As the intensity of the gravitational field decreased, the velocity of the ship increased—not linearly, but logarithmically. She shrieked through the upper atmosphere, quivering like a live thing, and emerged at last into relatively empty space. When she reached a velocity of a little over thirty miles per second—relative to the sun, and perpendicular to the solar ecliptic—Mike the Angel ordered her engines cut back to the lowest power possible which would still retain the one-gee interior gravity of the ship and keep the anti-acceleration fields intact.
“How does she look, Multhaus?” he asked.
Both of the men were checking the readings of the instruments. A computerman second class was punching the readings into the small table calculator as Multhaus read off the numbers.
“I think she weathered it, sir,” the chief said cautiously, “but she sure took a devil of a beating. And look at the power factor readings! We were tossing away energy as though we were S-Doradus or something.”
They worked for nearly an hour to check through all the circuits to find what damage—if any—had been done by the strain of Earth’s gravitational and magnetic fields. All in all, theBrainchildwas in pretty good shape. A few circuits needed retuning, but no replacements were necessary.
Multhaus, who had been understandably pessimistic about the ship’s ability to lift herself from the surface of even a moderate-sized planet like Earth, looked with new respect upon the man who had designed the power plant that had done the job.
Mike the Angel called the bridge and informed Captain Quill that the ship was ready for full acceleration.
Under control from the bridge, the huge ship yawed until her nose—and thus the line of thrust along her longitudinal axis—was pointed toward her destination.
“Full acceleration, Mister Gabriel,” said Captain Quill over the intercom.
Mike the Angel watched the meters climb again as the ship speared away from the sun at an ever-increasing velocity. Although the apparent internal acceleration remained at a cozy one gee, the acceleration in relation to the sun was something fantastic. When the ship reached the velocity of light, she simply disappeared, as far as external observers were concerned. But she still kept adding velocity with her tremendous acceleration.
Finally her engines reached their performance peak. They could drive theBrainchildno faster. They simply settleddown to a steady growl and pushed the ship at a steady velocity through what the mathematicians termed “null-space.”
TheBrainchildwas on her way.
“What I want to know,” said Lieutenant Keku, “is, what kind of ship is this?”
Mike the Angel chuckled, and Lieutenant Mellon, the Medical Officer, grinned rather shyly. But young Ensign Vaneski looked puzzled.
“What do you mean, sir?” he asked the huge Hawaiian.
They were sitting over coffee in the officers’ wardroom. Captain Quill, First Officer Jeffers, and Lieutenant Commander von Liegnitz were on the bridge, and Dr. Fitzhugh and Leda Crannon were down below, giving Snookums lessons.
Mike looked at Lieutenant Keku, waiting for him to answer Vaneski’s question.
“What do I mean? Just what I said, Mister Vaneski. I want to know what kind of ship this is. It is obviously not a warship, so we can forget that classification. It is not an expeditionary ship; we’re not outfitted for exploratory work. Is it a passenger vessel, then? No, because Dr. Fitzhugh and Miss Crannon are listed as ‘civilian technical advisers’ and are therefore legally part of the crew. I’m wondering if it might be a cargo vessel, though.”
“Sure it is,” said Ensign Vaneski. “That brain in Cargo Hold One is cargo, isn’t it?”
“I’m not certain,” Keku said thoughtfully, looking up at the overhead, as if the answer might be etched there in the metal. “Since it is built in as an intrinsic part of the ship, I don’t know if it can be counted as cargo or not.” He brought his gaze down to focus on Mike. “What do you think, Commander?”
Before Mike the Angel could answer, Ensign Vaneski broke in with: “But the brain is going to be removed when we get to our destination, isn’t it? That makes this a cargo ship!” There was a note of triumph in his voice.
Lieutenant Keku’s gaze didn’t waver from Mike’s face, nor did he say a word. For a boot ensign to interrupt like that was an impoliteness that Keku chose to ignore. He was waiting for Mike’s answer as though Vaneski had said nothing.
But Mike the Angel decided he might as well play along with Keku’s gag and still answer Vaneski. As a full commander, he could overlook Vaneski’s impoliteness to his superiors without ignoring it as Keku was doing.
“Ah, but the brainwon’tbe unloaded, Mister Vaneski,” he said mildly. “The ship will bedismantled—which is an entirely different thing. I’m afraid you can’t call it a cargo ship on those grounds.”
Vaneski didn’t say anything. His face had gone red and then white, as though he’d suddenly realized he’d committed afaux pas. He nodded his head a little, to show he understood, but he couldn’t seem to find his voice.
To cover up Vaneski’s emotional dilemma, Mike addressed the Medical Officer. “What do you think, Mister Mellon?”
Mellon cleared his throat. “Well—it seems to me,” he said in a dry, serious tone, “that this is really a medical ship.”
Mike blinked. Keku raised his eyebrows. Vaneski swallowed and jerked his eyes away from Mike’s face to look at Mellon—but still he didn’t say anything.
“Elucidate, my dear Doctor,” said Mike with interest.
“I diagnose it as a physician,” Mellon said in the same dry, earnest tone. “Snookums, we have been told, is too dangerous to be permitted to remain on Earth. I take this to mean that he is potentially capable of doing something that would either harm the planet itself or a majority—if not all—of the people on it.” He picked up his cup of coffee and took a sip. Nobody interrupted him.
“Snookums has, therefore,” he continued, “been removed from Earth in order to protect the health of that planet, just as one would remove a potentially malignant tumor from a human body.
“This is a medical ship. Q.E.D.” And only then did he smile.
“Aw, now....” Vaneski began. Then he shut his mouth again.
With an inward smile, Mike realized that Ensign Vaneski had been taking seriously an argument that was strictly a joke.
“Mister Mellon,” Mike said, “you win.” He hadn’t realized that Mellon’s mind could work on that level.
“Hold,” said Lieutenant Keku, raising a hand. “I yield to no one in my admiration for the analysis given by our good doctor; indeed, my admiration knows no bounds. But I insist we hear from Commander Gabriel before we adjourn.”
“Not me,” Mike said, shaking his head. “I know when I’m beaten.” He’d been going to suggest that theBrainchildwas a training ship, from Snookums’ “learning” periods, but that seemed rather obvious and puerile now.
He glanced at his watch, saw the time, and stood up. “Excuse me, gentlemen; I have things to do.” He had an appointment to talk to Leda Crannon, but he had no intention of broadcasting it.
