Saturn 3

by Steve Gallagher

  Damn you, Hector, he thought. What are you trying to do to me?

  NINE

  Tired as he was, James spent most of the night directing Hector in his mopping-up. He stood with his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his jumpsuit, watching despondently as the robot cleared the broken glass and went over the floor with a bacteriophage enzyme to consume any surviving members of the colony.

  The next morning Adam came into the lab and found it sterile and tidy, the only evidence of the previous night’s accident being the gaping maw of the empty tank in the far wall. James was asleep, his head cradled in his folded arms where it had subsided as he sat at the bench. Hector was behind him, a silent sentinel.

  James awoke with a start as Adam approached, and Hector seemed to shudder in an unchecked sympathetic response. Alex came into the lab at that moment, carrying an insulated container of Tethys sample to replace the one they’d lost. James looked around blearily as he heard her footsteps, and Hector’s lens turret swivelled around in perfect synchronisation with the movement.

  Adam watched this thoughtfully. James had supposedly proved himself to be competent in the use of the brain link, but he showed a remarkable lack of control in his unguarded moments. Alex seemed not to have noticed the move; she set the sample case down and turned to go back to the freezer rooms for an appropriate bacterium.

  James eased off the lab stool, rubbing his eyes. They were ringed and puffy, and there was a stubble around his chin.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I must have . . .” Then he realised that it was perfectly obvious what he must have done, and so he went on, “I’ll go and get a shower. Then I’ll come back and have Hector give you a hand with the sample.”

  “It won’t be necessary,” Adam told his retreating back, but James seemed not to hear him. The doors parted to let the rumpled jumpsuit and its similarly dishevelled occupant through.

  Adam wondered about the advisability of being alone with Hector. There was nothing to indicate that the robot was even active, although Adam knew otherwise; but he wasn’t prepared to relinquish any part of his station to a piece of inadequate engineering, and so he went on with his work with a wary eye on the metal body. Every now and again he would be surprised by the sharp whine of a servo motor announcing the twitch of a limb, and Adam assumed that James was occasionally broadcasting an unguarded thought of reaction as he showered. These small lapses apart, Hector stayed in place and behaved himself.

  Adam boiled off the sample gases and siphoned them into a pressure tank to re-liquify. A mess of rock waste remained on the tray at the bottom of the container, and he lifted this out for Alex to analyse and grade when she returned.

  James was back before Alex. The stubble was gone, and his still-damp hair had been combed—altogether he made a far more presentable sight than when he had left. He saw the sample tray and said, “Hector can take that, Major.”

  “Are you sure?” Adam didn’t want to be blatantly difficult, and there seemed to be little enough harm in letting it carve up a few rocks; nevertheless, Hector’s controlability was an uncertain factor.

  “I fed in the procedures as part of basic station orders,” James said. “He can handle it, no problem.”

  At that moment Alex arrived with the newly-thawed bacterial colony.

  “Dump that in tank twenty-eight,” Adam told her, “and leave the rest to Hector. Apparently he can handle it.”

  She smiled, and said “Okay.” Adam picked up his clipboard with the experiment log sheets and walked out of the lab, shaking his head in a display of amused disbelief.

  “You listening, Hector?” James said, and got the green light. “This is lab procedure 4002, where you get to analyse the residual waste from the surface samples. You remember it?” Green light. “Okay, there’s a laser saw at ninety degrees and nine or ten feet. You know what a laser saw looks like?” Green light. “All right, go get it. And stop the procedure if there’s anything you don’t understand.”

  Alex put the bacterial fluid through the pump, but found Hector’s activity more interesting. He zeroed in on the laser saw and collected it, holding it aloft as his free hand fixed the largest of the rock samples—a spongy, fist-sized boulder—into a vice. Then he shuffled up close and examined the stone from all angles before bringing in the saw and activating the beam.

