Rivets and Sprockets

by Alexander Key

  “I’m all wight ’thept for my looth thkwew. Can I turn off my wadio? It tickles.”

  “Oh, no! Don’t you dare turn it off, or Ilium won’t be able to find you. Don’t you realize that we are flying away from each other, and that soon we’ll be miles and miles and miles apart?”

  “Weally? Then I’ll keep it tickling. Why are we flying away from each other?”

  “Because we jumped in opposite directions, and there’s nothing to stop us. In space, you keep going and going and going.”

  “I’m worrit, Spwockets. Where’th the thauther?”

  Sprockets had been searching for the purple saucer, but there was no sign of it in the blackness around him. There was only the distant spaceship, so small now that it was a streak of blue against the stars. Away to the left of it was a tiny white dot that must be Rivets. Without using his radar vision or his special perceptors, Sprockets realized the only reason he could still see Rivets was because of the white sheet he wore. It reflected the sunlight, as did Earth and the Moon far below him. The sun was a fiery ball on his right, but it cast no glow in the empty airless blackness that was space.

  What could have happened to the purple saucer?

  “I can’t locate the saucer,” he told Rivets. “But I’m sure it’s around somewhere. There’s nothing to be worried about. Are you untangled?”

  “Yeth, but I can’t thee you.”

  “It’s because I’m not wearing a white sheet to reflect the sun. Save your sheet. It will make it easier for the saucer to find you.”

  “B-but, Spwockets, where ith the thauther?”

  “I can’t imagine, but it’s got to be somewhere around. I’ll see if I can raise Ilium.”

  Sprockets adjusted his voice button, and sang out—or rather he went through the motions of singing out, for it made only a small sound inside his head—“Ilium! Ilium! Sprockets calling. Where are you, Ilium?”

  There was no answer.

  Strange, for everyone in the saucer had a wrist radio, and surely by this time he should have heard from one of them. Something must be terribly wrong.

  Sprockets turned on his imagination button—but after three frightful tocks he turned it off quickly. It was definitely not the button to touch at a time like this. It must be awful to be a human, he thought, and have an imagination you couldn’t turn off.

  “I don’t know what’s happened,” he called to Rivets. “We’ll have to wait.”

  “But wait how long, Spwockets?”

  “Who knows? What does it matter? After all, we’re just robots—and that’s something to be thankful for.”

  “Mebbe tho, but I wisht I had my mobbles to play with.”

  “Aw, Rivets, you couldn’t play with mobbles—I mean marbles—out here.”

  “Well, I got to do sumfing and I don’t feel like counting. I fink I’ll make up poetwy.”

  “Poetry! Oh, no!”

  “Yeth. How’th thith?” And Rivets recited in his plaintive voice:

  “Two liddle wobots, lost in thpathe,

  Flying away at an orful pathe,

  If no wun findth the poor liddle dears,

  Where will they be in a hundert ears?”

  “Rivets!” Sprockets said in alarm. “Have you lost your screw entirely?”

  “Well, it wymes, even if it’th abbled. And who’d care after a hundert ears—”

  Rivets’ voice had stopped suddenly. Sprockets waited a moment, then called in alarm: “Rivets! What’s happened?”

  There was no reply.

  Sprockets called again and again. He searched the black distance, but even with his special perceptors to help, there was no sign of Rivets.

  “Oh, dear,” he told himself. “Maybe a space gobbler got him.” But immediately he added: “How silly! There’s no such thing as a space gobbler. I shouldn’t have turned on my imagination button when I did. It’s made me space wabbled—I mean abbled—I mean addled. Suppose I really did have to float for a hundert ears! I’d be just plain cuckoo.”

  It occurred to Sprockets that it might be a good thing if he turned himself off. Not right away, of course, but in time. Then he could float and add and subtract—not ordinary numbers full of sevens and nines, but great positronic numbers full of fractured fractions.

  It seemed that he had been drifting in space for weeks and weeks, but when he checked his built-in clock he was surprised to find that only thirty-three minutes and seven seconds had passed since he had been blown from the air lock. The doctor is right, he thought. Time and space are so readily relative.

