The Seventh Golden Age of Science Fiction Megapack

by H. B. Fyfe

  “Birken!” he shouted. “For the last time! Do you want me to send them to drag you back here?”

  Birken stopped at that. He regarded the motionless Tepoktans with a derisive sneer.

  “They don’t look too eager to me,” he taunted.

  Kinton growled a Tepoktan expression the meaning of which he had deduced after hearing it used by the dam workers.

  He whirled to run toward the helicopter. Hardly had he taken two steps, however, when he saw startled changes in the carefully blank looks of his escort. The constable half raised his heavy weapon, and Klaft sprang forward with a hissing cry.

  By the time Kinton’s aging muscles obeyed his impulse to sidestep, the spear had already hurtled past. It had missed him by an error of over six feet.

  He felt his face flushing with sudden anger. Birken was running as best he could toward the spaceship, and had covered nearly half the distance.

  Kinton ran at the Tepoktans, brushing aside the concerned Klaft. He snatched the heavy weapon from the surprised constable.

  He turned and raised it to his chest. Because of the shortness of Tepoktan arms, the launcher was constructed so that the butt rested against the chest with the sighting loops before the eyes. The little rocket tubes were above head height, to prevent the handler’s catching the blast.

  The circles of the sights weaved and danced about the running figure. Kinton realized to his surprise that the effort of seizing the weapon had him panting. Or was it the fright at having a spear thrown at him? He decided that Birken had not come close enough for that, and wondered if he was afraid of his own impending action.

  It wasn’t fair, he complained to himself. The poor slob only had a spear, and a man couldn’t blame him for wanting to get back to his own sort. He was limping…hurt…how could they expect him to realize—?

  Then, abruptly, his lips tightened to a thin line. The sights steadied on Birken as the latter approached the foot of the ladder leading to the entrance port of the spaceship.

  Kinton pressed the firing stud.

  Across the hundred-yard space streaked four flaring little projectiles. Kinton, without exactly seeing each, was aware of the general lines of flight diverging gradually to bracket the figure of Birken.

  One struck the ground beside the man just as he set one foot on the bottom rung of the ladder, and skittered away past one fin of the ship before exploding. Two others burst against the hull, scattering metal fragments, and another puffed on the upright of the ladder just above Birken’s head.

  The spaceman was blown back from the ladder. He balanced on his heels for a moment with outstretched fingers reaching toward the grips from which they had been torn. Then he crumpled into a limp huddle on the yellowing turf.

  Kinton sighed.

  The constable took the weapon from him, reloaded deftly, and proffered it again. When the Terran did not reach for it, the officer held out a clawed hand to receive it. He gestured silently, and the constable trotted across the intervening ground to bend over Birken.

  “He is dead,” said Klaft when the constable straightened up with a curt wave.

  “Will…will you have someone see to him, please?” Kinton requested, turning toward the helicopter.

  “Yes, George,” said Klaft. “George…?”

  “Well?”

  “It would be very instructive—that is, I believe Dr. Chuxolkhee would like to—”

  “All right!” yielded Kinton, surprised at the harshness of his own voice. “Just tell him not to bring around any sketches of the various organs for a few months!”

  He climbed into the helicopter and slumped into his seat. Presently, he was aware of Klaft edging into the seat across the aisle. He looked up.

  “The police will stay until cars from town arrive. They are coming now,” said his aide.

  * * * *

  Kinton stared at his hands, wondering at the fact that they were not shaking. He felt dejected, empty, not like a man who had just been at a high pitch of excitement.

  “Why did you not let him go, George?”

  “What? Why…why…he would have destroyed the ship you worked so hard to build. There is no safe path through the Dome of Eyes.”

  “No predictable path,” Klaft corrected. “But what then? We would have built you another ship, George, for it was you who showed us how.”

  Kinton flexed his fingers slowly.

  “He was just no good. You know the murder he did here; we can only guess what he did among my own…among Terrans. Should he have a chance to go back and commit more crimes?”

