“And how about the Martian—Ho Agar?”
“I don’t know him personally,” Captain Wilson said, “but his reputation as a scientist is one of the finest in the Universe. His work on metallurgy has been absolutely amazing. And from all reports he is agreeable, easy to work with and thoroughly cooperative.”
“Sounds all right,” Rick said. “One other thing: what excuse will I have for hanging around there after I deliver my supplies? Won’t it look suspicious if I don’t return immediately?”
“That’s been arranged,” said Captain Wilson. “Orders will be sent to you there to wait for the next ship from Earth, which will be equipped with experimental apparatus. Your orders will be to transfer that equipment to your ship for the purpose of testing it at high speed on your return trip to Earth. That should ease any suspicion your delay in leaving might create.”
“Good enough,” Rick said. “You haven’t given me much to go on, but I’ll keep my eyes open.”
“That’s all I want you to do,” Captain Wilson said. “Trust your common sense and observation. And if you find anything that you think should be reported immediately, don’t use the communication sets at our Jupiter base. Take your ship out beyond the range of their interceptor frequency and send your message on the ship’s set.”
“I understand,” Rick said. He glanced at his watch. “It’s six-twenty now. Shall I be getting under way?”
“Right,” Captain Wilson said. He shook hands with Rick and stepped to the door, “Luck. This is a big job, Rick, and you may need it.”
“Thanks,” Rick said. “I’ll be careful.”
WHEN the captain had gone Rick seated himself at the control panel and closed the switch that hermetically sealed the doors and the hatches of the ship. Then he signaled the field’s central tower for clearance and turned on the juice that set the rear rockets throbbing.
When a brilliant flare shot up from the main tower in answer to his signal he was ready to go. He set the rocket rheostats at full power and slowly released the suction clamps that locked the ship in its mooring slot.
The atmosphere of Earth screamed past the sides of the ship as it blasted void-ward.
CHAPTER II
RICK WESTON arrived at the mighty planet of Jupiter seven days later. The great glowing orb of the greatest unit of the Solar system had grown steadily in his fore visi-screen with every passing hour; and now that he was within range of its atmosphere it obscured the entire surface of the screen.
He set the automatic controls and fired the fore repulsion rockets. His ship was slicing through Jupiter’s heavy atmosphere and the sound of its passage was a thin high wail.
The mooring tower and group buildings of the Earth-Mars base were suddenly visible on his visi-screen and he felt his ship suddenly slide onto their beam and plummet directly toward the landing slot. He breathed a faint sigh of relief. Although he was a veteran of many such landings he never failed to feel grateful when his ship slanted onto a mechanical beam that would lead him directly and gently to the safety of a tower.
His speed was reduced to almost zero as the slim nose of the ship nuzzled softly into the tower socket. A compressed air lock snapped shut with a hiss and the ship stopped with a faint jar.
When he descended to the ground there was a short, swarthy man in uniform waiting for him. The man smiled and stuck out a hand.
“I’m Hawkins,” he said, “charge of maintenance here. Have you got all the stuff we ordered?”
“I guess so,” Rick said. “But I really wouldn’t know. I’m just a pilot. Your supplies are in the rear storage locker of the ship.”
“Fine,” Hawkins said, “I’ll have some of the boys get busy unloading right away. I suppose you’re in a hurry to get started back.”
Rick shrugged and said, “Not particularly. I feel like a little rest first.” He glanced around curiously at the vast factories and buildings that were shining under the pale cold light of the distant sun. The main building was a one-storied, duralloy structure that was at least a half-mile long. In the middle of the enclosure formed by flanking factories was a comfortable looking, four-storied building with curtained windows.
Hawkins followed his glance.
“That’s the living-quarters of the scientists and technicians,” he explained. “The long shed houses the robot assembly line.”
Rick saw only a few workers about and he commented on that fact to Hawkins.
“There’s only a dozen or so of us here altogether,” Hawkins said. “Most of the work is done by completed robots.”
