Universe Vol1Num2

by Jim Baen's Universe

  And no matter what I told myself, no matter how I argued, I became positive that we were heading Earthward.

  So I was not surprised when Lulu finally landed. I was just grateful and relieved.

  We looked at one another and I saw the hope and question in the others' eyes. Naturally, none of us could ask. One word might have ruined our victory. All we could do was stand there silently and wait for the answer.

  The port began to open and I got the whiff of Earth and I didn't fool around waiting any more. There wasn't room enough as yet to get out standing up, so I took a run at it and dived and went through slick and clean. I hit the ground and got a lot of breath knocked out of me, but I scrambled to my feet and lit out of there as fast as I could go. I wasn't taking any chances. I didn't want to be within reach if Lulu changed her mind.

  Once I stumbled and almost fell, and Ben and Jimmy went past me with a whoosh, and I told myself that I'd not been mistaken. They'd caught the Earth smell, too.

  It was night, but there was a big, bright moon and it was almost as light as day. There was an ocean to the left of us, with a wide strip of sandy beach, and, to the right, the land swept up into barren rolling hills, and right ahead of us was a strip of woods that looked as if it might border some river flowing down into the sea.

  We legged it for the woods, for we knew that if we got in among the trees, Lulu would have a tough time ferreting us out. But when I sneaked a quick look back over my shoulder, she was just squatting where she'd landed, with the moonlight shining on her.

  We reached the woods and threw ourselves on the ground and lay panting. It had been quite a stretch of ground to cover and we had covered it fast; after weeks of just sitting, a man is in no condition to do a lot of running.

  I had fallen face down and just sprawled there, sucking in great gulps of air and smelling the good Earth smell—old leaf mold and growing things and the tang of salt from the soft and gentle ocean breeze.

  After a while, I rolled over on my back and looked up. The trees were wrong—there were no trees like those on Earth—and when I crawled out to the edge of the woods and looked at the sky, the stars were all wrong, too.

  My mind was slow in accepting what I saw. I had been so sure that we were on Earth that my brain rebelled against thinking otherwise.

  But finally it hit me, the chilling terrible knowledge.

  I went back to the other two.

  "Gents," I said, "I have news for you. This planet isn't Earth at all."

  "It smells like Earth," said Ben. "It has the look of Earth."

  "It feels like Earth," Jimmy argued. "The gravity and the air and—"

  "Look at the stars. Take a gander at those trees."

  They took a long time looking. Like me, they must have gotten the idea that Lulu had zeroed in for home. Or maybe it was only what they wanted to believe. It took a while to knock the wishful thinking out of them, as well as myself.

  Ben let out his breath slowly. "You're right."

  "What do we do now?" asked Jimmy.

  We stood there, thinking about what we should do now.

  Actually it was no decision, but pure and simple reflex, conditioned by a million years of living on Earth as opposed to only a few hundred in which to get used to the idea that there were different worlds.

  We started running, as if an order had been given, as fast as we could go.

  "Lulu!" we yelled. "Lulu, wait for us!"

  But Lulu didn't wait. She shot straight up for a thousand feet or so and hung there. We skidded to a halt and gaped up at her, not quite believing what we saw. Lulu started to fall back, shot up again, came to a halt and hovered. She seemed to shiver, then sank slowly back until she rested on the ground.

  We continued running and she shot up and fell back, then shot up once more, then fell back again and hit the ground and hopped. She looked for all the world like a demented yo-yo. She was acting strangely, as if she wanted to get out of there, only there was something that wouldn't let her go, as if she were tethered to the ground by some invisible elastic cable.

  Finally she came to rest about a hundred yards from where she'd first set down. No sound came from her, but I got the impression she was panting like a winded hound dog.

  There was a pile of stuff stacked where Lulu had first landed, but we raced right past it and ran up to her. We pounded on her metal sides.

  "Open up!" we shouted. "We want to get back in!"

  Lulu hopped. She hopped about a hundred feet into the air, then plopped back with a thud, not more than thirty feet away.