As he closed the wardroom door, he heard Ensign Vaneski’s voice saying: “Istillsay this should be classified as a cargo ship.”
Mike sighed as he strode on down the companionway. The ensign was, of course, absolutely correct—which was the sad part about it, really. Oh well, what the hell.
Leda Crannon had agreed to have coffee with Mike in the office suite she shared with Dr. Fitzhugh. Mike had had one cup in the officers’ wardroom, but even if he’d had a dozen he’d have been willing to slosh down a dozen more to talk to Leda Crannon. It was not, he insisted to himself, that he was in love with the girl, but she had intelligence and personality in addition to her striking beauty.
Furthermore, she had given Mike the Angel a dressing-down that had been quite impressive. She had not at all cared for the remarks he had made when Snookums was being loaded aboard—patting him on the head and asking him his age, for instance—and had told him so in no uncertain terms. Mike, feeling sheepish and knowing he was guilty, had accepted the tongue-lashing and tendered an apology.
And she had smiled and said: “All right. Forget it. I’m sorry I got mad.”
He knew he wasn’t the only man aboard who was interested in Leda. Jakob von Liegnitz, all Teutonic masterfulness and Old World suavity, had obviously made a favorableimpression on her. Lew Mellon was often seen in deep philosophical discussions with her, his eyes never leaving her face and his earnest voice low and confidential. Both of them had known her longer than he had, since they’d both been stationed at Chilblains Base.
Mike the Angel didn’t let either of them worry him. He had enough confidence in his own personality and abilities to be able to take his own tack no matter which way the wind blew.
Blithely opening the door of the office, Mike the Angel stepped inside with a smile on his lips.
“Ah, good afternoon, Commander Gabriel,” said Dr. Morris Fitzhugh.
Mike kept the smile on his face. “Leda here?”
Fitzhugh chuckled. “No. Some problems came up with Snookums. She’ll be in session for an hour yet. She asked me to convey her apologies.” He gestured toward the coffee urn. “But the coffee’s all made, so you may as well have a cup.”
Mike was thankful he had not had a dozen cups in the wardroom. “I don’t mind if I do, Doctor.” He sat down while Fitzhugh poured a cup.
“Cream? Sugar?”
“Black, thanks,” Mike said.
There was an awkward silence for a few seconds while Mike sipped at the hot, black liquid. Then Mike said, “Dr. Fitzhugh, you said, at the briefing back on Earth, that Snookums knows too much about nuclear energy. Can you be more specific than that, or is it too hush-hush?”
Fitzhugh took out his briar and began filling it as he spoke. “We don’t want this to get out to the general public, of course,” he said thoughtfully, “but, as a ship’s officer, youcan be told. I believe some of your fellow officers know already, although we’d rather it wasn’t discussed in general conversation, even among the officers.”
Mike nodded wordlessly.
“Very well, then.” Fitzhugh gave the tobacco a final shove with his thumb. “As a power engineer, you should be acquainted with the ‘pinch effect,’ eh?”
It was a rhetorical question. The “pinch effect” had been known for over a century. A jet of highly ionized gas, moving through a magnetic field of the proper structure, will tend to pinch down, to become narrower, rather than to spread apart, as a jet of ordinary gas does. As the science of magnetohydrodynamics had progressed, the effect had become more and more controllable, enabling scientists to force the nuclei of hydrogen, for instance, closer and closer together. At the end of the last century, the Bending Converter had almost wrecked the economy of the entire world, since it gave to the world a source of free energy. Sam Bending’s “little black box” converted ordinary water into helium and oxygen and energy—plenty of energy. A Bending Converter could be built relatively cheaply and for small-power uses—such as powering a ship or automobile or manufacturing plant—could literally run on air, since the moisture content of ordinary air was enough to power the converter itself with plenty of power left over.
Overnight, all previous forms of power generation had become obsolete. Who would buy electric power when he could generate his own for next to nothing? Billions upon billions of dollars worth of generating equipment were rendered valueless. The great hydroelectric dams, the hundreds of steam turbines, the heavy-metal atomic reactors—all useless for power purposes. The value of the stock in thosecompanies dropped to zero and stayed there. The value of copper metal fell like a bomb, with almost equally devastating results—for there was no longer any need for the millions of miles of copper cable that linked the power plants with the consumer.
The Depression of 1929-42 couldn’t even begin to compare with The Great Depression of 1986-2000. Every civilized nation on Earth had been hit and hit hard. The resulting governmental collapses would have made the disaster even more complete had not the then Secretary General of the UN, Perrot of Monaco, grabbed the reins of government. Like the Americans Franklin Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, he had forced through unconstitutional bills and taken extra-constitutional powers. And, like those Americans, he had not done it for personal gain, but to preserve the society. He had not succeeded in preserving the old society, of course, but he had built, almost single-handedly, a world government—a new society on the foundations of the old.
All these thoughts ran through Mike the Angel’s mind. He wondered if Snookums had discovered something that would be as much a disaster to the world economy as the Bending Converter had been.
Fitzhugh got out his miniature flame thrower and puffed his pipe alight. “Snookums,” he said, “has discovered a method of applying the pinch effect to lithium hydride. It’s a batch reaction rather than a flow reaction such as the Bending Converter uses. But it’s as simple to build as a Bending Converter.”
“Jesus,” said Mike the Angel softly.
Lithium hydride. LiH. An atom of hydrogen to every atom of lithium. If a hydrogen nucleus is driven into thelithium nucleus with sufficient force, the results are simple:
Li7+ H1→ 2He4+ energy
An atom of lithium-7 plus an atom of hydrogen-1 yields two atoms of helium-4 and plenty of energy. One gram of lithium hydride would give nearly fifty-eight kilowatt-hours of energy in one blast. A pound of the stuff would be the equivalent of nearly seventonsof TNT.
In addition, it was a nice, clean bomb. Nothing but helium, radiation, and heat. In the early nineteen fifties, such a bomb had been constructed by surrounding the LiH with a fission bomb—the so-called “implosion” technique. But all that heavy metal around the central reaction created all kinds of radioactive residues which had a tendency to scatter death for hundreds of miles around.
Now, suppose a man had a pair of tweezers small enough to pick up a single molecule of lithium hydride and pinch the two nuclei together. Of course, the idea is ridiculous—that is, the tweezer part is. But if the pinch could be done in some other way....