“I see,” Rick said. He glanced about a moment and then he lit a cigarette and blew a cloud of smoke into the cold thin air. “These robots seem to be the coming thing,” he said absently. “They’ll be ready for import to Earth and Mars pretty soon, won’t they?” Hawkins looked away and Rick saw that the man’s face had become expressionless. It was as if a curtain had been pulled down suddenly over a lighted window.
“I wouldn’t know about that,” he said.
Rick didn’t push the questioning any further. He knew a blank wall when he saw one. But Hawkins’ reaction was interesting and he filed it away in his mind.
“Where can I find Dr. Farrel?” he asked.
“I suppose he’s in his office now,” Hawkins said.
“Where would that be?”
Hawkins gestured toward the four-storied building.
“Thanks. I’ll be seeing you,” Rick said, as he started for the doctor’s office.
Hawkins smiled but his hard bright eyes were not amused.
“Sure,” he said. “I’ll be seeing you.”
RICK crossed the cleared ground and entered the building that housed Doctor Farrel’s office. A hall extended the length of the building and an open door led from this hall to a spare office, furnished with a desk, a laboratory bench and several chairs.
Rick took off his hat and stepped into this office. It was empty. He looked around curiously and then walked toward the desk.
A door on the other side of the room opened suddenly and a stooped, grayhaired man in ill-fitting clothes appeared and his eyes narrowed angrily as he saw Rick.
“Who are you?” he snapped, limping into the room. “What do you mean by snooping around my office?”
Rick felt the blood mounting to his face. He fought down his swiftly growing anger.
“I’m Captain Weston of the Earth Space Command,” he said evenly. “I presume you’re Doctor Farrel.”
“Yes, I’m Doctor Farrel,” the grayhaired man said, limping around behind his desk and sitting down. “What do you want?”
“I just arrived from Earth with a cargo of supplies,” Rick answered. “I have some papers for you to sign.”
Doctor Farrel grunted and picked up a glazed communication sheet from his desk.
“You’re going to be here a while, Weston,” he said. “I just got a message from Earth ordering you to remain here until another ship arrives.” He tossed the message back to the desk and scowled at Rick. “What’s it all about?” he snapped.
“I haven’t the faintest idea in the world,” Rick said quietly. “It’s my business to take orders. I leave their interpretation to my superiors.”
Doctor Farrel chewed viciously on his lower lip and glared at Rick. Rick noticed that the man’s small eyes focused on his for only a second or so. They slid off his face and shifted to the top of the desk.
“You’ll stay here at this building, until your ship arrives,” he said. He looked up at Rick and his watery eyes held Rick’s for a second, then shifted away again. “Keep away from the robot factories and don’t question my men. I’ll have no snooping interference in my work. Do you understand?”
“I understand,” Rick said dryly. He forced back the angry words that quivered on his lips. He turned on his heel and started for the door.
“Just a minute,” Doctor Farrel snapped. “I’m not through talking to you.”
Rick turned in the doorway and his f
ace was hard as chiseled granite. His steady gaze forced the doctor’s eyes down to the desk.
“What do you want?” he said in a clipped, flat voice.
“I want to remind you that I am in complete charge here,” Doctor Farrel said. “If you remember that we’ll get along much better.”
RICK opened his mouth to reply, but before he could speak, the door opened and a tall, dark-haired girl walked into the room.
“Hello, Dad,” she said to the man behind the desk. “I—”
She noticed Rick then and her words trailed off in confusion. A flush of color appeared on her slim throat and crept upward to her cheeks. “I’m sorry,” she said, turning to the door, “I didn’t know you were busy.”
“Stay where you are,” Doctor Farrel said irritably. “Our guest,” he added, sarcastically, “is just leaving.”