  At that moment he turned his head and saw the purple saucer.

  In seven more seconds it had paused directly over him, and Rivets had hauled him aboard through the force field.

  Sprockets blinked his eye lights at the doctor and Jim, who were sprawled on a bunk holding their heads. They looked, well, quite abbled.

  “What happened?” he asked Rivets.

  “Don’t ask me,” said Rivets. “It was something about being gobbled, but—”

  “Gobbled! By what?”

  “All I know, Sprockets, is that I was mighty glad to be back and have Leli fix my screw. Space is no place to be lost in with a loose screw. I almost lost it—and then the sheet caught on my radio button and turned it off, and, and—You just don’t know!”

  Sprockets said earnestly, “Be thankful you haven’t got an imagination button.” He turned to Leli and said, “You were gobbled by something?”

  “Yes,” Leli sang to him. “We were gobbled by a space gobbler.”

  “A space gobbler!”

  Leli gave a little trill of laughter. “That’s what we call it. Actually it’s a sort of magnetic wave. They don’t affect old-fashioned spaceships, but they can do the most unpurplish things to saucers. We’re always running into them—this one bounced us five million miles. It was loads of fun—we love space gobblers—but it was hard on the doctor and Jim. So we gave them jumping pills.”

  “You gave them—pills that jump?”

  “Oh, no, the pills don’t jump.” She laughed again. “Jumping pills cure jumping sickness. Some people get it when they take quick jumps in space.”

  “I’m purplishly thankful I’m only a robot,” Sprockets told her. “How did you find Rivets and me so easily?”

  “Why shouldn’t we find you easily? Our locator could always hear you ticking, even though we couldn’t get a message to you.”

  Dr. Bailey stood up and looked around vaguely. “Bless me,” he muttered. “I feel so duddy-fuddyish. Something happened—but what?”

  Sprockets told him.

  “Ump!” said the doctor. “I wouldn’t care to go through that again.”

  “It made me hungry,” said Jim, reaching into the lunch basket. “How long before we’ll be on Mars?”

  “Yes,” the doctor began. “How long—” But suddenly he stopped and stared hard at Rivets. “What—have—you—got—there?”

  “Space marbles, sir,” Rivets replied brightly. “Leli gave them to me. Aren’t they super?” He flipped one, and it shot exactly three feet into the air and hung there motionless, purple and glowing. He flipped another and another, until six purple marbles hung in front of him. “See, sir? They float—and they don’t roll away.”

  The doctor’s hair was bristling. “Quite super-super. But I don’t approve of marbles for robots—and—you—know—why!”

  “Aw, Daddy,” Jim pleaded. “They’re such super-super-super marbles! Why can’t he keep them—especially after the ghosty way he abbled the professor?”

  “Bless me, so he did. H’mm, very well, he may keep them—on probation only. But about Mars. How long—”

  “Sir,” said Sprockets, “Ilium informs me that since you are full of jumping pills, it will be safe for you to go faster now. You can make it in an easy jump of thirty minutes.”

  The doctor’s long nose began to twitch with rising excitement. “Hot diggity!” he cried suddenly. “Let us proceed!”

 
Since time and space are readily relative, especially in a purple saucer, it seemed that they were flying over Mars in practically no time. It expanded so fast from a small red dot to a huge red globe, and there was so much to see on it, that time became timeless and didn’t count except on Sprockets’ built-in clock, which he didn’t have time to think about.

  The huge red globe, swelling every second as they rushed toward it, had gleaming white snow at the poles, with dried-up seas and great mottled red deserts ringed with mountains in between. And all over it, connecting everything and nothing, ran the strange straight lines of canals, perfectly huge canals that ran for hundreds of miles without a twitch. The canals were dry like the seas, but many of them were edged with green, as if plants were growing there.

  The doctor was so excited that his spectacles kept falling off, and Sprockets was forever jumping to catch them before they dropped. The doctor really needed a cup of sassafras tea to calm him, but Jim was too excited to think about it, though not too excited to keep his hand out of the lunch basket.

