by Rob Chilson
Wolruf was a starship pilot too, and knew the theory of hyperatomics. “Probably,” said Derec.
The caninoid made a sound of interest, paused to eat more, and resumed her tale after pondering Derec’s conclusion. “Anyway, we sat therre waiting, and Aranimas sat thecre waiting. We expected ‘ou to use the Key and escape. Aranimas musst have been chewing nails and sspitting rivets. He could not know what wass going on, and Earth too big even for reckless one like him to attack. “
“How did you know we were us?” Ariel asked, and Derec, head throbbing, tried to follow the logic of her sentence.
“When ‘ou used ‘our hyperwave radio, he musst have known. Aranimas bum to intercept, and we follow him. We fortunate to be closerr by half a solar orbit, get in firrst. Aranimas not sstop to think how lucky he be to have crock to hide behind, going just his way almost as fasst as he. Only mistake he evecr make. “
Derec hoped it would be his last.
“What did you do to his ship, though?” Ariel asked, exasperated.
“Blow up. All time we waiting in orrbit, we were making explosivess. Carbonite recipe in Dr. Avery ship data bank. I know enough chemistry to add oxidizer. Had to use food synthesizerr feedstock, but only one of me to feed, and I ssmall.”
The robots had no doubt needed carbonite for the building of Robot City. Derec knew generally how it was made: it was a super form of black powder, using activated charcoal saturated with potassium nitrate or sodium nitrate. Since the carbon was nearly all burned up-it approached one hundred percent efficiency and was therefore nearly smokeless-carbonite was about ten times as powerful as TNT.
“Even so, it would not worrk if Aranimass had not panicked and Jumped. But he could not know what wass happening.”
Derec nodded, immediately wished he hadn’t; the room seemed to spin. “His panic is understandable,” he said.
“Are’ ou all right?” Wolruff asked.
“No, but I’m not getting worse. I mean, I’m feeling no worse than before the battle.”
Ariel broke in to explain about the chemfets, and Wolruf was concerned but unable to help. She knew nothing of robots, nor did any race she knew of, save humans.
“I hope ‘ou will be well,” she said, but clearly had her doubts. She seemed shaken by the idea of this invasion.
Derec thought of it as a disease, and at least had the hope that the chemfets were programmed with the Three Laws.
“Shall we go?” he asked. He turned and found Mandelbrot looking at him.
“What do you intend to do about this infestation?” the robot asked.
“Go to Robot City and either turn the problem over to the Human Medical Team or seize Dr. Avery and force him to reverse it-or both,” said Ariel.
“I see. I can think of nothing better, for I do not believe that the medical and/or robotic resources of Aurora or the other Spacer worlds would be adequate to the task of eradication of chemfets,” Mandelbrot said. “That then must remain purely as a final resort.”
“Rright,” said Wolruf. “We go find Dr. Avery. He worrse than Aranimass!”
The next step was to explore the alien ship. They cast off from Wolruf’s Star Seeker and jetted lightly toward one of the larger, more intact hulls. They carried clubs, and Ariel a knife from the galley, but they found it airless and had little fear of survivors. There were none, as it turned out. Nor were there all that many bodies.
“Aranimas musst have sounded the recall and called them to the main hull,” Wolruf said. “They would be valuable to him, of courrse.”
Still, a good number of innocent Narwe-and not-so-innocent starfish folk-had died in the battle. They found nothing of immediate use in the first two hulls, and became depressed.
“We must have air, if nothing else,” Mandelbrot said. “ And we should also find organic feedstock for the synthesizers. It is, you tell me, five Jumps to Robot City. It will take at least three weeks, and then there is the final approach, and a reserve against emergencies. This hull will not hold air for three days. It can be patched up more, but probably not enough to hold air for more than a week. We will need four complements of air, and even so, I must spend every moment patching till the Jump.”
“You’ll be patching after every Jump,” Derec said grimly.
Mandelbrot was right. They returned to the search, though the hulls were getting far apart now.
The next hull had been one occupied by the starfish folk, and they immediately gave up hope of finding air here; the strange aliens breathed a mix containing a sulfur compound that Wolruf called “yellow-gas.” On the way out, though, they found a robot.
At Ariel’s cry, Derec shook his head and took a deep breath. The robot, when he came into the open chamber where she was, seemed a breath of sanity in unreality: the shot-up spaceship, in free-fall and airless, was like an Escher print of an upside down world. The body of one of the starfish folk was stuck to one wall, a vicious-looking energy piston in one tentacled grip. Ariel and the robot were spinning slowly in the vacuum, drifting toward a bulkhead. She had leaped to seize it.