Rick glanced at the girl and was surprised at her shy, hesitant beauty. Her hair, dark and lustrous, fell in simple waves to her shoulders and her features were regular and delicate. She wore a jacket and trousers of light soft leather and a wide belt was buckled about her slim waist. The costume was severely practical and yet the simple clothes accentuated the slim, gracious lines of her body. It seemed unbelievable that this lovely girl should be the daughter of the twisted, bitter man behind the desk.
Rick saw that the doctor did not intend to introduce him, so he nodded to the girl without speaking and left the room.
Outside, in the hall, he almost bumped into a tall, slender Martian. The Martian drew back and smiled pleasantly. He was as tall as Rick but he was thin, with the delicate bone-structure that was typical of his race. His lidless eyes were amber-colored, and the only difference in his appearance from that of an average Earthman was the boneless, spatulate nose and the pale greenish cast of his skin.
“You are Rick Weston, I suppose,” he said, in a high, soft voice, that was not unpleasant. He extended a hand. “Hawkins told me of your arrival. I am Ho Agar. Permit me to welcome you to our base.”
Rick shook hands with him and said, “Thanks.” He glanced at the door that led to Doctor Farrel’s office and added dryly, “Doctor Farrel doesn’t seem to share your sense of hospitality,” Ho Agar chuckled and patted Rick on the arm.
“Don’t mind the doctor,” he said. “He’s a good sort underneath all that crust. You’ve got to know him a while before he warms up. When I first arrived I expected to be thrown out bodily before the week was over, but we get along excellently, now. Of course,” he added with a grin, “there are still occasions when I think he’d like to have me boiled in oil, but they’re becoming less frequent.”
Rick felt his feeling of bitter anger cooling somewhat as a result of Ho Agar’s friendliness.
“Well, I’m going to be here a little while,” he said, “but I think I’ll just keep out of his way. I don’t think we’d ever develop a sweet, lasting friendship.”
“Maybe not,” Ho Agar smiled, “but the doctor will have forgotten he met you by tonight. You’ll have to be introduced to him again at dinner.”
“That’s certainly something to look forward to,” Rick said ironically.
Ho Agar laughed and then a look of friendly concern appeared on his face.
“I stand here gabbing,” he said ruefully, “when you probably want to get to your room and get some rest. I’ll take you up and see that you have everything you need. Come along.”
“I’m not tired,” Rick said, “but I would like to wash and get into some clean clothes.”
HE FOLLOWED the Martian down the hall to an elevator that took them to the third floor. Ho Agar led him to a large comfortable room that had a shower and bath attached.
“You’ll find everything simple and plain,” Ho Agar said, “but I think you’ll be comfortable.” He sat down on the edge of the wide bed while Rick took off his leather jacket and shirt. “I’m on the same floor, a few doors down, so if you need anything at any time just give me a call.”
“Thanks,” Rick said. He sat down in a chair facing the Martian and lit a cigarette. “After meeting you I don’t feel quite so much like an intruder.” He shook his head ruefully and stared at the glowing tip of his cigarette. “Doctor Farrel practically ordered me to stay in my room until I was ready to leave for Earth again, and he told me to keep away from the robot factories in no uncertain terms. You’d think I was a well-known saboteur, to judge from his reception.”
“You mustn’t let that bother you,” Ho Agar said. “He treats everyone that way. His life is completely absorbed with his work here and he is often suspicious and belligerent for no reason whatever. If you’d like to look over our plants I would be happy to act as your guide. The work we are doing here is not secretive and much of it is very interesting. Whenever you feel like taking a tour just let me know.” He smiled. “You wouldn’t know it to talk to Doctor Farrel but I am equally in command on this base. We don’t have any arguments about the division of authority, because I let him do pretty much as he likes. I know that he is interested solely in the production of safe, dependable robot life and that is all that matters to me.”
“I certainly appreciate your offer,” Rick said. “I think I’d better take advantage of it as soon as possible, because I haven’t any idea when my ship will arrive.”
“Fine,” Ho Agar said. “We’ll go immediately if you like. I don’t have anything pressing to do right now, and, even if I did, I feel in the mood for a holiday.” He got to his feet and walked to the door. “Will half an hour be too soon?”
