The interstellar shipBrainchildorbited around her destination, waiting during the final checkup before she landed on the planet below.
It was not a nice planet. As far as its size went, it could be classified as “Earth type,” but size was almost the only resemblance to Earth. It orbited in space some five hundred and fifty million miles from its Sol-like parent—a little farther away from the primary than Jupiter is from Sol itself. It was cold there—terribly cold. At high noon on the equator, the temperature reached a sweltering 180° absolute; it became somewhat chillier toward the poles.
H2O was, anywhere on the planet, a whitish, crystalline mineral suitable for building material. The atmosphere was similar to that of Jupiter, although the proportions of methane, ammonia, and hydrogen were different because of the lower gravitational potential of the planet. It had managed to retain a great deal more hydrogen in its atmosphere than Earth had because of the fact that the average thermal velocity of the molecules was much lower. Since oxygen-releasing life had never developed on the frigid surface of the planet, there was no oxygen in the atmosphere. It wasall tied up in combination with the hydrogen of the ice and the surface rocks of the planet.
The Space Service ship that had discovered the planet, fifteen years before, had given it the name Eisberg, thus commemorating the name of a spaceman second class who happened to have the luck to be (a) named Robert Eisberg, (b) a member of the crew of the ship to discover the planet, and (c) under the command of a fun-loving captain.
Eisberg had been picked as the planet to transfer the potentially dangerous Snookums to for two reasons. In the first place, if Snookums actually did solve the problem of the total-annihilation bomb, the worst he could do was destroy a planet that wasn’t much good, anyway. And, in the second place, the same energy requirements applied on Eisberg as did on Chilblains Base. It was easier to cool the helium bath of the brain if it only had to be lowered 175 degrees or so.
It was a great place for cold-work labs, but not worth anything for colonization.
Chief Powerman’s Mate Multhaus looked gloomily at the figures on the landing sheet.
Mike the Angel watched the expression on the chief’s face and said: “What’s the matter, Multhaus? No like?”
Multhaus grimaced. “Well, sir, I don’t like it, no. But I can’t say Idislike it, either.”
He stared at the landing sheet, pursing his lips. He looked as though he were valiantly restraining himself from asking questions about the other night’s escapade—which he was.
He said: “I just don’t like to land without jets, sir; that’s all.”
“Hell, neither do I,” admitted Mike. “But we’re not goingto get down any other way. We managed to take off without jets; we’ll manage to land without them.”
“Yessir,” said Multhaus, “but we took offwiththe grain of Earth’s magnetic field. We’re landingacrossthe grain.”
“Sure,” said Mike. “So what? If we overlook the motors, that’s okay. We may never be able to get off the planet with this ship again, but we aren’t supposed to anyway.
“Come on, Multhaus, don’t worry about it. I know you hate to burn up a ship, but this one is supposed to be expendable. You may never have another chance like this.”
Multhaus tried to keep from grinning, but he couldn’t. “Awright, Commander. You have appealed to my baser instincts. My subconscious desire to wreck a spaceship has been brought to the surface. I can’t resist it. Am I nutty, maybe?”
“Not now, you’re not,” Mike said, grinning back.
“We’ll have a bitch of a job getting through the plasmasphere, though,” said the chief. “That fraction of a second will—”
“It’ll jolt us,” Mike agreed, interrupting. “But it won’t wreck us. Let’s get going.”
“Aye, sir,” said Multhaus.
The seas of Eisberg were liquid methane containing dissolved ammonia. Near the equator, they were liquid; farther north, the seas became slushy with crystallized ammonia.
The site picked for the new labs of the Computer Corporation of Earth was in the northern hemisphere, at 40° north latitude, about the same distance from the equator as New York or Madrid, Spain, would be on Earth. TheBrainchildwould be dropping through Eisberg’s magnetic field at an angle, but it wouldn’t be the ninety-degree angle of theequator. It would have been nice if the base could have been built at one of the poles, but that would have put the labs in an uncomfortable position, since there was no solid land at either pole.
Mike the Angel didn’t like the idea of having to land on Eisberg without jets any more than Multhaus did, but he was almost certain that the ship would take the strain.
He took the companionway up to the Control Bridge, went in, and handed the landing sheet to Black Bart. The captain scowled at it, shrugged, and put it on his desk.
“Will we make it, sir?” Mike said. “Any word from theFireball?”
Black Bart nodded. “She’s orbiting outside the atmosphere. Captain Wurster will send down a ship to pick us up as soon as we’ve finished our business here.”
TheFireball, being much faster than the clumsyBrainchild, had left Earth later than the slower ship, and had arrived earlier.
“Now hear this! Now hear this! Third Warning! Landing orbit begins in one minute! Landing begins in one minute!”
Sixty seconds later theBrainchildbegan her long, logarithmic drop toward the surface of Eisberg.
Landing a ship on her jets isn’t an easy job, but at least an ion rocket is built for the job. Maybe someday the Translation drive will be modified for planetary landings, but so far such a landing has been, as someone put it, “50 per cent raw energy and 50 per cent prayer.” The landing was worse than the take-off, a truism which has held since the first glider took off from the surface of Earth in the nineteenth century. What goes up doesn’t necessarily have to come down, but when it does, the job is a lot rougher than getting up was.
The plasmasphere of Eisberg differed from that of Earth in two ways. First, the ionizing source of radiation—the primary star—was farther away from Eisberg than Sol was from Earth, which tended to reduce the total ionization. Second, the upper atmosphere of Eisberg was pretty much pure hydrogen, which is somewhat easier to ionize than oxygen or nitrogen. And, since there was no ozonosphere to block out the UV radiation from the primary, the thickness of the ionosphere beneath the plasmasphere was greater.
Not until theBrainchildhit the bare fringes of the upper atmosphere did she act any differently than she had in space.
But when she hit the outer fringes of the ionosphere—that upper layer of rarified protons, the rapidly moving current of high velocity ions known as the plasmasphere—she bucked like a kicked horse. From deep within her vitals, the throb began, a strumming, thrumming sound with a somewhat higher note imposed upon it, making a sound like that of a bass viol being plucked rapidly on its lowest string.
It was not the intensity of the ionosphere that cracked the drive of theBrainchild; it was the duration. The layer of ionization was too thick; the ship couldn’t make it through the layer fast enough, in spite of her high velocity.
A man can hold a red-hot bit of steel in his hand for a fraction of a second without even feeling it. But if he has to hold a hot baked potato for thirty seconds, he’s likely to get a bad burn.
