. He was moving the scale on his pocket slide rule,
blinking intently in the light of his flash. "Don't know how long this tunnel
is - or the exact location of HQ. But I have made the run before, and the
total elapsed time is usually a few minutes over three hours. Figuring the
time to the accident, our speed, allowing for deceleration   His voice trailed
off into a mumble and Pere waited impatiently, but unmoving. He needed this
information before he could make his next move.
      "Between forty and sixty miles to HQ, sir. And those are the outside
figures, I'd say it's very close to fifty..."
      "That's good enough. I want two volunteers, you and you. Get up in the
nose there and see if you can't dig a hole through that rubble. We're going to
try to get through and continue on foot. We'll be needed at HQ if the Enemy is
able to hit this close."
      This last was added for the sake of his staff's moral; the training
courses had recommended the human touch whenever possible. Particularly in
unusual situations. And this was an unusual, though not very promising way for
his first command to begin. He scowled unhappily into the darkness. It took an
effort to keep his feelings from his voice as he issued orders to assemble the
food stores and water. When this was done he sent his adjutant to relive the
two men who were digging into the dirt barricade. One robot was worth ten men
- not to say two - at this kind of labor.
      It took almost twelve hours to penetrate the barrier, and they were all
completely exhausted before it was through. The adjutant did all the digging,
and they rotated shifts in carrying away the rubble that he cleared. There had
been some minor falls of dirt and rock that in their haste they ignored, until
a major fall at the work face had completely buried the robot. They dug until
they reached its feet and Pere had lengths of the now useless tunnel signal
wire tied around the robot's ankles. It wasn't until they had added loops of
wire so that they could all pull together that the adjutant had been dragged
from his near grave. After that work slowed, since they had to unbolt the
chairs from the car and use them to shore up the roof. All things considered,
twelve hours was good time for penetration of the barrier.
      Once they were through General Pere allowed them a half-hour break. They
sipped at their water bottles and collapsed wearily on both sides of the
central track. Pride and position would not allow Pere to rest; he paced ahead
to see if the tunnel was clear, his adjutant beside him.
      "How many hours left in your battery?" Pere asked. "At maximum output."
      "Over three hundred."
      "Then start running. If you come to any other falls begin clearing them
away and we'll catch up with you. If you get through without any trouble have
them send a car for us. It will save some time."
      The robot saluted and was gone, his running steps thudding away in the
distance. Pere looked at the glowing dial of his watch and announced the end
of the break.
      Walking, with the single light twinkling ahead, soon took on a dream-
like quality that numbed their responses. They went on this way, with short
breaks every hour, for almost eight hours. When they began to drop out, asleep
on their feet, Pere reluctantly ordered a stop. He forced them to eat first,
then allowed them only four hours' sleep before he forcefully shook them to
their feet. The march continued - at a far slower pace now - and another five
hours of constant darkness passed before they saw the light of the car ahead.
      "Point your lights at it - everyone," Pere said. "We don't want to be
run down."
      The driver, a robot, had been driving at half speed, watching for them.
They climbed wearily aboard and most of them fell asleep during the short run
back to HQ. The adjutant made a report to Pere.
      "The break has been reported, and there have been two more blockages
discovered in the other tunnel."
      "What caused them?"
      "Intelligence is not sure, but is expecting to report soon."
      Pere swallowed his opinion of Intelligence's intelligence, since even
robots should not hear morale-lowering comment.
      He pulled at his sticky shirt and was suddenly aware of the rising heat
inside the car. "What's wrong with the air conditioning?" he asked petulantly.
      "Nothing, sir. It is the air temperature in the tunnel, it is much
hotter than usual."
      "Why?"
      "That fact is not known yet."
      The heat rose steadily as they approached HQ, and Pere issued orders
that collars could be opened. The car slowed to a halt in the immense bay at
the tunnel's end. When the door was opened the hot air that boiled in was
almost unbreathable.
      "Double-time to the lock," Pere gasped out, choking over the words as
the heat seared his throat. They stumbled and ran towards the large sealed
valve at the end of the platform, robot guns tracking them from the turrets
that studded the face of the metal wall. Identification was made and before
they reached the lock the immense outer door rotated ponderously. Someone
screamed as he fell and bare flesh touched the burning metal of the platform.