  The yellow stream of coherent waves hit the rock on its edge and sent a shower of loose particles flying, causing James to duck away. Hector had no such worries, his toughened lenses moving in close to the light-blade as he began a meticulcus sawing of a rock wafer.

  Alex wandered over, her own work forgotten, fascinated by the robot’s delicacy and precision.

  “Who devised this procedure?” James asked as she came level with the bench.

  “My partner. Why?”

  “It’s inefficient for Hector. You may need to take half a dozen slices to get one good one, but he can get it right every time.”

  She frowned at the implied criticism, and glanced down at Hector’s bright carving. There was a sudden flaring and she fell back with a searing pain of gravel in her eye.

  “What’s the matter?” James demanded. “What happened?”

  Hector cut the power to the laser saw, and waited patiently. His lenses swivelled to look at Alex.

  “My eye!” she said. “Something got into my eye!” It felt like a handful of grit had been pushed roughly under her eyelid and then rubbed around to scour at the fragile tissues.

  “Let me look,” James said, but Alex pushed his hands away.

  “Get Adam, please!”

  “I don’t know where he’s gone. There’s a stool just behind you, sit down and I’ll try to get it out.”

  She allowed herself to be guided back on to the seat, but wouldn’t let him near her eye. It was beginning to redden as the lid swelled, but the tears that were now running freely did nothing to wash out the sharp-edged intruder.

  “If you won’t let me near, I can’t help you,” James said, and so reluctantly she let him tilt back her head and gently pull apart the lids to expose the troubled eye.

  Hector was, leaning over her, his claw outstretched. “No,” she cried out in sudden alarm. “What’s he doing?”

  “It’s all right,” James said, pushing her down with his freehand. “Trust him.”

  “No, please,” she protested, “I don’t want him to touch me!”

  “Stay still or you’ll get hurt!”

  The claw poised before her eye and the Demigod’s lens turret moved into place behind it, weaving a little from side to side to get the best possible estimate of depth. She saw through a rippling sheet of tears as a hair-thin prong emerged from the tip of one of the claws. She didn’t dare to move, with blindness only inches away.

  The claw snapped towards her almost faster than she could make out, and she felt something brush the naked surface of her eye. She blinked in a reaction impossible to resist, her lids pulling free of James’s gently restraining fingertips; but the claw had gone, and with it the main cause of her distress.

  James moved back, as if suddenly aware of their closeness. Her eye was still sore and streaming, but that was nothing more than an after-effect.

  “That’s much better,” she said. “Thank you.” And then, to Hector with some embarrassment, “Thank you.”

  “We’re here to help,” James said quietly, “that’s all. You don’t have to go on fighting us every inch of the way.”

  Hector moved aside, and Alex could now see that Adam was standing in the open doorway. She moved over towards him, dabbing at her damp cheek with the sleeve of her jumpsuit.

  “I got some rock in my eye,” she explained. “Hector took it out for me.”

  Adam nodded without expression. “I saw it,” he said.

  Alex went off to rinse her eye in clean water, and Adam moved across to James.

  “It was damn lucky for you,” he said with quiet control, “that you didn’t make a mistake with that claw. Beca
use if anything had happened to her . . .”

  “I wish I could take the credit,” James interrupted, “but I can’t. Anything you want to say now, say it to Hector.”

  Adam didn’t understand. “What do you mean? What about the brain link?”

  James turned his head, pushing his hair aside. The probe had gone, and the plastic button was back in its place. “I took it out when I went to shower. Hector doesn’t need me—my mistake was in not letting him take over earlier. He’s on his own, now.”

  Adam looked at Hector, and for a moment it seemed that Hector was returning the gaze. Then the robot turned, and went back to his work.

  TEN

  Adam had come to realise with some annoyance that his work around the station was forming a backlog; as long as James and his robot were occupying the lab Adam was inclined to stay away. There was, however, a limit to the occupation that he could find elsewhere in the complex warren of the Saturn Three underground corridors—after checking all the pumps and seals on the trunking and cabling that ran along and under the base’s passageways, and having crawled down every narrow gap that he could find beneath grilled floors and behind sectioned walls, Adam had to face the fact that he would at some time have to return to the main work area.