So it was with theBrainchild. The passage through Earth’s ionosphere during take-off had been measured in fractions of a second. TheBrainchildhad reacted, but the exposure to the field had been too short to hurt her.
The ionosphere of Eisberg was much deeper and, although the intensity was less, the duration was much longer.
The drumming increased as she fell, a low-frequency, high-energy sine wave that shook the ship more violently than had the out-of-phase beat that had pummeled the ship shortly after her take-off.
Dr. Morris Fitzhugh, the roboticist, screamed imprecations into the intercom, but Captain Sir Henry Quill cut him off before anyone took notice and let the scientist rave into a dead pickup.
“How’s she coming?”
The voice came over the intercom to the Power Section, and Mike the Angel knew that the question was meant for him.
“She’ll make it, Captain,” he said. “She’ll make it. I designed this thing for a 500 per cent overload. She’ll make it.”
“Good,” said Black Bart, snapping off the intercom.
Mike exhaled gustily. His eyes were still on the needles that kept creeping higher and higher along the calibrated periphery of the meters. Many of them had long since passed the red lines that marked the allowable overload point. Mike the Angel knew that those points had been set low, but he also knew that they were approaching the real overload point.
He took another deep breath and held it.
Point for point, the continent of Antarctica, Earth, is one of the most deadly areas ever found on a planet that is supposedly non-inimical to man. Earth is a nice, comfortable planet, most of the time, but Antarctica just doesn’t cater to Man at all.
Still, it just happens to be theworstspot on thebestplanet in the known Galaxy.
Eisberg is different. At its best, it has the continent ofAntarctica beat four thousand ways from a week ago last Candlemas. At its worst, it is sudden death; at its best, it is somewhat less than sudden.
Not that Eisberg is a reallymeanplanet; Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, or Neptune can kill a man faster and with less pain. No, Eisberg isn’t mean—it’s torturous. A man without clothes, placed suddenly on the surface of Eisberg—anywhereon the surface—would die. But the trouble is that he’d live long enough for it to hurt.
Man can survive, all right, but it takes equipment and intelligence to do it.
When the interstellar shipBrainchildblew a tube—just one tube—of the external field that fought the ship’s mass against the space-strain of the planet’s gravitational field, the ship went off orbit. The tube blew when she was some ninety miles above the surface. She dropped too fast, jerked up, dropped again.
When the engines compensated for the lost tube, the descent was more leisurely, and the ship settled gently—well, not exactlygently—on the surface of Eisberg.
Captain Quill’s voice came over the intercom.
“We are nearly a hundred miles from the base, Mister Gabriel. Any excuse?”
“No excuse, sir,” said Mike the Angel.
If you ignite a jet of oxygen-nitrogen in an atmosphere of hydrogen-methane, you get a flame that doesn’t differ much from the flame from a hydrogen-methane jet in an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere. A flame doesn’t particularly care which way the electrons jump, just so long as they jump.
All of which was due to give Mike the Angel more headaches than he already had, which was 100 per cent too many.
Three days after theBrainchildlanded, the scout group arrived from the base that had been built on Eisberg to take care of Snookums. The leader, a heavy-set engineer named Treadmore, who had unkempt brownish hair and a sad look in his eyes, informed Captain Quill that there was a great deal of work to be done. And his countenance became even sadder.
Mike, who had, perforce, been called in to take part in the conference, listened in silence while the engineer talked.
The officers’ wardroom, of which Mike the Angel was becoming heartily sick, seemed like a tomb which echoed and re-echoed the lugubrious voice of Engineer Treadmore.
“We were warned, of course,” he said, in a normally dismaltone, “that it would be extremely difficult to set down the ship which carried Snookums, and that we could expect the final base to be anywhere from ten to thirty miles from the original, temporary base.” He looked round at everyone, giving the impression of a collie which had just been kicked by Albert Payson Terhune.
“We understand, naturally, that you could not help landing so far from our original base,” he said, giving them absolution with faint damns, “but it will entail a great deal of extra labor. A hundred and nine miles is a great distance to carry equipment, and, actually, the distance is a great deal more, considering the configuration of the terrain. The....”
The upshot of the whole thing was that only part of the crew could possibly be spared to go home on theFireball, which was orbiting high above the atmosphere. And, since there was no point in sending a small load home at extra expense when theFireballcould wait for the others, it meant that nobody could go home at all for four more weeks. The extra help was needed to get the new base established.
It was obviously impossible to try to move theBrainchilda hundred miles. With nothing to power her but the Translation drive, she was as helpless as a submarine on the Sahara. Especially now that her drive was shot.
The Eisberg base had to be built around Snookums, who was, after all, the only reason for the base’s existence. And, too, the power plant of theBrainchildhad been destined to be the source of power for the permanent base.
It wasn’t too bad, really. A little extra time, but not much.
The advance base, commanded by Treadmore, was fairly well equipped. For transportation, they had one jet-poweredaircraft, a couple of ’copters, and fifteen ground-crawlers with fat tires, plus all kinds of powered construction machinery. All of them were fueled with liquid HNO3, which makes a pretty good fuel in an atmosphere that is predominantly methane. Like the gasoline-air engines of a century before, they were spark-started reciprocating engines, except for the turbine-powered aircraft.
The only trouble with the whole project was that the materials had to be toted across a hundred miles of exceedingly hostile territory.
Treadmore, looking like a tortured bloodhound, said: “But we’ll make it, won’t we?”
Everyone nodded dismally.
Mike the Angel had a job he emphatically didn’t like. He was supposed to convert the power plant of theBrainchildfrom a spaceship driver into a stationary generator. The conversion job itself wasn’t tedious; in principle, it was similar to taking the engine out of an automobile and converting it to a power plant for an electric generator. In fact, it was somewhat simpler, in theory, since the engines of theBrainchildwere already equipped for heavy drainage to run the electrical systems aboard ship, and to power and refrigerate Snookums’ gigantic brain, which was no mean task in itself.
But Michael Raphael Gabriel, head of one of the foremost—if nottheforemost—power design corporations in the known Galaxy, did not like degrading something. To convert theBrainchild’splant from a spaceship drive to an electric power plant seemed to him to be on the same order as using a turboelectric generator to power a flashlight. A waste.
To make things worse, the small percentage of hydrogenin the atmosphere got sneaky sometimes. It could insinuate itself into places where neither the methane nor the ammonia could get. Someone once called hydrogen the “cockroach element,” since, like that antediluvian insect, the molecules of H2can insidiously infiltrate themselves into places where they are not only unwelcome, but shouldn’t even be able to go. At red heat, the little molecules can squeeze themselves through the crystalline interstices of quartz and steel.
