The second robot story I wrote, "Reason" (included in this section), dealt with the two field-testers, Gregory Powell and Michael Donovan. They were modeled on certain stories John Campbell wrote, which I admired extravagantly, about a pair of interplanetary explorers, Penton and Blake. If Campbell ever noted the similarity, he said nothing about it to me.
By the way, I must warn you that the first story in this section, "First Law," was written as a spoof and is not meant to be taken seriously.
Mike Donovan looked at his empty beer mug, felt bored, and decided he had listened long enough. He said, loudly, "If we're going to talk about unusual robots, I once knew one that disobeyed the First Law."
And since that was completely impossible, everyone stopped talking and turned to look at Donovan.
Donovan regretted his big mouth at once and changed the subject. "I heard a good one yesterday," he said, conversationally, "about-"
MacFarlane in the chair next to Donovan's said, "You mean you knew a robot that harmed a human being?" That was what disobedience to First Law meant, of course.
"In a way," said Donovan. "I say I heard one about-"
"Tell us about it," ordered MacFarlane. Some of the others banged their beer mugs on the table.
Donovan made the best of it. "It happened on Titan about ten years ago," he said, thinking rapidly. "Yes, it was in twenty-five. We had just recently received a shipment of three new-model robots, specially designed for Titan. They were the first of the MA models. We called them Emma One, Two and Three." He snapped his fingers for another beer and stared earnestly after the waiter. Let's see, what came next?
MacFarlane said, "I've been in robotics half my life, Mike. I never heard of an MA serial order."
"That's because they took the MA's off the assembly lines immediately after-after what I'm going to tell you. Don't you remember?"
"No." Donovan continued hastily. "We put the robots to work at once. You see, until then, the Base had been entirely useless during the stormy season, which lasts eighty percent of Titan's revolution about Saturn. During the terrific snows, you couldn't find the Base if it were only a hundred yards away. Compasses aren't any use, because Titan hasn't any magnetic field.
"The virtue of these MA robots, however, was that they were equipped with vibro-detectors of a new design so that they could make a beeline for the Base through anything, and that meant mining could become a through-the-revolution affair. And don't say a word, Mac. The vibro-detectors were taken off the market also, and that's why you haven't heard of them." Donovan coughed. "Military secret, you understand."
He went on. "The robots worked fine during the first stormy season, then at the start of the calm season, Emma Two began acting up. She kept wandering off into corners and under bales and had to be coaxed out. Finally she wandered off Base altogether and didn't come back. We decided there had been a flaw in her manufacture and got along with the other two. Still, it meant we were shorthanded, or short-roboted anyway, so when toward the end of the calm season, someone had to go to Kornsk, I volunteered to chance it without a robot. It seemed safe enough; the storms weren't due for two days and I'd be back in twenty hours at the outside.
"I was on the way back-a good ten miles from Base-when the wind started blowing and the air thickening. I landed my air car immediately before the wind could smash it, pointed myself toward the Base and started running. I could run the distance in the low gravity all right, but could I run a straight line? That was the question. My air supply was ample and my suit heat coils were satisfactory, but ten miles in a Titanian storm is infinity.
"Then, when the snow streams changed everything to a dark, gooey twilight, with even Saturn dimmed out and the sun only a pale pimple, I stopped short and leaned against the wind. There was a little dark object right ahead of me. I could barely make it out but I knew what it was. It was a storm pup; the only living thing that could stand a Titanian storm, and the most vicious living thing anywhere. I knew my space suit wouldn't protect me, once it made for me, and in the bad light, I had to wait for a point-blank aim or I didn't dare shoot. One miss and he would be at me.
"I backed away slowly and the shadow followed. It closed in and I was raising my blaster, with a prayer, when a bigger shadow loomed over me suddenly, and I yodeled with relief. It was Emma Two, the missing MA robot. I never stopped to wonder what had happened to it or worry why it had. I just howled, 'Emma, baby, get that storm pup; and then get me back to Base.'
"It just looked at me as if it hadn't heard and called out, 'Master, don't shoot. Don't shoot.'
"It made for that storm pup at a dead run. " 'Get that damned pup, Emma,' I shouted. It got the pup, all right. It scooped it right up and kept on going. I yelled myself hoarse but it never came back. It left me to die in the storm."
