Norby tnc-2

by Isaac Asimov

  "Then I fall, too, don't I?"

  "Just a little. Fall slowly and let him bang against the floor, then up, then down with another bang, and so on." Jeff had trouble getting the words out, so anxious was he that Fargo understand.

  The Mentor understood. He made a sound like gears grinding horribly. "I will let you go, alien monster, if you get me down to the ground. Don't do as the other monster suggests. I am nearly dead and I will be quickly destroyed it there is hard contact with the ground."

  Fargo looked at Jeff. Jeff looked at Fargo.

  "Let's go down," said Jeff, "Nice and easy." Unfortunately, he didn't count on Oola's reaction. Without warning, she jumped from his arms to the Mentor's shoulder and Jeff found himself in midair without antigrav.

  He cried, "Help! I'm falling!"

  Fargo yelled, too, as he desperately dropped with the Mentor and tried to snatch at his falling brother.

  Jeff was trying to shrink back from the rapidly approaching floor when he felt two hard hands grab him. They were not Fargo's, but the Mentor's. Jeff was hanging from the Mentor's left arms, facing Fargo, who was still wearing the antigrav collar, and was still clutched by the Mentor's two right arms.

  Fargo cancelled the fall with such vigor that all three-four, counting Oola-shot upward again.

  "Wow!" said Fargo, shaking his head to free his left ear from Oola's enthusiastic licking. "That was close!"

  He slapped Jeff's arm and grinned. "Let's all go down slowly, now, and have a reasonable conversation about this. Haven't I always told you, Jeff, that logical argument is better than derring-do?"

  "Sure," said Jeff. "You've always told me. What you don't do is show me." His feet reached the floor and the Mentor let go first of Jeff and then of Fargo.

  The two brothers watched while the enormous robot, with Oola resting comfortably on his shoulder, clumped slowly back into the scanning room, where Norby still sat inside his barrel. The Mentor sat down and put his head in his hands.

  "Suddenly, I'm sorry for him," said Fargo in Terran Basic. "He's such an old robot."

  "I think he's Mentor First," said Jeff in Jamyn.

  "Yes," said the Mentor, looking up. "How did you know that?"

  "We came to see you, long ago, just after you had been activated to do your work here," said Jeff, gently. The Mentor First they'd met then had been so strong, so gleamingly new.

  "Surely you could not be alive for so long; we were activated thirty thousand years ago. And I do not remember you," said the Mentor. He said this in Terran Basic.

  "You have learned to speak our language!" said Jeff.

  "Since you left two weeks ago, the computer analyzed your language and I have learned it-enough to know that you pity me. An alien such as yourself should not take the liberty of pitying me; it is not your place to do so. And yet-and yet I find it strangely comforting. Perhaps, now, you will help me remove this terrible fear I have."

  "What is the fear?" Jeff asked softly.

  "When you would not help, I scanned you, hoping the computer and I could find out how you got to Jamya." The Mentor's head hung lower, and his body seemed to quiver.

  "What's the matter?" asked Fargo. "Are you afraid of us?"

  "No, no. I am afraid of myself. I am so seriously out of order that, at times, I am not in a position of mental stability, and the moments-of insanity-have come more frequently. When my Pet came back to me so unexpectedly, I felt myself becoming sane once more, but I don't know how long that will last. If I become insane again, you must leave me here in the scanner. The computer is adjusted to deactivate me if I become too dangerous."

  Jeff was horrified. Suddenly the thought of Mentor First as a villain seemed grotesque. He was a sad and suffering machine.

  Jeff protested, "But you mustn't kill yourself."

  "I must, if I cannot be cured. And I do not think a cure is possible. I am too old. All the other Mentors have died, and I am too much alone. Caring for the Jamyn by myself is more than I can manage and even my Pet has been away from me for too long. We have no means of entering hyperspace to refuel ourselves, you see. The Others wanted to isolate this planet, and they must have thought they would be back long before our enormous supply of fuel would be consumed, but they have not come back."

  "And you thought I came from hyperspace," said Jeff, "and could get you into hyperspace where you could refuel-and perhaps find the Others."