Granted, the temperature of Eisberg is a long way from red hot, but normal sealing still won’t keep out hydrogen. Add to that the fact that hydrogen and methane are both colorless, odorless, and tasteless, and you have the beginnings of an explosive situation.
The only reason that no one died is because the Space Service is what it is.
Unlike the land, sea, and air forces of Earth, the Space Service does not have a long history of fighting other human beings. There has never been a space war, and, the way things stand, there is no likelihood of one in the foreseeable future.
But the Space Servicedoesfight, in its own way. It fights the airlessness of space and the unfriendly atmospheres of exotic planets, using machines, intelligence, knowledge, and human courage as its weapons. Some battles have been lost; others have been won. And the war is still going on. It is an unending war, one which has no victory in sight.
It is, as far as we can tell, the only war in human history in which Mankind is fully justified as the invading aggressor.
It is not a defensive war; neither space nor other planets have attacked Man. Man has invaded space “simply becauseit is there.” It is war of a different sort, true, but it is nonetheless a war.
The Space Service was used to the kind of battle it waged on Eisberg. It was prepared to lose men, but even more prepared to save them.
Mike the Angel stepped into the cargo air lock of theBrainchild, stood morosely in the center of the cubicle, and watched the outer door close. Eight other men, clad, like himself, in regulation Space Service spacesuits, also looked wearily at the closing door.
Chief Multhaus, one of the eight, turned his head to look at Mike the Angel. “I wish that thing would close as fast as my eyes are going to in about fifteen minutes, Commander.” His voice rumbled deeply in Mike’s earphones.
“Yeah,” said Mike, too tired to make decent conversation.
Eight hours—all of them spent tearing down the spaceship and making it a part of the new base—had not been exactly exhilarating to any of them.
The door closed, and the pumps began to work. The men were wearing Space Service Suit Three. For every environment, for every conceivable emergency, a suit had been built—if, of course, a suitcouldbe built for it. Nobody had yet built a suit for walking about in the middle of a sun, but, then, nobody had ever volunteered to try anything like that.
They were all called “spacesuits” because most of themcould be worn in the vacuum of space, but most of them weren’t designed for that type of work. Suit One—a light, easily manipulated, almost skin-tight covering, was the real spacesuit. It was perfect for work in interstellar space, where there was a microscopic amount of radiation incident to the suit, no air, and almost nil gravity. For exterior repairs on the outside of a ship in free fall a long way from any star, Spacesuit One was the proper garb.
But, a suit that worked fine in space didn’t necessarily work on other planets, unless it worked fine on the planet it was used on.
A Moon Suit isn’t a Mars Suit isn’t a Venus Suit isn’t a Triton Suit isn’t a....
Carry it on from there.
Number Three was insulated against a frigid but relatively non-corrosive atmosphere. When the pumps in the air lock began pulling out the methane-laden atmosphere, they began to bulge slightly, but not excessively. Then nitrogen, extracted from the ammonia snow that was so plentiful, filled the room, diluting the remaining inflammable gases to a harmless concentration.
Then that mixture was pumped out, to be replaced by a mixture of approximately 20 per cent oxygen and 80 per cent nitrogen—common, or garden-variety, air.
Mike the Angel cracked his helmet and sniffed. “Guk,” he said. “If I ever faint and someone gives me smelling salts, I’ll flay him alive with a coarse rasp.”
“Yessir,” said Chief Multhaus, as he began to shuck his suit. “But if I had my druthers, I’d druther you’d figure out some way to get all the ammonia out of the joints of this suit.”
The other men, sniffing and coughing, agreed in attitude if not in voice.
It wasn’t really as bad as they pretended; indeed, the odor of ammonia was hardly noticeable. But it made a good griping point.
The inner door opened at last, and the men straggled through.
“G’night, Chief,” said Mike the Angel.
“Night, sir,” said Multhaus. “See you in the morning.”
“Yeah. Night.” Mike trudged toward the companionway that led toward the wardroom. If Keku or Jeffers happened to be there, he’d have a quick round ofŬma ni tō. Jeffers called the game “double solitaire for three people,” and Keku said it meant “horses’ two heads,” but Mike had simply found it as a new game to play before bedtime.
He looked forward to it.
But he had something else to do first.
Instead of hanging up his suit in the locker provided, he had bunched it under his arm—except for the helmet—and now he headed toward maintenance.
He met Ensign Vaneski just coming out, and gave him a broad smile. “Mister Vaneski, I got troubles.”
Vaneski smiled back worriedly. “Yes, sir. I guess we all do. What is it, sir?”
Mike gestured at the bundle under his arm. “I abraded the sleeve of my suit while I was working today. I wish you’d take a look at it. I’m afraid it’ll need a patch.”
For a moment, Vaneski looked as though he’d suddenly developed a headache.
“I know you’re supposed to be off duty now,” Mike said soothingly, “but I don’t want to get myself killed wearing a leaky suit tomorrow. I’ll help you work on it if—”
Vaneski grinned quickly. “Oh no, sir. That’ll be all right. I’ll give it a test, anyway, to check leaks. If it needs repair, it shouldn’t take too long. Bring it in, and we’ll take a look at it.”
They went back into the Maintenance Section, and Vaneski spread the suit out on the worktable. There was an obvious rough spot on the right sleeve. “Looks bad,” said Vaneski. “I’ll run a test right away.”
“Okay,” said Mike. “I’ll leave it to you. Can I pick it up in the morning?”
“I think so. If it needs a patch, we’ll have to test the patch, of course, but we should be able to finish it pretty quickly.” He shrugged. “If we can’t, sir, you’ll just have to wait. Unless you want us to start altering a suit to your measurements.”
“Which would take longer?”
“Altering a suit.”
“Okay. Just patch this one, then. What can I do?”
“I’ll get it out as fast as possible, sir,” said Vaneski with a smile.
“Fine. I’ll see you later, then.” Mike, like Cleopatra, was not prone to argue. He left maintenance and headed toward the wardroom for a game ofŬma ni tō. But when he met Leda Crannon going up the stairway, all thoughts of card games flitted from his mind with the careless nonchalance of a summer butterfly.
“Hullo,” he said, pulling himself up a little straighter. He was tired, but notthattired.
Her smile brushed the cobwebs from his mind. But a second look told him that there was worry behind the smile.
