Lost In Space

by Dave Van Arnam

  “He’s right, John,” said Maureen.

  “It looks like it’s meant to be that two-story building across the plaza,” mused Robinson.

  “It’s the place with the largest green dot, too,” said Don. “Ask it if that dot means it’s a transportation center.”

  Robinson complied, and presently everyone could see the green dot over the building in question had become brighter.

  “Wonderful, Daddy,” Penny enthused. “We’ll all go over to that one and explore it togetherl”

  “Tut-tut, my child,” Smith said, “the lad and I will stay here with the Robot. There is far more to be learned in this magnificent structure than in that piddling little shack!”

  “I do hope you’ll come by for lunch, though,” said Don acidly.

  “Sir,” Smith said, drawing himself up, “I make it a point never to miss one of Mrs. Robinsons splendid meals, simply because it is only fair for me to appear and do homage and justice to her noble labors, and—”

  “Shall we meet back at the ship in, say, three hours, then,” said Maureen, laughing. “I’ll whip something up for you fast and then we can all get back to work.”

  “Controls,” said Don puzzledly.

  The five of them had entered the low, colonnaded building to find a large area filled with tall control consoles fronted by chairs twice the size of ordinary chairs.

  “A lot of good they’ll do us,” Judy said. “Unless these machines are willing to tell us a lot more than those other ones back in the Central Tower.”

  “Well, kids, it’s up to you,” said Robinson. “That ramp over there looks to me like it might lead to the transit system. Maureen, do you really want to go down there with me? Remember, there’s no telling what we’ll find.”

  He wondered, in fact, whether he should simply forbid her to come along—but she wouldn’t obey him, he realized. And probably a good thing, too. However much he loved her, he loved his children too, and he liked West. Even Smith was okay, when he wasn’t trying to put everyone on or take things over.

  Which meant that everyone had to take fundamentally the same chances—all of them were important, hence all of them were almost equally unimportant, in terms of risks to be faced. It was the only way they really had a chance, considering all of them together-absolute fairness modified only by the nature of an individual situation.

  “Lead on, brave leader,” said Maureen cheerfully. “It’s no riskier down there than up here.”

  “Ok, then, we’re taking off,” announced Robinson to Don and the two girls. Penny had just discovered how the chairs worked, and was sitting in one, being carried slowly past one huge console.

  “Don’t worry, Dad, we’ll have a hot meal here for you and Mother when you come back up!” said Judy.

  “We’ll try, anyway,” agreed Don.

  And John and Maureen Robinson walked over to and down the wide, gently sloping ramp.

  They found it led downward to a network of wide, tall corridors, and more down-ramps.

  “Do we examine this level, or keep following the ramps,” mused Robinson. “It doesn’t look like there’s any subway system here.”

  “Let’s follow one of these corridors until we find another set of ramps,” suggested Maureen. “Perhaps we’ll come across something before then that will tell us what all this means.”

  “Sounds sensible,” said Robinson. They took a corridor at random, and began walking.

  But after they’d walked a few minutes, Robinson said, “Just blank walls, as far as I can tell. I think we’d better turn back and stay in one system of down-ramps.”

  They turned about and came back to their starting point.

  “Just a second, I’d better check our line of communications,” he said, as they stood at the top of the second ramp. He pulled out his communicator and thumbed it. “Don, this is John. I’m checking our communications. How are you doing up there, fella? Any bug-eyed monsters?”

  “Everything’s on the q,” answered Don. “You’re coming in loud and clear.”

  “Good,” said Robinson. “Carry on.” He thumbed the communicator off and pocketed it, turning to Maureen.

  “Let’s go,” she said, smiling. They linked arms and walked down to the next level.

  “This is absurd,” said Robinson, with a scowl, as they stood at the bottom of the second ramp, facing another network of corridors identical to those on the first level. “I’m sure they didn’t use these corridors and nothing else, for getting from one place to another. Maybe these are only maintenance access routes or something. Still . . . ”

  “You’re forgetting something, dear,” Maureen said. “It was something you told me long ago as a joke, and it isn’t a joke after all.”