  "Yes. It is as though you read my mind…But the disturbance in my brain has progressed too far. It is too rate. Go away."

  "Then have the computer release Norby. He can help. Norby!" shouted Jeff.

  "I heard," came Norby's voice, and his head popped up. He elevated on antigrav and hung in the air before the Mentor.

  "I was exploring the computer, Jeff," Norby said. "I'm sorry you thought I was helpless in its grip and that you were upset by that, but I could not allow anything to interrupt me. I'm done now, though, and I'll be glad to help you, Mentor First. I will take you into hyperspace so you can refuel."

  The Mentor's eye patches flared in a blue iridescence, but quickly dulled. "You? A small alien robot?"

  "I am not alien. I'm yours. You made me. At least partly. Can't you tell?"

  "You don't look familiar," said Mentor First. "You are lying."

  "Take my hand," said Norby. "Find the data in my mind. It's available now that I've explored the data banks of your computer. I remember-and you will, too."

  They touched, and while Jeff watched, his heart thumping, the Mentor's eye patches began to brighten and he reached out his two lower arms to hold Norby's barrel. "You are the Searcher," he said in Jamyn.

  "Part of it," Norby said. "When you realized that the Others might not be returning and that you could not go into hyperspace to find them or to refuel, you finally worked out a device that would go into hyperspace for you." Norby spread out his arms. "Inside me is that device."

  "You never returned," said Mentor First, softly, "and I thought my attempt to build a hyperpenetrator had failed."

  "Your attempt did not fail, and I found the ship the Others had promised to send, but a collision with a small asteroid ruined the ship and damaged me. I lay paralyzed for a long time until a human being named McGillicuddy, a creature like these two with me, explored the asteroid on which the ship and I were wrecked, and found me. He repaired a damaged robot of his own, using some of my parts. Since I have been in this new and beautiful shape, I have been drawn back to Jamya over and over. Now I remember everything and can help you and at the same time, fulfill my original function."

  "It is too late, my son, I am dying."

  "No! Come with me to hyperspace and refuel."

  "I do not think I can. I am too weak to refuel now."

  "I'll do it-and channel the energy to you." A wire extended from Norby's hat and touched Mentor First's chest. "Now, father, join minds with me. I will think of hyperspace, and together we will go…" Norby and Mentor First vanished.

  11. Pirates!

  Oola whined, her ears lengthening. She slunk on her belly over to Fargo.

  Stroking her ears, Fargo muttered, "Poor Oola. I guess she's tom between Mentor First and me. And poor me, because I guess if Mentor First lives, I'll end up minus a pet."

  "He'd better live," said Jeff, "even if it means you being petless. and he'd better come back with Norby intact, because without Norby, how are we going to get home? The Hopeful will be forever stuck within the energy barrier around Jamya if we can't make use of Norby's mixed-up abilities."

  "You're right. But let's be optimistic. When Norby gets back, we'll go out in search of the Others, if they still exist."

  "Or, if they don't, we must at least find that wrecked ship of theirs that McGillicuddy stumbled on. No telling what information it might have on it."

  "Either way," said Fargo, "whether it's the Others, or their ship, we'd better do the finding before anybody else in the Federation does."

  "Absolutely," said Jeff. "We could use that knowledge
as ransom for Norby. It's Norby I worry about. Right now, and after we get back home!"

  The two waited with increasing impatience. Then Fargo said, "This doesn't seem to be an appropriate time for it, but I'm getting hungry. How about you?"

  Jeff said, "I'm a growing boy, superannuated brother. I'm more or less always hungry."

  "Too bad. Part of the problem of being organic rather than metal is that one has to refuel so much more often. Do you suppose Zi will feed us if we go down there?"

  "Sure, she's a great hostess, but her aunt, the Grand Dragon, will try to chew us up."

  "Let me try my charm," Fargo said, sauntering out with Oola in his arms.

  Charm or whatever, Jeff thought a while later, it certainly worked.

  Fargo, collarless since he had restored her property to the Grand Dragon, had eaten and was now serenading Her Dragonship, who sat in royal splendor against the sunset light of Jamya. She reached out with one careful claw every now and then and ran it through Fargo's hair.