Snookums had done it.
“Homemade atomic bombs in your back yard or basement lab,” said Mike the Angel.
Fitzhugh nodded emphatically. “Exactly. We can’t let that technique out until we’ve found a way to keep people from doing just that. The UN Government has inspection techniques that prevent anyone from building the conventional types of thermonuclear bombs, but not the pinch bomb.”
Mike the Angel thought over what Dr. Fitzhugh had said. Then he said: “That’s not all of it. Antarctica is isolated enough to keep that knowledge secret for a long time—atleast until safeguards could be set up. Why take Snookums off Earth?”
“Snookums himself is dangerous,” Fitzhugh said. “He has a built-in ‘urge’ to experiment—to get data. We can keep him from making experiments that we know will be dangerous by giving him the data, so that the urge doesn’t operate. But if he’s on the track of something totally new....
“Well, you can see what we’re up against.” He thoughtfully blew a cloud of smoke. “We think he may be on the track of the total annihilation of matter.”
A dead silence hung in the air. The ultimate, the super-atomic bomb. Theoretically, the idea had been approached only in the assumption of contact between ordinary matter and anti-matter, with the two canceling each other completely to give nothing but energy. Such a bomb would be nearly fifty thousand times as powerful as the lithium-hydride pinch bomb. That much energy, released in a few millimicroseconds, would make the standard H-bomb look like a candle flame on a foggy night.
The LiH pinch bomb could be controlled. By using just a little of the stuff, it would be possible to limit the destruction to a neighborhood, or even a single block. A total-annihilation bomb would be much harder to control. The total annihilation of a single atom of hydrogen would yield over a thousandth of an erg, and matter just doesn’t come in much smaller packages than that.
“You see,” said Fitzhugh, “wehadto get him off Earth.”
“Either that or stop him from experimenting,” Mike said. “And I assume that wouldn’t be good for Snookums.”
“To frustrate Snookums would be to destroy all the work we have put into him. His circuits would tend to exceed optimum randomity, and that would mean, in humanterms, that he would be insane—and therefore worthless. As a machine, Snookums is worth eighteen billion dollars. The information we have given him, plus the deductions and computations he has made from that information, is worth....” He shrugged his shoulders. “Who knows? How can a price be put on knowledge?”
TheWilliam Branchell—dubbedBrainchild—fled Earth at ultralight velocity, while officers, crew, and technical advisers settled down to routine. The only thing that disturbed that routine was one particularly restless part of the ship’s cargo.
Snookums was a snoop.
Cut off from the laboratories which had been provided for his special work at Chilblains, he proceeded to interest himself in the affairs of the human beings which surrounded him. Until his seventh year, he had been confined to the company of only a small handful of human beings. Even while theWilliam Branchellwas being built, he hadn’t been allowed any more freedom than was absolutely necessary to keep him from being frustrated.
Even so, he had developed an interest in humans. Now he was being allowed full rein in his data-seeking circuits, and he chose to investigate, not the physical sciences, but the study of Mankind. Since the proper study of Mankind is Man, Snookums proceeded to study the people on the ship.
Within three days the officers had evolved a method of Snookums-evasion.
Lieutenant Commander Jakob von Liegnitz sat in the officers’ wardroom of theBrainchildand shuffled a deck of cards with expert fingers.
He was a medium-sized man, five-eleven or so, with a barrel chest, broad shoulders, a narrow waist, and lean hips. His light brown hair was worn rather long, and its straight strands seemed to cling tightly to his skull. His gray eyes had a perpetual half-squint that made him look either sleepy or angry, depending on what the rest of his broad face was doing.
He dealt himself out a board of Four Cards Up and had gone through about half the pack when Mike the Angel came in with Lieutenant Keku.
“Hello, Jake,” said Keku. “What’s to do?”
“Get out two more decks,” said Mike the Angel, “and we can all play solitaire.”
Von Liegnitz looked up sleepily. “I could probably think of duller things, Mike, but not just immediately. How about bridge?”
“We’ll need a fourth,” said Keku. “How about Pete?”
Mike the Angel shook his head. “Black Bart is sleeping—taking his beauty nap. So Pete has the duty. How about young Vaneski? He’s not a bad partner.”
“He is out, too,” said von Liegnitz. “He also is on duty.”
Mike the Angel lifted an inquisitive eyebrow. “Something busted? Why should the Maintenance Officer be on duty right now?”
“He is maintaining,” said von Liegnitz with deliberate dignity, “peace and order around here. He is now performing the duty of Answerman-in-Chief. He’s very good at it.”
Mike grinned. “Snookums?”
Von Liegnitz scooped the cards off the table and beganshuffling them. “Exactly. As long as Snookums gets his questions answered, he keeps himself busy. Our young boot ensign has been assigned to the duty of keeping that mechanical Peeping Tom out of our hair for an hour. By then, it will be lunch time.” He cleared his throat. “We still need a fourth.”
“If you ask me,” said Lieutenant Keku, “we need a fifth. Let’s play poker instead.”
Jakob von Liegnitz nodded and offered the cards for a cut.
“Deal ’em,” said Mike the Angel.
A few minutes less than an hour later, Ensign Vaneski slid open the door to the wardroom and was greeted by a triune chorus of hellos.
“Sirs,” said Vaneski with pseudo formality, “I have done my duty, exhausting as it was. I demand satisfaction.”
Lieutenant Keku, upon seeing Mike the Angel dealt a second eight, flipped over his up cards and folded.
“Satisfaction?” he asked the ensign.
Vaneski nodded. “One hand of showdown for five clams. I have been playing encyclopedia for that hunk of animated machinery for an hour. That’s above and beyond the call of duty.”
“Raise a half,” said Mike the Angel.
“Call,” said von Liegnitz.
“Three eights,” said Mike, flipping his hole card.
Von Liegnitz shrugged, folded his cards, and watched solemnly while Mike pulled in the pot.
“Vaneski wants to play showdown for a fiver,” said Keku.
Mike the Angel frowned at the ensign for a moment, then relaxed and nodded. “Not my game,” he said, “but if the Answerman wants a chance to catch up, it’s okay with me.”
The four men each tossed a five spot into the center of the table and then cut for deal. Mike got it and started dealing—five cards, face up, for the pot.