  We backed away from her. She could have just as easily come straight down on top of us.

  We stood watching her, but she didn't move.

  "Lulu!" I yelled at her.

  She didn't answer.

  "She's gone crazy," Jimmy said.

  "Someday," said Ben, "this was bound to happen. It was a cinch they'd sooner or later build a robot too big for its britches."

  We backed away from her slowly, watching all the time. We weren't afraid of her exactly, but we didn't trust her either.

  We backed all the way to the mound of stuff that Lulu had unloaded and stacked up and we saw that it was a pyramid of supplies, all neatly boxed and labeled. And beside the pyramid was planted a stenciled sign that read:

  NOW, DAMN

  YOU, WORK!!

  Ben said, "She certainly took our worthlessness to heart."

  Jimmy was close to gibbering. "She was actually going to maroon us!"

  Ben reached out and grabbed his shoulder and shook him a little—a kindly sort of shake.

  "Unless we can get back inside," I said, "and get her operating, we are as marooned as if she had up and left us."

  "But what made her do it?" Jimmy wailed. "Robots aren't suppose to—"

  "I know," said Ben. "They're not supposed to harm a human. But Lulu wasn't harming us. She didn't throw us out. We ran away from her."

  "That's splitting legal hairs," I objected.

  "Lulu's just the kind of gadget for hair-splitting," Ben said. "Trouble is they made her damn near human. They probably poured her full of a lot of law as well as literature and physics and all the rest of it."

  "Then why didn't she just leave? If she could whitewash her conscience, why is she still here?"

  Ben shook his head. "I don't know."

  "She looked like she tried to leave and couldn't, as though there was something holding her back."

  "This is just an idea," said Ben. "Maybe she could have left if we had stayed out of sight. But when we showed up, the order that a robot must not harm a human may have become operative again. A sort of out of sight, out of mind proposition."

  She was still squatting where she'd landed. She hadn't tried to move again. Looking at her, I thought maybe Ben was right. If so, it had been a lucky thing that we'd headed back exactly when we did.

  We started going through the supplies Lulu had left for us. She had done right well by us. Not only had she forgotten nothing we needed, but had stenciled careful instructions and even some advice on many of the boxes.

  Near the signboard, lying by themselves, were two boxes. One was labeled TOOLS and the top was loosely nailed so we could pry it off. The other was labeled WEAPONS and had a further stencil: Open immediately and always keep at hand.

  We opened both the boxes. In the weapons box, we found the newest type of planet-busters—a sort of shotgun deal, a general-purpose weapon that put out everything from bullets to a wide range of vibratory charges. In between these two extremes were a flame-thrower, acid, gas, poisoned darts, explosive warheads and knockout pellets. You merely twirled a dial to choose your ammunition. The guns were heavy and awkward to handle and they were brutes to operate, but they were just the ticket for a planet where you never knew what you might run into next.

  We turned our attention to the rest of the stuff and started to get it sorted out. There were boxes of protein and carbohydrate foods. There were cartons of vitamins and minera
ls. There was clothing and a tent, lanterns and dishes—all the stuff you'd need on a high-priced camping trip.

  Lulu hadn't forgotten a single item.

  "She had it all planned out," said Jimmy bitterly. "She spent a long time making this stuff. She had to synthesize every bit of it. All she needed then was to find a planet where a man could live. All that took some doing."

  "It was tougher than you think," I added. "Not only a planet where a man could live, but one that smelled like Earth and looked and felt like Earth. Because, you see, we had to be encouraged to run away from her. If we hadn't, she couldn't have marooned us. She had the problem of her conscience and—"

  Ben spat viciously. "Marooned!" he said. "Marooned by a love-sick robot!"

  "Maybe not entirely robot." I told them about the old maid I had conjured up and they hooted at me and that made us all feel better.

  But Ben admitted that my idea needn't be entirely crazy. "She was twenty years in building and a lot of funny stuff must have gone into her."

