F. L. Wallace

by Address Centauri

  "All right, Jordan, it's safe to come down," he called.

  Jordan dangled overhead. He swung along until he reached a column and slid down. Awkwardly he propelled himself across the floor and up the ramp. Balancing himself with his hands he looked up at Docchi.

  "Well, monster," he grinned. "How did you do it?"

  "Monster yourself," said Docchi. "I crawled through the rocket tube."

  "I saw you start in," said Jordan. "I wasn't sure you'd make it. Even when the ship rose I wasn't certain until you came out." Jordan scratched his cheek. "What I meant was: how did you get rid of Cameron?"

  "Doctors usually aren't mechanically inclined," said Docchi. "Cameron was no exception. He forgot an emergency rocket landing cancels any verbal orders. So I took the ship up a few inches. Geepees aren't very bright and it wouldn't matter if they were. As long as the ship was in the air and I said I was coming in for a landing they had to obey."

  Jordan nodded delightedly. "Poor doc," he said. "It wasn't that he was dumb. There was nothing he could do when you outsmarted him."

  "He should have anticipated it," said Docchi. "He could have splashed heat against a gravity generator. This would have created an emergency condition in the main dome, artificial of course, but it would have outweighed the one I set up. He'd have had priority, not me, and he could have directed the robots from gravity center."

  "I wouldn't have thought of it," said Jordan. "Anyway, how did you get the robots to rush off, carrying Cameron with them?"

  "I didn't have to do anything. As long as the pilot of the incoming ship declares he may crash, the geepees must remove all humans from the danger zone, willing or not. They'd have taken you too if they could have reached you but they had to abandon that idea when I ordered crash equipment."

  "Glad they did," said Jordan. "Wouldn't want to hear what Cameron's saying. Besides it's safer inside the ship." He swung himself in, touching the hull fondly, peering down the corridor with grave wonder. "It's ours now," he said. "But what about the others? How do we get them?"

  "Anti's taken care of. Geepees aren't built to question anything and in their mind she's listed as emergency landing material. They'll bring her. And Nona is supposed to be waiting with Anti." Docchi's face showed misgiving. "I think we made it clear she was supposed to stay there."

  "What if she didn't understand?"

  "I'm sure she did," said Docchi. "It wasn't complicated. Meanwhile you'd better get ready to lift ship."

  Jordan disappeared, heading toward the control compartment. Docchi stationed himself at the passenger lock. He had said the instructions weren't hard to understand, and they weren't—for anyone else. But to Nona the world was upside down; the simplest things often she didn't comprehend—and the reverse was true. He hoped she hadn't got mixed up.

  He had little time to dwell on it. The geepees were coming back. He heard them first and saw them seconds later. They came into sight half carrying, half pushing a huge rectangular tank. With ingenuity that was unexpected in robots they had mounted it on four of their smaller bretheren, the squat repair robots. This served to support the tremendous weight.

  The tank was filled with blue liquid. Twisted pipes dangled from the ends—it had been torn from the pit in the ground, lifted up from the foundation. Broken plants still clung to a narrow ledge on top and moist soil adhered to the sides. Wracked out of shape and askew, the tank was intact and did not leak. Five geepees pushed it rapidly toward the ship, mechanically oblivious to the disheveled man who shouted and struck at them, incoherent with frustrated rage.

  "Jordan, open the freight lock."

  In response the ship rose a few more inches and hung quivering. To the rear a section of the ship hinged outward and downward to form a ramp. The ship was ready and the cargo had arrived.

  Docchi remained at the passenger entrance. Cameron was an idiot. He should have stayed in the main dome once the geepees had released him. His presence was unwelcome, more than he may have realized. Still, they'd gotten rid of him once and it ought to work again.

  It was Nona who worried Docchi. She hadn't accompanied the robots and she wasn't to be seen. It didn't look as if Cameron had found her there and managed to confine her to the hospital. It had happened too fast; the doctor was lucky to have kept up with the geepees. Docchi started uncertainly down the ramp and came back. She wasn't around, he could see that, and it was too late to go back to the main dome.

