by Isaac Asimov
“Send a man. There is no alternative.”
Schloss had paled to a pasty gray. “It’s easy to say, send a man. But whom?”
“I’ve been considering that problem. Isn’t there a young man – his name is Black – whom I met on the occasion of my previous visit to Hyper Base?”
“Dr. Gerald Black?”
“I think so. Yes. He was a bachelor then. Is he still?”
“Yes, I believe so.”
“I would suggest then that he be brought here, say, in fifteen minutes, and that meanwhile I have access to his records.”
Smoothly she had assumed authority in this situation, and neither Kallner nor Schloss made any attempt to dispute that authority with her.
Black had seen Susan Calvin from a distance on this, her second visit to Hyper Base. He had made no move to cut down the distance. Now that he had been called into her presence, he found himself staring at her with revulsion and distaste. He scarcely noticed Dr. Schloss and General Kallner standing behind her.
He remembered the last time he had faced her thus, undergoing a cold dissection for the sake of a lost robot.
Dr. Calvin’s cool gray eyes were fixed steadily on his hot brown ones.
“Dr. Black,” she said, “I believe you understand the situation.” Black said, “I do.”
“Something will have to be done. The ship is too expensive to lose. The bad publicity will probably mean the end of the project.”
Black nodded. “I’ve been thinking that.”
“I hope you’ve also thought that it will be necessary for someone to board the Parsec, find out what’s wrong, and – uh – deactivate it.”
There was a moment’s pause. Black said harshly, “What fool would go?”
Kallner frowned and looked at Schloss, who bit his lip and looked nowhere.
Susan Calvin said, “There is, of course, the possibility of accidental activation of the hyperfield, in which case the ship may drive beyond all possible reach. On the other hand, it may return somewhere within the solar system. If so, no expense or effort will be spared to recover man and ship.”
Black said, “Idiot and ship! Just a correction.”
Susan Calvin disregarded the comment. She said, “I have asked General Kallner’s permission to put it to you. It is you who must go.”
No pause at all here. Black said, in the flattest possible way, “Lady, I’m not volunteering.”
“There are not a dozen men on Hyper Base with sufficient knowledge to have any chance at all of carrying this thing through successfully. Of those who have the knowledge, I’ve selected you on the basis of our previous acquaintanceship. You will bring to this task an understanding –”
“Look, I’m not volunteering.”
“You have no choice. Surely you will face your responsibility?”
“My responsibility? What makes it mine?”
“The fact that you are best fitted for the job.”
“Do you know the risk?”
“I think I do,” said Susan Calvin.
“I know you don’t. You never saw that chimpanzee. Look, when I said ‘idiot and ship’ I wasn’t expressing an opinion. I was telling you a fact. I’d risk my life if I had to. Not with pleasure, maybe, but I’d risk it. Risking idiocy, a lifetime of animal mindlessness, is something I won’t risk, that’s all.”
Susan Calvin glanced thoughtfully at the young engineer’s sweating, angry face.
Black shouted, “Send one of your robots, one of your NS-2 jobs.”
The psychologist’s eye reflected a kind of cold glitter. She said with deliberation, “Yes, Dr. Schloss suggested that. But the NS-2 robots are leased by our firm, not sold. They cost millions of dollars apiece, you know. I represent the company and I have decided that they are too expensive to be risked in a matter such as this.”
Black lifted his hands. They clenched and trembled close to his chest as though he were forcibly restraining them. “You’re telling me – you’re saying you want me to go instead of a robot because I’m more expendable.”
“It comes to that, yes.”
“Dr. Calvin,” said Black, “I’d see you in hell first.”
“That statement might be almost literally true, Dr. Black. As General Kallner will confirm, you are ordered to take this assignment. You are under quasi-military law here, I understand, and if you refuse an assignment, you can be court-martialed. A case like this will mean Mercury prison and I believe that will be close enough to hell to make your statement uncomfortably accurate were I to visit you, though I probably would not. On the other hand, if you agree to board the Parsec and carry through this job, it will mean a great deal for your career.”
Black glared, red-eyed, at her.
Susan Calvin said, “Give the man five minutes to think about this, General Kallner, and get a ship ready.”
Two security guards escorted Black out of the room.
Gerald Black felt cold. His limbs moved as though they were not part of him. It was as though he were watching himself from some remote, safe place, watching himself board a ship and make ready to leave for It and for the Parsec.
He couldn’t quite believe it. He had bowed his head suddenly and said, “I’ll go.”
But why?
He had never thought of himself as the hero type. Then why? Partly, of course, there was the threat of Mercury prison. Partly it was the awful reluctance to appear a coward in the eyes of those who knew him, that deeper cowardice that was behind half the bravery in the world.
Mostly, though, it was something else.
Ronson of Interplanetary Press had stopped Black momentarily as he was on his way to the ship. Black looked at Ronson’s Bushed face and said. “What do you want?”
Ronson babbled. “Listen! When you get back, I want it exclusive. I’ll arrange any payment you want – anything you want –”
Black pushed him aside, sent him sprawling, and walked on.