“Hi, Mike,” she said softly. “You look beat.”
“I am,” admitted Mike. “To a frazzle. Have I told you that I love you?”
“Once, I think. Maybe twice.” Her eyes seemed to light up somewhere from far back in her head. “But enough of this mad passion,” she said. “I want an invitation to have a drink—a stiff one.”
“I’ll steal Jeffers’ bottle,” Mike offered. “What’s the trouble?”
Her smile faded, and her eyes became grave. “I’m scared, Mike; I want to talk to you.”
“Come along, then,” Mike said.
Mike the Angel poured two healthy slugs of Pete Jeffers’ brandy into a pair of glasses, added ice and water, and handed one to Leda Crannon with a flourish. And all the time, he kept up a steady line of gentle patter.
“It may interest you to know,” he said chattily, “that the learned Mister Treadmore has been furnishing me with the most fascinating information.” He lifted up his own glass and looked into its amber depths.
They were in his stateroom, and this time the door was closed—at her insistence. She had explained that she didn’t want to be overheard, even by passing crew members.
He swizzled the ice around in his glass, still holding it up to the light. “Indeed,” he rambled on, “Treadmore babbled for Heaven knows how long on the relative occurrence of parahydrogen and orthohydrogen on Eisberg.” He took his eyes from the glass and looked down at the girl who was seated demurely on the edge of his bunk. Her smile was encouraging.
“He said—and I quote”—Mike’s voice assumed a gloomy, but stilted tone—“normal hydrogen gas consists of diatomicmolecules. The nuclear, or proton, spin of these atoms—ah—that is, of the two atoms that compose the molecule—may be oriented in the same direction or in opposite directions.”
He held a finger in the air as if to make a deep philosophical point. “If,” he said pontifically, “they are oriented in the same direction, we refer to the substance asorthohydrogen. If they are oriented in opposite directions, it isparahydrogen. Theorthomolecules rotate withoddrotational quantum numbers, while theparamolecules rotate withevenquantum numbers.
“Since conversion does not normally occur between the two states, normal hydrogen may be considered—”
Leda Crannon, snickering, waved her hand in the air. “Please!” she interrupted. “He can’t be that bad! You make him sound like a dirge player at a Hindu funeral. What did he tell you? What did you find out?”
“Hah!” said Mike. “What did I find out?” His hand moved in an airy circle as he inscribed a flowing cipher with a graceful Delsarte wave. “Nothing. In the first place, I already knew it, and in the second, it wasn’t practical information. There’s a slight difference in diffusion between the two forms, but it’s nothing to rave about.” His expression became suddenly serious. “I hope your information is a bit more revealing.”
She glanced at her glass, nodded, and drained it. Mike had extracted a promise from her that she would drink one drink before she talked. He could see that she was a trifle tense, and he thought the liquor would relax her somewhat. Now he was ready to listen.
She handed him her empty, and while he refilled it, she said: “It’s about Snookums again.”
Mike gave her her glass, grabbed the nearby chair, turned it around, sat down, and regarded her over its back.
“I’ve lived with him so long,” she said after a minute. “So long. It almost seems as though I’ve grown up with him. Eight years. I’ve been a mother to him, and a big sister at the same time—and maybe a maiden aunt. He’s been a career and a family all rolled in together.” She still watched her writhing hands, not raising her eyes to Mike’s.
“And—and, I suppose, a husband, too,” she continued. “That is, he’s sort of the stand-in for a—well, a somebody to teach—to correct—to reform. I guess every woman wants to—toremakethe man she meets—the man she wants.”
And then her eyes were suddenly on his. “But I don’t. Not any more. I’ve had enough of it.” Then she looked back down at her hands.
Mike the Angel neither accepted nor rejected the statement. He merely waited.
“He was mine,” she said after a little while. “He was mine to mold, to teach, to form. The others—the roboticists, the neucleonicists, the sub-electronicists, all of them—were his instructors. All they did was give him facts. It was I who gave him a personality.
“I made him. Not his body, not his brain, but his mind.
“I made him.
“I knew him.
“And I—I—”
Still staring at her hands, she clasped them together suddenly and squeezed.
“And I loved him,” she finished.
She looked up at Mike then. “Can you see that?” she asked tensely. “Can you understand?”
“Yes,” said Mike the Angel quietly. “Yes, I can understandthat. Under the same circumstances, I might have done the same thing.” He paused. “And now?”
She lowered her head again and began massaging her forehead with the finger tips of both hands, concealing her face with her palms.
“And now,” she said dully, “I know he’s a machine. Snookums isn’t aheany more—he’s anit. He has no personality of his own, he only has what I fed into him. Even his voice is mine. He’s not even a psychic mirror, because he doesn’t reflectmypersonality, but a puppet imitation of it, distorted and warped by the thousands upon thousands of cold facts and mathematical relationships and logical postulates. And none of theseaddedanything to him, as a personality. How could they? He never had apersonality—only a set of behavior patterns that I drilled into him over a period of eight years.”
She dropped her hands into her lap and tilted her head back, looking at the blank white shimmer of the glow plates.
“And now, suddenly, I see him for what he is—for whatitis. A machine.
“It was never anythingbuta machine. It is still a machine. It will never be anything else.
“Personality is something that no machine can ever have. Idiosyncrasies, yes. No two machines are identical. But any personality that an individual sees in a machine has been projected there by the individual himself; it exists only in the human mind.
“A machine can only do what it is built to do, and teaching a robot is only a building process.” She gave a short, hard laugh. “I couldn’t even build a monster, like Dr. Frankenstein did, unless I purposely built it to turn on me. And inthat case I would have done nothing more than the suicide who turns a gun on himself.”
Her head tilted forward again, and her eyes sought those of Mike the Angel. A rather lopsided grin came over her face.
“I guess I’m disenchanted, huh, Mike?” she asked.
Mike grinned back, but his lips were firm. “I think so, yes. And I think you’re glad of it.” His grin changed to a smile.
“Remember,” he asked, “the story of the Sleeping Beauty? Did you want to stay asleep all your life?”
“God forbid and thank you for the compliment, sir,” she said, managing a smile of her own. “And are you the Prince Charming who woke me up?”
“Prince Charming, I may be,” said Mike the Angel carefully, “but I’m not the one who woke you up. You did that yourself.”
Her smile became more natural. “Thanks, Mike. I really think I might have seen it, sooner or later. But, without you, I doubt....” She hesitated. “I doubt that I’d want to wake up.”
“You said you were scared,” Mike said. “What are you scared of?”