  The tank neared the ship, the forward section sliding onto the ramp. The motion slowed as the geepees' effort slackened. Then the robots stopped altogether, straightening up in bewilderment.

  The tank rolled backward. The geepees got out of the way, shaking and buzzing, looking questioningly around. Simultaneously, it seemed, they saw Docchi. Their intentions were obvious but he forestalled them, leaping back in the ship. "Close the passenger entrance," he shouted.

  Jordan appeared at the far end of the corridor. "Sure. What's wrong?"

  "Vogel, the engineer. He must have seen the geepees on scanning when they entered the main dome. He's trying to do what Cameron should have thought of but didn't have sense."

  Jordan went away and the passenger ramp rose with ponderous slowness, clamping shut with metallic finality. As soon as he saw there was no danger there Docchi hurried to the control compartment.

  "Now we can't see what to do," complained Jordan.

  "Maybe," said Docchi. "Try to get something on the telecom."

  From the angle it was difficult to see anything. The receptor tubes were close to the hull, and the ship curved backward, filling most of the screen. By rotating the view they managed to pick up a comer of the tank. Apparently it was resting where Docchi had last seen it. He couldn't be sure but he thought it hadn't been moved.

  "I don't know whether we can bring it in," said Jordan nervously. "Maybe we should leave it. We'll make out by ourselves."

  "Leave without the tank? Not a chance. Vogel hasn't got complete control of the robots yet." It seemed to be true. They were huddled away from the ship, looking alternately at the rocket and the tank, nearly motionless, paralyzed.

  "Yeah, but he'll have them soon. Look at them."

  "I am, which is why I think he's having trouble. Give me full power on the emergency radio."

  "What good will it do? He's got priority."

  "He's got it, but can he push it through to them? It's my idea that he can't, that he's at the wrong angle to put much power in his signal. There's a lot of steel between him and the robots and that's weakening his beam."

  "Maybe you've got something," said Jordan. "I'll bum the emergency stuff out. If it doesn't work we won't need it again anyway." He flipped the dials until the lights above them were blazing fiercely.

  "Energized geepees are requested to lend assistance. This is an emergency. Place the tank in the ship. At once. At once."

  Geepees were not designed to sift contradictory commands at nearly the same level of urgency. Their reasoning ability was feeble but the mechanism that enabled them to think at all was complicated. In one respect they resembled humans: borderline decisions were difficult. A ship in distress—an asteroid in danger. Both called for the robot to destroy itself if necessary. It seemed as if that was all that would be accomplished.

  "More power," whispered Docchi.

  "There ain't more," answered Jordan, but somehow he coaxed an extra trickle out of the reserves.

  Marionettes. But they were always that, puppets on invisible wires. And now this string led toward one action. Another, intrinsically more important but suddenly less powerful, pulled for something else. Circuits burned in electronic brains. Micro-rays fluttered under the stress. They didn't know. They just didn't know.

  But there had to be a choice.

  Stiffly the geepees moved in and grasped the tank. The quality of their decision was strained. They were pushing themselves more than the tank but inch by inch the huge twisted structure rolled up the ramp.

  "When it's completely
on, raise the ramp." Docchi wasn't aware that he could hardly be heard.

  The cargo ramp began to lift up. The tank gained speed as it rolled forward into the ship. "Geepees, the job is finished. Save yourselves," shouted Docchi. He saw a swirl of metallic bodies as they leaped from the ramp.

  Jordan breathed deeply. "That did it. I don't think they can hurt us now."

  "It's not over. Get ship-to-station communication, if there's any radio left."

  "I'll be surprised if there is," muttered Jordan, but his skepticism was without basis. The radio was still functioning. He made the adjustments.

  Docchi was matter of fact. "Vogel, we're going out. Don't try to stop us. Give us clearance and save the dome some damage."

  There was no reply.

  "He's bluffing/' said Jordan. "He knows the airlocks in the main dome will close automatically if we break through."