  “I understand, George, the logic of it,” said Klaft. “I meant…it is not my place to say this…but you seem unhappy.”

  “Possibly,” grunted Kinton wrily.

  “We, too, have criminals,” said the aide, as gently as was possible in his clicking language. “We do not think it necessary to grieve for the pain they bring upon themselves.”

  “No, I suppose not,” sighed Kinton. “I…it’s just—”

  He looked up at the pointed visage, at the strange eyes regarding him sympathetically from beneath the sloping, purple-scaled forehead.

  “It’s just that now I’m lonely…again,” he said.

  YES, SIR!, by H.B. Fyfe

  Stocky Les Dale peeped out the door of the lab and grunted disgustedly. “Visitors!”

  Murdock, his co-worker, wrinkled his freckled Roman nose and scowled intently at the report blank he was filling out. He leaned over until his head was almost level with the chest of the sample robot they had been testing, read off the serial number.

  Only after he had written this down, apparently, did Dale’s remark penetrate. “Another tour?” He groaned.

  Les did not smile at the cracked tenor voice. Murdock enjoyed a certain respect among the United Labs technicians.

  “Looks like just one big-shot and his crowd. Irma’s guiding them.”

  “Let’s go help MacNichols with his voice-boxes,” suggested Murdock immediately.

  “It’ll look bad, Jim. They’ll walk in on an empty lab.”

  “Then maybe we can be testing something that demands absolute silence! Open up this pot and pretend to be listening to his innards! Very grave now—it might be intestinal dandruff!”

  Les shook his sleek dark head resignedly but came over. Even in his gunny-sack of a lab coat he contrived to look dapper, a decided contrast to his loose-jointed lanky friend. “It’ll take more than that to shut Irma up,” he predicted.

  “Yeah, but maybe they won’t hang around asking asinine questions and watching for me to sit up and bark like a scientist—whatever they think one looks like!”

  He unscrewed and opened a double door in the robot’s back, revealing an imposing array of connections and switches. As Les obediently laid his ear against the casing of the chest, Murdock began to fiddle with tiny adjustment knobs at the back of the robot’s head. The machine hummed and buzzed and its built-in headlight blinked.

  The door swung open, admitting a petite blonde and a large gray-haired man whose ruddy face bore an arrogant expression. Les Dale, from the corner of his eye, estimated the ruddiness as fifty per cent artificial sunlamp and fifty per cent blood pressure. The visitor’s very posture indicated that he was used to getting his way.

  Several prettily groomed young men with bright looks hovered in the hall, peering over the stout man’s broad shoulders.

  “…and in this lab, Mr. Whitehead, the technicians test the robots for maneuverability and response to commands.”

  “Looks like one of ours they have,” remarked the heavy-set gentleman in uninhibited tones. “That right, Bowman?”

  “Yes, sir,” answered one of his henchmen, all but snapping to attention. “One of our Series-K models.”

  Murdock, head cocked as if listening, raised his eyes slowly. He stared through
Mr. Whitehead with a distant scowl.

  “Not interrupting anything, are we?” demanded the latter jovially.

  Murdock shook his head a fraction of an inch and continued to stare. He twisted a knob slightly, causing the humming to rise correspondingly in pitch. Les remained engrossed by faint internal sounds.

  “As you see, Mr. Whitehead,” Irma interposed after flinging the technical pair a cold look, “United Labs checks scientifically on every detail before certifying a product publicly. The mere fact that your robots bear our seal of approval—”

  “Yes, yes,” agreed Whitehead in a slightly subdued bellow. “We make a lot of that in advertising, don’t we, Larkin?”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Whitehead.”

  “In fact my decision to have our products certified by United Labs has resulted in a definite gain in sales.”

  “That’s right, Mr. Whitehead,” agreed Larkin but Les thought he had the look of a man just denied custody of his own brain child.