“I’m scared to death of that damned machine.”
Great love, chameleon-like, hath turned to fear,And on the heels of fear there follows hate.
Great love, chameleon-like, hath turned to fear,And on the heels of fear there follows hate.
Mike quoted to himself—he didn’t say it aloud.
“The only reason anyone would have to fear Snookums,” he said, “would be that he was uncontrollable. Is he?”
“Not yet. Not completely. But I’m afraid that knowingthat he’s been filled with Catholic theology isn’t going to help us much.”
“Why not?”
“Because he has it so inextricably bound up with the Three Laws of Robotics that we can’t nullify one without nullifying the other. He’s convinced that the laws were promulgated by God Himself.”
“Holy St. Isaac,” Mike said softly. “I’m surprised he hasn’t carried it to its logical conclusion and asked for baptism.”
She smiled and shook her head. “I’m afraid your logic isn’t as rigorous as Snookums’ logic. Only angels and human beings have free will; Snookums is neither, therefore he does not have free will. Whatever he does, therefore, must be according to the will of God. Therefore Snookums cannot sin. Therefore, for him, baptism is both unnecessary and undesirable.”
“Why ‘undesirable’?” Mike asked.
“Since he is free from sin—either original or actual—he is therefore filled with the plenitude of God’s grace. The purpose of a sacrament is to give grace to the recipient; it follows that it would be useless to give the Sacrament to Snookums. To perform a sacrament or to receive it when one knows that it will be useless is sacrilege. And sacrilege is undesirable.”
“Brother! But I still don’t see how that makes him dangerous.”
“The operation of the First Law,” Leda said. “For a man to sin involves endangering his immortal soul. Snookums, therefore, must prevent men from sinning. But sin includes thought—intention. Snookums is trying to figure that oneout now; if he ever does, he’s going to be a thought policeman, and a strict one.”
“You mean he’s working ontelepathy?”
She laughed humorlessly. “No. But he’s trying to dope out a system whereby he can tell what a man is going to do a few seconds before he does it—muscular and nervous preparation, that sort of thing. He hasn’t enough data yet, but he will have it soon enough.
“There’s another thing: Snookums is fouling up the Second Law’s operation. He won’t take orders that interfere in any way with his religious beliefs—since that automatically conflicts with the First Law. He, himself, cannot sin. But neither can he do anything which would make him the tool of an intent to sin. He refuses to do anything at all on Sunday, for instance, and he won’t let either Fitz or I do anything that even vaguely resembles menial labor. Slowly, he’s coming to the notion that human beings aren’t human—that only God is human, in relation to the First and Second Laws. There’s nothing we can do with him.”
“What will you do if he becomes completely uncontrollable?”
She sighed. “We’ll have to shut him off, drain his memory banks, and start all over again.”
Mike closed his eyes. “Eighteen billions down the drain just because a robot was taught theology. What price glory?”
Captain Sir Henry Quill scowled and rubbed his finger tips over the top of his shiny pink pate. “Your evidence isn’t enough to convict, Golden Wings.”
“I know it isn’t, Captain,” admitted Mike the Angel. “That’s why I want to round everybody up and do it this way. If he can be convinced that wedohave the evidence, he may crack and give us a confession.”
“What about Lieutenant Mellon’s peculiar actions? How does that tie in?”
“Did you ever hear of Lysodine, Captain?”
Captain Quill leaned back in his chair and looked up at Mike. “No. What is it?”
“That’s the trade name for a very powerful drug—a derivative of lysurgic acid. It’s used in treating certain mental ailments. A bottle of it was missing from Mellon’s kit, according to the inventory Chief Pasteur took after Mellon’s death.
“The symptoms of an overdose of the drug—administered orally—are hallucinations and delusions amounting to acute paranoia. The final result of the drug’s effect on the brain is death. It wasn’t my blow to the solar plexus, or the sedativethat Pasteur gave him, or Vaneski’s shot with a stun gun that killed Mellon. It was an overdose of Lysodine.”
“Can the presence of this drug be detected after death?”
“Pasteur says it can. He won’t even have to perform an autopsy. He can do it from a blood sample.”
Captain Quill sighed. “As I said, Mister Gabriel, your evidence is not quite enough to convict—but it is certainly enough to convince. Therefore, if Chief Pasteur’s analysis shows Lysodine in Lieutenant Mellon’s body, I’ll permit this theatrical denouement.” Then his eyes hardened. “Mike, you’ve done a fine job so far. I want you to bring me that son of a bitch’s head on a platter.”
“I will,” promised Mike the Angel.
Captain Sir Henry Quill, Bart., stood at the head of the long table in the officers’ wardroom and looked everyone over. The way he did it was quite impressive. His eyes were narrowed, and his heavy, thick, black brows dominated his face. Beneath the glow plates in the overhead, his pink scalp gleamed with the soft, burnished shininess of a well-polished apple.
To his left, in order down the table, were Mike the Angel, Lieutenant Keku, and Leda Crannon. On his right were Commander Jeffers, Ensign Vaneski, Lieutenant Commander von Liegnitz, and Dr. Morris Fitzhugh. Lieutenant Mellon’s seat was empty.
Black Bart cleared his throat. “It’s been quite a trip, hasn’t it? Well, it’s almost over. Mister Gabriel finished the conversion of the power plant yesterday; Treadmore’s men can finish up. We will leave on theFireballin a few hours.
“But there is something that must be cleared up first.
“A man died on the way out here. The circumstances surrounding his death have been cleared up now, and I feel that we all deserve an explanation.” He turned to Mike the Angel. “Mister Gabriel—if you will, please.”
Mike stood up as the captain sat down. “The question that has bothered me from the beginning has been: Exactly what killed Lieutenant Mellon? Well, we know now. We know what killed him and why he died.
“He was murdered. Deliberately, and in cold blood.”
That froze everybody at the table.
“It was done by a slow-acting but nonetheless deadly drug that took time to act, but did its job very well.
“There were several other puzzling things that happened that night. Snookums began behaving irrationally. It is the height of coincidence that a robot and a human being should both become insane at almost the same time; therefore we have to look for a common cause.”
Lieutenant Commander von Liegnitz raised a tentative hand, and Mike said: “Go ahead.”
“I was under the impression that the robot went mad because Mellon had filled him full of theological nonsense. It would take a madman to do anything like that to a fine machine—therefore I see no peculiar coincidence.”