Pere forced himself to wait until they were all inside, entering last. There
was some relief when the outer door had closed, but no real drop in the
temperature until they had passed through all five seals of the four-barreled
lock. Even then the air inside the fortress was far warmer than normal.
      "Perhaps this heat has something to do with the reason we were sent out
a week early," General Natia said. "This and the tunnel blockage might be
caused by an enemy penetration in force."
      Pere had reached the same conclusion himself, though he wouldn't admit
it aloud, even to his second-in-command. In addition only he knew that a real
emergency at HQ had changed their shipping orders, though Command had not been
specific about the nature of the emergency. As fast as he could, without
running, Pere led his staff towards HQ control.
      Nothing was right. No one answered him when he formally requested
permission to enter. There were maintenance robots stolidly going about their
work, but no officers in view. For a single heart-stopping instant he thought
that all four battle stations were vacant. Then he saw a finger come out and
touch a button at Command Prime: the occupant of the chair was slumped so low
that he could hardly be seen. Pere stalked quickly towards the post and began
a salute, but his hand stopped before it reached his forehead and forgotten,
dropped slowly back. He stared with horror.
      In the chair the operator gradually became aware that someone was
standing over him. It was an effort for the man to draw the attention of his
deep-socketed and reddened eyes from the board. When he did it was just for an
instant and Pere had only a glimpse of the pain in their depths, of eyes
peeping out of their black-rimmed pits like frightened animals. Then their
attention wavered back to the board and the thin arm lifted tremulously to
touch a control.
      "Thank God you've come... you've come at last thank..." The words,
scarcely a whisper to begin with, died away to a wheeze.
      The officer's arms were pocked and scarred with needle holes: streaked
with hardened rivulets of blood. The jumbled cartons and vials on the table
told a wordless story of a man forcing himself to stay awake and active long
past human limits: there were stimulants, sleep-surrogate, glucose,
anesthetics, vitamin complexes. He had obviously been days alone in this
chair, manning all four battle stations hooked into his own board. Alone - for
some unknown and terrible reason alone-he had fought the war, waiting for
help. With an uncontrollable feeling of revulsion Pere saw that the man had
soiled himself as he sat there.
      "General Natia, man that free board," he ordered.
      She slipped efficiently into the chair and set up a repeater from the
others. Quickly taking in the factors of the conflict she called out, "Ready,
sir."
      Pere threw the command switch and the red bulb winked out on the board
before him, and the one in front of Natia flashed on.
      It was as though the light had been the spark of life holding the man at
the controls. When the red bulb snuffed out he dropped his face into his hands
and collapsed sideways into the cushioning chair. Pere took him by the
shoulder and shook him until the hands dropped away and the last traces of
consciousness stiffened the lolling head. With painful effort the man opened
his eyes.
      "What happened?" Pere asked. "Where is everyone else?"
      "Dead," the feeble voice whispered, near to death itself. "I was the
only one didn't die - in bed at the time. Just chance I wasn't touching any
metal. Just sheets, mattress. Robots say it was a vibration source - subsonic
- supersonic - something new. Curdled everyone, killed them - coagulated the
protein. Like eggs... cooked eggs... all dead."
      When the man sank into unconsciousness again Pere signalled to the
medical officer who was standing by. Pere looked down at the solid steel floor
beneath his feet and shuddered; the vibration weapon might be used again at
any time. Or could it? The robots must have taken some preventative measures.
He turned to the command robot, standing with steady metallic patience by the
computor bank. Shaped like a normal motile, this robot's unique function was
apparent only by the large vision screen on its chest and the thick cable, a
metallic unbilical cord, that ran back from it to the computors behind. It was
simply an extension of the giant computors and logic and memory units that
were the heart of HQ.
      "Have you found out what generated the killing vibration?" Pere asked
the command robot.
      "A machine that assembled and attached itself to the outer wall of HQ.
It was detected as soon as it began operating and the frequencies were
analyzed and neutralized in three minutes and seventeen seconds. No equipment
or robots were injured since the frequencies used only caused resonance in
animal protein. All of the staff, with the exception of Colonel Frey, were
killed instantly. Large quantities of food in the lockers -"
      "We'll concern ourselves with the food later. Where is the machine?"