When three cards apiece had been dealt, young Vaneski was ahead with a king high. On the fourth round he grinned when he got a second king and Mike dealt himself an ace.
On the fifth round Vaneski got a three, and his face froze as Mike dealt himself a second ace.
Mike reached for the twenty.
“You deal yourself a mean hand, Commander,” said Vaneski evenly.
Mike glanced at him sharply, but there was only a wry grin on the young ensign’s face.
“Luck of the idiot,” said Mike as he pocketed the twenty. “It’s time for lunch.”
“Next time,” said Keku firmly, “I’ll take the Answerman watch, Mike. You and this kraut are too lucky for me.”
“If I lose any more to the Angel,” von Liegnitz said calmly, “I will be a very sour kraut. But right now, I’m quite hungry.”
Mike prowled around the Power Section that afternoon with a worry nagging at the back of his mind. He couldn’t exactly put his finger on what was bothering him, and he finally put it down to just plain nerves.
And then he began to feel something—physically.
Within thirty seconds after it began, long before most of the others had noticed it, Mike the Angel recognized it for what it was. Half a minute after that, everyone aboard could feel it.
A two-cycle-per-second beat note is inaudible to the human ear. If the human tympanum can’t wiggle any faster than that, the auditory nerves refuse to transmit the message.The wiggle has to be three or four octaves above that before the nerves will have anything to do with it. But if the beat note has enough energy in it, a man doesn’t have to hear it—he canfeelit.
The bugs weren’t all out of theBrainchild, by any means, and the men knew it. She had taken a devil of a strain on the take-off, and something was about due to weaken.
It was the external field around the hull that had decided to goof off this time. It developed a nice, unpleasant two-cycle throb that threatened to shake the ship apart. It built up rapidly and then leveled off, giving everyone aboard the feeling that his lunch and his stomach would soon part company.
The crew was used to it. They’d been on shakedown cruises before, and they knew that on an interstellar vessel the word “shakedown” can have a very literal meaning. The beat note wasn’t dangerous, but it wasn’t pleasant, either.
Within five minutes everybody aboard had the galloping collywobbles and the twittering jitters.
Mike and his power crew all knew what to do. They took their stations and started to work. They had barely started when Captain Quill’s voice came over the intercom.
“Power Section, this is the bridge. How long before we stop this beat note?”
“No way of telling, sir,” said Mike, without taking his eyes off the meter bank. “Check A-77,” he muttered in an aside to Multhaus.
“Can you give me a prognosis?” persisted Quill.
Mike frowned. This wasn’t like Black Bart. He knew what the prognosis was as well as Mike did. “Actually, sir, there’s no way of knowing. The oldGainswayshook likethis for eight days before they spotted the tubes that were causing a four-cycle beat.”
“Why can’t we spot it right off?” Quill asked.
Mike got it then. Fitzhugh was listening in. Quill wanted Mike the Angel to substantiate his own statements to the roboticist.
“There are sixteen generator tubes in the hull—two at each end of the four diagonals of an imaginary cube surrounding the ship. At least two of them are out of phase; that means that every one of them may have to be balanced against every other one, and that would make a hundred and twenty checks. It will take ten minutes if we hit it lucky and find the bad tubes in the first two tries, and about twenty hours if we hit on the last try.
“That, of course, is presuming that there are only two out. If there are three....” He let it hang.
Mike grinned as Dr. Morris Fitzhugh’s voice came over the intercom, confirming his diagnosis of the situation.
“Isn’t there any other way?” asked Fitzhugh worriedly. “Can’t we stop the ship and check them, so that we won’t be subjected to this?”
“’Fraid not,” answered Mike. “In the first place, cutting the external field would be dangerous, if not deadly. The abrupt deceleration wouldn’t be good for us, even with the internal field operating. In the second place, we couldn’t check the field tubes if they weren’t operating. You can’t tell a bad tube just by looking at it. They’d still have to be balanced against each other, and that would take the same amount of time as it is going to take anyway, and with the same effects on the ship. I’m sorry, but we’ll just have to put up with it.”
“Well, for Heaven’s sake do the best you can,” Fitzhughsaid in a worried voice. “This beat is shaking Snookums’ brain. God knows what damage it may do unless it’s stopped within a very few minutes!”
“I’ll do the best I can,” said Mike the Angel carefully. “So will every man in my crew. But about all anyone can do is wish us luck and let us work.”
“Yes,” said Dr. Fitzhugh slowly. “Yes. I understand. Thank you, Commander.”
Mike the Angel nodded curtly and went back to work.
Things weren’t bad enough as they were. They had to get worse. TheBrainchildhad been built too fast, and in too unorthodox a manner. The steady two-cycle throb did more damage than it would normally have done aboard a non-experimental ship.
Twelve minutes after the throb started, a feeder valve in the pre-induction energy chamber developed a positive-feedback oscillation that threatened to blow out the whole pre-induction stage unless it was damped. The search for the out-of-phase external field tubes had to be dropped while the more dangerous flaw was tackled.
Multhaus plugged in an emergency board and began to compensate by hand while the others searched frantically for the trouble.
Hand compensation of feeder-valve oscillation is pure intuition; if you wait until the meters show that damping is necessary, it may be too late—you have to second-guess the machine and figure out what’s comingbeforeit happens and compensate then. You not only have to judge time, but magnitude; overcompensation is ruinous, too.
Multhaus, the Chief Powerman’s Mate, sat behind the emergency board, a vernier dial in each hand and both eyes on an oscilloscope screen. His red, beefy face was cordedand knotted with tension, and his skin glistened with oily perspiration. He didn’t say a word, and his fingers barely moved as he held a green line reasonably steady on that screen.
Mike the Angel, using unangelic language in a steady, muttering stream, worked to find the circuit that held the secret of the ruinous feedback tendency, while other powermen plugged and unplugged meter jacks, flipped switches, and juggled tools.
In the midst of all this, in rolled Snookums.
Whether Snookums knew that his own existence was in danger is problematical. Like the human brain, his own had no pain or sensory circuits within it; in addition, his knowledge of robotics was small—he didn’t even know that his brain was in Cargo Hold One. He thought it was in his head, if he thought about it at all.
Nonetheless, he knewsomethingwas wrong, and as soon as his “curiosity” circuits were activated, he set out in search of the trouble, his little treads rolling at high speed.