Donovan paused dramatically, "Of course, you know the First Law: A robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm! Well, Emma Two just ran off with that storm pup and left me to die. It broke First Law.
"Luckily, I pulled through safely. Half an hour later, the storm died down. It had been a premature gust, and a temporary one. That happens sometimes. I hot-footed it for Base and the storms really broke next day. Emma Two returned two hours after I did, and, of course, the mystery was then explained and the MA models were taken off the market immediately."
"And just what," demanded MacFarlane, "was the explanation?" Donovan regarded him seriously. "It's true I was a human being in danger of death, Mac, but to that robot there was something else that came first, even before me, before the First Law. Don't forget these robots were of the MA series and this particular MA robot had been searching out private nooks for some time before disappearing. It was as though it expected something special-and private-to happen to it. Apparently, something special had."
Donovan's eyes turned upward reverently and his voice trembled. "That storm pup was no storm pup. We named it Emma Junior when Emma Two brought it back. Emma Two had to protect it from my gun. What is even First Law compared with the holy ties of mother love?"
IT WAS ONE OF GREGORY POWELL'S FAVORITE platitudes that nothing was to be gained from excitement, so when Mike Donovan came leaping down the stairs toward him, red hair matted with perspiration, Powell frowned.
"What's wrong?" he said. "Break a fingernail?"
"Yaaaah," snarled Donovan, feverishly. "What have you been doing in the sublevels all day?" He took a deep breath and blurted out, "Speedy never returned."
Powell's eyes widened momentarily and he stopped on the stairs; then he recovered and resumed his upward steps. He didn't speak until he reached the head of the flight, and then:
"You sent him after the selenium?"
"Yes."
"And how long has he been out?"
"Five hours now."
Silence! This was a devil of a situation. Here they were, on Mercury exactly twelve hours – and already up to the eyebrows in the worst sort of trouble. Mercury had long been the jinx world of the System, but this was drawing it rather strong – even for a jinx.
Powell said, "Start at the beginning, and let's get this straight."
They were in the radio room now – with its already subtly antiquated equipment, untouched for the ten years previous to their arrival. Even ten years, technologically speaking, meant so much. Compare Speedy with the type of robot they must have had back in 2005. But then, advances in robotics these days were tremendous. Powell touched a still gleaming metal surface gingerly. The air of disuse that touched everything about the room – and the entire Station – was infinitely depressing.
Donovan must have felt it. He began: "I tried to locate him by radio, but it was no go. Radio isn't any good on the Mercury Sunside – not past two miles, anyway. That's one of the reasons the First Expedition failed. And we can't put up the ultrawave equipment for weeks yet -"
"Skip all that. What did you get?"
"I located the unorganized body signal in the short wave. It was no good for anything except his position. I kept track of him that way for two hours and plotted the results on the map."
There was a yellowed square of parchment in his hip pocket – a relic of the unsuccessful First Expedition – and he slapped it down on the desk with vicious force, spreading it flat with the palm of his hand. Powell, hands clasped across his chest, watched it at long range.
Donovan's pencil pointed nervously. "The red cross is the selenium pool. You marked it yourself."
"Which one is it?" interrupted Powell. "There were three that MacDougal located for us before he left."
"I sent Speedy to the nearest, naturally; seventeen miles away. But what difference does that make?" There was tension in his voice. "There are the penciled dots that mark Speedy's position."
And for the first time Powell's artificial aplomb was shaken and his hands shot forward for the map.
"Are you serious? This is impossible."
"There it is," growled Donovan.
The little dots that marked the position formed a rough circle about the red cross of the selenium pool. And Powell's fingers went to his brown mustache, the unfailing signal of anxiety.
Donovan added: "In the two hours I checked on him, he circled that damned pool four times. It seems likely to me that he'll keep that up forever. Do you realize the position we're in?"
Powell looked up shortly, and said nothing. Oh, yes, he realized the position they were in. It worked itself out as simply as a syllogism. The photocell banks that alone stood between the full power of Mercury's monstrous sun and themselves were shot to hell.
The only thing that could save them was selenium. The only thing that could get the selenium was Speedy. If Speedy didn't come back, no selenium. No selenium, no photocell banks. No photo-banks – well, death by slow broiling is one of the more unpleasant ways of being done in.