      "There," the robot said, pointing towards the far wall. It led the way,
its cable trailing smoothly behind it, and pulled a cover from the yard high
object resting there. It resembled no machine Pere had ever seen, rather it
looked like a tangled mass of tiny gleaming roots: the red earth still packed
between them heightened the illusion.
      "How does it work?"
      The robot reached out - leaning very close to focus its microscopic
eyepieces -and carefully pulled one of the strands free. It lay on the robot's
outstretched metallic palm, eight inches long, an eighth of an inch in
diameter. Seen close it was not completely flexible, but made instead of
pivoted and smoothly finished segments. The robot pointed out the parts of
interest.
      "The vibration generator is made up of a large number of these machines,
all of similar construction. At the front end is a hard-edged orifice that
drills a hole in the ground. Debris is carried back through the body of the
machine and eliminated here: in operation it is not unlike the common
earthworm. Directional apparatus here guides it, orientated by a gravimeter to
locate our base. Here a power unit and here a frequency generator. Singly the
machines are harmless, their radiation of no importance. But when grouped
together and activated at the same time they produce the deadly frequency.
      "Why weren't they detected before going into operation?"
      "Their individual mass is too small and they have no metallic
components. In addition they move very slowly, it took them a long time to
reach HQ and mass for the attack."
      "How long?"
      "By measuring the sensitivity of their gravimeters in response to the
bulk of HQ and timing their speed of movement, it has been estimated that they
entered the ground four years ago."
      "Four years!" General Pere was aghast at the thought. The miles of dirt
and rock that surrounded HQ on all sides, formally so comforting, changed
suddenly to the hiding place of countless crawling, remorseless machines,
closing in with mechanical patience.
      "Can they be stopped from constructing another group-machine?"
      "That is no problem now that it is known what we must guard against.
Defensive screens and detectors have been installed."
      Anxiety seeped slowly away and Pere wiped the trickling sweat from his
face as he looked around at his staff. All of the battle stations were manned
now and the collapsed form of Colonel Frey had been taken out. Everything was
functioning perfectly - except for the damn heat.
      "And what's causing that?" Pere snapped. "Why the rise in temperature?
You must have found the cause."
      "The increased temperature is caused by areas of in-tense heat in the
soil around this station. The cause of this localized heat increase is
unknown."
      Pere found himself worrying his thumb nail with his front teeth and
angrily jerked it from his mouth. "Cause unknown! I should think it would be
obvious. If the Enemy can build complex wave generators into something as
small as this piece of plastic spaghetti, they can certainly build more of
them with some kind of compact heat generator. These things could be coming in
a second wave after the coagulator generators."
      "This theory was considered, as well as other high probability
explanations, but we have no evidence..."
      "Then get evidence!" Pere was angry at the persistant logicality of all
robots, no matter how theoretically brilliant they might be. This obvious
explanation of the mysterious heat seemed to him to be more than a hunch or
guess, it was almost a certainty. He thumbed the button labeled IMPLEMENT
ORDER on the robot's chest and issued a command. "Search will be made at once
beyond the heat zone to uncover any more of these specialized boring
machines."
      With his defense taken care of he turned his attention to the war.
Operations were proceeding so smoothly that the knot of tension in his midriff
softened a bit. Lights flickered across the control boards, coded symbols for
logistics and intelligence. The operators collated and questioned, feeding
their results to Command Prime where General Natia sat relaxed yet completely
alert. The electronic war of course moved at too great a pace for the human
mind to follow. All of the missiles, anti-missile missiles, interceptors,
bombers and tank squadrons were robot-controlled and -operated. Computors of
varying degrees of intelligence and responsibility did the actual battle
ordering. The same was true of logistics. But men had started this war and
guided it towards its finish. The human operators made sense of the shifting
factors in the global battle and chose the best course from among those fed to
them by the strategy machines. The war had been going well Analysis of the
results showed a small increment of victory during the past nine months. If
this increment could be kept steady - or even increased-another generation or
two might see complete victory. It was a pleasant, though slightly
disconcerting, thought for Pere.
