by Isaac Asimov
“Yes.”
“Why? Why you?”
“My experience with human beings has provided me with a more sophisticated perspective on their nature and behavior.”
“You’ve had contact with other humans? Besides me?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“I am not permitted to say,”
Dead end. “Are the other robots even aware of what you asked me to try to do?”
“No.”
“How were you going to destroy the complex?”
“The material used to line all the tunnel walls contains an explosive. Once all the other Supervisors have been destroyed, the last Monitor and Analyst will together transmit the trigger signal. The resulting explosion should cause the entire excavated portion of the asteroid to subside.”
“I see,” Derec said. Great, he thought to himself. If I stay in the complex, the raiders will bring it down on my head. If I leave, the robots will blow it up under my feet.
Unless —
Unless there was some way to get off the surface, some source of thrust adequate to give him and his augment escape velocity. Considering the weakness of the asteroid’s gravity, escape velocity did not amount to much. He could probably put a ball in orbit just by throwing it as hard as he could. The leg servos of the augmented suit were likely powerful enough to permit him to literally jump clear.
Unfortunately, the safety regs on augment design required governors on the leg servos to prevent someone from trying exactly that. But what engineers had joined together, tinkerers could tear asunder —
At that moment, a bright flare seemed to appear on the body of the ship, and an instant later the energy beam burned out the eyes of the camera unit relaying the picture. Another camera some distance away took over, and the low angle at which it was focused showed not only the ship but the bilious clouds boiling off the surface where its weapons were trained.
The sight spurred Derec to action. “There doesn’t seem to be any escape for any of us,” he lied, wearing his best look of resignation. “I guess there’s nothing else for me to do but go prepare to die. I would be grateful if you could grant me privacy while I carry out the appropriate rituals.”
The lie passed. “I do not fully understand the purpose of such rituals,” the robot said, “but I will respect your privacy.”
Derec did not need long to put his rapidly developing plan in motion. Returning to his cabin, he swept up the pillows off two of the bunks, then ran to the airlock with them cradled in his arms.
“Open.”
The sound of the inner seal opening brought Analyst 17 out of the wardroom, but by then it was too late. Derec stepped inside the lock, and the door closed behind him.
“Cycle,” he said, fumbling with the straps of a breather.
When the outer door opened, he draped the pillows over the bottom sill of the hatch and then stepped out over them. Just as Derec had expected, the pillows kept the outer door from sealing, interrupting the cycle and imprisoning the robot inside. He did not know how long it would hold, whether there was some way for the robot to override the lock system, and he did not wait around to find out.
The line at the smelter included Supervisors, but they took no notice of him as he passed by. He rode the lift up to Level Zero, where he discovered that Monitor 5 had been busy taking precautions against his return. Two of the augments were missing, vanished as though they had never been there. The third was wedged against the wall by one of the tracked carriers, which in turn was barricaded in place by a four-legged auger unit.
He did not think the suit was damaged — tampering with safety equipment would almost certainly invoke the First Law — but it was going to take a little getting to. And part of the problem would be Monitor 5. The robot was seated at the console when Derec arrived, and rose and started for Derec the moment he stepped off the lift and placed it on standby.
Their paths intersected when Derec was a few meters short of the carrier. “The surface is a restricted area,” the robot said.
“I know that,” Derec said, circling and staying out of reach of the robot’s hands. “This equipment is improperly stored. I’m going to take care of it.”
But Monitor 5 was not going to be put off that easily.
“You may not leave. You are in no danger here,” it said, reaching for him.
Derec backed away and scrambled up the steps into the enclosed operator’s station. “Wrong. If I stay here, I’ll be killed when the ship destroys the station.”
“We will protect you.”
Derec wasted no time or breath arguing the point. “You can’t even protect yourselves,” he said, and slammed and locked the door.
The operator’s interface was standard, and the functions of those few controls which weren’t were clear at a glance. He touched the power switch, and the display came alive with information on the vehicle’s status. The most important item was near the bottom:
POWER CELL...... 100,000 Kw... OK
The robot was politely knocking on the window and trying to attract Derec’s attention, but Derec ignored it. With a touch on one of two small joysticks in the armrest at his right hand, Derec unshipped the small crane which lay crosswise behind the control cab.
Since the controls had been designed primarily for robots with their fine motor control, Derec found them a little touchy. But the crane was semi-automatic, so when he had managed to swing the boom out over the backend of the carrier and bring the auger in range of the crane’s camera, all he had to do was say, “Pick it up.” The crane handled the rest.
Monitor 5 seemed slow to realize what was happening. Derec couldn’t decide if that was because it was still experiencing some internal conflict, or if he was just seeing the difference between a Monitor and an Analyst. But when Derec lifted the auger off the floor of the chamber and began to swing it out of the way, the robot suddenly became agitated.
“Analyst 17 was in error,” it said, grasping the door latch and shaking violently. “Derec — you cannot escape. You cannot leave. I am required to protect you. I am responsible.”