The ship had a crew of two. Neither spoke to him. Their glances slid over and under and around him. Black didn’t mind that. They were scared spitless themselves and their ship was approaching the Parsec like a kitten skittering sideways toward the first dog it had ever seen. He could do without them.
There was only one face that he kept seeing. The anxious expression of General Kallner and the look of synthetic determination on Schloss’s face were momentary punctures on his consciousness. They healed almost at once. It was Susan Calvin’s unruffled face that he saw. Her calm expressionlessness as he boarded the ship.
He stared into the blackness where Hyper Base had already disappeared into space –
Susan Calvin! Doctor Susan Calvin! Robopsychologist Susan Calvin! The robot that walks like a woman!
What were her three laws, he wondered. First Law: Thou shalt protect the robot with all thy might and all thy heart and all thy soul. Second Law: Thou shalt hold the interests of U. S. Robots and Mechanical Men Corporation holy provided it interfereth not with the First Law. Third Law: Thou shalt give passing consideration to a human being provided it interfereth not with the First and Second laws.
Had she ever been young, he wondered savagely? Had she ever felt one honest emotion?
Space! How he wanted to do something – something that would take that frozen look of nothing off her face.
And he would!
By the stars, he would. Let him but get out of this sane and he would see her smashed and her company with her and all the vile brood of robots with them. It was that thought that was driving him more than fear of prison or desire for social prestige. It was that thought that almost robbed him of fear altogether. Almost.
One of the pilots muttered at him, without looking, “You can drop down from here. It’s half a mile under.”
Black said bitterly, “Aren’t you landing?”
“Strict orders not to. The vibration of the landing might –”
“What about the vibration of my landing?” The pilot said, “I’ve got my orders.”
Black
said no more but climbed into his suit and waited for the inner lock to open. A tool kit was welded firmly to the metal of the suit about his right thigh.
Just as he stepped into the lock, the earpieces inside his helmet rumbled at him. “Wish you luck, doctor.”
It took a moment for him to realize that it came from the two men aboard ship, pausing in their eagerness to get out of that haunted volume of space to give him that much, anyway.
“Thanks,” said Black awkwardly, half resentfully.
And then he was out in space, tumbling slowly as the result of the slightly off-center thrust of feet against outer lock.
He could see the Parsec waiting for him, and by looking between his legs at the right moment of the tumble he could see the long hiss of the lateral jets of the ship that had brought him, as it turned to leave.
He was alone! Space, he was alone!
Could any man in history ever have felt so alone?
Would he know, he wondered sickly, if – if anything happened? Would there be any moments of realization? Would he feel his mind fade and the light of reason and thought dim and blank out?
Or would it happen suddenly, like the cut of a force knife? In either case
The thought of the chimpanzee, blank-eyed, shivering with mindless terrors, was fresh within him.
The asteroid was twenty feet below him now. It swam through space with an absolutely even motion. Barring human agency, no grain of sand upon it had as much as stirred through astronomical periods of time.
In the ultimate jarlessness of It, some small particle of grit encumbered a delicate working unit on board the Parsec, or a speck of impure sludge in the fine oil that bathed some moving part had stopped it.
Perhaps it required only a small vibration, a tiny tremor originating from the collision of mass and mass to unencumber that moving part, bringing it down along its appointed path, creating the hyperfield, blossoming it outward like an incredibly ripening rose.
His body was going to touch It and he drew his limbs together in his anxiety to “hit easy.” He did not want to touch the asteroid. His skin crawled with intense aversion.
It came closer. Now – now –
Nothing!
There was only the continuing touch of the asteroid, the uncanny moments of slowly mounting pressure that resulted from a mass of 250 pounds (himself plus suit) possessing full inertia but no weight to speak of.
Black opened his eyes slowly and let the sight of stars enter. The sun was a glowing marble, its brilliance muted by the polarizing shield over his faceplate. The stars were correspondingly feeble but they made up the familiar arrangement. With sun and constellations normal, he was still in the solar system. He could even see Hyper Base, a small, dim crescent.
He stiffened in shock at the sudden voice in his ear. It was Schloss.
Schloss said, “We’ve got you in view, Dr. Black. You are not alone!”
Black could have laughed at the phraseology, but he only said in a low, clear voice, “Clear off. If you’ll do that, you won’t be distracting me.”
A pause. Schloss’s voice, more cajoling, “If you care to report as you go along, it may relieve the tension.”
“You’ll get information from me when I get back. Not before.” He said it bitterly, and bitterly his metal-encased fingers moved to the control panel in his chest and blanked out the suit’s radio. They could talk into a vacuum now. He had his own plans. If he got out of this sane, it would be his show.
He got to his feet with infinite caution and stood on It. He swayed a bit as involuntary muscular motions, tricked by the almost total lack of gravity into an endless series of overbalancings, pulled him this way and that. On Hyper Base there was a pseudo-gravitic field to hold them down. Black found that a portion of his mind was sufficiently detached to remember that and appreciate it in absentia.
The sun had disappeared behind a crag. The stars wheeled visibly in time to the asteroid’s one-hour rotation period.
He could see the Parsec from where he stood and now he moved toward it slowly, carefully – tippy-toe almost. (No vibration. No vibration. The words ran pleadingly through his mind.)