      Five shifts later the first of the thermal-wrigglers was found and
neutralized. Pere examined it with distaste. So small to be causing so much
trouble. They were all wearing tropical kit now, and constantly uncomfortable
in the overheated air. The only external difference between this wriggler and
the wave generators was in the color of its plastic body; the new one was an
appropriately fiery red.
       "How does it generate the heat?" Pere asked the command robot.
      "The machine contains a suicide circuit. The power supply is short
circuited through a contractile field. The circuits burn out in microseconds,
but there is enough time to compress a small quantity of hydrogen -"
      "It implodes! A small hydrogen bomb?"
      "In a sense, yes. There is very little radiation, most of the energy is
released as heat. A molten pocket of lava is the result. The heat dissipates
slowly into our base here. New implosions add constantly to the molten area
outside."
      "Can't you detect and destroy these things before they detonate?"
      "This is difficult because of the large number of them involved and the
volume of earth that must be inspected. Special machines and detectors are
being constructed. An extrapolation has been made of all the factors, and it
is estimated with a ninety-nine percent certainty that the heat will not rise
to the point where it interferes with the operation of the base."
      This was one load of worry that Pere could cheerfully throw aside: the
constant heat was a continual source of discomfort to them all. He wondered
idly just how hot it would get before the temperature started back down.
      "What is your estimate of this maximum temperature?" he asked.
      "Five hundred degrees," the robot said with mechanical imperturbability.
      Pere stared into the blank eye cells of the machine and had the
sensation of being suddenly hammered down and gasping for air. "Why - that's
five times higher than the boiling temperature of water!"
      "That is correct. Water boils at one hundred degrees."
      Pere could only choke with unbelief. "Do you realize what you are
saying? What do you think people are... How can we live?"
      The robot did not answer since this problem was not the responsibility
of the HQ robots. Pere chewed his lip and rephrased it.
      "This temperature is unsatisfactory for the personnel - even if the
machines can survive it. You must find some way to lower the temperature."
      "This problem has already been considered, since a number of the more
delicate components will be near their critical range at that temperature. The
air conditioning units are now operating at maximum overload and no new units
can be added. Therefore drilling operations have begun and are tapping nearby
deposits of water, which will be substituted for air within the base. This
water will enter at a lower temperature and will have a greater heat transfer
capacity."
      A compromise, not a perfect answer, but it might work for awhile. One
room would have to be sealed off for living quarters and the watch officers
could wear pressure suits. Uncomfortable but not impossible.
      "What will be the maximum temperature of this water?" he asked.
      "One hundred and forty degrees. There is adequate water to bring the
temperature lower, but this base was not designed for easy circulation of
anything other than air. All machine units are of battle standard and
waterproof -"
      "People aren't!" Pere shouted, forgetting himself. "And if they were
they would cook in this boiling soup of yours. How are we to survive, tell me
that?"
      Once more the oracle was silent. In the distance there was the sudden
gush and spatter of water.
      "What's that?" he gasped.
      "Flooding. The lower levels," the robot said.
      Everyone in the room was watching him, Pore realized, listening to the
final judgment of the robot's words. "Anyone have any ideas?" he asked,
unaware of the pleading in his voice. There were no answers.
      There had to be an answer; he forced his numbed mind to check over the
possibilities. Remote control of HQ from National Central? No, too dangerous,
control circuits could be interrupted, cut off or even taken over. Someone had
to be here, at least one person to man the Command Prime station. Unless this
station could be robot-controlled too.
      "A discretion circuit," he shouted with sudden relief. "Can a robot with
discretion circuitry be built to operate the Command station?" he asked the
robot extension of HQ.
      "Yes."
      "Well do it. Do it at once. We may have to evacuate, and in case we do I
want the robot ready to take over."
      It wouldn't be for long, they would just be gone until the temperature
dropped and human habitation became possible again. All of the decisions to be
made at Command Prime were simple either-or choices, and an occasional
multiple choice. A robot with the correct evaluation and discretion circuits
would do well enough for awhile. It wouldn't be perfect and the victory
increment would surely drop a few points, but it wouldn't be disaster. He
would have to check with National Central before putting the plan into
operation, but he was sure they wouldn't come up with a better answer.