“It’s dysfunctional,” she said.
Timing his moves with hers, he intercepted them at the bulkhead and they turned their lights on it. It made no move, but whether it was speaking or not, they could not tell.
Mandelbrot entered while they were examining the robot’s body. “Energy scoring on the head, and fuse marks here and there, mostly on the body. It looks like the starfish over there shot it up during the battle.
“How did it come to be in the ship?” Ariel asked.
“Hmm. I suppose Aranimas must have come upon it somewhere and captured it,” said Derec.
“Where could he have found it?”
Derec considered. “Possibly it’s one he found at the ice asteroid. But I doubt it. He was desperate for me to make him a robot. He’d have given me all the parts he had.”
Mandelbrot fixed his cold eyes on the damaged robot. “This is a robot from Robot City.”
“Yes.” The design style was unmistakable to the trained eye.
“Let’s get it into air; maybe it’s trying to speak,” said Ariel.
But back in the Star Seeker it lay as inert as before. Removing his spacesuit, Derec got out the toolkit and looked at Mandelbrot. The prospect of work on the robot made him feel better than he had in days. A matter of interest. They quickly learned that power to the brain was off. Reenergizing it, though, did no good.
“A near-miss from an energy beam might well cause brain burn-out without visibly damaging the brain,” said Mandelbrot.
The positronic brain was a platinum-iridium sponge, with a high refractivity; it wouldn’t melt easily. But the positronic paths through it were not so resistant.
“So we can learn nothing from questioning it,” Derec said, dejected. “Wait a minute. What’s this?”
Clutched tightly in its fist was a shiny object. A shiny rectangular object.
“A Key to Perihelion,” said Mandelbrot expressionlessly. “
Aranimas would have taken it away from the robot if he’d known it had one,” said Ariel. “I wonder what the robot was doing with it?”
“We’ll never know. Maybe it took the first moment it wasn’t under observation to try use the Key. And the starfish caught it in the act.” Derec gripped the Key and pulled it out of the fist. Instantly he knew it was different.
“It feels like two Keys built together!”
“It is,” said Mandelbrot, peering at it. “One, I suppose, to take the robot from Robot City. One to return him to Robot City.”
“Which is which?” Ariel asked.
Derec and Mandelbrot spent a few minutes determining that. They found that one Key had a cable plug in one end.
“I see,” Ariel said, when they showed her. “A tiny cable, with five tiny prongs. It must be for reprogramming. I don’t know what would plug into it-”
“Something like a calculator,” said Derec, “to enable one to input the coordinates of the desti
nation. “
The other Key had no provision for changing its programming, and was therefore set permanently on Robot City.
“Not that it does us any good,” said Ariel wistfully. “It’s initialized for a robot. Too bad; we desperately need to get to Robot City, especially Derec. And only Mandelbrot can get there.”
“That is true; Derec must go to Robot City soon, and the Key is better than three weeks in a ship, even if the ship did not leak,” said Mandelbrot. “I will take you there, Derec.” He wrapped his normal arm around Derec, half carrying him.
“What about us?” Ariel cried. “This ship is no safer for Wolruf and me.”
Mandelbrot’s mutable Avery-designed arm was already stretching into a long tentacle. “That is correct-it is very likely that you and Wolruf will die if you do not accompany us,” he said. “Therefore, I shall have to take you all.”
The tentacle coiled about Ariel and Wolruf and splayed out into a small hand at the end. “The Key, if you please, Derec.”
Derec placed the doubled Key in the small hand. “At least Dr. Avery won’t be expecting us,” he said.
“He find out soon ‘nough,” said Wolruf.
Mandelbrot extruded another finger from the hand that held the Key to Perihelion. It rose up and pressed, in sequence, the corners of the Key, and waited for the activating button to appear. Knowing it was irrational, Derec felt the air get staler in the tiny pace of time it took. Then, Perihelion.
And then a planetary sky burst blue and brilliant above them. They were breathing deeply, standing atop the Compass Tower-the mighty pyramid that reared over Dr. Avery’s Robot City.
Data Bank
ILLUSTRATIONS BY PAUL RIVOCHE
R. David: This robot is a typical example of an Earthly robot. Like all robots, it possesses a positronic intelligence infused with the Three Laws of Robotics. R. David wears a blandly smiling face, a standard feature on all Earth robots, which are designed to reassure Terrans. The Terran economy is based on full employment, not full automation like the Spacer worlds. Thus robots are used only for those jobs that humans cannot or will not take. Terrans rarely come into contact with robots, increasing their fear and dislike of them.
