“Yes.”
“Which means that the Erani probably can’t spend any time on your world without getting sick,” Derec concluded.
“We arr protected from the Erani temper,” Wolruf agreed.
Derec paused and considered. “You said the star-creatures were part of an experiment. Could Aranimas be trying to find a way to neutralize the gas, so that the Erani can invade?”
“It iss possible.”
“Are there samples, bottled up?”
“There is a liquid that turns to yellow-gas when freed.”
“Perfect. Get me some.”
When Derec turned in that night, he was a bundle of restless energy, and sleep did not come easily. When it finally did come, it seemed as though he closed his eyes one moment and the next someone was shaking him. He looked up to see Wolruf standing over him.
“Aranimas wants ‘u,” Wolruf said.
“Is it the robot?”
“New servant won’t listen to the boss anymore,” Wolruf said. “It just sits there.”
“This could be it, then,” Derec said, scrambling to his feet. “I’ll get my tools.”
As Derec followed Wolruf through the passageways, his anticipation and anxiety both spiraled upward. When they reached the hex junction, he stopped and caught the caninoid’s arm. “Does he expect you to come in?”
“No. Only to deliver ‘u. But I could come in and see if he sends me away-”
“No,” Derec said. “Don’t do anything out of the ordinary. I can handle the first part myself. Just wait here.”
Inside Hull A, Derec spotted Aranimas across the main compartment and picked his way around the mesh bulkheads to where the alien waited.
“The robot has malfunctioned,” Aranimas said, gesturing, “Repair it.”
The robot sat on the edge of a low counter, motionless except for his left hand, rotating slowly and aimlessly at the wrist joint. Code 3033-our location! Derec thought.
“What did you do to it?” Derec demanded, moving within arm’s reach of the robot.
“I did nothing. The mechanism ceased to obey me.”
“You must have done something.” Derec bent at the waist to peer directly into the glowing eyes. “Alpha. Acknowledge.”
“Yess, ssir,” the robot said, its words slurred and distorted.
Code 804! The key! But he had to be sure. “Alpha. Default l-A-l-B. Execute.”
The robot sat inert.
“Alpha. Default 2-C-2-D. Execute.”
Still there was no response.
“What’s wrong with my servant?” Aranimas demanded.
Stalling for time, Derec opened his small tool clutch and then the robot’s left shoulder access plate. As he peered inside, he thought the next step through. The reworking he had done on the robot’s instinct to protect intelligent life was a delicate business. It had already been stressed unexpectedly when Aranimas took possession of the robot.
If he were to release the robot from its instruction block and order it to move against Aranimas, that would create a Second Law obligation to break the First Law. His careful adjustments might come apart under the stress, and the robot would freeze up in a way Derec would not be able to repair.
He did not want to take that risk. It was much more straightforward for the robot to act in obedience to the First Law than in defiance of it. But that meant it was necessary to provoke Aranimas into an attack.
“It looks like a failure of the volitional initiator,” Derec double talked. “If two contradictory impulses reach it on the same pulse, it can set up a standing wave in the oscillator. It’s almost always the owner’s fault. What did you ask it to do?”
“I did nothing wrong, I was explaining the functions of the equipment in this section when its hand began to twirl foolishly that way.”
“Don’t lie to me,” Derec said. “I should have known that a race as backward as yours couldn’t cope with sophisticated machinery-”
“You are worse than the Narwe,” Aranimas snarled. “You do not have the good sense to know when you are in the service of a true superior.” As he spoke, his hand moved toward the gap in his robelike blouse.
“Aurora!” Derec shouted.
But the robot had begun to move even before Derec uttered the word, the First Law overcoming the strictures of the instruction block. The race between Aranimas’s reflexes and the robot’s was no contest. Before the stylus had even cleared the folds of Aranimas’s robe, the robot had grabbed the alien’s wrist with its right hand and plucked the stylus from his grasp with its left.