      They didn't. The aging commanders couldn't even do as well and were
grateful with General Pere for the suggestion. He even received a promotion
and was authorized to wear another star on his shoulder. As soon as the
command robot could begin satisfactory operation he was ordered to evacuate.
      On the lower levels the hot oily water reached to their knees. The
tension among the staff ebbed away only when the new robot was carried in.
Pere watched and frowned when the machine was bolted into place in his chair.
The job had been a quick one and no special care had been taken with
unessentials; the body of the robot consisted simply of a square box, ugly
with beaded weld marks. Two eye cells sat on a stubby column above it and a
single, articulated arm projected from the front. The eyes focused on the
unlit command light and the arm hung down limply. Pere had all the other
boards tied into the logistics board, took one last look at the war, then
decisively threw the command switch.
      The red light came on in front of the robot and it instantly began
operation. With lightning speed the metallic index finger pressed three
buttons and threw a switch, then drooped again. Pere looked at the decisions
and could find no fault. Perhaps he might have brought in the reserve tanks in
the eastern bulge and tried to hold. Though it was just as tactically sound to
withdraw and straighten the line and save on the estimated losses. Both
choices had the same probability rating on the scale, which was why they had
appeared on the board. The robot would work.
      He hated it though. For some reason it seemed a colossal personal
affront to him to be replaced by this arm-waving black box. Was this all that
a man was to a machine? The metal fingers ran across the controls, then
dropped again.
      "Prepare to move out," he shouted in a harsh voice. This evacuation was
wrong, very wrong. But what else could he do?
       "We'll rig a stretcher for Colonel Frey," he told the medical officer.
"How is he progressing?"
      "He's dead," the doctor said with his toneless professional manner. "The
heat was too much for him in his weakened condition. Too much of a strain on
his heart."
      "Alright," Pere said, keeping his emotions under control. "That leaves
Zen as the only casualty and he can walk well enough with his arm in a cast."
      When the officers had all assembled General Natia stepped up to Pere and
saluted. "All present, sir. Everyone is carrying extra rations and water, in
case there is trouble in the return tunnel."
      "Yes, of course," Pere said, mentally berating himself for not thinking
of these simple precautions. There had been so much on his mind. It was time
to leave.
      "Has the mono tunnel been kept open?" he asked the adjutant.
      "Two additional minor blockages have occurred, but have been cleared."
      "Very good. Fall in with the others. Attention... right face... forward
MARCH." As his small company tramped out of the room General Pere turned back,
goaded by some anachronistic impulse, and saluted the command post. None of
the machines paid the slightest attention to him. The robot in his chair
jabbed a quick finger at some buttons and ignored him. Feeling slightly
foolish he turned quickly and followed the others out.
      They were cycling through the multiple sealed doors of the fortress when
they met the robot. It was waiting in the outer compartment and pushed past
them as soon as the door was open. It was a worker, a mechanical of some kind,
scratched and covered with mud: because it had no speech facilities Pere had
to question it through the adjutant.
      "Find out what has happened," he snapped.
      The two robots held a voiceless communion, their radio waves in a direct
brain-to-brain hookup carried thoughts far faster than could any speech.
      "The exit tunnel has been blocked," the adjutant said. "The roof is down
in many places and it is beginning to fill with water. The decision has been
reached that it cannot be opened. New falls are occurring all the time."
      "Challenge the decision. It is not possible," Pere said. There was a
note of desperation in his voice.
      They were through the last door now and in the exit bay. The heat was
overpowering and made intelligent thought almost impossible. Through a red
haze Pere saw bulky digging robots streaming out of the mouth of the exit
tunnel, going towards the entrance valve behind them.
      "No change is possible," the adjutant said, a metallic voice of doom.
"The tunnel can not be opened now. It has been found that small machines, very
like the heat units, have penetrated the earth and are collapsing the tunnel.
It will be opened after they -"
      "Another way! There must be another way out!" Pere's voice was as heat-
strained as his thoughts, yet the robot understood and took it for a command.
      "There are emergency exits here that once led to higher levels. My
information is incomplete. I do not know if they have been sealed."
      "Show us - we can't stay here."