Leda Crannon saw him heading down a companionway and called after him. “Where are you going, Snookums?”
“Looking for data,” answered Snookums, slowing a little.
“Wait! I’ll come with you!”
Leda Crannon knew perfectly well what effect the throb might have on Snookums’ brain, and when something cracked, she wanted to see what effect it might have on the behavior of the little robot. Like a hound after a fox, she followed him through the corridors of the ship.
Up companionways and down, in and out of storerooms, staterooms, control rooms, and washrooms Snookums scurried, oblivious to the consternation that sometimes erupted at his sudden appearance. At certain selected spots, Snookumswould stop, put his metal arms on floors and walls, pause, and then go zooming off in another direction with Leda Crannon only paces behind him, trying to explain to crewmen as best she could.
If Snookums had been capable of emotion—and Leda Crannon was not as sure as the roboticists that he wasn’t—she would have sworn that he was having the time of his life.
Seventeen minutes after the throb had begun, Snookums rolled into Power Section and came to a halt. Something else was wrong.
At first he just stopped by the door and soaked in data. Mike’s muttering; the clipped, staccato conversation of the power crew; the noises of the tools; the deep throb of the ship itself; the underlying oddness of the engine vibrations—all these were fed into his microphonic ears. The scene itself was transmitted to his brain and recorded. The cryotronic maze in the depths of the ship chewed the whole thing over. Snookums acted.
Leda Crannon, who had lost ground in trying to keep up with Snookums’ whirling treads, came to the door of Power Section too late to stop the robot’s entrance. She didn’t dare call out, because she knew that to do so would interrupt the men’s vital work. All she could do was lean against the doorjamb and try to catch her breath.
Snookums rolled over to the board where Multhaus was sitting and watched over his shoulder for perhaps thirty seconds. The crewmen eyed him, but they were much too busy to do anything. Besides, they were used to his presence by this time.
Then, in one quick tour of the room, Snookums glanced at every meter in the place. Not just at the regular operatingmeters, but also at the meters in the testing equipment that the power crew had jack-plugged in.
Mike the Angel looked around as he heard the soft purring of the caterpillar treads. His glance took in both Snookums and Leda Crannon, who was still gasping at the door. He watched Leda for the space of three deep breaths, tore his eyes away, looked at what Snookums was doing, then said: “Get him out of here!” in a stage whisper to Leda.
Snookums was looking over the notations on the meter readings for the previous few minutes. He had simply picked them up from the desk where one of the computermen was working and scanned them rapidly before handing them back.
Before Leda could say anything, Snookums rolled over to Mike the Angel and said: “Check the lead between the 391-JF and the big DK-37. I think you’ll find that the piping is in phase with the two-cycle note, and it’s become warped and stretched. It’s about half a millimeter off—plus or minus a tenth. The pulse is reaching the DK-37 about four degrees off, and the gate is closing before it all gets through. That’s forcing the regulator circuit to overcompensate, and....”
Mike didn’t listen to any more. He didn’t know whether Snookums knew what he was talking about or not, but he did know that the thing the robot had mentioned would have had just such an effect.
Mike strode rapidly across the room and flipped up the shield housing the assembly Snookums had mentioned. The lead was definitely askew.
Mike the Angel snapped orders, and the power crewmen descended on the scene of the trouble.
Snookums went right on delivering his interpretation of the data, but everyone ignored him while they worked. Being ignored didn’t bother Snookums in the least.
“... and that, in turn, is making the feeder valve field oscillate,” he finished up, nearly five minutes later.
Mike was glad that Snookums had pinpointed the trouble first and then had gone on to show why the defect was causing the observed result. He could just as easily have started with the offending oscillation and reached the bit about the faulty lead at the end of his speech, except that he had been built to do it the other way around. Snookums made the deduction in his superfast mind and then reeled it off backward, as it were, going from conclusion to premises.
Otherwise, he might have been too late.
The repair didn’t take long, once Snookums had found just what needed repairing. When the job was over, Mike the Angel wiped his hands on a rag and stood up.
“Thanks, Snookums,” he said honestly. “You’ve been a great help.”
Snookums said: “I am smiling. Because I am pleased.”
There was no way for him to smile with a steel face, but Mike got the idea.
Mike turned to the Chief Powerman’s Mate. “Okay, Multhaus, shut it off. She’s steady now.”
Multhaus just sat there, surrounded by a wall of concentration, his hands still on the verniers, his eyes still on the screen. He didn’t move.
Mike flipped off the switch. “Come on, Multhaus, snap to. We’ve still got that beat note to worry about.”
Multhaus blinked dizzily as the green line vanished from his sight. He jerked his hands off the verniers, and thensmiled sheepishly. He had been sitting there waiting for that green line to move a full minute after the input signal had ceased.
“Happy hypnosis,” said Mike. “Let’s get back to finding out which of those tubes in the hull is giving the external field the willies.”
Snookums, who had been listening carefully, rolled up and said, “Generator tubes three, four, and thirteen. Three is out of phase by—”
“You can tell us later, Snookums,” Mike interrupted rapidly. “Right now, we’ll get to work on those tubes. You were right once; I hope you’re right again.”
Again the power crew swung into action.
Within five minutes Mike and Multhaus were making the proper adjustments on the external field circuits to adjust for the wobbling of the output.
The throb wavered. It wobbled around, going up to two-point-seven cycles and dropping back to one-point-four, then climbing again. All the time, it was dropping in magnitude, until finally it could no longer be felt. Finally, it dropped suddenly to a low of point-oh-five cycles, hovered there for a moment, then vanished altogether.
“By the beard of my sainted maiden aunt,” said Chief Multhaus in awe. “A three-tube offbeat solved in less than half an hour! If that isn’t a record, I’ll dye my uniform black and join the Chaplains’ Corps.”
Leda Crannon, looking tired but somehow pleased, said softly: “May I come in?”
Mike the Angel grinned. “Sure. Maybe you can—”
The intercom clicked on. “Power Section, this is the bridge.” It was Black Bart. “Are my senses playing me false, or have you stopped that beat note?”
“All secure, sir,” said Mike the Angel. “The system is stable now.”
“How many tubes were goofing?”
“Three of them.”
“Three!” There was astonishment in the captain’s voice. “How did you ever solve a three-tube beat in that short a time?”