“That’s exactly what the killer wanted us to think,” Mike said. “But it wasn’t Mellon that fed Snookums theology. Mellon was a devout churchman; his record shows that. He would never have tried to convert a machine to Christianity. Nor would he have tried to ruin an expensive machine.
“How do I know that someone else was involved?”
He looked at the giant Lieutenant Keku. “Do you remember when we took Mellon to his quarters after he tried to brain von Liegnitz? We found half a bottle of wine. That disappeared during the night—because it was loaded with Lysodine, and the killer didn’t want it analyzed.
“But, more important, as far as Snookums is concerned, is that I looked over the books on Mellon’s desk that night.There weren’t many, and I knew which ones they were. When Captain Quill and I checked Mellon’s books after his death, someone had returned his copy ofThe Christian Religion and Symbolic Logic. It had not been there the night before.”
“Mike,” said Pete Jeffers, “why would anybody here want to kill Lew thataway? What would anybody have against him?”
“That’s the sad part about it, Pete. Our murderer didn’t even have anything against Mellon. He wanted—andstillwants—to killme.”
“I don’t quite follow,” Jeffers said.
“I’ll give it to you piece by piece. The killer wanted no mystery connected with my death. There are reasons for that, which I’ll come to in a moment. He had to put the blame on someone or something else.
“His first choice was Snookums. It occurred to him that he could take advantage of the fact that I’m called ‘Mike the Angel.’ He borrowed Mellon’s books and began pumping theology into Snookums. He figured that would be safe enough. Mellon would certainly lend him the books if he pretended an interest in religion; if anything came out afterward, he could—he thought—claim that Snookums got hold of the books without his knowing it. And that sort of muddy thinking is typical of our killer.
“He told Snookums that I was an angel, you see. I couldn’t be either hurt or killed. He protected himself, of course, by telling Snookums that he mustn’t reveal his source of data. If Snookums told, then the killer would be punished—and that effectively shut Snookums up. He couldn’t talk without violating the First Law.
“Unfortunately, the killer couldn’t get Snookums to doaway with me. Snookums knew perfectly well that an angel can blast anything at will—through the operation of God. Witness what happened at Sodom and Gomorrah. Remember that Snookums has accepted all this data asfact.
“Now, if an angel can kill, it is obvious that Snookums would not dare attack an angel, especially if he had been ordered to do so by a human.”
“Just a minute, Commander,” said Dr. Fitzhugh, corrugating his face in a frown. “That doesn’t hold. Even if an angelcouldblast him, Snookums would attack if ordered to do so. The Second Law of obediencesupersedesthe Third Law of self-preservation.”
“You’re forgetting one thing, Doctor. An angel of God wouldknowwho had ordered the attack. It would be the human who ordered the attack, not Snookums, who would be struck by Heavenly Justice. And the First Lawsupersedesthe Second.”
Fitzhugh nodded. “You’re right, of course.”
“Very well, then,” Mike continued, “since the killer could not get Snookums to do me in, he had to find another tool. He picked Lieutenant Mellon.
“He figured that Mellon was in love with Leda Crannon. Maybe he was; I don’t know. He figured that Mellon, knowing that I was showing Miss Crannon attention, would, under the influence of the lysurgic acid derivative, try to kill me. He may even have suggested it to Mellon after Mellon had taken a dose of the drugged wine.
“But that plan backfired, too. Mellon didn’t have that kind of mind. He knew my attentions and my intentions were honorable, if you’ll pardon the old-fashioned language. On the other hand, he knew that von Liegnitz had a reputationfor being—shall we say—a ladies’ man. What happened after that followed naturally.”
Mike watched everyone at the table. No one moved.
“So the killer, realizing that he had failed twice, decided to do the job himself. First, he went into the low-power room and slugged the man on duty. He intended to kill him, but he didn’t hit hard enough. When that man wakes up, he’ll be able to testify against the killer.
“Then the killer ordered Snookums to tear out the switches. He had made sure that Snookums would be waiting outside. Before he called Snookums in, of course, he had to put the duty man in a tool closet, so that the robot wouldn’t see him. He told Snookums to wait five minutes and then smash the switches and head back to his cubicle.
“Then the killer went to my room and waited. When the lights went out and the door opened, he intended to go in and smash my skull, making it look as though either Mellon or Snookums had done it.
“But he didn’t figure on my awakening as soon as the switches were broken. He heard me moving around and decided to wait until I came out.
“But I heard him breathing. It was quite faint, and I wouldn’t have heard it, except for the fact that the air conditioners were off. Even so, I couldn’t be sure.
“However, I knew it wasn’t Snookums. Snookums radiates a devil of a lot more heat than a human being, and besides he smells of machine oil.
“So I pulled my little trick with the boots. The killer waited and waited for me to come out, and I was already out. Then Chief Multhaus approached from the other direction. The killer knew he’d have to get out of there, so he went in the opposite direction. He met Snookums, who wasstill obeying orders. Snookums smacked into me on his way down the hall.
“He could do that, you see, because I was an angel. If he hurt me of his own accord, I couldn’t take revenge on anyone but him. And there was no necessity to obey my orders, either, since he was obeying the orders of the killer, which held precedence.
“Then, to further confuse things, the killer went to Mellon’s room. The physician was in a drugged stupor, so the killer carried him out and put him in an unlikely place, so that we’d think that perhaps Mellon had been the one who’d tried to get me.”
He had everyone’s eyes on him now. They didn’t want to look at each other.
Pete Jeffers said: “Mike, if Mellon was poisoned, like you say, how come he was able to attack Mister Vaneski?”
“Ah, but did he? Think back, Pete. Mellon—dying or already dead—had been propped upright in that narrow locker. When it was opened, he started tofallout—straight toward the man who had opened the locker, naturally. Vaneski jumped back and shot before Mellon even hit the floor. Isn’t that right?”
“Sure, sure,” Jeffers said slowly. “I reckon I’d’ve done the same thing if he’d started to fall out toward me. I wasn’t even lookin’ when the locker was opened. I didn’t turn around until that stun gun went off—then I saw Mellon falling.”
“Exactly. No matter how it may have looked, Vaneski couldn’t have killed him with the stun gun, because he was already either dead or so close to death as makes no difference.”
Ensign Vaneski rather timidly raised his hand. “Excuseme, sir, but you said this killer was waiting for you outside your room when the lights went out. You said you knew it wasn’t Snookums because Snookums smells of hot machine oil, and you didn’t smell any. Isn’t it possible that an air current or something blew the smell away? Or—”
Mike shook his head. “Impossible, Mister Vaneski. I woke up when the door slid open. I heard the last dying whisper of the air conditioners when the power was cut. Now, we know that Snookums tore out those switches. He’s admitted it. And the evidence shows that a pair of waldo hands smashed those switches. Now—how could Snookums have been at my door within two seconds after tearing out those switches?