      They were all wearing gloves, so the metal bars of the ladder didn't
char their hands, just burned them. The robot adjutant went first and only his
mechanical strength could have turned the time-sealed wheel that locked the
entrance to the older levels. The humans groped their way behind the adjutant,
some falling and failing to rise again. Colonel Zen must have been the first
to be left behind because he only bad the use of one arm. The heat in the
stifling darkness was so great that even the doctor didn't notice when his
patient dropped out. The doctor himself must have gone soon after, because he
was no longer a young man.
      General Pere tried to issue orders, and when they were not obeyed he
made an attempt to help the laggards himself. He could not do this and keep up
with the others. When he saw the lights winking out of sight in the dust
filled passage ahead, he made the only decision possible under the
circumstances. Not that he was aware of making it, he was barely conscious at
the time and only the will to survive drove him forward. Passing the
straggling survivors he shouldered General Natia aside and took his place
behind the guiding robot.
      Pain fought a battle with fatigue and kept them going until they were
out of the zone of terrible heat. Pere had strength enough only to utter the
one word command to stop, drink from his canteen, then fall unconscious to the
floor. The others dropped in huddled lumps of pain about him. The adjutant
stood with untiring machine-patience, waiting for them to rise.
      Moans of agony roused Pere at last and he forced his charred fingers to
fumble out the first aid packs. Burn ointment brought some relief to the five
survivors and stimulants gave them the illusion of strength needed to carry
on. General Natia had somehow managed to stay close behind him through the
ordeal, as well as three others. They were all young and strong, though one
was not strong enough. He simply vanished during the next climb.
      Above HQ was a maze of tunnels and rooms, occupied by the base at
various times before the unremitting pressures of the war had driven the
controllers even deeper into the ground. Most of it was collapsed and choked
with rubble and no progress was possible. If the robot had not been with them
they would have died. Every detail of the various layers was impressed in his
electronical cortex, since his brain contained the memory of every other
adjutant back to the beginning of the war. They retraced their steps whenever
their way was blocked and found a different direction. Bit by bit they
progressed towards the surface. There was no way to measure time in the
darkness; they slept when exhaustion was too great, then woke up to stumble
on. Their food was gone and the water almost exhausted. They kept going only
because of the robot's firm insistence that they were now m the upper levels.
      "We are just under the surface of the ground," the adjutant said. "This
tunnel led to a gun position, but it is now blocked."
      Pere sat and blinked at the circular tunnel and forced his fatigued
brain to consider the problem. The top of the tunnel was not much higher than
their heads and made of ferroconcrete. Jagged chunks of the same material
choked the end.
      "Clear away the opening," Pere ordered.
      "I cannot," the robot said. "My battery is almost discharged, I would
not be able to finish."
      This was the end. They could not go on.
      "Perhaps we could... blow it out of the way," Natia said apologetically.
Pere turned his light on her and she shook a handful of cartridges from the
clip at her waist. "These contain powerful explosive. Perhaps the adjutant
could arrange them to all explode together."
      "I can," the adjutant said.
      Surprisingly, all four of them still had their sidearms and spare clips;
they had not been discarded with the rest of the equipment. The adjutant took
the spare clips and buried them in the rubble while they moved back down the
tunnel. A minute later the robot came running back to join them and they
pressed themselves to the floor. The ground jumped and the roar of concussion
smote their ears. They forced themselves to wait long minutes for the stifling
cloud of dust settled, before Pere let them go forward.
      The barrier was still there, but the ceiling had fallen and high up in
the gap a ray of light shone on the dust motes.
      "We're through," Pere said hoarsely. "Help me up there." Steadied by the
robot he reached up into the hole and crumbled away the soft dirt at the lip
until it was big enough for his shoulders. A lump came away with a tuft of
grass, green and damp. He groped up through the hole, reaching for a hold.
      "Let me help you," a voice said, and brown calloused hands clutched his
and pulled.
      It was so unexpected that Pere gasped with shock. Yet he could not let
go and the hand pulled him steadily out of the hole in the ground. He fell
face first onto the grass and groped for his gun, while the light burned into
his eyes. Through tears of pain he saw a circle of legs surrounding him, and
took his hand from the pistol butt.