  The hyroponics tanks would have to be drained; the plants’ nutrient fluids were becoming stale and choked, and he would need at least half a day to lift out the sections of the lab floor which would give him access to the deep waste pits beneath. Of course, with James’s help and Hector’s strength it might take less than an hour—but no, Adam wasn’t prepared to ask. His bitter antagonism towards their intrusion had diminished and become contained, but still he could not fully relax until the robot was considered completely functional and James had no choice but to leave. The uncertain, undisciplined Demigod seemed unlikely ever to replace a member of base personnel, and James, despite his persistence, met nothing but rejection from Alex. As long as Adam could last out the twelve days to the moon’s emergence from shadowlock, everything would be fine.

  Soon it would be necessary to make a trip out in the buggy, leaving Saturn Three’s protective warmth for the bleakness of the surface. Sample stocks were down, and as this was supposedly an area of Hector’s capability it would perhaps be unavoidable that the obtuse giant should be taken along. It seemed likely that he would be little more than an inert passenger; more than two weeks, and James hadn’t even got him to speak yet.

  James watched dispiritedly as Hector gave all his concentration to the VDU unit before him. The lines of lettering rolled by too fast for James to follow, but Hector’s hungry mind took it all in, occasionally stopping the display and questioning with a few sharp, economical taps on the keyboard. Then the base computer would dutifully re-present the information with added support material and Hector, when satisfied, would indicate for it to continue.

  “You can read well enough,” James called out. Hector’s visual probe pulled away from the screen, and the gimballed turret at its base swung around to bring the eye to bear on James.

  “And you can hear well enough, too.” The probe stared levelly, but Hector showed no further reaction. “So why the hell won’t you say anything? You know you can. There are no faults, no reason why you should go on like this.”

  After a moment, the gimbals whirred and the turret swung back to the VDU. A claw darted out and punched in the code to clear the still-rolling type and changed over to keyboard display.

  NOT YET READY.

  James moved across the room to the unit, delight mingling with disbelief to modify his anger and frustration. “You sly bastard! There’s nothing wrong with your communication centres, and you let me think you weren’t capable!”

  FULLY CAPABLE BUT NOT YET READY.

  “Why? I mean, why not?”

  No response.

  “What’s stopping you? Is it him? Or is it the girl?”

  YOU.

  “Me? What am I supposed to have done?”

  MURDER.

  James stared, bewildered and sick as the whole focus of his life began to shift. The act that he had thought would clear the slate of his competitive failure, an arrangement of events which he had thought were contained in his mind alone and which could be modified into a new truth by persistent self-delusion—this act was now the speculative property of another intellect. Competent, successful probationary Captain-handler James began to crumble and dissolve, leaving the twisted failure Benson in his place.

  “Blank that!” he shouted angrily. “You’ve got no right to say that!”

  BLANKED AS ORDERED.

  James breathed deeply, and his world began to fall back into its proper shape. “That shouldn’t have come through the link. What else do you know about me?”

  YOU FAILED COURSE.

  “Blank that.”

  BLANKED AS ORDERED.

  “Anything else?” The claw did not move. “What about the girl?” It hovered, uncertain of its response. “Are you aware of her?”

  AFFIRMATIVE.

  “And what do you think?”

  BEAUTIFUL.

  James laughed, and the turret swung around to look at him.

  WHY.

  “Take a look at yourself, Hector, and don’t get ideas above your station. Ball-bearings are no substitute for the real thing.”

  YOU LAUGH—KILLER.

  “I told you to get that erased,” James snapped. “Now blank it!”

  BLANKED AS ORDERED.

  “So? Am I a killer?”

  BLANKED AS ORDERED.