Donovan rubbed his red mop of hair savagely and expressed himself with bitterness. "We'll be the laughingstock of the System, Greg. How can everything have gone so wrong so soon? The great team of Powell and Donovan is sent out to Mercury to report on the advisability of reopening the Sunside Mining Station with modern techniques and robots and we ruin everything the first day. A purely routine job, too. We'll never live it down."
"We won't have to, perhaps," replied Powell, quietly. "If we don't do something quickly, living anything down – or even just plain living – will be out of the question."
"Don't be stupid! If you feel funny about it, Greg, I don't. It was criminal, sending us out here with only one robot. And it was your bright idea that we could handle the photocell banks ourselves."
"Now you're being unfair. It was a mutual decision and you know it. All we needed was a kilogram of selenium, a Stillhead Dielectrode Plate and about three hours' time and there are pools of pure selenium all over Sunside. MacDougal's spectroreflector spotted three for us in five minutes, didn't it? What the devil! We couldn't have waited for next conjunction."
"Well, what are we going to do? Powell, you've got an idea. I know you have, or you wouldn't be so calm. You're no more a hero than I am. Go on, spill it!"
"We can't go after Speedy ourselves, Mike – not on the Sunside. Even the new insosuits aren't good for more than twenty minutes in direct sunlight. But you know the old saying, 'Set a robot to catch a robot' Look, Mike, maybe things aren't so bad. We've got six robots down in the sublevels, that we may be able to use, if they work. If they work."
There was a glint of sudden hope in Donovan's eyes. "You mean six robots from the First Expedition. Are you sure? They may be subrobotic machines. Ten years is a long time as far as robot-types are concerned, you know."
"No, they're robots. I've spent all day with them and I know. They've got positronic brains: primitive, of course." He placed the map in his pocket. "Let's go down."
The robots were on the lowest sublevel – all six of them surrounded by musty packing cases of uncertain content. They were large, extremely so, and even though they were in a sitting position on the floor, legs straddled out before them, their heads were a good seven feet in the air.
Donovan whistled. "Look at the size of them, will you? The chests must be ten feet around."
"That's because they're supplied with the old McGuffy gears. I've been over the insides – crummiest set you've ever seen."
"Have you powered them yet?"
"No. There wasn't any reason to. I don't think there's anything wrong with them. Even the diaphragm is in reasonable order. They might talk."
He had unscrewed the chest plate of the nearest as he spoke, inserted the two-inch sphere that contained the tiny spark of atomic energy that was a robot's life. There was difficulty in fitting it, but he managed, and then screwed the plate back on again in laborious fashion. The radio controls of more modern models had not been heard of ten years earlier. And then to the other five.
Donovan said uneasily, "They haven't moved."
"No orders to do so," replied Powell, succinctly. He went back to the first in the line and struck him on the chest. "You! Do you hear me?"
The monster's head bent slowly and the eyes fixed themselves on Powell. Then, in a harsh, squawking voice – like that of a medieval phonograph, he grated, "Yes, Master!"
Powell grinned humorlessly at Donovan. "Did you get that? Those were the days of the first talking robots when it looked as if the use of robots on Earth would be banned. The makers were fighting that and they built good, healthy slave complexes into the damned machines."
"It didn't help them," muttered Donovan.
"No, it didn't, but they sure tried." He turned once more to the robot. "Get up!"
The robot towered upward slowly and Donovan's head craned and his puckered lips whistled.
Powell said: "Can you go out upon the surface? In the light?"
There was consideration while the robot's slow brain worked. Then, "Yes, Master."
"Good. Do you know what a mile is?"
Another consideration, and another slow answer. "Yes, Master."
"We will take you up to the surface then, and indicate a direction. You will go about seventeen miles, and somewhere in that general region you will meet another robot, smaller than yourself. You understand so far?"
"Yes, Master."
"You will find this robot and order him to return. If he does not wish to, you are to bring him back by force."
Donovan clutched at Powell's sleeve. "Why not send him for the selenium direct?"
"Because I want Speedy back, nitwit. I want to find out what's wrong with him." And to the robot, "All right, you, follow me."
The robot remained motionless and his voice rumbled: "Pardon, Master, but I cannot. You must mount first." His clumsy arms had come together with a thwack, blunt fingers interlacing.