  “Bless me!” said the doctor. “There’s no question of it now. No question at all.”

  “Sir?” said Sprockets. “No question of what?”

  “Martians,” said the doctor. “Those canals didn’t dig themselves. A great civilization flourished here once.”

  “But, Daddy”—and Jim was puzzled—“where did the Martians live? I don’t see any cities—not even ruined ones. And I don’t see any rubble where ruins might have been.”

  “I’ll be doubly blessed!” The doctor replaced his spectacles, which Sprockets had caught for him again. “You’re quite right, which you seldom are. No ruins, no rubble, no roads, no nothing. Nothing except canals! I don’t understand it. Why were the canals built—and who built them? They must be ancient—audaciously so.”

  “Sir,” said Sprockets, “Ilium tells me they are older than ancient, and even older than that—which means they were audaciously ancient when Earth was young. He says Mars is a riddle that has never been unraveled, although the purple people have been flying over it for a million years.”

  “And it’s been like this for a million years?”

  “Exactly, sir. He says the only change is seasonal. Then the vapor comes down the canals, and the lichens turn green.”

  “Eh? Vapor, did you say?”

  “Vapor, sir. There’s practically no water on Mars, and very little air. So when the polar frost melts, it merely turns to vapor and drifts down the canals, and the lichens suck it up. Ilium says the lichenlike plants are the only things alive on Mars. Naturally he was quite flumdiddled when I told him Mars had a Something on it.”

  “Naturally,” said the doctor. “I’m quite flumdiddled myself. The whole thing is most flumdiddling. The way to unriddle the ravel is to find that Something and talk to it face to face. The question is where to begin. Ask Ilium to take us lower while I think deeply.”

  The saucer swooped down over the curious red landscape and began drifting along one of the canals.

  “H’mm!” said the doctor, peering out and thinking deeply. “H’mmmm!”

  “Daddy,” Jim began, “can’t we—”

  “Silence,” said the doctor. “I’m arriving at a conclusion.”

  Sprockets had turned on his cerebration button, and now he turned on his instinct button as well. The doctor, he knew, was fairly itching to go tramping on Martian soil. But his instinct button told him this would be most unwise.

  Before Sprockets could speak, the doctor said: “Ah! I’m certain those lichens are a clue. Being the only known things alive on Mars, they should be examined.”

  “And I want one for my collection,” Jim burst out. “Can’t we land, Daddy? Please, Daddy, can’t we?”

  “Naturally we must land,” said the doctor. His nose was quivering, and his mop of white hair was vibrating with expectation. “We must land, look, examine, think, and consult.”

  “Sir,” Sprockets began earnestly. “It is my duty to warn you that the surface of Mars is most inhospitable to humans, and that furthermore—”

  “Naturally it is inhospitable,” the doctor said impatiently. “It is icy and practically airless. But we will wear space suits. Tell Leli to get them for us.”

  “Yes, sir. But I must advise you that my positronic instinct, which is extremely sensitive, reacts alarmingly—”

  “Drivel!” snapped the doctor. “Preposterous positronic drivel! Turn it off, or I’ll turn you off. Can’t you see that I want to put my feet on Mars?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  6

  They Search for the Something

  As the saucer moved to the edge of the canal, Leli gave everyone a little belt with a switch in the middle of the curling buckle. It was a simplified space suit, which she called a force globe. When the wearer pressed the switch, he was instantly surrounded by a bubble of protecting force that furnished both air and heat.

  “You and Rivets must wear them too,” she told Sprockets. “Mars has dust storms. Perfectly unpurplish awful ones. They come up in a wink before you know it. If you ever get Martian dust in your joints, you’ll never get rid of your squeaks.”

  The saucer came down and hung poised over an open spot nearly surrounded by the lichenlike plants. The plants looked very much like the lichens on Earth, all spreading and mottled with green, yet full of puckers and wrinkles. But there was a difference in size.

  “Whew!” Jim exclaimed, staring out at them. “I never saw lichens as big as bushes! We could get lost in them.”

  “Bless me,” said the doctor, “so we could. We must be careful to keep our radios on and not stray too far. Turn on your force globes, everybody!”