Mike the Angel grinned up at the eye in the wall.
“Nothing to it, sir,” he said. “A child could have done it.”
Leda Crannon sat down on the edge of the bunk in Mike the Angel’s stateroom, accepted the cigarette and light that Mike had proffered, and waited while Mike poured a couple of cups of coffee from the insul-jug on his desk.
“I wish I could offer you something stronger, but I’m not much of a drinker myself, so I don’t usually take advantage of the officer’s prerogative to smuggle liquor aboard,” he said as he handed her the cup.
She smiled up at him. “That’s all right; I rarely drink, and when I do, it’s either wine or averydiluted highball. Right now, this coffee will do me more good.”
Mike heard footsteps coming down the companionway. He glanced out through the door, which he had deliberately left open. Ensign Vaneski walked by, glanced in, grinned, and went on his way. The kid had good sense, Mike thought. He hoped any other passers-by would stay out while he talked to Leda.
“Does a thing like that happen often?” the girl asked. “Not the fast solution; I mean the beat note.”
“No,” said Mike the Angel. “Once the system is stabilized, the tubes tend to keep each other in line. But becauseof that very tendency, an offbeat tube won’t show itself for a while. The system tries to keep the bad ones in phase in spite of themselves. But eventually one of them sort of rebels, and that frees any of the others that are offbeat, so the bad ones all show at once and we can spot them. When we get all the bad ones adjusted, the system remains stable for the operating life of the system.”
“And that’s the purpose of a shakedown cruise?”
“One of the reasons,” agreed Mike. “If the tubes are going to act up, they’ll do it in the first five hundred operating hours—except in unusual cases. That’s one of the things that bothered me about the way this crate was hashed together.”
Her blue eyes widened. “I thought this was a well-built ship.”
“Oh, it is, it is—all things considered. It isn’t dangerous, if that’s what you’re worried about. But it sure as the devil is expensively wasteful.”
She nodded and sipped at her coffee. “I know that. But I don’t see any other way it could have been done.”
“Neither do I, right off the bat,” Mike admitted. He took a good swallow of the hot liquid in his cup and said: “I wanted to ask you two questions. First, what was it that Snookums was doing just before he came into the Power Section? Black Bart said he’d been galloping all over the ship, with you at his heels.”
Her infectious smile came back. “He was playing seismograph. He was simply checking the intensity of the vibrations at different points in the ship. That gave him part of the data he needed to tell you which of the tubes were acting up.”
“I’m beginning to think,” said Mike, “that we’ll have tostart building a big brain aboard every ship—that is, if we can learn enough about such monsters from Snookums.”
“What was the other question?” Leda asked.
“Oh.... Well, I was wondering just why you are connected with this project. What does a psychologist have to do with robots? If you’ll pardon my ignorance.”
This time she laughed softly, and Mike thought dizzily of the gay chiming of silver bells. He clamped down firmly on the romantic wanderings of his mind as she started her explanation.
“I’m a specialist in child psychology, Mike. Actually, I was hired as an experiment—or, rather, as the result of a wild guess that happened to work. You see, the first two times Snookums’ brain was activated, the circuits became disoriented.”
“You mean,” said Mike the Angel, “they went nuts.”
She laughed again. “Don’t let Fitz hear you say that. He’ll tell you that ‘the circuits exceeded their optimum randomity limit.’”
Mike grinned, remembering the time he had driven a robot brain daffy by bluffing it at poker. “How did that happen?”
“Well, we don’t know all the details, but it seems to have something to do with the slow recovery rate that’s necessary for learning. Do you know anything about Lagerglocke’s Principle?”
“Fitzhugh mentioned something about it in the briefing we got before take-off. Something about a bit of learning being an inelastic rebound.”
“That’s it. You take a steel ball, for instance, and drop it on a steel plate from a height of three or four feet. Itbounces—almost perfect elasticity. The next time you drop it, it does the same thing. It hasn’t learned anything.
“But if you drop a lead ball, it doesn’t bounce as much, and it will flatten at the point of contact.The next time it falls on that flat side, its behavior will be different.It has learned something.”
Mike rubbed the tip of an index finger over his chin. “These illustrations are analogues of the human mind?”
“That’s right. Some people have minds like steel balls. They can learn, but you have to hit them pretty hard to make them do it. On the other hand, some people have minds like glass balls: They can’t learn at all. If you hit them hard enough to make a real impression, they simply shatter.”
“All right. Now what has this got to do with you and Snookums?”
“Patience, boy, patience,” Leda said with a grin. “Actually, the lead-ball analogy is much too simple. An intelligent mind has to have time to partially recover, you see. Hit it with too many shocks, one right after another, and it either collapses or refuses to learn or both.
“The first two times the brain was activated, the roboticists just began feeding data into the thing as though it were an ordinary computing machine. They were forcing it to learn too fast; they weren’t giving it time to recover from the shock of learning.
“Just as in the human being, there is a difference between a robot’s brain and a robot’s mind. Thebrainis a physical thing—a bunch of cryotrons in a helium bath. But themindis the sum total of all the data and reaction patterns and so forth that have been built into the brain or absorbed by it.
“The brain didn’t have an opportunity to recover from the learning shocks when the data was fed in too fast, so the mind cracked. It couldn’t take it. The robot went insane.
“Each time, the roboticists had to deactivate the brain, drain it of all data, and start over. After the second time, Dr. Fitzhugh decided they were going about it wrong, so they decided on a different tack.”
“I see,” said Mike the Angel. “It had to be taught slowly, like a child.”
“Exactly,” said Leda. “And who would know more about teaching a child than a child psychologist?” she added brightly.
Mike looked down at his coffee cup, watching the slight wavering of the surface as it broke up the reflected light from the glow panels. He had invited this girl down to his stateroom (he told himself) to get information about Snookums. But now he realized that information about the girl herself was far more important.
“How long have you been working with Snookums?” he asked, without looking up from his coffee.
“Over eight years,” she said.
Then Mike looked up. “You know, you hardly look old enough. You don’t look much older than twenty-five.”
She smiled—a little shyly, Mike thought. “As Snookums says, ‘You’re nice.’ I’m twenty-six.”
“And you’ve been working with Snookums since you were eighteen?”