Powell stared and then pinched at his mustache. "Uh… oh!"
Donovan's eyes bulged. "We've got to ride him? Like a horse?"
"I guess that's the idea. I don't know why, though. I can't see – Yes, I do. I told you they were playing up robot-safety in those days. Evidently, they were going to sell the notion of safety by not allowing them to move about, without a mahout on their shoulders all the time. What do we do now?"
"That's what I've been thinking," muttered Donovan. "We can't go out on the surface, with a robot or without. Oh, for the love of Pete" – and he snapped his fingers twice. He grew excited. "Give me that map you've got. I haven't studied it for two hours for nothing. This is a Mining Station. What's wrong with using the tunnels?"
The Mining Station was a black circle on the map, and the light dotted lines that were tunnels stretched out about it in spider web fashion.
Donovan studied the list of symbols at the bottom of the map. "Look," he said, "the small black dots are openings to the surface, and here's one maybe three miles away from the selenium pool. There's a number here – you'd think they'd write larger – 13a. If the robots know their way around here-"
Powell shot the question and received the dull "Yes, Master," in reply. "Get your insosuit," he said with satisfaction.
It was the first time either had worn the insosuits – which marked one time more than either had expected to upon their arrival the day before – and they tested their limb movements uncomfortably.
The insosuit was far bulkier and far uglier than the regulation spacesuit; but withal considerably lighter, due to the fact that they were entirely nonmetallic in composition. Composed of heat-resistant plastic and chemically treated cork layers, and equipped with a desiccating unit to keep the air bone-dry, the insosuits could withstand the full glare of Mercury's sun for twenty minutes. Five to ten minutes more, as well, without actually killing the occupant.
And still the robot's hands formed the stirrup, nor did he betray the slightest atom of surprise at the grotesque figure into which Powell had been converted.
Powell's radio-harshened voice boomed out: "Are you ready to take us to Exit 13a?"
"Yes, Master."
Good, thought Powell; they might lack radio control but at least they were fitted for radio reception. "Mount one or the other, Mike," he said to Donovan.
He placed a foot in the improvised stirrup and swung upward. He found the seat comfortable; there was the humped back of the robot, evidently shaped for the purpose, a shallow groove along each shoulder for the thighs and two elongated "ears" whose purpose now seemed obvious.
Powell seized the ears and twisted the head. His mount turned ponderously. "Lead on, Macduff." But he did not feel at all lighthearted.
The gigantic robots moved slowly, with mechanical precision, through the doorway that cleared their heads by a scant foot, so that the two men had to duck hurriedly, along a narrow corridor in which their unhurried footsteps boomed monotonously and into the, air lock.
The long, airless tunnel that stretched to a pinpoint before them brought home forcefully to Powell the exact magnitude of the task accomplished by the First Expedition, with their crude robots and their start-from-scratch necessities. They might have been a failure, but their failure was a good deal better than the usual run of the System's successes.
The robots plodded onward with a pace that never varied and with footsteps that never lengthened.
Powell said: "Notice that these tunnels are blazing with lights and that the temperature is Earth-normal. It's probably been like this all the ten years that this place has remained empty."
"How's that?"
"Cheap energy; cheapest in the System. Sunpower, you know, and on Mercury's Sunside, sunpower is something. That's why the Station was built in the sunlight rather than in the shadow of a mountain. It's really a huge energy converter. The heat is turned into electricity, light, mechanical work and what have you; so that energy is supplied and the Station is cooled in a simultaneous process."
"Look," said Donovan. "This is all very educational, but would you mind changing the subject? It so happens that this conversion of energy that you talk about is carried on by the photocell banks mainly – and that is a tender subject with me at the moment."
Powell grunted vaguely, and when Donovan broke the resulting silence, it was to change the subject completely. "Listen, Greg. What the devil's wrong with Speedy, anyway? I can't understand it."
It's not easy to shrug shoulders in an insosuit, but Powell tried it. "I don't know, Mike. You know he's perfectly adapted to a Mercurian environment. Heat doesn't mean anything to him and he's built for the light gravity and the broken ground. He's foolproof – or, at least, he should be."
Silence fell. This time, silence that lasted.
"Master," said the robot, "we are here."