Saying nothing, Derec used the dangling mass of the auger to brush the robot away from the side of the carrier and back it toward the wall. The robot’s protestations went up in volume, but Derec did not stop until he had gently pinned the robot against the wall ten meters to the left of where it had done the same to the augment.
“Reverse slow,” Derec said, and the carrier crawled away from the wall. “Stop. Standby.”
He jumped out and ran to the augment. As he wrestled the suit away from the wall, Monitor 5 was struggling to extricate itself. It was a race Derec had to win.
Finally the access door was clear, and Derec levered himself inside. At that moment, Monitor 5 clambered to the top of the auger, free from its makeshift prison. But it was too late to stop him. The access door was closing to seal Derec in the suit.
“Power on,” he said.
His next objective was the open control cab on the other side of the carrier, meant for use by workers in augments. But before he could reach it, Monitor 5 was again trying to block his way.
“I don’t want to harm you,” Derec said. “You can’t stop me. You’ve done your duty by trying. Now stand aside.”
“You are attempting to commit suicide. I am not required to comply with your orders under these circumstances.”
“I’m trying to save myself,” Derec said. “If you really want me to live, you’ll step aside and give me a chance.”
“I will take you to a safe place within the community —”
“There are no safe places here!” Derec shouted. “Don’t you understand?”
“I cannot allow —”
“I can’t stand here and debate it,” Derec said. “I’m sorry.”
As he spoke, he swung the right grapple of the suit in a sweeping arc that caught the robot in the neck and sent it sprawling. But Derec had barely taken three steps when it was back again, cla
wing at the suit’s emergency panel.
This time Derec reached down and grabbed the robot’s right leg, upending it and dropping it on its back. Catching its ankle with the other grapple, Derec pinched down hard until he heard the sounds of metal crumpling. When he released his grip, the robot’s leg was crippled, the foot frozen at an odd angle.
Derec climbed into the open cab unimpeded. As he backed the carrier away from the wall and turned it toward the ramp, he saw Monitor 5 still lying on the floor where he had left it, vainly trying to repair the damage Derec had done. It’s slitlike scanners followed Derec and the carrier across the chamber.
It was still watching him, its gaze somehow forlorn and somehow accusing, when Derec drove the carrier up through the lock and out onto the surface.
Chapter 7
FRIEND OR FOE
AFTER HIS TIME underground, it seemed strange to have the infinite open sky of space overhead. The sun, a tiny orange disk, hung low in the sky. Barely twenty degrees above the horizon, it cast long shadows into the depressions. The sky was bright with stars, but no planets declared themselves to Derec’s eye.
He did not know how long it would take to make the modifications to the augment. He only knew that the raider ship’s orbit was bringing it closer, and he had to be done before it arrived. He knew too that the robots would be pursuing him in a short-sighted effort to protect him. It was as though the jaws of a vise were closing on him. Somehow he had to squirm away or die.
He only drove far enough over the rugged, frozen terrain to separate himself from the potential target of the complex entrance. Then he parked the carrier half in shadow on a valley floor and started off on foot across the frozen wastes. Though he was sacrificing speed in giving up the carrier, the vehicle almost certainly contained a tracking transponder that would lead the robots right to him.
As soon as he was on foot, he began looking for the right place to hole up while working on the suit. He did not need sunlight for what he had to do, since the augment had its own worklamps. A shadowed hollow, a darkened crevice, a pitch-black ice cave — any of those would hide him without hindering his efforts. But the better hidden he was, the less warning he would have about the approach of the robots or the raiders. There was no having it both ways.
While Derec hiked across the frozen terrain and equivocated, he used the augment’s omnidirectional radio to send a series of distress calls. Derec did not know if the signals would carry over the horizon to the raider, and he feared that they would lead the robots to him. But he had to try, had to give the raiders a chance and a reason to save him.
“Clear channel, code 1. To all ships: pilot marooned, requires pickup. Respond if in range. To all ships —”
Eventually Derec settled on a fissure in an ice cliff that faced back the way he had come. From there, he had a fair view of the terrain, except for what was blocked by the larger crags and mounds. And he had a clear view of the sky from the horizon on the northwest to the horizon on the northeast.
“Diagnostic library,” he said.
The lower half of the bubblelike viewport turned opaque and a list of subsystems appeared on it in bright yellow letters. He scanned down the list quickly.
“Motive systems.”
One of the items near the middle of the list flashed twice, and then the entire list was replaced by another. In the same manner, Derec worked his way through the help screens until the circuit and logic paths of the subcontroller filled the half-display with a maze of fine tracings. Derec studied the system carefully, his lips pursed into a frown.
“Frost,” he muttered finally.
It was as he had feared. The governor was not a physical device that could be readily disconnected. It was a feedback loop in the leg servo circuits. The loop told the suit controller, “Do not allow the force applied by the drivers to exceed a force of x number of dynes persecond.” Small forces applied quickly were acceptable, as were large forces applied slowly. But large forces applied quickly, which was what he needed, were forbidden.
If he had had more time, there might have been a chance to reprogram the subcontrollers. But under the circumstances, it would have to be radical surgery. Fortunately, augments were designed to be field-repairable, a practice which had saved more than one laborer’s life.