      The others were out of the hole now and as his eyes adjusted Pere could
look around him. The sky was cloudy and it must have been raining because the
grass on which he sat was damp. Before him stretched a freshly plowed field.
He felt a sudden spurt of pleasure at identifying these things that he had
only seen before on the screen. This was the first time in his life that he
had ever been above ground.
      Of course all of the recordings he had seen were historicals, from the
time before the war when people still lived on the surface, instead of in the
numerous sub-cities. He had always assumed that the surface was sterile and
bare of life. Then who were these people? Something whistled and screamed away
into the distance over his head, and he was aware for the first time of a
constant rumbling that seemed to come from all sides.
      "Who are you?" a voice asked, and Pere struggled up to face the man who
had helped him from the hole.
      "I am General Pere, this is my staff." The man had a very dark skin and
was wearing a weird costume that seemed to consist completely of cast off
mechanical items. His tunic was plexicloth from a machine cover: his shoes
wedges of metal with webbing straps to hold them in place. He wore a metal
helmet on his head as did all the others.
      "A general," the man grunted and the smile vanished from his face. He
turned and whistled shrilly. In the field there were some more people pulling
at a strange device, one of them waved and they started in Pere's direction.
      "Boruk is coming," the tan skinned man said grufily. "Talk to him. Maybe
it'll do some good. Though I doubt it." He spat on the ground and kicked dirt
into the spittle with one toe.
      Overhead in the clouds there was a muffled and gigantic explosion. Pere
looked up and saw the clouds briefly stained a rosy pink. A black speck
appeared below the clouds and before his horrified eyes grew instantly to the
shape of a giant wheel. It plunged down, apparently at him, but hit instead on
the far side if the field. The huge tire recoiled and it bounced into the air
directly over their heads. Only Pere and his officers looked up as it sailed
over. The wheel must have been a hundred feet in diameter and he could see
clearly the treads on the tire, and the metal hub with its sheared supports, a
stream of liquid still leading from some severed pipe. It bounced again,
shaking the ground, and vanished from sight over the hill.
      "What was that?" Pere asked, but no one answered him.
      The group in the field were closer now and he could see they were
pulling a plow assembled of odd pieces of junk. The two handles of the plow
were the only identifiable parts: the arms of a robot welded into place, the
hands extended and acting as handles. One of the men who had been tugging in a
harness dropped it and walked over. He was naked to the waist, but wore a pair
of gray uniform pants and high boots.
      "The military!" he shouted when he saw their uniforms. "Wonderful!
Wonderful!" He turned and ran away. A fine rain of metallic particles hit in
the grass around them. Pere had the feeling he was going mad.
      The man had only gone to the side of the field to get the rest of his
clothes. He struggled into a jacket and in place of his steel helmet pulled on
a peaked cap of hauntingly familiar design. Only when he had buttoned it and
knocked the dust from his trousers did he turn and come towards Pere.
       "The Enemy!" Pere shouted and scratched for his gun. This was the
uniform he had seen so many times in orientation films. He hauled the gun out
but someone knocked it from his fingers. Then he could only stand paralyzed as
the man stamped up to him, clicked his heels together and saluted.
      "General Boruk," he said. "On a mission of peace. May I ask whom I have
the pleasure of addressing?" He dropped the salute and pulled a white flag
from one pocket with a collapsible rod attached to it. After snapping open the
rod he held the flag up proudly. His face was as sunburned as the others, with
a black moustache and pointed beard.
      "I am General Pere," Pere forced himself to say. "'Who are you? What are
you doing here?"
      "At your service, general," Boruk said, and stabbed the pole into the
ground. He groped in another pocket and fished out a large wallet. "I bring
you greetings from my proud country, and the joyous news that we wish to me
for peace. All of the papers are here - including my credentials - and you
have only to forward them to the proper authorities. You will notice that
there is mention of a peace commission, but I am forced to admit that they are
all dead or have returned. In fact, to be truthful, you will see my name
entered on the rolls of the commission as Captain Boruk, but this was only in
the beginning. Through determination and the fact I am young and strong as a
bull, I was promoted to dizzying heights. In fact General Graniaz, who himself
conferred my commission upon me, even gave me his own coat with his general's
Insignia. In that, his was a wise choice, for I ask you only to notice that I
am here and the others are not. We want peace, any terms you care to name. Do
you agree?"