“Release me!” Aranimas squalled shrilly. He squirmed and fought, but could not free himself from the grip of the single mechanical hand.
“I cannot allow you to harm Derec,” the robot said.
“You are my servant. Obey my orders! Release me!”
“No, Aranimas,” Derec said, stepping forward. “Alpha is my servant, and always was.” Then he called back over his shoulder, “Wolruf! You can come in now!”
Retrieving the stylus from the floor, Derec turned it over in his hand. There were no obvious switches or controls on it. Holding it the way Aranimas had, Derec pointed it at the alien. Aranimas remained unaffected.
“My own weapons cannot be used against me,” Aranimas said with stiff pride.
“A very clever management technique,” Derec said. He reached into the tool clutch and retrieved the little toy he had made earlier that day. Attached to a small pressure bottle half full of mustard-yellow liquid was a miniature pump salvaged from the disabled robot. “But I have my own weapon.”
As Wolruf joined him, Derec pointed the pump’s outlet valve at Aranimas and pressed the switch. A fine mist blasted from the tiny opening and caught the alien in the face.
A human would have gasped in surprise. Aranimas lunged for the aerosol with his freehand and nearly got it, his arm span being almost equal to the makeshift device’s range.
But a moment later, a reddish liquid began streaming from Aranimas’s eyes, and the skin of his face seemed to pucker. He went rigid and reached high in the air with his free hand, the fingers curling as though grasping for something, the ropelike muscles of his arm and shoulder visible under the skin for the first time. As the aerosol began to sputter, the alien’s eyes closed, and his arm dropped limply to his side.
“Release him,” Derec said, thumbing the switch. The robot’s hand opened, and the alien crumpled to the deck and lay there motionless.
“I-detect-no respiration,” the robot said haltingly.
The robot’s speech impediment was a warning sign to Derec. I should have warned it what was going to happen, he realized belatedly. “He’s not dead,” Derec said. “His system has received a poison shock, but he will recover.”
“I-will try-to integrate-”
“Alpha-analyze the situation. This is Aranimas’s ship. He had all the advantages. He could have done a hundred things to stop us and we’d never have known until it was too late. He had to be neutralized.”
“I understand-and accept.”
“Are you all right?”
“I detect a moderate disturbance-in my brain potentials which I attribute-to witnessing violence against an intelligent-being-not-a-human,” the robot said, its speech gradually returning to normal. “The disturbance is abating and I do not believe that it will affect my functioning.”
“Good,” Derec said, dropping the spent aerosol on top of the tools. “What did you find out?”
“We are approaching an independent free-flying space station.”
“Frost,” Derec said emphatically. “I was hoping he’d take us right in to one of the Spacer worlds. How much time do we have?”
“I am unable to accurately estimate our arrival time. However, I did determine that the ship’s crew is presently at the lowest level of alert.”
“So we probably have more than a few hours,” Derec said. “Has Aranimas been in contact with the station?”
“Not that I am aware o
f, sir. This vessel does not appear to have hyperwave communications-only simple carrier-wave radio.”
That agreed with Derec’s experience on the asteroid, but it raised a puzzle. How had the aliens found the asteroid? Derec had assumed along with Monitor 5 that they had intercepted the distress message sent on his behalf. But without a hyperwave viewer, that was clearly impossible.
Perhaps Wolruf could shed some light-but it would have to wait. “Okay. What about the key? Do you know where it is?”
“Within limits. I believe it is concealed beneath one of the deck tiles of the command center.”
The last time he had been in the command center, Derec had been in too much pain to pay attention to his surroundings. “Let’s go see,” Derec said, starting off. “How did you find it?” he called back over his shoulder.
“Aranimas showed the key to me and questioned me about it,” the robot said. “When he left with it, I was not able to see precisely what disposition he made of it. However, the time he was gone limited the radius of concealment to this deck, and the sounds I heard were consistent with the removal and replacement of a floor tile.”