  “Of course, it’s just a formality. We know they’re okay and I certainly wouldn’t pay you to tell me otherwise. But it helps in advertising—right, Bowman?”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Whitehead!”

  Irma expressed gratification on behalf, of United Labs. Tactfully attempting to gloss over the silent reception she moved toward the door. The sightseers were soon trouping on to the next laboratory in the robot-certification chain.

  Murdock turned off the robot while Les replaced the hatches. He followed his nose over to an intercom and flicked a switch. “Hey, Mac!” he called. “You finished with the voice-box from this Whitehead Mark K eggbeater?”

  A discreetly lowered voice replied.

  “Speak up! What’s the matter? That old stuffed shirt get to your place with his pack of performing baboons?”

  He listened reflectively a moment, then turned to Les. “How do you like that? He cut me off—they must be there.”

  Les grinned faintly. “The old man didn’t look exactly like a dope to me,” he objected “If he’s the boss of Whitehead Robots he probably knows what he wants and how to get it.”

  Murdock shrugged and switched on the robot’s power. “Go into the next room!” he ordered, handing the machine the test data sheet, stamped and annotated by the technicians through whose hands the sample robot had already passed.

  The machine pivoted to its right and strode with some dignity toward the connecting door to, the next lab. It fumbled clumsily with the knob but finally got into the next room and shut the door behind itself.

  “By the way,” asked Les, “what was it made for?”

  “House servant. Bargain-price butler or something like that.”

  “Huh!” grunted Les. “Moves pretty well but I can see it dropping a lot of dishes.”

  “So can I but it just manages to meet the minimum performance requirements. That Whitehead crowd sure knows how to trim the corners!” Les yawned. “Let’s get some lunch,” he suggested. “We’ve got those Jones and Clark machinist models to check this afternoon—ten samples.

  “A snap,” said Murdock airily. “They hardly have to move around at all. The built-in tools have already been checked downstairs. We can stretch it out a day or two for an easy loaf.”

  * * * *

  Late the following morning, however, this pleasant schedule was interrupted.

  Murdock, Les Dale and MacNichols had gathered for a break. The grizzled expert on voice-boxes had finished replacing the speaking mechanisms in the ten specialized robots lined up along one wall of the room. He sat down and offered a pack of cigarettes.

  Just as Les reached for one, the door banged open and a shiny new robot strode in. It seemed to be bronze with gold trim. Clinking to a smart halt it proffered its data sheet.

  “Another one?” yawned Murdock. “Go to the end of the line!”

  “Wait a minute!” exclaimed Les.

  The robot, caught in mid-turn, got its feet crossed, staggered ungracefully.

  “He’s carrying a pink data sheet,” the stocky technician pointed out.

  Murdock scowled down his freckled nose. “Rush job, eh? Another one where they want the data yesterday! You’re nearest, Mac—see whose it is!”

  MacNichols relieved the robot of the offensively colored data sheet and scanned the heading.

  “XL-Three, Whitehead Robot Company,” he read aloud. “Personal attendant. All locomotion, vocal and manual tests—structure already certified.”

  The lanky redhead scowled more deeply. “That loud-mouthed stuffed shirt that stuck his nose in here yesterday!” he exclaimed. “One of his cheap jobs! A ‘personal attendant,’ huh? Probably a bargain basement valet.”

  “Doesn’t look so cheap,” demurred MacNichols, scanning the specifications. “That bronze sheath is real and so is the gold trim on the face and head. And—my gosh!”

  He peered closely at the robot. “Hold up your left hand!” he ordered.

  The robot complied. They stared at the ring it wore, a massive imitation of a college class-ring with a large gleaming stone. Someone had obviously gone to considerable trouble to create an expensive aura about this machine.

  “You two do as you like,” said MacNichols, rising. “I’ll take the voice-box now. Far’s I know ‘rush’ means ‘rush.’”

  He opened the compartment in the robot’s chest, pulled a screwdriver from his pocket, and went to work. Les and Murdock looked at each other and shrugged.