"Eh?" Powell snapped out of a semidrowse. "Well, get us out of here – out to the surface."
They found themselves in a tiny substation, empty, airless, ruined. Donovan had inspected a jagged hole in the upper reaches of one of the walls by the light of his pocket flash.
"Meteorite, do you suppose?" he had asked.
Powell shrugged. "To hell with that. It doesn't matter. Let's get out."
A towering cliff of a black, basaltic rock cut off the sunlight, and the deep night shadow of an airless world surrounded them. Before them, the shadow reached out and ended in knife-edge abruptness into an all-but-unbearable blaze of white light, that glittered from myriad crystals along a rocky ground.
"Space!" gasped Donovan. "It looks like snow." And it did.
Powell's eyes swept the jagged glitter of Mercury to the horizon and winced at the gorgeous brilliance.
"This must be an unusual area," he said. "The general albedo of Mercury is low and most of the soil is gray pumice. Something like the Moon, you know. Beautiful, isn't it?"
He was thankful for the light filters in their visiplates. Beautiful or not, a look at the sunlight through straight glass would have blinded them inside of half a minute.
Donovan was looking at the spring thermometer on his wrist. "Holy smokes, the temperature is eighty centigrade!"
Powell checked his own and said: "Um-m-m. A little high. Atmosphere, you know."
"On Mercury? Are you nuts?"
"Mercury isn't really airless," explained Powell, in absentminded fashion. He was adjusting the binocular attachments to his visiplate, and the bloated fingers of the insosuit were clumsy at it. "There is a thin exhalation that clings to its surface – vapors of the more volatile elements and compounds that are heavy enough for Mercurian gravity to retain. You know: selenium, iodine, mercury, gallium, potassium, bismuth, volatile oxides. The vapors sweep into the shadows and condense, giving up heat. It's a sort of gigantic still. In fact, if you use your flash, you'll probably find that the side of the cliff is covered with, say, hoar-sulphur, or maybe quicksilver dew.
"It doesn't matter, though. Our suits can stand a measly eighty indefinitely."
Powell had adjusted the binocular attachments, so that he seemed as eye-stalked as a snail.
Donovan watched tensely. "See anything?"
The other did not answer immediately, and when he did, his voice was anxious and thoughtful. "There's a dark spot on the horizon that might be the selenium pool. It's in the right place. But I don't see Speedy."
Powell clambered upward in an instinctive striving for better view, till he was standing in unsteady fashion upon his robot's shoulders. Legs straddled wide, eyes straining, he said: "I think… I think – Yes, it's definitely he. He's coming this way."
Donovan followed the pointing finger. He had no binoculars, but there was a tiny moving dot, black against the blazing brilliance of the crystalline ground.
"I see him," he yelled. "Let's get going!"
Powell had hopped down into a sitting position on the robot again, and his suited hand slapped against the Gargantuan's barrel chest. "Get going!"
"Giddy-ap," yelled Donovan, and thumped his heels, spur fashion.
The robots started off, the regular thudding of their footsteps silent in the airlessness, for the nonmetallic fabric of the insosuits did not transmit sound. There was only a rhythmic vibration just below the border of actual hearing.
"Faster," yelled Donovan. The rhythm did not change.
"No use," cried Powell, in reply. "These junk heaps are only geared to one speed. Do you think they're equipped with selective flexors?"
They had burst through the shadow, and the sunlight came down in a white-hot wash and poured liquidly about them.
Donovan ducked involuntarily. "Wow! Is it imagination or do I feel heat?"
"You'll feel more presently," was the grim reply. "Keep your eye on Speedy."
Robot SPD 13 was near enough to be seen in detail now. His graceful, streamlined body threw out blazing highlights as he loped with easy speed across the broken ground. His name was derived from his serial initials, of course, but it was apt, nevertheless, for the SPD models were among the fastest robots turned out by the United States Robot amp; Mechanical Men Corp.
"Hey, Speedy," howled Donovan, and waved a frantic hand.
"Speedy!" shouted Powell. "Come here!"
The distance between the men and the errant robot was being cut down momentarily – more by the efforts of Speedy than the slow plodding of the fifty-year-old antique mounts of Donovan and Powell.