“Uh-huh.” She looked, very suddenly, much younger than even the twenty-five Mike had guessed at. She seemed to be more like a somewhat bashful teen-ager who had been educated in a convent. “I was what they call an ‘exceptional child.’ My mother died when I was seven, and Dad ...well, he just didn’t know what to do with a baby girl, I guess. He was a kind man, and I think he really loved me, but he just didn’t know what to do with me. So when the tests showed that I was ... brighter ... than the average, he put me in a special school in Italy. Said he didn’t want my mind cramped by being forced to conform to the mental norm. Maybe he even believed that himself.
“And, too, he didn’t approve of public education. He had a lot of odd ideas.
“Anyway, I saw him during summer vacations and went to school the rest of the year. He took me all over the world when I was with him, and the instructors were pretty wonderful people; I’m not sorry that I was brought up that way. It was a little different from the education that most children have, but it gave me a chance to use my mind.”
“I know the school,” said Mike the Angel. “That’s the one under the Cesare Alfieri Institute in Florence?”
“That’s it; did you go there?” There was an odd, eager look in her eyes.
Mike shook his head. “Nope. But a friend of mine did. Ever know a guy named Paulvitch?”
She squealed with delight, as though she’d been playfully pinched. “Sir Gay? You mean Serge Paulvitch, the Fiend of Florence?” She pronounced the name properly: “Sair-gay,” instead of “surge,” as too many people were prone to do.
“Sounds like the same man,” Mike admitted, grinning. “As evil-looking as Satanas himself?”
“That’s Sir Gay, all right. Half the girls were scared of him, and I thinkallthe boys were. He’s about three years older than I am, I guess.”
“Why call him Sir Gay?” Mike asked. “Just because of his name?”
“Partly. And partly because he was always such a gentleman. A realniceguy, if you know what I mean. Do you know him well?”
“Knowhim? Hell, I couldn’t run my business without him.”
“Your business?” She blinked. “But he works for—” Then her eyes became very wide, her mouth opened, and she pointed an index finger at Mike. “Then you ... you’re Mike the Angel! M. R. Gabriel! Sure!” She started laughing. “I never connected it up! My golly, my golly! I thought you were just another Space Service commander! Mike the Angel! Well, I’ll be darned!”
She caught her breath. “I’m sorry. I was just so surprised, that’s all. Are you reallytheM. R. Gabriel, of M. R. Gabriel, Power Design?”
Mike was as close to being nonplused as he cared to be. “Sure,” he said. “You mean you didn’t know?”
She shook her head. “No. I thought Mike the Angel was about sixty years old, a crotchety old genius behind a desk, as eccentric as a comet’s orbit, and wealthier than Croesus. You’re just not what I pictured, that’s all.”
“Just wait a few more decades,” Mike said, laughing. “I’ll try to live up to my reputation.”
“So you’re Serge’s boss. How is he? I haven’t seen him since I was sixteen.”
“He’s grown a beard,” said Mike.
“No!”
“Fact.”
“My God, how horrible!” She put her hand over her eyes in mock horror.
“Let’s talk about you,” said Mike. “You’re much prettier than Serge Paulvitch.”
“Well, I should hope so! But really, there’s nothing to tell. I went to school. B.S. at fourteen, M.S. at sixteen, Ph.D. at eighteen. Then I went to work for C.C. of E., and I’ve been there ever since. I’ve never been engaged, I’ve never been married, and I’m still a virgin. Anything else?”
“No runs, no hits, no errors,” said Mike the Angel.
She grinned back impishly. “I haven’t been up to bat yet, Commander Gabriel.”
“Then I suggest you grab some sort of club to defend yourself, because I’m going to be in there pitching.”
The smile on her face faded, to be replaced by a look that was neither awe nor surprise, but partook of both.
“You really mean that, don’t you?” she asked in a hushed voice.
“I do,” said Mike the Angel.
Commander Peter Jeffers was in the Control Bridge when Mike the Angel stepped in through the door. Jeffers was standing with his back to the door, facing the bank of instruments that gave him a general picture of the condition of the whole ship.
Overhead, the great dome of the ship’s nose allowed the gleaming points of light from the star field ahead to shine down on those beneath through the heavy, transparent shield of the cast transite and the invisible screen of the external field.
Mike walked over and tapped Pete Jeffers on the shoulder.
“Busy?”
Jeffers turned around slowly and grinned. “Hullo, old soul. Naw, I ain’t busy. Nothin’ outside but stars, and wedon’t figger on gettin’ too close to ’em right off the bat. What’s the beef?”
“I have,” said Mike the Angel succinctly, “goofed.”
Jeffers’ keen eyes swept analytically over Mike the Angel’s face. “You want a drink? I snuck a spot o’ brandy aboard, and just bypurtyole coincidence, there’s a bottle right over there in the speaker housing.” Without waiting for an answer, he turned away from Mike and walked toward the cabinet that held the intercom speaker. Meantime, he went right on talking.
“Great stuff, brandy. French call iteau de vie, and that, in case you don’t know it, means ‘water of life.’ You want a little, eh, ol’ buddy? Sure you do.” By this time, he’d come back with the bottle and a pair of glasses and was pouring a good dose into each one. “On the other hand, the Irish gave us our name for whisky. Comes fromuisge-beatha, and by some bloody peculiar coincidence, that also means ‘water of life.’ So you just set yourself right down here and get some life into you.”
Mike sat down at the computer table, and Jeffers sat down across from him. “Now you just drink on up, buddy-buddy and then tell your ol’ Uncle Pete what the bloody hell the trouble is.”
Mike looked at the brandy for a full half minute. Then, with one quick flip of his wrist and a sudden spasmodic movement of his gullet, he downed it.
Then he took a deep breath and said: “Do I look as bad as all that?”
“Worse,” said Jeffers complacently, meanwhile refilling Mike’s glass. “While we were on active service together, I’ve seen you go through all kinds of things and never look likethis. What is it? Reaction from this afternoon’s—or, pardon me—yesterdayafternoon’s emergency?”
Mike glanced up at the chronometer. It was two-thirty in the morning, Greenwich time. Jeffers held the bridge from midnight till noon, while Black Bart had the noon to midnight shift.
Still, Mike hadn’t realized that it was as late as all that.
He looked at Jeffers’ lean, bony face. “Reaction? No, it’s not that. Look, Pete, you know me. Would you say I was a pretty levelheaded guy?”
“Sure.”