  In a few minutes MacNichols had the voice-box out and tucked under his arm. “Shall I leave you the data sheet?” he asked, starting toward the door of his adjoining workshop.

  “Never mind,” said Les. “We can write down our figures on another sheet and attach it later.”

  “I could run the tests backward anyway!” snorted Murdock.

  They scrutinized the robot indecisively after the door had closed behind MacNichols. Murdock’s stare became the more prejudiced every minute. He curled a lip disdainfully.

  “I doubt that Whitehead would put out anything even accidentally good,” he declared. “Probably fall on its face if it tries to walk ten steps in a straight line for all its fancy outside!”

  Les grinned and shook his head in mock reproof. “Walk along that white line on the floor!” he told the robot. He began to make out a response-to-command data sheet.

  “Let’s see,” he muttered as he scribbled. “Balance, front-to-rear and lateral, standing and walking. Accuracy in direction, in obedience. Then we’ll have to run dexterity and speed of responses, maybe with obstacles—”

  He was interrupted by a ringing crash that jerked him upright. His first confused impression was that something was missing from the room. Then he looked down and saw the bronze robot lying near the head of the line of machinists. It was flat on its beautiful, gold-trimmed face.

  Murdock sank back into the chair from which he had half risen. His freckled Roman nose twisted in a sneer. “What did I say?” he demanded. “Not even ten steps!”

  “Holy smoke!” exclaimed Les. “I hope nothing’s damaged that they can blame on us. Help me get it up!”

  “Hunk of junk!” growled the redhead. “Probably won’t stand alone for more than five minutes.”

  They heaved the robot to its feet. It was surprisingly heavy, which rendered doubtful Murdock’s slurs about cheap construction. It immediately took the two extra steps necessary to reach the end of the painted line, then stood still.

  “Let’s have lunch!” said Murdock, glaring at the machine.

  “Do you think we ought to?” asked Les doubtfully.

  “I’m no robot. I gotta eat. Whitehead can wait till this afternoon.” Murdock peeled off his lab coat and put on a jacket. After a moment’s hesitation Les followed his example. Murdock perched a disreputable hat on his head and they moved toward the door.

  “Wait a minute,�
� said Les. “I’ll give Mac a call.”

  He retraced his steps and thrust his head through the connecting doorway but MacNichols declined to join them.

  They walked into the corridor and shut the door. Before they had taken three steps along the hall, another crash resounded from inside the lab. They looked at each other.

  “If that’s what it sounds like—” began Les.

  “What a lemon!” growled Murdock. He strode back, thrust his beak through the half-opened doorway, then flung, the door wide open and beckoned to Les. The robot was flat on the floor again, this time on its back.

  “Remind me to mark the balance unsatisfactory,” said Murdock. “Come on before I lose my appetite completely!”

  An hour later, when they straggled back from lunch, they found the robot undisturbed. Murdock expressed surprise that it was not snoring, but Les reminded him that MacNichols had the voice-box.

  “Good!” said Murdock. “Saves me the trouble of asking, ‘Why did you fall down, XL-Three?’ The darn thing’s probably stupid, too!”

  They hauled the robot to its feet. Les considered it. “It only fell straight forward or backward,” he said. “Maybe the side balance is okay.”

  “Or maybe those knotheads downstairs passed a structural fault in the legs,” said Murdock.

  “Mac looked at the data sheet. He would have mentioned anything they found wrong.”

  Murdock shrugged and let Les have his way. They had the robot stand up straight and then lean over to one side or the other. In every trial it put out a foot and recovered before falling over. They checked at least a dozen times.

  “See?” asked Les. “I’ve known many a time when you couldn’t stand up that well. What do you want?”

  Murdock grudgingly admitted that the machine was satisfactory in that one respect.

  They proceeded to put the robot through a series of walking maneuvers, all of which it performed passably. It also lifted a desk without apparent difficulty or strain, which seemed to indicate that there was no structural weakness in the legs.