  "Sure," said Docchi. "Everyone in the main dome is safe— if everyone is in there. Vogel, do you know where Cameron is? Are you certain a nurse or an accidental hasn't wandered in here to see what's wrong? We'll give you time to think about it."

  Again they waited and waited. Each second was tangible, the precious duration that lives and events were measured with—and the measure was exceedingly slow. Meanwhile Jordan flipped on the telecom and searched the rocket dome. They saw nothing; there was not even a geepee in sight. Docchi watched the screen impassively; what he thought didn't show on his face.

  And still there was no reply from the engineer in the gravity station.

  "AH right. We've given you a chance," said Docchi. His voice was brittle. "You know what we're going to do. If anybody gets hurt you can take the credit." He turned away from the screen. "Jordan, let's go. Hit the shell with the bow."

  Jordan grasped the levers. The ship hardly quivered as it tilted upward and leaped away. It roared in the air and then fell silent as it passed into space. And the silenee was worse than any sound—it was filled with the imagined hiss of air escaping from a great hole in the transparent covering of the dome.

  Jordan sat at the controls. "Did he?"

  "He had to. He wouldn't risk killing some innocent person." "I don't know," said Jordan. "If you'd said he wouldn't want his pretty machinery banged up it would be easier to believe."

  "I didn't hear anything. We would have if we'd hit."

  "It was fast. Could we tell? Maybe Vogel played it safe and had the inner shell out of the way even if he didn't give us the automatic signal. In that event it's all right because it would close as soon as we got out of the way even if we did rip through the outer shell. All the air wouldn't escape." Jordan sat there for a moment, silently reviewing his own arguments.

  He twisted the lever and the ship leaped forward. "Cameron I don't mind. He had time to get away and he knew what we were going to do. I keep thinking Nona might have been there."

  "He opened it," said Docchi harshly. "We didn't hit the dome. I didn't hear anything. Nona wasn't there." His face was gray, there was no light at all in it. "Come on," he said, walking away.

  Jordan rocked back and forth. The hemisphere that held what remained of his body was suited for it. He set the auto-controls and reduced the gravity to quarter normal. He bent his arms and shoved himself into the air", deftly catching a guide rail, swinging along it.

  It was pure chance that he glanced toward the back of the ship instead of forward as he entered the corridor after Docchi. There was a light blinking at a cabin door.

  It was occupied.

  4

  JORDAN caught up before Docchi reached the cargo hold. In lesser gravity he was more active and could move freely. Now his handicap was almost unnoticeable, seemed to have disappeared. The same was not true of Docchi. It required less effort to walk but there was also a profound unsettling effect that made him cautious and uncertain.

  Docchi heard him coming and waited, bracing himself against the wall in case the gravity should momentarily change. Jordan still carried the weapon he'd taken from the pilot. It was clipped to the sacklike garment, dangling from his midsection which, for him, was just below his shoulders. Down the passageway he came, swinging from the guide rails with easy grace though the gravity on the ship was as erratic as on the asteroid.

  Jordan halted, hanging on with one hand. "We have a passenger. Someone we didn't know about."

  Docchi stiffened. "Who?" he asked. But the answer was already on Jordan's face. "Nona," he said in relief. He slumped forward. "How did she get on?"

  "A good question," said Jordan. "But there isn't any answer and never will be. It's my guess that after she jammed the lights and scanners in the rocket dome she went to the ship and it looked inviting. So she went in. She wouldn't let a little thing like a lock that couldn't be opened stop her."

  "It's a good guess," agreed Docchi. "She's exceedingly curious."

  "We may as well make the picture complete. Once in the ship she felt tired. She found a comfortable cabin and fell asleep. She can't hear anything so our little skirmish with the geepees didn't bother her."

  "I can't argue with you. It'll do until a tetter explanation comes along."

  "But I wish she'd waited a few minutes to take her nap. She'd have saved us a lot of trouble. She didn't know you'd be able to crawl through the tubes—and neither did you until you'd actually done it."

  "What do you want?" said Docchi. "She did more than we did. We depend too much on her. Next thing we'll expect her to escort us personally to the stars."