R. David is cruder in appearance than the positronic denizens of Robot City because he has been designed to look less powerful, less invulnerable, and hence les threatening to suspicious humans. He lacks the streamlined and efficient appearance of the robots Dr. Avery created for Robot City.
STAR SEEKER SHIP: Dr. Avery’s small craft is the interstellar equivalent of an economy car, a small personal starcraft capable of transporting a maximum of six people. The Star Seeker model comes equipped with only the essentials needed to sustain life during an interstellar voyage. There are no luxuries. There is a food synthesis system, a water purification and recycling system, which includes a shower, and sanitary facilities.
The ship’s communications system consists of hyperwave, microwave, and laser transmitters and receivers. The hyperwave antenna is mounted in a nacelle in the ship’s nose, as far as possible from the hyperatomic engines to avoid disruption of the communications signal.
The ship’s computer is a less-than-positronic intelligence, actually not much more than a glorified calculator and information storage system.
Like all interstellar ships, Star Seekers jump through hyperspace, with massive thrusts of the hyperatomic motors that propel the ship at right angles to time and all three spatial dimensions simultaneously. Ships cannot jump without precise coordinates, so their guidance systems lock onto beacons in orbit around stars along the lanes of interstellar travel.
[THE UNDERGROUND CITY OF ST. LOUIS: Terran cities are enclosed, largely underground, and entirely dependent on the Terran power grid. Light, ventilation, and climate control are all artificially maintained, and if power were to be disrupted for even an hour, it would mean the extinction of the city’s population.
In the enclosed cities of Earth’s future, citizens rarely travel beyond the city of their birth, and almost never go outside. Agoraphobia is so widespread as to be the norm of human behavior.
St. Louis, like the other enclosed Terran cities, is connected to the rest of the world by its communications systems, airport, and the highway system traveled mostly by robot-driven, or remote-controlled trucks.
Travel within the cities is accomplished on the expressways. There is some use of small trucks for transport of goods within the cities, but most freight is sent over a system of moving slidewalks. Personal vehicles are almost unknown, and are basically the prerogative of the very rich and powerful.
The city scene shown here is late at night. Normally, the streets and escalators are clogged with people.]
[EXPRESSWAYS: This is the average citizen’s primary means of transportation in Terran cities. The expressways move at varying speeds, with the slowest ones at the outside to make it easier to enter, and the fastest lanes in the center. There are expressways to all areas of the city.
To accommodate rush hour crowds, special rules go into effect, restricting access to certain lanes to the citizens with the highest ratings.
For Earther’s, using the expressways is as natural as breathing, and Terran babies learn to use them as soon as they learn to walk.]
[LOADING DOCKS: The loading docks are one of the few areas that connect directly with the world outside of the city, and even then, the entryways are slanted at oblique angles to prevent the people working on the docks from gaining a potentially debilitating view of the outside. The trucks are mostly remote controlled or robotically driven, though some are driven by hardy truckers who can tolerate the open roads without being crippled by their agoraphobia. Truckers willing to make hauls between cities are highly sought after and very well paid.
Once trucks enter the loading docks, their cargo is transferred to the smaller inner-city transports by loading vehicles known as handlers.]
LAMBERT FIELD: Although air travel is rarely used by the average citizens of Terran cities, every city has an airport. The airport itself, like the rest of the city, is totally enclosed, including the runways. The airliners are windowless, to avoid traumatizing the agoraphobic passengers. Each seat on the airliner is equipped with a viewing screen that provides a constant feed of news and entertainment to occupy the thoughts of edgy air travelers. Sedatives are also provided for those passengers who wish to sleep during the entire trip, thus minimizing their trauma.
SPECIAL AGENT DONOVAN: Donovan is the agent in charge of the St. Louis office of the Terrestrial Bureau of Investigation. The TBI is the global investigative force, which is charged, among other tasks, with keeping tabs on all Earthside Spacers in order to avoid any unpleasant incidents between the Spacers and the less-privileged Earthers.
TBI agents are a tough, well-trained corps of policeman. In common with his brother agents, Donovan is athletic, intelligent and relentlessly efficient.
Rob Chilson
A Kansas City area writer, Rob Chilson has lived in Missouri since the age of nine. He began writing at eleven, and was part of the last generation of authors to be trained by John Campbell. His first sf story was published in 1968. Among his novels are The Curtain Falls, The Star-Crowned Kings, and The Shores of Kansas. He is currently working on several series of stories in collaboration with such writers as Robin Bailey and William F. Wu. He is also doing another series, for Analog, about pocket brains.
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