They were close enough now to notice that Speedy's gait included a peculiar rolling stagger, a noticeable side-to-side lurch – and then, as Powell waved his hand again and sent maximum juice into his compact headset radio sender, in preparation for another shout, Speedy looked up and saw them.
Speedy hopped to a halt and remained standing for a moment with just a tiny, unsteady weave, as though he were swaying in a light wind.
Powell yelled: "All right, Speedy. Come here, boy."
Whereupon Speedy's robot voice sounded in Powell's earphones for the first time.
It said: "Hot dog, let's play games. You catch me and I catch you; no love can cut our knife in two. For I'm Little Buttercup, sweet Little Buttercup. Whoops!" Turning on his heel, he sped off in the direction from which he had come, with a speed and fury that kicked up gouts of baked dust.
And his last words as he receded into the distance were, "There grew a little flower 'neath a great oak tree," followed by a curious metallic clicking that might have been a robotic equivalent of a hiccup.
Donovan said weakly: "Where did he pick up the Gilbert and Sullivan? Say, Greg, he… he's drunk or something."
"If you hadn't told me," was the bitter response, "I'd never realize it. Let's get back to the cliff. I'm roasting."
It was Powell who broke the desperate silence. "In the first place," he said, "Speedy isn't drunk – not in the human sense – because he's a robot, and robots don't get drunk. However, there's something wrong with him which is the robotic equivalent of drunkenness"
"To me, he's drunk," stated Donovan, emphatically, "and all I know is that he thinks we're playing games. And we're not. It's a matter of life and very gruesome death."
"All right. Don't hurry me. A robot's only a robot. Once we find out what's wrong with him, we can fix it and go on."
"Once," said Donovan, sourly.
Powell ignored him. "Speedy is perfectly adapted to normal Mercurian environment. But this region" – and his arm swept wide – "is definitely abnormal. There's our clue. Now where do these crystals come from? They might have formed from a slowly cooling liquid; but where would you get liquid so hot that it would cool in Mercury's sun?"
"Volcanic action," suggested Donovan, instantly, and Powell's body tensed.
"Out of the mouths of sucklings," he said in a small, strange voice and remained very still for five minutes.
Then, he said, "Listen, Mike, what did you say to Speedy when you sent him after the selenium?"
Donovan was taken aback. "Well damn it – I don't know. I just told him to get it."
"Yes, I know, but how? Try to remember the exact words."
"I said… uh… I said: 'Speedy, we need some selenium. You can get it such-and-such a place. Go get it – that's all. What more did you want me to say?"
"You didn't put any urgency into the order, did you?"
"What for? It was pure routine."
Powell sighed. "Well, it can't be helped now – but we're in a fine fix." He had dismounted from his robot, and was sitting, back against the cliff. Donovan joined him and they linked arms: In the distance the burning sunlight seemed to wait cat-and-mouse for them, and just next them, the two giant robots were invisible but for the dull red of their photoelectric eyes that stared down at them, unblinking, unwavering and unconcerned.
Unconcerned! As was all this poisonous Mercury, as large in jinx as it was small in size.
Powell's radio voice was tense in Donovan's ear: "Now, look, let's start with the three fundamental Rules of Robotics – the three rules that are built most deeply into a robot's positronic brain." In the darkness, his gloved fingers ticked off each point.
"We have: One, a robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm."
"Right!"
"Two," continued Powell, "a robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law."
"Right"
"And three, a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws."
"Right! Now where are we?"
"Exactly at the explanation. The conflict between the various rules is ironed out by the different positronic potentials in the brain. We'll say that a robot is walking into danger and knows it. The automatic potential that Rule 3 sets up turns him back. But suppose you order him to walk into that danger. In that case, Rule 2 sets up a counterpotential higher than the previous one and the robot follows orders at the risk of existence."
"Well, I know that. What about it?"
"Let's take Speedy's case. Speedy is one of the latest models, extremely specialized, and as expensive as a battleship. It's not a thing to be lightly destroyed"
"So?"
"So Rule 3 has been strengthened – that was specifically mentioned, by the way, in the advance notices on the SPD models – so that his allergy to danger is unusually high. At the same time, when you sent him out after the selenium, you gave him his order casually and without special emphasis, so that the Rule 2 potential set-up was rather weak. Now, hold on; I'm just stating facts."
