by H. B. Fyfe
“I still don’t think much of it,” Murdock insisted sourly. “Fancy finish on the surface but from Whitehead that means something inside has been skimped.”
“What could they skimp? It makes all the standard motions.”
“Oh, I’ll find something when I open it up. I’m betting on at least two burned-out tubes or a loose connection.”
“Well, let’s run dexterity tests first,” suggested Les.
“Be lucky if it can pick up a book without dropping it,” predicted Murdock.
Les marched the machine over to his own desk. He laid out three books, flat and quite close together. “Pick up the middle book,” he ordered casually.
The robot reached out its right hand, selected the book requested, lifted it about a foot above the desk without disturbing the other volumes.
Les nodded triumphantly to Murdock. “You see?” he began. “It’s—”
The book seemed to slip through the bronze fingers. It bounced on the surface of the desk and fell open. Murdock thrust out his freckled beak like a pugnacious eagle.
“My book of tables!” he squawked. “I’ve been missing that for a week. My books you have to let him mangle!”
Les hurriedly snatched up the book and closed it properly. “Didn’t notice,” he apologized. “Must have borrowed it.”
“Huh!” grunted his friend. He turned his baleful glare upon the machine. “Pick out the fourth book in the row along the back of the other desk,” he directed.
The robot hesitated momentarily, then reached out toward Dale’s desk and chose a volume that stood approximately fourth in the row. Murdock snorted.
“Not there! I said the other desk. My desk. Over there!”
The robot dropped the book on the floor and clinked across to the other desk.
“Hey!” protested Les. “Whose books are getting mangled now? You can’t buy that one anywhere nowadays.”
Murdock watched him pick it up tenderly and grinned. “See?” he taunted. “I told you it was stupid and you can see for yourself it’s clumsy too! Wait till—hey! No! Leave those alone! They’re mine!”
He rushed across the room to rescue his own belongings from the robot’s blighting touch. “Enough of this!” he declared, scooping up a pile of his books and dumping them on the desk. “I’m going to have a look at his innards.”
They found the cut-off switch on the back of the robot’s head, turned it. Then he opened the compartment below the shoulders, cursing when he found that the Whitehead designer had chosen screws requiring use of a socket wrench instead of the screwdriver with which he was armed.
Finally, he got it open while Les scribbled down his comments on what had been done. Murdock removed all the tubes the Whitehead man seemed to have thought ought to be reached, carried them over to a Rube Goldberg to check.
“There’s one in there that’s going to stay,” he remarked. “Far’s I can see, they built the chassis around it. What a simple crew they must be at Whitehead!”
Les wandered over but he too failed to see just how the tube in question could be reached by human hands. “Maybe they have a robot or a special tool that can get in there for it,” he suggested.
“Hah!” yelled Murdock triumphantly. “Two dead ones! They have a nerve, sending around a pot like this and expecting us to certify it satisfactory. Where’s that red-ink stamp? I’m going in to Mac’s and dance all-over that data sheet with it!”
“Calm down,” urged Les. “Let’s look for a wiring diagram. Maybe they were smart enough to have spares to take over if a tube blew. Maybe that’s why it was clumsy at some things.”
He dragged Murdock over to the passive machine and they searched the inside of the casing for diagrams. They located the proper one quickly, began to trace it. After a few minutes they were thoroughly befuddled.
Murdock went back and checked the tubes he had already pronounced dead. He stood by his opinion.
“I don’t get it,” said Les. “Without those two how could it operate at all?”
“Couldn’t!” Murdock shrugged with simple finality. “All I know is I didn’t manhandle them in any way as I got them out. They were dead when I opened him up.”
“I’ll get some spares from the cabinet,” offered Les.
Murdock called off the number to him, but raised a hand when he returned with the replacements. “Let’s try the old ones for a minute,” he suggested.
They carefully replaced the original set of tubes. Murdock turned the robot on.
“Take three steps forward!” he ordered.
The machine remained impassive.