  He grinned. “Yeah. ‘Remember the most obvious thing about aliens—an iron-clad rule common to every alien you meet, the one thing you can count on.”

  “ ‘They’re alien!’ ”

  Maureen nodded. “Then I don’t think we should worry so much about what things are for, when we haven’t any way of knowing how alien these people were.”

  “No, I can’t really accept that,” he answered. “Things should look like they’re making some sense, even with aliens.”

  Maureen came to a decision. “Look, why don’t we split up for a few minutes; we could cover a lot more ground that way and still be reasonably close together. And we’ve got the communicators. And it’s so obvious this place has been abandoned for years . . . ”

  “Hmmm. I don’t really like the idea of our separating, but we could cover twice the number of corridors that way . . . Ok, but keep your communicator on.”

  Unhappily, Robinson walked away from his wife and down one of the long, high corridors. She breathed a small sigh of regret herself, then turned down another corridor.

  It seemed like only a minute later—the walls had been endlessly the same; time passed slowly, as if sand were slowing her wristwatch.

  Something was different, suddenly.

  She stopped.

  That wall panel—it was shimmering! Had it been shimmering as she walked up to it, without her noticing? Or had it happened just as she passed it?

  She studied the panel, thought a moment, then stepped back hastily. “It may be a weapon,” she said aloud.

  “What? Maureen, what did you say?” came her husband’s voice tinnily on the open communicator.

  She said nothing, bemused by the silvery shimmer.

  Moments passed.

  Then Maureen Robinson screamed, and fainted.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “Now, now, my boy,” said Dr. Smith testily. “Don’t bother me while I’m at work.”

  Immediately after the rest of the group had left the Central Tower, Smith had exclaimed, with glee, “Aha! Now back to that lovely little treasure house upstairs! Come on, lad, march smartly, now, we’ve work to do. You too,” he said, turning to the Robot, “march along smartly too, you vanadium vanity case! I shall have need of your excellent circuitry, my lumbering friend. Much work, yes, indeed!”

  He rubbed his hands and urged them to the antigravity beam. A breathtaking trip two miles straight up, and they were being gently urged out of the well and onto a featureless small platform.

  “Come along, now,” Smith said, and passed through a large door.

  Will went through—and it was like standing on the top of the building, outside!

  “Remarkable effect, isn’t it?” Smith said, chuckling with glee.

  All around them—even where they had just come through a blank featureless wall, just like on the ground floor—it was as if there were no walls at all, or transparent ones, showing everywhere a spectacular view of the city. Even the ceiling and floor continued the effect, though the effect was not complete in that one could detect the flatness of the surfaces.

  It didn’t seem to bother Smith, who had been here before and who seemed quite aware he was only in a room, but for Will it was frighteningly re
al—as if he were actually suspended in space, two miles above the city. But . . . something was missing!

  “Dr. Smith,” Will said, turning to see Smith nearby, already engrossed in a computer panel that had previously been invisibly part of the illusion but which now stood out clearly.

  Smith was muttering to himself, concentrating on his work, but Will kept at it. “Dr. Smith,” he said, louder, “why is it that this shows the whole city—except for the Central Tower?”

  “Because we’re in it, lad,” said Smith absently.

  “But . . . but it shows the rest of the city . . . ”

  “I don’t know why,” said Smith, a little sharply. “They’re aliens. They’ve got their reasons.”

  “But-”

  “Now, now, my boy. Don’t bother me while I’m at work.”

  “Aw, gee,” said the youngest Robinson. “Hey, Robot, you wanna come with me?”

  “Now, really, that machine must stay with me. I have need of him. I told you that already. Now will you be quiet!”