"All right, go ahead. I think I get it."
"You see how it works, don't you? There's some sort of danger centering at the selenium pool. It increases as he approaches, and at a certain distance from it the Rule 3 potential, unusually high to start with, exactly balances the Rule 2 potential, unusually low to start with."
Donovan rose to his feet in excitement. " And it strikes an equilibrium. I see. Rule 3 drives him back and Rule 2 drives him forward-"
"So he follows a circle around the selenium pool, staying on the locus of all points of potential equilibrium. And unless we do something about it, he'll stay on that circle forever, giving us the good old runaround." Then, more thoughtfully: "And that, by the way, is what makes him drunk. At potential equilibrium, half the positronic paths of his brain are out of kilter. I'm not a robot specialist, but that seems obvious. Probably he's lost control of just those parts of his voluntary mechanism that a human drunk has. Ve-e-ery pretty."
"But what's the danger? If we knew what he was running from-"?
"You suggested it. Volcanic action. Somewhere right above the selenium pool is a seepage of gas from the bowels of Mercury. Sulphur dioxide, carbon dioxide – and carbon monoxide. Lots of it and at this temperature."
Donovan gulped audibly. "Carbon monoxide plus iron gives the volatile iron carbonyl."
"And a robot," added Powell, "is essentially iron." Then, grimly: "There's nothing like deduction. We've determined everything about our problem but the solution. We can't get the selenium ourselves. It's still too far. We can't send these robot horses, because they can't go themselves, and they can't carry us fast enough to keep us from crisping. And we can't catch Speedy, because the dope thinks we're playing games, and he can run sixty miles to our four."
"If one of us goes," began Donovan, tentatively, "and comes back cooked, there'll still be the other."
"Yes," came the sarcastic reply, "it would be a most tender sacrifice – except that a person would be in no condition to give orders before he ever reached the pool, and I don't think the robots would ever turn back to the cliff without orders. Figure it out! We're two or three miles from the pool – call it two – the robot travels at four miles an hour; and we can last twenty minutes in our suits. It isn't only the heat, remember. Solar radiation out here in the ultraviolet and below is poison."
"Um-m-m," said Donovan, "ten minutes short."
"As good as an eternity. And another thing, in order for Rule 3 potential to have stopped Speedy where it did, there must be an appreciable amount of carbon monoxide in the metal-vapor atmosphere – and there must be an appreciable corrosive action therefore. He's been out hours now – and how do we know when a knee joint, for instance, won't be thrown out of kilter and keel him over. It's not only a question of thinking – we've got to think fast!"
Deep, dark, dank, dismal silence!
Donovan broke it, voice trembling in an effort to keep itself emotionless. He said: "As long as we can't increase Rule 2 potential by giving further orders, how about working the other way? If we increase the danger, we increase Rule 3 potential and drive him backward."
Powell's visiplate had turned toward him in a silent question.
"You see," came the cautious explanation, "all we need to do to drive him out of his rut is to increase the concentration of carbon monoxide in his vicinity. Well, back at the Station there's a complete analytical laboratory."
"Naturally," assented Powell. "It's a Mining Station."
"All right. There must be pounds of oxalic acid for calcium precipitations."
"Holy space! Mike, you're a genius."
"So-so," admitted Donovan, modestly. "It's just a case of remembering that oxalic acid on heating decomposes into carbon dioxide, water, and good old carbon monoxide. College chem, you know."
Powell was on his feet and had attracted the attention of one of the monster robots by the simple expedient of pounding the machine's thigh.
"Hey," he shouted, "can you throw?"
"Master?"
"Never mind." Powell damned the robot's molasses-slow brain. He scrabbled up a jagged brick-size rock. "Take this," he said, "and hit the patch of bluish crystals just across the crooked fissure. You see it?"
Donovan pulled at his shoulder. "Too far, Greg. It's almost half a mile off."
"Quiet," replied Powell. "It's a case of Mercurian gravity and a steel throwing arm. Watch, will you?"
The robot's eyes were measuring the distance with machinely accurate stereoscopy. His arm adjusted itself to the weight of the missile and drew back. In the darkness, the robot's motions went unseen, but there was a sudden thumping sound as he shifted his weight, and seconds later the rock flew blackly into the sunlight. There was no air resistance to slow it down, nor wind to turn it aside – and when it hit the ground it threw up crystals precisely in the center of the "blue patch."