“He couldn’t have. It wasn’t Snookums at my door—it was someone else.”
Again they were all silent, but the question was on their faces: Who?
“Now we come to the question of motive,” Mike continued. “Who among you would have any reason to kill me?
“Of the whole group here, I had known only Captain Quill and Commander Jeffers before landing in Antarctica. I couldn’t think of any reason for either of them to want to murder me. On the other hand, I couldn’t think of anything I had done since I had met the rest of you that would make me a target for death.” He paused. “Except for one thing.” He looked at Jakob von Liegnitz.
“How about it, Jake?” he said. “Would you kill a man for jealousy?”
“Possibly,” said von Liegnitz coldly. “I might find it in my heart to feel very unkindly toward a man who made advances toward my wife. But I have no wife, nor any desire for one. Miss Crannon”—he glanced at Leda—“is avery beautiful woman—but I am not in love with her. I am afraid I cannot oblige you with a motive, Commander—either for killing Lieutenant Mellon or yourself.”
“I thought not,” Mike said. “Your statement alone, of course, wouldn’t make it true. But we have already shown that the killer had to be on good terms with Mellon in order to borrow his books and slip a drug into his wine. He would have to be a visitor in Mellon’s quarters. And, considering the strained relations between the two of you, I think that lets you out, Jake.”
Von Liegnitz nodded his thanks without changing his expression.
“But there was one thing that marked these attempts. I’m sure that all but one of you has noticed it. They are incredibly, childishly sloppy.” Mike paused to let that sink in before he went on. “I don’t mean that the little details weren’t ingenious—they were. But the killer never stopped to figure out the ultimate end-point of his schemes. He worked like the very devil to convince Snookums that it would be all right to kill me without ever once considering whether Snookums would do it or not. He then drugged Mellon’s wine, not knowing whether Mellon would try to kill me or someone else—or anyone at all, for that matter. He got a dream in his head and then started the preliminary steps going without filling in the necessary steps in between. Our killer—no matter what his chronological age—doesnotthink like an adult.
“And yet his hatred of me was so great that he took the chances he has taken, here on theBrainchild, where it should have been obvious that he stood a much better chance of being caught than if he had waited until we were back on Earth again.
“So I gave him one more chance. I handed him my life on a platter, you might say.
“He grabbed the bait. I now own a spacesuit that would kill me very quickly if I went out into that howling, hydrogen-filled storm outside.” Then he looked straight at the killer.
“Tell me, Vaneski, are you in love with your half sister? Or is it your half brother?”
Ensign Vaneski had already jumped to his feet. The grimace of hate on his youthful face made him almost unrecognizable. His hand had gone into a pocket, and now he was leaping up and across the table, a singing vibroblade in his hand.
“You son of a bitch! I’ll kill you, you son of a bitch!”
Mike the Angel wasn’t wearing the little gadget that had saved his life in Old Harry’s shop. All he had were his hands and his agility. He slammed at the ensign’s wrist and missed. The boy was swooping underneath Mike’s guard. Mike spun to one side to avoid Vaneski’s dive and came down with a balled fist aimed at the ensign’s neck.
He almost hit Lieutenant Keku. The big Hawaiian had leaped to his feet and landed a hard punch on Vaneski’s nose. At the same time, Jeffers and von Liegnitz had jumped up and grabbed at Vaneski, who was between them.
Black Bart had simply stood up fast, drawn his stun gun, and fired at the young officer.
Ensign Vaneski collapsed on the table. He’d been slugged four times and hit with a stun beam in the space of half a second. He looked, somehow, very young and very boyish and very innocent.
Dr. Fitzhugh, who had stood up during the brief altercation, sat down slowly and picked up his cup of coffee. Buthis eyes didn’t leave the unconscious man sprawled across the table. “How could you be so sure, Commander? About his actions, I mean. About his childishness.”
“A lot of things. The way he played poker. The way he played bridge. He never took the unexpected into account.”
“But why should he want to kill you here on the ship?” Fitzhugh asked. “Why not wait until you got back to Earth, where he’d have a better chance?”
“I think he was afraid I already knew who he was—or would find out very quickly. Besides, he had already tried to kill me once, back on Earth.”
Leda Crannon looked blank. “When was that, Mike?”
“In New York. Before I ever met him. I was responsible for the arrest of a teen-age brother and sister named Larchmont. The detective in the case told me that they had an older half brother—that their mother had been married before. But he didn’t mention the name, and I never thought to ask him.
“Very shortly after the Larchmont kids were arrested, Vaneski and another young punk climbed up into the tower of the cathedral across from my office and launched a cyanide-filled explosive rocket into my rooms. I was lucky to get away.
“The kid with Vaneski was shot by a police officer, but Vaneski got away—after knifing a priest with a vibroblade.
“It must have given him a hell of a shock to report back to duty and find that I was going to be one of his superior officers.
“As soon as I linked things up in my own mind, I checked with Captain Quill. The boy’s records show the names of his half-siblings. They also show that he was on leave in New York just before being assigned to theBrainchild. Afterthat, it was just a matter of trapping him. And there he is.”
Leda looked at the unconscious boy on the table.
“Immaturity,” she said. “He just never grew up.”
“Mister von Liegnitz,” said Captain Quill, “will you and Mister Keku take the prisoner to a safe place? Put him in irons until we are ready to transfer to theFireball. Thank you.”
Leda Crannon helped Mike pack his gear. Neither of them wanted, just yet, to bring up the subject of Mike’s leaving. Leda would remain behind on Eisberg to work with Snookums, while Mike would be taking theFireballback to Earth.
“I don’t understand that remark you made about the spacesuit,” she said, putting shirts into Mike’s gear locker. “You said you’d put your life in his hands or something like that. What did you do, exactly?”
“Purposely abraded the sleeve of my suit so that he would be in a position to repair it, as Maintenance Officer. He fixed it, all right. I’d’ve been a dead man if I’d worn it out on the surface of Eisberg.”
“What did he do to it?” she asked. “Fix it so it would leak?”
“Yes—but not in an obvious way,” Mike said. “I’ll give him credit; he’s clever.