  "These are such pleasant scales," she said. "Soft and fine. How did you come to get them?"

  "I have noticed," said Fargo, "that they have grown softer and finer since I have had the good fortune to meet you, Your Dragonship."

  At this, the Grand Dragon made a gargling sound that seemed to signify gratified pleasure. She was obviously infatuated with him.

  With his melodic tenor, Fargo had no trouble acting the part of a troubadour, and was now well into a peculiar translation of "God Save the Queen" which seemed to delight the Grand Dragon.

  Jeff lacked Fargo's ability to live in the passing moment, however. He did not enjoy either the food or the song, for he could think only of the absent Norby. Even Zargl, who sat next to him and made fearsome faces at him in an apparent design to make him laugh, failed to cheer him up.

  As the sun sank below the trees, the Grand Dragon offered to fly Jeff and Fargo to her palace where they might spend the night. It seemed to the appalled Jeff that Fargo might actually accept the invitation, and he said, "I think we had better stay in the Hopeful, in case our small robot returns."

  Fargo, looking guilty for a moment, agreed.

  But Norby did not return: The night was very dark because Jamya had no satellite and seemed to be in a section of space rich in cosmic dust that dimmed most of the stars that might have been visible in the sky.

  "Fargo," Jeff said, as he lay in the top bunk of their cabin. "I'm so worried I can't sleep:'

  Only snores answered him. Fargo could sleep through anything.

  Jeff stared gloomily at the darkness above with increasingly dire visions passing through his mind, when he heard Oola's paws plunk against the floor and pad down the corridor to the control room. Apparently, she had leaped down from Fargo's stomach, where she had been curled up when the lights were put out.

  Jeff slid over the edge of his bunk, dropped quietly to the cabin floor, and followed her.

  "What is it, girl?" he said, scratching her behind the ears. She must have changed into a cattish phase now, for her eyes shone in the dim lights from the control panels.

  Crash! A falling object struck the Captain's chair, bounced to the floor, and rolled.

  Jeff put on the room light. Out of the falling object, half a head popped up and large eyes peered from under a metal derby hat.

  "Norby!" Jeff cried out in sheer joy. The pleasantest sight in the world, it seemed to him, was the little robot appearing out of nowhere, even if he failed to make a good landing. What other robot would be as clumsy as delightful, wonderful, mixed-up Norby?

  Norby said, "Sorry, Jeff. I was so upset I forgot to turn on my antigrav when I reappeared from hyperspace. Didn't you get my telepathic message warning you I was trying to get back?"

  "No, but I think Oola did."

  "That's very annoying," said Norby. "We're going to have to work on your long-distance telepathy…but that's for later. Right now, you've got to wake up Fargo, and both of you had better help me take the Hopeful back to the Terran solar system. After we refueled in hyperspace, the Mentor First and I tuned into the Others' supply ship and found it on an asteroid, but so have the pirates. I came back here to get help."

  "What about Mentor First?"

  "He's holding off the pirates, and I don't know how long he can do that, so we'd better get to him fast."

  "Did I hear you say pirates?" asked Fargo from the doorway.

  "I'll say it again. Pirates! Pirates!" yelled Norby. "Let's get going." He grabbed both brothers and all three ran to the computer.

  The Hopeful emerged in normal space next to the asteroid.

  "Wow-from Jamya slam-bang through hyperspace to my own solar system! And right on target, Norby," said Fargo softly.

  "Have you stopped being mixed up?" asked Jeff.

  "I'm tuned to Mentor First. Getting us here was easy. Do you have any suggestions as to how to cope with those pirates who are trying to steal the Jamya's supply ship? Look at the size of it!"

  Following Norby's pointing finger, Jeff watched the viewscreen intently while Fargo was whispering rapidly to the little robot.

  Another ship, tiny by comparison, but larger than the Hopeful was anchored to the small asteroid. Jeff could dimly see the huge outline of a strange wreck on the asteroid, partially hidden by its irregularities. On the asteroid, Mentor First was confronting three men in spacesuits who were holding weapons.

  "But are they pirates?" asked Jeff, doubtful. "They could be Federation police."