“Not at all,” Rick said. “I can wash and change in half that time.”
CHAPTER III
A HALF hour later Rick and Ho Agar walked across the cleared compound to a graveled walk that led to the long steel shed that housed the robot assembly line.
“We’ve made great strides here,” Ho Agar said, as he noted Rick’s obvious interest in the sprawling factories. “Four years ago when Doctor Farrel and I arrived, this was as desolate a place as you could imagine.”
“How about the doctor’s daughter?” Rick asked. “I saw her but I didn’t meet her. Did she come along with the doctor on the original trip?”
“You mean Rita,” Ho Agar said. “She arrived about a year later. Her mother died on Earth and she had completed her schooling, so she joined her father here.”
“Not a very normal life for a young girl,” Rick said.
Ho Agar shrugged. “She seems contented. She acts as her father’s secretary and is very efficient. She is not an easy girl to know, but I have found her very intelligent and charming.” They had reached the steel shed, and an armed guard unbolted and opened a massive steel door as they approached. Ho Agar nodded to the man and stepped through the doorway. He waited inside until Rick joined him, then he turned and swept his arm in a gesture that took in the entire mighty plant that stretched ahead of them for an unbroken mile. “This is your first view of robot life at work,” he said, over the noise of the factory. “Someday such scenes may be familiar to the entire world.”
Rick stared in fascination at the hundreds of steel robots that were working with mechanical speed and rhythm beside the two long assembly lines. There was only an occasional human being visible throughout the great plant and these men were present in a supervising capacity.
Ho Agar smiled at Rick.
“It’s rather impressive, isn’t it?”
“It’s wonderful,” Rick said.
The robot workers were fashioning others of their kind. Each robot performed a specialized operation, for he had been expressly built. Some had intricate tools bolted to their wrists, others were equipped with long, sensitive steel fingers that moved with uncanny sureness and bewildering rapidity, checking delicate equipment, making minute adjustments on complicated rheostats and gauges. The robots were not uniform in shape. There were some constructed in a crouched position, others were built with extra-long arms or extra-long fingers to suit more perfectly the particular work they were doing.
The h
eads of the robots were simply steel balls, about eight inches in diameter, with a tiny slit in the front in which was set a high-powered lens. On the chest of each robot was a coil of fine filament wire, protected by a metal screen.
“The coils,” Ho Agar explained, “are simply sensitive microphones that transmit orders to the brain of the robot, The lenses you see in their foreheads act as motion-picture cameras that impress the image of what they ‘see’ on the robot’s brain. Those operations are simply mechanical,” Ho Agar continued, as he led Rick down the long assembly line, “but the real problem has been to find some way to give robots a mechanism that would act as a human brain to interpret orders.”
“You seem to have solved that problem brilliantly,” Rick said.
HE WATCHED a robot assembling tiny screws on the surface of a slim metal bar. The long, deft fingers moved swiftly, unerringly through the screw container, selecting the proper size and groove, then fitting them into the metal bar and moving them under a machine that automatically tightened them into place. “This robot here,” he said, “is certainly more than a machine.”
Ho Agar nodded. “All the workers here are completed and have passed all their tests.” He glanced at a metal tag on the assembly line directly in front of the robot, on which were stamped the numerals 18435.
“Watch,” he said to Rick. He turned slightly and spoke directly to the robot. “18435 cease work.”
The robot stopped working immediately and waited motionlessly.
Ho Agar said to Rick, “You see they obey perfectly. They are not automatons, by any means. They actually use intelligence and reason of a sort in obeying our commands.” He nodded to the robot. “You may resume work, 18435.”
The robot commenced work again without an instant’s hesitation.
Ho Agar walked along, pointing out various interesting phases of the robot activity, until they reached the end of the line. Ahead of them was a massive door, bolted and protected by a combination lock.
Collected Fiction (1940-1963) Page 200