  "I wasn't criticizing her," protested Jordan.

  "Maybe not. You've got to remember her mind works differently. It never occurred to her that we'd have difficulty with something that was so simple to her. At the same time she's completely unable to grasp our concepts." He straightened up. "We'd better get going if we don't want Anti to start yelling."

  The cargo hold was sizable. It had to be to hold the tank, which was now quite battered and twisted. But the tank was sturdily built and looked as if it would hold together for ages to come. There was some doubt as to whether the ship would. The wall opposite the ramp was badly bent where the tank

  ADDRESS: CENT AU RI

  37

  had plowed into it and the storage racks were demolished. Odds and ends of equipment lay in scattered heaps on the floor.

  "Anti," called Docchi.

  "Here."

  "Are you hurt?"

  "Never felt a thing," came the cheerful reply. It was not surprising; her surplus flesh was adequate protection against deceleration.

  Jordan began to scale the side of the tank, reaching the top and peering over. "She seems to be all right," he called down. "Part of the acid's gone. Otherwise there's no damage."

  "Of course not," replied Anti. "What did I say?"

  It was perhaps more serious than she realized. She might personally dislike it, but acid was necessary to her life. And some of it had been splashed from the tank. Where it had spilled metal was corroding rapidly. By itself this was no cause for alarm. The ship was built for a multitude of strange environments and the scavenging system would handle acid as readily as water, neutralizing it and disposing of it where it would do no harm. But the supply had to be conserved. There was no more.

  "What are you waiting for?" Anti rumbled with impatience. "Get me out of here. I've stewed in this disgusting soup long enough."

  "We were thinking how we could get you out. We'll figure out a way."

  "You let me do the thinking. You just get busy. After you left I decided there must be some way to live outside the tank and of course when I bent my mind to it there was a way. After all, who knows more about my condition than me?"

  "You're the expert. Tell us what to do."

  "Oh I will. All I need from you is no gravity and I'll take care of the rest. I've got muscles, more than you think. I can walk as long as my bones don't break from the weight."

  Light gravity was bad, none at all was worse for Docchi. Having no arms he'd be helpless. The prospect of floating
free without being able to grasp anything was terrifying. He forced down his fear. Anti had to have it and so he could get used to null gravity.

  "We'll get around to it," he promised. "Before we do we'll have to drain and store the acid."

  "I don't care what you do with it," said Anti. "All I know is that I don't want to be in it."

  Jordan was already working. He swung off the tank and was busy expelling water from an auxiliary compartment into space. As soon as the compartment was empty he led a hose from it to the tank. A pump vibrated and the acid level in the tank began to fall.

  Docchi felt the ship lurch familiarly. The ship was older than he thought, the gravity generator more out of date. "Hurry," he called to Jordan.

  In time they'd cut it off. But if gravity went out before they were ready they were in for rough moments. Free floating globes of highly corrosive acid, scattered throughout the ship by air currents, could be as destructive as high velocity meteor clusters.

  Jordan tinkered with the pump and then jammed the lever as far as it would go, holding it there. "I think we'll make it," he said above the screech of the pump. The machinery gasped, but it won. The throbbing broke into a vacant clatter that betokened the tank was empty. Jordan had the hose rolled away before the gravity generator let the feeling of weight trickle off into nothingness.

  As soon as she was weightless Anti rose out of the tank.

  In all the time Docchi had known her he had seen no more than a face framed in blue acid. Where it was necessary periodic surgery had trimmed the flesh away. For the rest, she lived submerged in a corrosive fluid that destroyed the wild tissue as fast as it grew. Anyway, nearly as fast.

  "Well, junkman, look at a real freak," snapped Anti.

  He had anticipated—and he was wrong in what he thought. It was true humans weren't meant to grow so large, but Jupiter wasn't repulsive merely because it was the bulging giant of planets. It was unbelievable and overwhelming when seen close up but it was not obscene. It took getting used to but he could stand the sight of Anti.

  "How long can you live out of the acid?" he stammered.