  Everyone pressed the switch on his belt, and was immediately surrounded by a shimmering bubble of force. Ilium thought a command to the saucer, and the slender stairway opened below them. Eagerly the doctor and Jim stepped through the saucer’s force field and hurried down to the dusty red ground.

  “Look!” cried Jim, jumping six feet upward with ease. “I weigh eighty pounds at home—and only thirty-two pounds here!”

  “Be careful where you jump,” Sprockets warned him over his radio. “And watch out for dust storms.”

  “Aw, Sprockets, you’re such a worrywart,” Jim called back. “You act as if Mars were full of rattlesnakes.”

  Rivets said: “What’s the matter, Sprockets? Is something wrong?”

  “You wouldn’t ask such a question if you had an instinct button.”

  “If it bothers you, why don’t you turn it off?”

  “I had to turn it off because the doctor ordered it—but it had already told me something was wrong, and I can’t figure out what it is. Got your pay-attention button on?”

  “All the way.”

  “Your hurry-up button?”

  “All the way.”

  “Then keep your marbles in your pocket—and your eye lights blinking.”

  “Aw, I think you’re still space-abbled. How could there be any danger here?”

  Sprockets didn’t know. Surely everything seemed all right. He watched Ilium and Leli, shimmering with color in their force globes, go bouncing away through the lichens like two happy children—which they were, as he knew. Being only a hundred years old, they were classed as young children by the purple people. He also knew that they were slightly radioactive, so he was not too surprised to see the lichens actually bend away as they moved through them.

  The doctor and Jim were not radioactive, and they had the opposite effect on the lichens. The lichens seemed to be reaching toward them.

  Sprockets thought, My goodness, what an odd thing for a plant to do! With his cerebration button on, it took only an instant to figure out the reason. Mars had so little air that these plants were positively greedy for it.

  Suddenly he cried out on his radio: “Don’t touch those lichens! They’re dangerous!”

  His warning came a second too late. The doctor, absorbed in his study of the curious plants, was
reaching among them to find one small enough to pluck. Before he could draw back, a mottled leaf had enclosed his arm, and another lichen was folding itself around him, squeezing the force globe and sucking at the air. Jim saw him struggling and jumped to help—but the jump carried him much too far and the greedy lichens had a second victim.

  Sprockets was already racing across the open area with Rivets at his heels. Ilium and Leli, hearing Sprockets’ cries, came running back. In spite of the gravity, it took all four of them to tear Jim and the doctor free and drag them to safety.

  “Oof! Ug! Glup!” sputtered the doctor, gasping for breath.

  “G-great grief an’ M-moses!” Jim stuttered. “They nearly drained me dry!”

  “Almost tore off my force globe,” said the doctor, staggering to his feet. “Let’s get out of here!”

  Sprockets helped the doctor back into the saucer. It took three cups of sassafras tea to calm him, and Jim nearly emptied the lunch basket—though where he put it all Sprockets couldn’t guess.

  “Why weren’t the rest of you attacked?” the doctor asked Sprockets.

  “Sir, the rest of us have a touch of radioactivity, which the plants seem to abhor.”

  “Of course! That explains it. H’mm! Who would have dreamed that a plant could be so revoltingly ravenous for oxygen? Bless me, there’s a valuable clue here. Let me think.” He reached absently into the lunch basket, found a pickle that Jim didn’t want, and began to nibble it thoughtfully.

  “Daddy,” Jim began. “I’ve an idea.”

  “Don’t interrupt my thinking. There’s a conclusion trying to elude me.”

  “But, Daddy,” Jim persisted, “can’t you see? The lichens are growing where they are for a purpose.”

  “Eh? Purpose?”

  “Daddy, they are the only things alive on Mars, and they grow only near the canals. Couldn’t their purpose be to suck up all the vapor that drifts down to them?”

  “Naturally,” said the doctor. “Practically the conclusion I was almost arriving at. Proceed.”

  “Well,” said Jim, “since they are so grubbily greedy for oxygen, it would seem that their purpose is to store it up for something.”