“It’s not working,” said Les, noting that the pilot lights in the “eyes” were dark.
Murdock threw up his hands, opened the casing again, and inserted the new tubes. This time, the machine came to life when addressed.
“Funny,” muttered the redhead. “I expected to find junk inside—I even said so, remember? But I don’t quite see how it ran at all!”
He strode over to his desk phone and called the director of the robot-certification group. “Say, Stephens, what’s this fancy Whitehead rush job?” he demanded.
Listening over his shoulder Les gathered that Mr. Whitehead was taking a personal interest in this experimental model, that he claimed the design was based upon his years of experience as an executive and —above all—that Stephens knew better than to contradict Mr. Whitehead even if some jackasses in lab coats did not.
“But it’s a heap of junk!” protested Murdock irately. “And half-witted besides!”
That, he was informed, was unlikely, considering the unusually expensive construction. Anyway it was beside the point. His job was to pass upon the fitness of the machine or else to discover exactly why it did not function. There was no getting around as simple a definition of terms as that.
Murdock flung down the phone. After ten minutes Les got him sufficiently calmed down to heed a suggestion that they re-run all their tests, with the new tubes now in place.
* * * *
The trouble was, as they soon found and as Murdock pointed out emphatically, that the robot’s performance did not change with the tubes. Worse—despite this fact the technicians were unable to check some of the mistakes. XL-Three remained inept but erratically so, as if it were a characteristic that could appear in various ways at random. Murdock’s features gradually approached the color of his hair.
The robot almost seemed to sense his mood as if human. The worse Murdock expected, the worse he found.
“For gosh sakes!” exploded Les at last. “Stop looking for more trouble! Every single time today you tried to find something wrong, it went all the way wrong!”
“Yeah,” scowled Murdock. “Wish I knew how much is the old tech instinct and how much is Whitehead sloppiness.”
“Proves the old saying anyhow—‘expect the worst and you won’t be disappointed.’”
“Here comes Mac,” sighed Murdock as the connecting door was kicked open. “Let’s put it up to him.”
They joined MacNichols beside the robot, drowning him in their lamentations while he replaced the voice-box. Once or twice he opened his mouth but was unable to break in.
The well ran dry about the time MacNichols drove the last screw. He scratched his grizzled head and looked at them.
“You mean you hit practically every guess straight on the head?” he asked Murdock. “Whenever you smelled something faulty, you found it?”
“I was right every time!” declared Murdock.
“Hmmm,” murmured MacNichols.
He dropped the test data sheet on Les Dale’s desk and began to toy idly with the latter’s approval stamp.
“Queer vocal system it has,” he mused. “It can make two or three variations, but in effect it always says the same thing.”
“Hah!” exulted Murdock. “Cheap work there, too!”<
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“I don’t think so,” said MacNichols. “I think it was designed that way.”
He inked the rubber stamp and pressed it down on their section of the data sheet with a firm, unhurried motion. “Hey!” they protested simultaneously.
“Why not?” queried MacNichols. “It serves its purpose. Ask it something and listen to the answer!”
He turned on the vocal switch, so that the robot was now functioning fully.
“What kind of numbskull built you?” demanded Murdock with a sneer.
“Not that kind of question,” interrupted MacNichols patiently. “Something calling for a yes-or-no answer from a—uh—personal attendant.”
Murdock turned to the robot again with exaggerated politeness. “You’re a complete hunk of junk that can’t even stand up, aren’t you?” he inquired.
For the first time, the robot was equipped to answer back. “Yes, sir, Mr. Whitehead!” it agreed emphatically—and promptly fell flat on its face with a jingling crash.
Les scampered nimbly out of the way but Murdock did not quite make it. He swore and hopped about, rubbing a grazed shin.
MacNichols grinned at him. “You and Whitehead!” he chuckled. “You’re never, never wrong, are you?”
“Absolutely right, Mr. Whitehead, sir!” answered a muffled voice from the floor.…