The various “hands” which the augment could use were located in bulging closures on the suit’s thighs. Derec selected an illuminated micromanipulator for the right, and a spotweld laser for the left.
Just then the ground under and around him shook suddenly, bringing a minor avalanche of slow-falling particles down on the crown of the suit. “Clear,” he ordered. The bubble became a window again, revealing to Derec a chilling sight. The attacking spacecraft had climbed above the western horizon. It was still firing randomly, still carving out a path of destruction on the asteroid’s surface. Time was running out.
“Shut down subsystem twenty-four.” That was it: he was committed. With the leg controllers powered down, Derec could no longer walk.
The modifications included burning through three circuit traces and fusing a fourth to a neighboring circuit as a shunt. Accuracy with the tiny laser was absolutely critical. A misfire could destroy enough circuits to cripple the augment permanently.
With the help of the augment’s pointing guide, Derec completed the work on the right leg without mishap. But by the time he was ready to start on the left, the vibrations from the more powerful explosions were more than strong enough to disturb his aim. As he stood trying to outguess the shaking ground, a familiar voice intruded:
“Derec, please listen. Derec, you must stop. This is madness —”
Two hundred meters away on the slope of the mound due north of him was a robot. It was Monitor 5, waving its arms and advancing directly toward where Derec stood. It was walking easily, with no sign of the damage Derec had inflicted on its leg.
In the same glance, Derec saw that the reason the shaking was stronger was that the raider ship was much closer, more nearly overhead than he had expected. Once again he was trapped between the raiders, who would rescue him by killing him, and the robots, who would kill him by rescuing him.
“Go away!” Derec hissed.
“Derec, you must return to the compound. You are in danger here.”
The raider ship seemed to have taken notice of the robot, for the plain between Monitor 5 and the cliff where Derec stood suddenly came under a barrage of pinpoint laser impacts.
These were not the high-intensity weapons which were shaking the ground, and mercifully, the gunners did not seem to be targeting Derec. But the surface in this area was nearly all ice, and volatile. One blast boiled away the top of the mound behind the robot. Another gouged a deep trench between the robot and Derec.
Derec did not think that would stop Monitor 5, and he was right. The robot scrambled down into the trench before the billow of gas could even dissipate, and Derec lost sight of it.
He could not afford to worry about the robot. Setting his jaw determinedly, Derec went back to work on the left subcontroller. Using the body rigidity and autocontrol of the augment to the fullest, he made short work of it. The three unwanted circuits vaporized in tiny puffs of atomic metal. The two parallel traces melted and merged into one.
“Derec!” Monitor 5 called suddenly. “It’s here! In the ice! I’ve found it!”
Derec looked up. The firing had stopped, and there was no sign of the robot. “Close the panels,” he said, then tongued the radio switch. “Monitor 5, go back to the installation. There’s nothing you can do for me out here.”
Just then, a metallic arm appeared above the lip of the trench, the hand clutching a small silver object. A moment later Monitor 5 struggled out of the trench. Starting toward Derec, Monitor 5 raised the silver object triumphantly overhead in one hand.
“The key is here, Derec. You must take it —”
The robot’s triumph did not last long. The raider ship was now a great ominous mass directly overhead. M
onitor 5 had barely taken a step when the laser fire started up again. Red targeting beams danced like spotlights on a stage on the ice around it.
For a moment it seemed as though the robot was going to escape destruction. Then, a dozen strides from the foot of the cliff, a laser tracked a fiery line across the robot’s torso. An instant later, Monitor 5 disappeared in a silent explosion, all blue-green flame and disintegrating metal.
Disappeared — but not completely. The explosion sent pieces flying in all directions. One of the largest, spinning so rapidly Derec could not tell what it was, came cartwheeling toward him. As it struck the ground and skidded to a stop, Derec saw what it was: Monitor 5’s right arm, from the shoulder joint to the fingers.
And still gripped tightly in those fingers was the shining silver object — a rectangle perhaps five centimeters by fifteen centimeters, the size of a remote controller or a memory cartridge.
Could this be the object that the robots were so obsessively searching for all this time? If so, then why had Monitor 5’s last act been to try to give it to Derec?
For a moment Derec hesitated. To retrieve the object was an additional risk in an enterprise which was already too risky. But he knew that it was impossible for him to simply leave it lying there. Ripping the specialized end effectors from the augment’s arms, Derec slapped the general-purpose grapples back in place.
“Power up system twenty-four,” he snapped, and the sole red lamp on the augment’s status board turned to green.
His descent down the slope to where the arm rested was a controlled fall at best. With the leg servos jimmied, Derec could not control a walking gait. But he got there all the same, seizing the arm and the artifact in his right hand and locking the grapple.
Gathering his feet under himself, Derec glanced upward to gauge the distance and angle to the raider ship. He lifted his feet on the control pads, and the suit went into a crouch. He jammed his feet down hard, and the powerful legs of the augment kicked out with all their unrestrained might. Like a tiny spacecraft, the augment launched itself from the surface, carrying Derec toward a rendezvous with the raider ship.