They reached the command center then, and Derec saw that the deck was a mosaic of several hundred hexagonal metal tiles the size of a dinner plate. The surface of each tile had a pattern of small holes, but there was no obvious fingerlift-in fact, no obvious way to lift an individual tile. All six edges were flush with the adjoining tiles.
“Any idea where I should start?”
“The strategy of concealment would argue against obvious positions such as the center and corners. Beyond that, I cannot say.”
“You can’t detect it under the deck? It’s not giving off some kind of radio signal, or generating a magnetic field?”
“Not that I am able to detect.”
That, too, was consistent with what had happened on the asteroid. If the key had declared its presence in any measurable way, the robots’ scans would have turned it up long before the raider ship arrived.
“All right,” Derec said slowly. He turned to Wolruf, who had been a silent spectator since joining them. “We need a place to lock up Aranimas.”
Wolruf glanced nervously back toward where they had left the Erani. “Therr arr some lockers outside, on the side passage, which would be large enough-”
Derec nodded. “Alpha-pick up Aranimas and go with Wolruf. She will show you where to put him. Wolruf, make sure it’s something Aranimas can’t open from the inside. Then both of you come back here.” He caught the look of apprehension in Wolruf’s eyes and added. “I know-you don’t like the robot.”
“Maybe ‘u surprise Wolruf like ‘u surprise Aranimas.”
“I promise you, it’ll be all right,” Derec said, patting the caninoid’s arm. “No surprises. I’ll be waiting for you here.”
When the robot was gone, Derec lowered himself to his hands and knees to examine the holes in the tiles. They proved to be tapered pits barely a half-centimeter deep. There seemed to be no way of hooking anything into one to lift the tile. Derec wondered if he would have to build some sort of vacuum clamp before he could locate the key.
Then he realized that the openings were about the diameter of the tip of Aranimas’s stylus. Of course, Derec thought as he fumbled for the instrument. Let’s hope this feature doesn’t work only for Aranimas, too-
He touched the conical tip to one of the openings, and the tile seemed to seize hold of the stylus and stand it straight up. Gripping the stylus with one and then both hands, Derec tried to lift the tile straight up. The tile did not budge. But when he used the stylus as a lever, he was easily able to tip the tile back, like peeling the lid off a can. Underneath was a small hexagonal compartment-empty.
No beginner’s luck, eh? he thought. When he replaced the tile, the stylus came free. Very nice, he thought, touching the stylus to the adjacent tile. The trick wasn’t done with magnetics; the stylus seemed to actually bond to the tile. Perhaps a metallic affinity, followed by a little shot of current to jostle the atoms and break the bonds. Cute trick-
There was a humming sound behind him, and Derec whirled. Half a dozen meters down the central corridor, a circular platform was descending from the ceiling, suspended on four slender wires. And standing on the platform was a woman-a young human female, no more than a year or two older than Derec but a good eight centimeters taller. The broad-shouldered sash blazer she was wearing was cut in an aristocratic style, but showed many days of wear.
Her expression was one of surprise, even shock. Her mouth worked as though trying to form a word. “You?” she said disbelievingly as the platform reached floor level. “Here?”
Wild thoughts filled Derec’s head, and reason had to fight for control. That would sure help explain Aranimas’s success-if he had had a human consort all along to guide him-
“You’d better tell me real fast who you are and what you’re doing here,” he said, slowly coming to his feet. “I don’t have a lot of time to decide what to do about you.”
“What to do about me?” she echoed angrily. “I don’t know why I oweyou any answers, not after what you did.”
The meaning of the condition of the girl’s clothes finally impressed itself on Derec. She was a prisoner, just as he. But Derec realized that to her, he might be the one who seemed to have thrown in with the raiders.
“I only helped Aranimas to buy time and save my neck. The robot’s mine now, and Aranimas can’t hurt you,” Derec said. “We’re going to get of here.”
The hostility faded from her face, leaving behind bewilderment. “But what are you doing here? How long have you been on board?”