  Smith’s tone was as harsh now as Will had ever heard it; he didn’t like it at all when Dr. Smith was like that. Dr. Smith was a nice man—most of the time. Why did he have to get so . . . so . . . strange, some times? , ,

  Will sighed again, decided to leave by himselt, and then wondered where the door was. On the thought, it opened before him.

  “Think mechanical,” advised the Robot, as Will started to go through the door. “You have as much chance as any of the rest of us to find out something of importance. I do not compute significant danger at this point. Be cautious, Will Robinson, and use your sense, and all should be well.” The Robot watched the boy leave.

  While John Robinson would never have directly programmed the Robot to take chances with his son, his own actions indicated to the Robot that with the boy as with everyone else, he was intent on building as much knowledge and survival-ability as could be taken by Will.

  It was not surprising, then, that with the Robots own tendency to consolidate his independent personality and make it stronger, he should have noticed Robinson doing this, and have judged it worthy of imitation and further development.

  So the Robot did not find it difficult, in a fairly obviously non-danger situation, to send the boy off on his own with a word of advice. Everyone on the Jupiter had to carry far more of a load than he ever should have had to-and Will would have to assume far more responsibilities, the older he grew; it was only fair to everyone else to push him the way the rest were being pushed . . .

  “Robot,” said Smith, “why can’t I figure this thing out?”

  “Which thing, Zachary?”

  “Wait a minute, let me get rid of all this blasted scenery again,” said Smith, and squeezed his brows in thought for a moment.

  There was a slight pause, as if the telepathic machine monitoring his thoughts could not believe that was what he really wanted.

  Then the magnificent view of the city winked off, leaving a room whose walls were banks upon banks of computer controls.

  “Ahhhh,” said Smith, rubbing his hands, “that’s much better. Observe all those beautiful control panels, my friend. If I am not mistaken—and I never am in such matters—this room contains the controls for the machine that runs, and thinks for, this huge barren irritating city. And if I am not also mistaken, the computers tied into these panels are infinitely more powerful than those which formed the Central Complex on Voyd’azh. Power! At last!”

  “These are more powerful by far, Zachary,” said the Robot, and Smith looked up at him, smirking.

  “But more complex, also,” continued the Robot, and Smith’s face fell woefully. “I would calculate, roughly, that it may well take you upwards of a hundred years just to figure out how to turn it on.”

  Smith’s face was almost comically sorrowful, but it brightened very quickly. “Nonsense, you blithering iridium eye-sore! I am Dr. Zachary Smith, and no computer lives that can hide its secrets from me!”

  “Ho. Ho. Ho,” stated the Robot matter-of-factly.

  “Now stop that, you metal monstrosity. It is mechanically impossible for you to laugh. What’s more, I won’t have it—do you hear?”

  “I hear and obey, Master,” said the Robot. The voice was toneless but the sarcasm was unmistakable. Smith bit off another insult and calmed down.

  “Let us get back to significant matters,” he said, scowling. “I will admit I am having some slight difficulties in fathoming the apparently random pattern of the controls on this panel here. I didn’t get more than a glance at this room before, when West almost caught me—I mean, rescued—I mean, came up on that infernal force-ray.

  “I see now that it may, perhaps, take me more than a few minutes. But observe, Robot, the similarity in this respect between this panel here, and that one there. I believe that if we can work out the topographic relationships that seem evident, that may give us our first key, and . . . ”

  Dr. Zachary Smith bent to his work once more. He was always happiest when he felt himself only hours away from becoming all-powerful . . .

  For a few minutes Will amused himself by stopping the down-“elevator” at particular floors and exploring them.

  But he always found the same thing—the floors were, except for the top floor where Smith was so busy and the ground floor with the information panels, barren. There were no machines, no windows, no chairs, no sign of anything but simple plain floor space.

  “Rats,” Will muttered to himself at last, and permitted the gravity-elevator to deposit him on the ground floor.

  A thought occurred to him.

  “I wonder if this thing has a basement?” he said aloud.