  Dawn was breaking and now, for the first time, we really saw the land. It was a pleasant place, as pleasant as any man might wish. But we failed to appreciate it much.

  The sea was so blue that it made you think of a blue-eyed girl and the beach ran white and straight and, from the beach, the land ran back into rolling hills with the faint whiteness of distant mountains frosting the horizon. And to the west was the forest.

  Jimmy and I went down to the beach to collect some driftwood for a fire while Ben made ready to get breakfast.

  We had our arms full of wood and were starting back when something came charging over the hill and down upon the camp. It was about rhinoceros size and shaped somewhat like a beetle and it shone dully in the morning light. It made no sound, but it was traveling fast and it looked like something hard to stop.

  And, of course, we'd left our guns behind.

  I dropped my wood and yelled at Ben and started running up the slope. Ben had already seen the charging monster and had grabbed a rifle. The beast swerved straight for him and he brought up his gun. There was a flash of fire and then the bright gout of an exploding warhead and, for an instant, the scene was fogged with smoke and shrieking bits of metal and flying dust.

  It was exactly as if one had been watching a film and the film had jumped. One moment there was the blaze of fire; then the thing had plunged past Ben and was coming down the slope of the beach, heading for Jimmy and myself.

  "Scatter!" I yelled at Jimmy and didn't think till later how silly it must have sounded to yell for just the two of us to scatter.

  But it wasn't any time or place for fine points of semantics and, anyhow, Jimmy caught onto what I meant. He went one way down the beach and I went the other and the monster wheeled around, hesitating for a moment, apparently to decide which one of us to take.

  And, as you might have known, he took after me.

  I figured I was a goner. That beach was just plain naked, with not a place to hide, and I knew I had no chance at all of outrunning my pursuer. I might be able to dodge a time or two, but even so, that thing was pretty shifty on the turns and I knew in the end I'd lose.

  Out of the tail of my eye, I saw Ben running and sliding down the slope to cut off the beast. He yelled something at me, but I didn't catch the words.

  Then the air shook with the blast of another exploding warhead and I sneaked a quick look back.

  Ben was legging it up the slope and the thing was chasing him, so I spun around and sprinted for the camp. Jimmy, I saw, was almost there and I put on some extra speed. If we only could get three guns going, I felt sure we could make it.

  Ben was running straight toward Lulu, apparently figuring that he could race around her bulk and elude the beast. I saw that his dash would be a nip-and-tuck affair.

  Jimmy had reached the camp and grabbed a gun. He had it firing before he got it to his shoulder and little splashes of liquid were flying all over the running beast.

  I tried to yell at Jimmy, but had no breath to do it—the damn fool was firing knockout pellets and they were hitting that tough hide and bursting without penetrating.

  Within arm's reach of Lulu, Ben stumbled. The gun flew from his hand. His body struck the ground doubled up and he rolled, trying to get under the curve of Lulu's side. The rhinoceros-thing lunged forward viciously.

  Then it happened—quicker than the eye could follow, much quicker than it can be told.

  Lulu grew an arm, a long, ropelike tentacle that snaked out of the top of her. It lashed downward and had the beast about the middle and was lifting him.

  I stopped dead still and watched. The instant of the lifting of the beast seemed to stretch out into long minutes as my mind scrambled at top speed to see what kind of thing it was. The first thing I saw was that it had wheels instead of feet.

  The dull luster of the hide could be nothing but metal and I could see the dents where the warheads had exploded. Drops of liquid spotted the hide—what was left of the knockout drops Jimmy had been firing.

  Lulu raised the monster high above the ground and began swinging it around and around. It went so fast, it was just a blur. Then she let go and it sailed out above the sea. It went tumbling end over end in an awkward arc and plunged into the water. When it hit, it raised a pretty geyser.

  Ben picked himself up and got his gun. Jimmy came over and I walked up to Lulu. The three of us stood and looked out to sea, watching the spot where the creature had kerplunked.