Before he was completely aware of the distance he had crossed, he was at the ship. He was at the foot of the line of hand grips that led to the outer lock.
There he paused.
The ship looked quite normal. Or at least it looked normal except for the circle of steely knobs that girdled it one third of the way up, and a second circle two thirds of the way up. At the moment, they must be straining to become the source poles of the hyperfield.
A strange desire to reach up and fondle one of them came over Black. It was one of those irrational impulses, like the momentary thought, “What if I jumped?” that is almost inevitable when one stares down from a high building.
Black took a deep breath and felt himself go clammy as he spread the fingers of both hands and then lightly, so lightly, put each hand flat against the side of the ship.
Nothing! He seized the lowest hand grip and pulled himself up, carefully. He longed to be as experienced at null-gravity manipulation as were the construction men. You had to exert enough force to overcome inertia and then stop. Continue the pull a second too long and you would overbalance, careen into the side of the ship.
He climbed slowly, tippy-fingers, his legs and hips swaying to the right as his left arm reached upward, to the left as his right arm reached upward.
A dozen rungs, and his fingers hovered over the contact that would open the outer lock. The safety marker was a tiny green smear.
Once again he hesitated. This was the first use he would make of the ship’s power. His mind ran over the wiring diagrams and the force distributions. If he pressed the contact, power would be siphoned off the micropile to pull open the massive slab of metal that was the outer lock.
Well? What was the use? Unless he had some idea as to what was wrong, there was no way of telling the effect of the power diversion. He sighed and touched contact.
Smoothly, with neither jar nor sound, a segment of the ship curled open. Black took one more look at the friendly constellations (they had not changed) and stepped into the softly illuminated cavity. The outer lock closed behind him.
Another contact now. The inner lock had to be opened. Again he paused to consider. Air pressure within the ship would drop ever so slightly as the inner lock opened, and seconds would pass before the ship’s electrolyzers could make up the loss.
Well? The Bosch posterior-plate, to name one item, was sensitive to pressure, but surely not this sensitive.
He sighed again, more softly (the skin of his fear was growing calloused) and touched the contact. The inner lock opened.
He stepped into the pilot room of the Parsec, and his heart jumped oddly when the first thing he saw was the visiplate, set for reception and powdered with stars. He forced himself to look at them.
Nothing!
Cassiopeia was visible. The constellations were normal and he was inside the Parsec. Somehow he could feel the worst was over. Having come so far and remained within the solar system, having kept his mind so far, he felt something that was faintly like confidence begin to seep back.
There was an almost supernatural stillness about the Parsec. Black had been in many ships in his life and there had always been the sounds of life, even if only the scuffing of a shoe or a cabin boy humming in the corridor. Here the very beating of his own heart seemed muffled to soundlessness.
The robot in the pilot’s seat had its back to him. It indicated by no response that it was aware of his having entered.
Black bared his teeth in a savage grin and said sharply, “Release the bar! Stand up!” The sound of his voice was thunderous in the close quarters.
Too late he dreaded the air vibrations his voice set up, but the stars on the visiplate remained unchanged.
The robot, of course, did not stir. It could receive no sensations of any sort. It could not even respond to the First Law. It was
frozen in the unending middle of what should have been almost instantaneous process.
He remembered the orders it had been given. They were open to no misunderstanding: “Seize the bar with a firm grip. Pull it toward you firmly. Firmly! Maintain your hold until the control board informs you that you have passed through hyperspace twice.”
Well, it had not yet passed through hyperspace once. Carefully, he moved closer to the robot. It sat there with the bar pulled firmly back between its knees. That brought the trigger mechanism almost into place. The temperature of his metal hands then curled that trigger, thermocouple fashion, just sufficiently for contact to be made. Automatically Black glanced at the thermometer reading set into the control board. The robot’s hands were at 37 Centigrade, as they should be.
He thought sardonically, Fine thing. I’m alone with this machine and I can’t do anything about it.
What he would have liked to do was take a crowbar to it and smash it to filings. He enjoyed the flavor of that thought. He could see the horror on Susan Calvin’s face (if any horror could creep through the ice, the horror of a smashed robot was it). Like all positronic robots, this one-shot was owned by U. S. Robots, had been made there, had been tested there.
And having extracted what juice he could out of imaginary revenge, he sobered and looked about the ship.
After all, progress so far had been zero.
Slowly, he removed his suit. Gently, he laid it on the rack. Gingerly, he walked from room to room, studying the large interlocking surfaces of the hyperatomic motor, following the cables, inspecting the field relays.
He touched nothing. There were a dozen ways of deactivating the hyperfield, but each one would be ruinous unless he knew at least approximately where the error lay and let his exact course of procedure be guided by that.
He found himself back at the control panel and cried in exasperation at the grave stolidity of the robot’s broad back, “Tell me, will you? What’s wrong?”
There was the urge to attack the ship’s machinery at random. Tear at it and get it over with. He repressed the impulse firmly. If it took him a week, he would deduce, somehow, the proper point of attack. He owed that much to Dr. Susan Calvin and his plans for her.