  There was a slight noise off to one side of the ground floor. Will hunted for its source a moment, then found it. Apparently a wall-panel had slid away; a ramp was now revealed, sloping gently down towards a dimly-seen corridor in the distance. There was a faint musty smell of old unused houses.

  Will whistled tunelessly. “Gosh. The Robot was right. Think mechanical. I gotta remember to ask for what I want instead of just worrying about it . . . “

  Fearlessly he stepped forward down the ramp, and presently found himself at the intersection of a number of corridors.

  “I wonder if I’ll bump into Dad and Mom down here?” he said aloud. “Huh, machine?”

  Nothing happened.

  It was not a question the machine could formulate a response for. But the machine did run a check on its memory banks, searching for this being and then for its parents. Presently it recovered in toto all the information that had come to it since the Jupiter II had come within 17,400 miles of this planet’s surface, which, among other things, included a record of every one of its passengers’ conscious thoughts since that time.

  Thus the machine obtained the information that this being’s parents were walking through two parallel maintenance tunnels, almost directly away from his present position, at a distance of about 1400 werts. Absently the machine translated that into 1700 yards in the measuring-system of these newcomers.

  For some minutes the boy descended the ramp system, until he was at last some six floors down from the surface.

  “Maybe . . . maybe I should have stayed up on the first level,” he thought. “There isn’t anything down here. It’s gonna be a long walk back up, too. Gee, I wish I had stayed with Mom and Dad . . . ”

  The machine digested this, decided it had enough information about these beings to translate that as a specific request, and then acted on its conclusion. “Yipes!” explained Will. A panel in the wall of the corridor had suddenly changed.

  Where it had been dull reddish-orange, a panel in the wall several feet wide and reaching to the ceiling had now become shimmery, as if a sort of gaseous mirror.

  Will wondered for a moment whether he should run, then decided that if anything bad was going to happen to him, it would have happened by now.

  That left the problem of what it was. Nervously he edged closer to the shimmeri
ng silvery surface, and, when nothing happened, dared to touch it gently.

  There was no sensation.

  It didn’t hurt, it didn’t not-hurt. There was no feeling of something being there. It was neutral. Intangible. The words tumbled through Will’s mind, leftovers from lengthy sessions with his father, with Dr. Smith, with the Robot, as they all tried to cram as much of the abstract and practical knowledge of the human race into him as possible.

  The words told him nothing, this time.

  He shrugged his shoulders, and walked through the silvery shimmering.

  He was face to face with his mother, who immediately screamed and slumped to the ground.

  He jumped forward and caught her before she hurt herself. A signal came insistantly over her communicator, and he detached it from his mother’s waist gingerly.

  “Maureen! Maureen! Are you all right? I’m almost there, darling—”

  “Uh, Dad,” he said into the communicator, his voice low and hesitant. “It’s just me, Dad; everything’s ok. I think. Maybe you better get here soon, though. I think, er, I think Mom has, er, fainted . . . ”

  “Where did—what have you—never mind, I’ll be right there.”

  There was a decisive click from the communicator, and Will shrugged again. He was probably in for it now; why had he stepped through that wall? What a stupid thing to do! And now maybe Mother was hurt or something . . .

  Maureen came to rather quickly, and found herself with her head cradled in her son’s arms, a worried look on his face.

  She smiled at him involuntarily. “Hi, son,” she said, as cheerfully as she could, “I think everything’s ok. But you gave me quite a start, whatever that was you did!”

  “Gee, Mom, I’m awful sorry—it was—”

  There was the sound of running footsteps, and John Robinson appeared at the next intersection.

  “It’s all right, John,” Maureen called to him. But he ran towards her anyway. She tingled with warmth at the thought of how genuinely concerned he was; sometimes, with all the strains, she wondered whether he could possibly still feel the old emotions. It looked as if he somehow managed to . . . and she was pleased. Her emotions had not changed . . .