Derec took a step toward her. “It doesn’t take long to tell. Five days ago I woke up in a survival pod on the surface of an asteroid. I was found by a colony of robots mining the asteroid. Aranimas raided the colony and took me prisoner.” That’s enough. No sense muddying the waters with details even I don’t understand yet, he thought.
She was looking at him curiously. “So you weren’t looking for me.”
“I didn’t know anyone else was on the ship,” he said, throwing his hands in the air. “Wolruf told me that they had captured a couple of human ships, but she left the impression the crews were all-gone.”
“I think Aranimas kept me alive because he was interested in my robots,” she said. “Are you the one that repaired Capek?”
“Was that its old name? It answers to Alpha now. Yes, I’m the one who fixed it.”
“You did a rotten job,” she said with a hint of childish petulance. “It doesn’t remember me. The new arm is ugly, too.”
“I’m sorry.”
“And you don’t remember me, either.”
Derec swallowed. “I had the feeling you thought I should-”
“I thought you were just being cruel,” she said slowly. “I didn’t want to give you the satisfaction. But you don’t know who I am, do you?”
“I don’t even know who I am,” Derec answered with a weak smile. “When I woke up on the asteroid, I was wearing a safesuit with the name Derec on the chest, so I’ve been calling myself that. But I can’t remember anything that happened before I woke up on the asteroid.”
“Nothing at all?”
“Nothing personal. I remember a lot of facts-things I learned sometime, I guess. But I don’t know where I’m from or where I was going.” Derec was badly confused. “So you know me?”
“I thought I did,” she said.
“Then for mercy’s sake, tell me-”
A chirping sound came from the huge control console at that moment.
“Someone’s paging Aranimas,” the girl said, a flash of nervousness crossing her face. “You said we were going to get out of here. Maybe we should worry about that first. What were you doing when I surprised you? What were you looking for?”
“Some of my property-that Aranimas took when I came aboard.”
“The key? Was that yours?”
“You know about it?”
“Aranimas showed it to me. Is that where it’s hidden?”
“According to Alpha.”
“Is it important?”
“I think so.”
“Then let’s get it and get out of here,” she said anxiously.
Wondering what was keeping Alpha and Wolruf, Derec slowly turned back to the floor grid. He checked the second tile, stole a glance back over his shoulder at her, then moved crabwise to the right to try a third.
“I can look for the key and listen at the same time,” he said, attaching the stylus to the next tile. “Can’t you tell me what you know about me?”
If she gave an answer, Derec never heard it. One moment he was starting to lift the tile, and the next there was a flash, a roaring sound, and a tremendous wash of heat. Something heavy struck Derec across the back and he toppled forward, catching the hard edge of the tile across his chest and driving the air from his lungs. His mind had time to think one word-booby trap-before it retreated from the fury to a dark, quiet recess where it would not be disturbed.
Chapter 13. Rockliffe Station
Soft-edged images drifted through a dreamlike haze. A sea of light surrounded Derec, buoying him up. He was as transparent as glass, as inconsequential as the wind. His consciousness resided on a mote of dust, floating on gentle currents of time.
Faceless figures floated there with him. Some drew near as though aware of him, only to turn away again and withdraw. The only sounds were the fragrance-songs of flowers and the color-songs of sunsets, and those played in his head without understanding.
None of it seemed to make sense, and yet he did not care. He only thought that after everything that had happened, all that he had survived, it would be a terrible disappointment to be dead.
After a time, his body returned to him. He was still floating, still adrift, but his consciousness again inhabited its familiar place, filled its familiar space. But his thoughts were as sluggish as his limbs, as though the burdens of once again managing his body’s functions had overwhelmed the simple processes of his mind.
Presently he became aware that the dreamlike world of light and shadow which he was inhabiting existed entirely within himself. If he chose to, he could open his eyes to the larger world beyond, to survey it, to enter it. He was certain that when he saw that world he would know his place in it, would know then who and what he was. But he would pay a price in peace and silence, and that was too high a price to pay.
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