      "Sit down," Pere said, feeling the need to do so himself. "Why are you
asking for peace now - allowing for the moment that your credentials are not
forged? you are not losing the war?"
      "To be truthful again, general, we are not even fighting the war." Boruk
sprawled on the ground and chewed a stem of grass. "You will discover the
reasons for our request sooner or later, so it might as well be sooner. In
fact sooner the better since the situation is so far out of hand. It seems we
have been forced to abandon our battle headquarters and turn it over to robot
operation. Are you all right?" he asked, seeing Pere jump.
      "Yes," Pere told him. "Yes, go on." This was too familiar to permit him
to listen easily.
      "I must say your scientists are tricky ones, I believe they managed to
invest our HQ with a mutated virus that was impossible to eradicate. The base
had to be evacuated, radiated and sterilized. To do this the robots had to be
left in complete control of the war operations. When we tried to get back in,
it was most difficult. All entrances had been sealed and we couldn't get the
robots to understand what we wanted. They were doing very well without us,
very well indeed." He spat the grass out and scowled.
      "But there are ways. You could have countermanded -"
      "It is not that easy, general. I assure you we tried. To be brief, the
more we tried the better the robot defenses against our interferences became.
In the end they fought us off - having identified us with the Enemy - and we
had to retire."
      "We'll get back in," Pere said, then mapped his mouth shut guiltily.
      "I had assumed something of the sort," Boruk smiled. His seemingly lazy
attention had missed nothing. "When a general and his staff climb out of the
ground above the area of their HQ, I am afraid I leaped to a conclusion due to
my own previous knowledge. Is it true? You have been forced to leave as well?"
      "I'll tell you nothing."
      "You don't have to. It is a cosmic jest indeed." Boruk laughed
humorlessly and tore the surrender papers across and threw them into the dirt.
Something keened through the air and exploded in an immense cloud of dust on
the horizon. "You have been pushed out the way our officers were pushed out,
and you shall not get back. It was due to come, since every other part of the
battle in this war is done by robots. Since we have both been concentrating
our weapons upon the opposite headquarters, it was fated that some of the
weapons should have at least a partial success. Robots are much stronger than
humans, much more able to stand lethal climates. I have had plenty of time to
think about this, since I have waited here many months."
      "Why - why didn't you surrender? Why didn't you come to us?"
      "Believe me, my young companion general, that is the one wish of my
country. But how is this done in this day of total war? We tried radio and all
other forms of communication, but all were blocked by robot mechanisms
designed for that job. Then we sent the mission in person-not carrying
weapons, so of course the robots ignored us. Our casualties were due simply to
the deadliness of the battlefields we had to cross on the way here. The robots
were completely indifferent to us, a forewarning of the future - or of the
present, I might say. Battle is going on everywhere, and only a few peaceful
areas exist, such as this one, above a strongly defended base. But even when I
reached here I found no surface installations and no way of reaching you
below."
      "This is monstrous! Monstrous!" Pere bellowed.
      "It is indeed, but we must be philosophical about it. Accept it as these
good people have done who live here under a canopy of death. The robots will
continue their war just as efficiently without us, and probably make it last
much longer since they are so evenly matched. Find yourself a woman, settle
down and enjoy the life."
      Pere found himself glancing inadvertently at Natia, who looked away and
blushed. Even if she was a general, she had a fine figure...
      "No!" he shouted. "I will not submit. This is terrible. This is no way
for mankind to live. Just to sit by and watch these senseless machines destroy
each other."
      "It does not matter, friend general, whether we like it or not. We have
been bypassed. Displaced. We have played too long at the destructive game of
war and made our machines too efficient. They enjoy the game too much
themselves to relinquish it, and we must find some place where we can try and
live to the best of our abilities. Some place where they will not step on us
while they play."
      "No, I can't accept it!" Pere shouted again and tears of frustration and
anger burned in his eyes. He threw off Natia's hand when she put it on his
arm. The horizon grumbled and flared red, hot metal rattled into the ground
nearby.
      "I just hope you're having a good time," he cried and shook his fist up
at the unheeding sky. "I just hope you're having a good time!"