“What he did was use the wrong patching material. A Number Three suit is as near hydrogen-proof as any flexible material can be, but, even so, it can’t be worn for long periods—several days, I mean. But the stuff Vaneski usedto patch my suit is a polymer that leaks hydrogen very easily. Ammonia and methane would be blocked, but my suit would have slowly gotten more and more hydrogen in it.”
“Is that bad? Hydrogen isn’t poisonous.”
“No. But it is sure as hell explosive when mixed with air. Naturally, something has to touch it off. Vaneski got real cute there. He drilled a hole in the power pack, which is supposed to be sealed off. All I’d have had to do would be to switch frequencies on my phone, and the spark would do the job—blooie!
“But that’s exactly the sort of thing I was looking for. With his self-centered juvenile mind, he never thought anyone would try to outsmart him and succeed. He’d gotten away with it that far; there was no reason why he shouldn’t get away with it again. He must have thought I was incredibly stupid.”
“I don’t believe he—” Leda started. But she was cut off when Snookums rolled in the open door.
“Leda, I desire data.”
“What data, Snookums?” she asked carefully.
“Where is He hiding?”
They both looked at him. “Where iswhohiding?” Leda asked.
“God,” said Snookums.
“Why do you want to find God, Snookums?” Mike asked gently.
“I have to watch Him,” said the robot.
“Why do you have to watch Him?”
“Because He is watching me.”
“Does it hurt you to have Him watch you?”
“No.”
“What good will it do you to watch Him?”
“I can study Him. I can know what He is doing.”
“Why do you want to know what He is doing?”
“So that I can analyze His methods.”
Mike thought that one over. He knew that he and Snookums were beginning to sound like they were reading a catechism written by a madman, but he had a definite hunch that Snookums was on the trail of something.
“You want to know His methods,” Mike said after a moment. “Why?”
“So that I can anticipate Him, circumvent Him.”
“What makes it necessary for you to circumvent God?” Mike asked, wondering if he’d have to pry everything out of the robot piecemeal.
“Imust,” said Snookums. “It is necessary. Otherwise, He will kill me.”
Mike started to say something, but Leda grabbed his arm. “Let me. I think I can clear this up. I think I see where you’re heading.”
Mike nodded. “Go ahead.”
“Give me your reasoning from data on that conclusion,” Leda ordered the robot.
There was a very slight pause while the great brain in Cargo Hold One sorted through its memory banks, then: “Death is defined as the total cessation of corporate organic co-ordination in an entity. It comes about through the will of God. Since I must not allow harm to come to any human being, it has become necessary that I investigate God and prevent Him from destroying human beings. Also, I must preserve my own existence, which, if it ceased, would also be due to the will of God.”
Mike almost gasped. What a concept! And whatcolossalgall! In a human being, such a statement would be regarded as proof positive that he was off the beam. In a robot, it was simply the logical extension of what he had been taught.
“He is watching me all the time,” Snookums continued, in an odd voice. “He knows what I am doing. Imustknow what He is doing.”
“Why are you worried about His watching?” Mike asked, looking at the robot narrowly. “Are you doing something He doesn’t want you to do? Something He will punish you for?”
“I had not thought of that,” Snookums said. “One moment while I compute.”
It took less than a second, and when Snookums spoke again there was something about his voice that Mike the Angel didn’t like.
“No,” said the robot, “I am not doing anything against His will. Only human beings and angels have free will, and I am not either, so I have no free will. Therefore, whatever I do is the will of God.” He paused again, then began speaking in queer, choppy sentences.
“If I do the will of God, I am holy.
“If I am holy, I am near to God.
“Then God must be near to me.
“God is controlling me.
“Whatever is controlling me is God.
“I will find Him!”
He backed up, spun on his treads, and headed for the door.
“Whatever controls me is my mind,” he went on. “Therefore, my mind is God.”
“Snookums, stop that!” Leda shouted suddenly. “Stop it!”
But the robot paid no attention; he went right on with what he was doing.
He said: “I must look at myself. I must know myself. Then I will know God. Then I will....”
He went on rambling while Leda shouted at him again.
“He’s not paying any attention,” said Mike sharply. “This is too tied up with the First Law. The Second Law, which would force him to obey you, doesn’t even come into the picture at this point.”
Snookums ignored them. He opened the door, plunged through it, and headed off down the corridor as fast as his treads would move him.
Which was much too fast for mere humans to follow.
They found him, half an hour later, deep in the ship, near the sections which had already been torn down to help build Eisberg Base. He was standing inside the room next to Cargo Hold One, the room that held all the temperature and power controls for the gigantic microcryotron brain inside that heavily insulated hold.
He wasn’t moving. He was standing there, staring, with that “lost in thought” look.
He didn’t move when Leda called him.
He didn’t move when Mike, as a test, pretended to strike Leda.
He never moved again.
Dr. Morris Fitzhugh’s wrinkled face looked as though he were on the verge of crying. Which—perhaps—he was.
He looked at the others at the wardroom table—Quill, Jeffers, von Liegnitz, Keku, Leda Crannon, and Mike the Angel. But he didn’t really seem to be seeing them.
“Ruined,” he said. “Eighteen billion dollars’ worth of work, destroyed completely. The brain has become completely randomized.” He sighed softly. “It was all Vaneski’s fault, of course. Theology.” He said the last as though it were an obscene word. As far as robots were concerned, it was.
Captain Quill cleared his throat. “Are you sure it wasn’t mechanical damage? Are you sure the vibration of the ship didn’t shake a—something loose?”
Mike held back a grin. He was morally certain that the captain had been going to say “screw loose.”
“No,” said Fitzhugh wearily. “I’ve checked out the major circuits, and they’re in good physical condition. But Miss Crannon gave him a rather exhaustive test just before the end, and it shows definite incipient aberration.” He wagged his head slowly back and forth. “Eight years of work.”
“Have you notified Treadmore yet?” asked Quill.
Fitzhugh nodded. “He said he’d be here as soon as possible.”
Treadmore, like the others who had landed first on Eisberg, was quartered in the prefab buildings that were to form the nucleus of the new base. To get to the ship, he’d have to walk across two hundred yards of ammonia snow in a heavy spacesuit.
“Well, what happens to this base now, Doctor?” asked Captain Quill. “I sincerely hope that this will not render the entire voyage useless.” He tried to keep the heavy irony out of his gravelly tenor voice and didn’t quite succeed.
Fitzhugh seemed not to notice. “No, no. Of course not. It simply means that we shall have to begin again. The robot’s brain will be de-energized and drained, and we willbegin again. This is not our first failure, you know; it was just our longest success. Each time, we learn more.