“My old man always said, ‘Never make an enemy accidentally,’ and I think he was right. So I usually think over what I say before I open my big mouth, don’t I?”
Again Jeffers said, “Sure.”
“I wouldn’t call myself over-cautious,” Mike persisted, “but I usually think a thing through pretty carefully before I act—that is, if I have time. Right?”
“I’d say so,” Jeffers admitted. “I’d say you were about the only guy I know who does the right thing more than 90 per cent of the time. And says the right thing more than 99 per cent of the time. So what do you want? Back-patting, or just hero worship?”
Mike took a small taste of the brandy. “Neither, you jerk. But about eight hours ago I said something that I hadn’t planned to say. I practically proposed to Leda Crannon without knowing I was going to.”
Peter Jeffers didn’t laugh. He simply said, “How’d it happen?”
Mike told him.
When Mike had finished, one drink later, Peter Jeffers filled the glasses for the third time and leaned back in hischair. “Tell me one thing, ol’ buddy, and think about it before you answer. If you had a chance to get out of it gracefully, would you take back what you said?”
Mike the Angel thought it over. The sweep hand on the chronometer made its rounds several times before he answered. Then, at last, he said: “No. No, I wouldn’t.”
Jeffers pursed his lips, then said judicially: “In that case, you’re not doing badly at all. There’s nothing wrong with you except the fact that you’re in love.”
Mike downed the third drink fast and stood up. “Thanks, Pete,” he said. “That’s what I was afraid of.”
“Wait just one stinkin’ minute,” said Jeffers firmly. “Sit down.”
Mike sat.
“What do you intend to do about it?” Jeffers asked.
Mike the Angel grinned at him. “What the hell else can I do but woo and win the wench?”
Jeffers grinned back at him. “I reckon you know you got competition, huh?”
“You mean Jake von Liegnitz?” Mike’s face darkened. “I have the feeling he’s looking for something that doesn’t include a marriage certificate.”
“Love sure makes a man sound noble,” said Jeffers philosophically. “If you mean that all he wants is to get Leda into the sack, you’re prob’ly right. Normal reaction, I’d say. Can’t blame Jake for that.”
“I don’t,” said Mike. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t spike his guns.”
“Course not. Again, a normal reaction.”
“What about Lew Mellon?” Mike asked.
“Lew?” Jeffers raised his eyebrows. “I dunno. I think he likes to talk to her, is all. But if heisinterested, he’s bloodywell serious. He’s a strict Anglo-Catholic, like yourself.”
I’m not as strict as I ought to be, Mike thought. “I thought he had a rather monkish air about him,” he said aloud.
Jeffers chuckled. “Yeah, but I don’t think he’s so ascetic that he wouldn’t marry.” His grin broadened. “Now, if we were still at ol’ Chilblains, you’dreallyhave competition. After all, you can’t expect that a gal who’s stacked ... pardon me ... who has the magnificent physical and physiognomical topography of Leda Crannon to spend her life bein’ ignored, now can you?”
“Nope,” said Mike the Angel.
“Now, I figger,” Jeffers said, “that you can purty much forget about Lew Mellon. But Jakob von Liegnitz is a chromatically variant equine, indeed.”
Mike shook his head vigorously, as if to clear away the fog. “Pfui!Let’s change the subject. My heretofore nimble mind has been coagulated by a pair of innocent blue eyes. I need my skull stirred up.”
“I have a limerick,” said Jeffers lightly. “It’s about a young spaceman named Mike, who said: ‘I can do as I like!’ And to prove his bright quip, he took a round trip, clear to Sirius B on a bike. Or, the tale of the pirate, Black Bart, whose head was as hard as his heart. When he found—”
“Enough!” Mike the Angel held up a hand. “That distillate of fine old grape has made us both silly. Good night. I’m going to get some sleep.” He stood up and winked at Jeffers. “And thanks for listening while I bent your ear.”
“Any time at all, ol’ amoeba. And if you ever feel you need some advice from an ol’ married man, why you just trot right round, and I’ll give you plenty of bad advice.”
“At least you’re honest,” Mike said. “Night.”
Mike the Angel left the bridge as Commander Jeffers was putting the brandy back in its hiding place.
Mike went to his quarters, hit the sack, and spent less than five minutes getting to sleep. There was nothing worrying him now.
He didn’t know how long he’d been asleep when he heard a noise in the darkness of his room that made him sit up in bed, instantly awake. The floater under him churned a little, but there was no noise. The room was silent.
In the utter blackness of the room, Mike the Angel could see nothing, and he could hear nothing but the all-pervading hum of the ship’s engines. But he could still feel and smell.
He searched back in his memory, trying to place the sound that had awakened him. It hadn’t been loud, merely unusual. It had been a noise that shouldn’t have been made in the stateroom. It had been a quiet sound, really, but for the life of him, Mike couldn’t remember what it had sounded like.
But the evidence of his nerves told him there was someone else in the room besides himself. Somewhere near him, something was radiating heat; it was definitely perceptible in the air-conditioned coolness of his room. And, too, there was the definite smell of warm oil—machine oil. It was faint, but it was unmistakable.
And then he knew what the noise had been.
The soft purr of caterpillar treads against the floor!
Casually, Mike the Angel moved his hand to the wall plaque and touched it lightly. The lights came on, dim and subdued.
“Hello, Snookums,” said Mike the Angel gently. “What are you here for?”
The little robot just stood there for a second or two, unmoving,his waldo hands clasped firmly in front of his chest. Mike suddenly wished to Heaven that the metallic face could show something that Mike could read.
“I came for data,” said Snookums at last, in the contralto voice that so resembled the voice of the woman who had trained him.
Mike started to say, “At this time of night?” Then he glanced at his wrist. It was after seven-thirty in the morning, Greenwich time—which was also ship time.
“What is it you want?” Mike asked.
“Can you dance?” asked Snookums.
“Yes,” said Mike dazedly, “I can dance.” For a moment he had the wild idea that Snookums was going to ask him to do a few turns about the floor.
“Thank you,” said Snookums. His treads whirred, he turned as though on a pivot, whizzed to the door, opened it, and was gone.
Mike the Angel stared at the door as though trying to see beyond it, into the depths of the robot’s brain itself.
“Now just what wasthatall about?” he asked aloud.
In the padded silence of the stateroom, there wasn’t even an echo to answer him.