  “Don’t give me that. I want a straight answer.” The claw hung over the keys. “So, if you don’t think I’m a killer, and you still won’t talk to me, you must be malfunctioning . . .”

  AM NOT MALFUNCTIONING.

  “And if there’s nothing wrong in the speech circuits, the fault must be in the brain. That means a flash-burning for you and a new braincase on the next available drop. Is that what you want?”

  AM NOT MALFUNCTIONING AM NOT MALFUNCTIONING AM NOT MALFUNCTIONING AM NOT MALF.

  YOU ARE A.

  Hector hammered on at the keys, even though James had cut the power to the VDU and walked away. After a few moments he stopped and was still; then the claw reached over to flick a switch and restore the power. Within a few seconds the screen was again a rolling mass of data as Demigod and base computer conspired together.

  ELEVEN

  “I don’t think you should be alone with the robot. James ought to go with you.”

  “We’ve been over this,” Adam told her as they moved towards the Central Nucleus. “It’s obvious that the machine’s never going to be anything more than a mobile pair of hands, and a pretty inept pair at that. It’s never going to say anything and it’s certainly never going to replace one of us. The sooner we can say we’re satisfied with its basic functions, the sooner we can ship James back to the platform. Then he can drag his tail back to Earth or go singe it on the sun as far as I’m concerned. Once he’s gone we can pull the plugs on old Hector, and get back to normal.”

  She was not reassured. “It could be dangerous. We’ve seen what Hector’s capable of.”

  “He’s been fine ever since James took him off the brain link, which is understandable. Anybody with their mind on a direct line to his should be excused a few wild actions.”

  James was waiting for them in the Central Nucleus, standing apart from his protegé and displaying a distinct lack of paternal pride. Alex didn’t help by asking if Hector had started to speak yet; James actually winced at the question. Alex said a quick goodbye to Adam, and then disappeared before she could be left alone with James.

  “I ought to come with you,” James said doubtfully.

  Adam smiled, and shook his head. “You can’t wet-nurse him all the time, and I can’t delay this trip any longer. Let’s see if he’s as good as you say he is.”

  “He’s good. He’s got everything but the speech, and that’s . . . not really essential.”


  “Rather depends on what he’s trying to tell you, doesn’t it? But my main concern is that he’ll be able to understand me.”

  “He’s got a full vocabulary and he probably knows more about Saturn Three than you do. He’s sensitive to the wavelength of your suit radio, so no problem there.”

  “Okay.” Adam moved towards the ramp which led to the airlock. “Let’s get suited up and go.”

  “I’ll come up with you,” James offered, bur Adam waved him back.

  “May as well start as we intend to continue. Let’s get going, Hector.”

  “Carry on, Hector,” James said, but Hector was already moving.

  James’s suit hung in the racks by the airlock door, and Adam eyed it with envy as he struggled into his own, less flexible pressure garment. Hector needed no extra protection against surface conditions, his armoured body drawing its energy needs from the internal power supply that he replenished every twelve hours or less, depending on his requirements.

  “Open the door, Hector.” James had fitted most of the internal doors of the station with a manual opening trigger which Hector could operate, circumventing the need for the biocapacitance sensors, but the airlock door was a simple servo control intended for the clumsy grasp of gloved fingers. It should have given Hector no trouble, but he stooped and peered at it with his sensor extended, tapping and probing experimentally with an uncertain claw.

  Adam moved forward with his helmet under his arm, and pushed the robot gently aside. The turret whipped round at the unexpected pressure but Hector’s legs absorbed the slight unbalancing effect and he moved away.

  “You’re big,” Adam muttered, mostly to himself, “But you’re not so bright.” As the door opened he led the way through the decontamination chamber into the airlock proper, aware that Hector was following from the swing and clank of his metal tread. Adam fixed the seals on his helmet and tested his airflow as he walked, but when he turned to close the airlock doors he saw that the Demigod was hesitating in the archway, turret swivelled to look back with apparent uncertainty into the main body of the station.