  "No chance," said Fargo. "Those are known pirates; I recognize their ship. They're renegades from the Inventors Union. Up and at 'em."

  "With what?" asked Jeff. "The Hopeful doesn't carry weapons."

  "You're not up-to-date, little brother. Admiral Yobo insisted that once I became one of Space Command's secret agents, my ship would have to be armed. You and I will go out in suits and distract the pirates, and Norby will plug into system G6YY of the computer. The computer will tell you what to do, Norby."

  Norby was plugging in. "Right, Fargo. Are you sure you also want me to notify…"

  "Yes, those are my orders. I'm certain," said Fargo hastily, pulling Jeff to the airlock and throwing him a space suit from the three hanging there.

  "Fortunately, we don't need antigrav in open space-or on an asteroid either," he added, readying the jet propulsion system of the suit. He and Jeff stepped into the airlock.

  "I wish you'd tell me what we're planning to do," said Jeff in exasperation, over the suit's intercom.

  "Just follow me."

  Jeff followed, landing between the Mentor and the three pirates.

  "Howdy," said Fargo. "How about cutting me in on the spoils, boys? If you've found anything, that is."

  The pirates were clearly startled at the sudden and unexpected voice in their radio receivers. Apparently they had not been aware of a ship materializing silently out of hyperspace and into their vicinity.

  One of the pirate guns turned on Fargo and Jeff, with the clumsiness that attended all movements in open space.

  "Who are you?" demanded the pirate.

  "Fargo Wells, descended from an ancestor who was tarred and feathered in North Dakota, American sector of the Terran Federation. My buddy here and I are interested in what you found. An old robot?"

  "That robot's alive, mister," said the pirate leader, "and it's dangerous. If you want anything out of us besides destruction, you'd better get ready to help us. That thing is holding some gadget that repels our force guns and produces a nasty shock when you get near enough. If you two do something useful, maybe you'll get something in exchange."

  Fargo said, "Sounds good, if you can really get something out of an old robot. Is that all you've got here?"

  "The wreck of an alien ship, too, that the Inventors Union might pay a lot for."

  "Why should they? Is there anything on the ship?"

  "That's what we aim to find out, and we don't figure on delaying things with talk. Are you going to help us or do we poke h
oles in your suits and let out all that nice air?"

  "As it happens," said Fargo, "we're attached to our air. My buddy here is a robotics expert, so let him approach that monster."

  The three pirates touched fingers and conferred in sound, the waves being carried by the material of the suits. The first pirate, clearly the leader, switched back to radio.

  "You have one chance," he said. "If you can handle the robot, fine! If not, say good-bye to each other real fast, because we're not going to wait for you to say your prayers."

  Jeff used rocket microsurges to bring himself down to the asteroid surface and approached Mentor First in the slow, swaying steps enforced by a nearly gravitationless world. He touched Mentor First and said, telepathically and in Jamyn, -Hold on, First, Fargo and I have come to…

  — I recognized your ship, said Mentor First telepathically. I am recharged and in much better health, but this weapon is nearly exhausted. I have very few options. I could tear off their suits and kill them, but I cannot bring myself to destroy living things. It is against my programming. And yet I must keep them from taking the ship.

  The pirate leader said tensely to Fargo, "How did your pal get past the repulsion field? And is he talking to that thing? How can he talk to an alien robot?"

  "Maybe it's not an alien robot," said Fargo. "It could be an advanced experimental gadget of Space Command. My pal would be able to speak to a Command robot. He knows Martian Swahili."

  But while Fargo and Jeff had been engaging the attention of the pirates, the Hopeful had been edging closer to the pirate ship. Now the Hopeful plunged outward and away from the asteroid, dragging the pirate ship with it so the pirates would be stranded.

  "A force grapple," shouted the pirate leader waving his weapons furiously. "You tell your friends to bring it back or you both die. You have one minute to convince me my ship is being brought back."

  "It's mutiny," shouted Fargo, shaking his gloved fist at the Hopeful. "They've taken over our ship, stolen yours, and marooned us all. Killing us won't get you off the asteroid now. We've got to do something fast. If you don't have any ideas, I do."