  Finally Ben turned around and rapped on Lulu's side with his rifle barrel.

  "Thanks a heap," he said.

  Lulu grew another tentacle, shorter this time, and there was a face on it. It had a lenslike eye and an audio and speaker.

  "Go chase yourselves," Lulu remarked.

  "What's eating you?" I asked.

  "Men!" she spat, and pulled her face in again.

  We rapped on her three or four times more, but there was no reply. Lulu was sulking.

  So Jimmy and I started down to pick up the wood that we had dropped. We had just gotten it picked up when Ben let out a yelp from up by the camp and we spun around. There was our rhinoceros friend wheeling out of the water.

  We dropped the wood and lit out for camp, but there was no need to hurry. Our boy wasn't having any more just then. He made a wide circle to the east of us and raced back into the hills.

  We cooked breakfast and ate it and kept our guns handy, because where there was one critter, there were liable to be more. We didn't see the sense in taking chances.

  We talked about our visitor and since we had to call it something, we named it Elmer. For no particular reason, that seemed appropriate.

  "Did you see those wheels?" asked Ben, and the two of us agreed that we'd seen them. Ben seemed to be relieved. "I thought I was seeing things," he explained.

  But there could be no doubt about the wheels. All of us had noticed them and there were the tracks to prove it—wheel tracks running plain and clear along the sandy beach.

  But we were somewhat puzzled when it came to determining just what Elmer was. The wheels spelled out machine, but there were a lot of other things that didn't—mannerisms that were distinctly lifelike, such as the momentary hesitation before it decided which one of us to charge, Jimmy or myself, or the vicious lunge at Ben when he lay upon the ground, or the caution it had shown in circling us when it came out of the sea.

  But there were, as well, the wheels and the unmistakably metal hide and the dents made by exploding warheads that would have torn the biggest and toughest animal to shreds.

  "A bit of both?" suggested Ben. "Basically machine, but with some life in it, too, like the old-maid brain you dreamed up for Lulu?"

  Sure it could be that. It could be almost anything.

  "Silicate life?" offered Jimmy.

  "That's not silicate," Ben declared. "That's metal. Silicate, any form of it, would have turned to dust under a direct rocket hit. Besides, we know what silicate life is like. One species of it
was found years ago out on Thelma V."

  "It isn't basically life," I said. "Life wouldn't evolve wheels. Wheels are bum inventions so far as locomotion is concerned, except where you have special conditions. Life might be involved, but only as Ben says—as a deliberate, engineered combining of machine and life."

  "And that means intelligence," said Ben.

  We sat there around the fire, shaken at the thought of it. In many years of searching, only a handful of intelligent races had been found and the level of intelligence, in general, was not too impressive. Certainly nothing of the order that would be necessary to build something like Elmer.

  So far, man was top dog in the discovered universe. Nothing had been found to match him in the use of brain-power.

  And here, by utter accident, we'd been dumped upon a planet where there seemed to be some evidence of an intelligence that would equal man—if not, indeed, surpass him.

  "There's one thing that has been bothering me," said Ben. "Why didn't Lulu check this place before she landed here? She intended to maroon us, that's why. She meant to dump us here and leave. And yet presumably she's still bound by the precept that a robot cannot harm a human. And if she followed that law, it would have meant that she was compelled—completely and absolutely compelled—to make certain, before she marooned us, that there was nothing here to harm us."

  "Maybe she slipped a little," guessed Jimmy.

  "Not Lulu," said Ben. "Not with that Swiss-watch brain of hers."

  "You know what I think?" I said. "I think Lulu has evolved. In her, we have a brand-new kind of robot. They pumped too much humanity into her—"

  "She had to have the human viewpoint," Jimmy pointed out, "or she couldn't do her job."

  "The point," I said, "is that when you make a robot as human as Lulu, you no longer have a robot. You have something else. Not quite human, not entirely robot, but something in between. A new kind of a sort of life you can't be certain of. One you have to watch."

  "I wonder if she's still sulking," Ben wondered.