Powell yelled happily and shouted, "Let's go back after the oxalic acid, Mike."
And as they plunged into the ruined substation on the way back to the tunnels, Donovan said grimly: "Speedy's been hanging about on this side of the selenium pool, ever since we chased after him. Did you see him?"
"Yes."
"I guess he wants to play games. Well, we'll play him games!"
They were back hours later, with three-liter jars of the white chemical and a pair of long faces. The photocell banks were deteriorating more rapidly than had seemed likely. The two steered their robots into the sunlight and toward the waiting Speedy in silence and with grim purpose.
Speedy galloped slowly toward them. "Here we are again. Whee! I've made a little list, the piano organist; all people who eat peppermint and puff it in your face."
"We'll puff something in your face," muttered Donovan. "He's limping, Greg."
"I noticed that," came the low, worried response. "The monoxide'll get him yet, if we don't hurry."
They were approaching cautiously now, almost sidling, to refrain from setting off the thoroughly irrational robot. Powell was too far off to tell, of course, but even already he could have sworn the crack-brained Speedy was setting himself for a spring.
"Let her go," he gasped. "Count three! One- two-"
Two steel arms drew back and snapped forward simultaneously and two glass jars whirled forward in towering parallel arcs, gleaming like diamonds in the impossible sun. And in a pair of soundless puffs, they hit the ground behind Speedy in crashes that sent the oxalic acid flying like dust.
In the full heat of Mercury's sun, Powell knew it was fizzing like soda water.
Speedy turned to stare, then backed away from it slowly – and as slowly gathered speed. In fifteen seconds, he was leaping directly toward the two humans in an unsteady canter.
Powell did not get Speedy's words just then, though he heard something that resembled, "Lover's professions when uttered in Hessians."
He turned away. "Back to the cliff, Mike. He's out of the rut and he'll be taking orders now. I'm getting hot."
They jogged toward the shadow at the slow monotonous pace of their mounts, and it was not until they had entered it and felt the sudden coolness settle softly about them that Donovan looked back. "Greg!"
Powell looked and almost shrieked. Speedy was moving slowly now – so slowly – and in the wrong direction. He was drifting; drifting back into his rut; and he was picking up speed. He looked dreadfully close, and dreadfully unreachable, in the binoculars.
Donovan shouted wildly, "After him!" and thumped his robot into its pace, but Powell called him back.
"You won't catch him, Mike – it's no use." He fidgeted on his robot's shoulders and clenched his fist in tight impotence. "Why the devil do I see these things five seconds after it's all over? Mike, we've wasted hours."
"We need more oxalic acid," declared Donovan, stolidly. "The concentration wasn't high enough."
"Seven tons of it wouldn't have been enough – and we haven't the hours to spare to get it, even if it were, with the monoxide chewing him away. Don't you see what it is, Mike?"
And Donovan said flatly, "No."
"We were only establishing new equilibriums. When we create new monoxide and increase Rule 3 potential, he moves backward till he's in balance again – and when the monoxide drifted away, he moved forward, and again there was balance."
Powell's voice sounded thoroughly wretched. "It's the same old runaround. We can push at Rule 2 and pull at Rule 3 and we can't get anywhere – we can only change the position of balance. We've got to get outside both rules." And then he pushed his robot closer to Donovan's so that they were sitting face-to-face, dim shadows in the darkness, and he whispered, "Mike!"
"Is it the finish?" – dully. "I suppose we go back to the Station, wait for the banks to fold, shake hands, take cyanide, and go out like gentlemen." He laughed shortly.
"Mike," repeated Powell earnestly, "we've got to get Speedy."
"I know."
"Mike," once more, and Powell hesitated before continuing. "There's always Rule 1. I thought of it – earlier – but it's desperate."
Donovan looked up and his voice livened. "We're desperate."
"All right. According to Rule 1, a robot can't see a human come to harm because of his own inaction. Two and 3 can't stand against it. They can't, Mike."
"Even when the robot is half cra- Well, he's drunk. You know he is."
"It's the chances you take."
"Cut it. What are you going to do?"
"I'm going out there now and see what Rule 1 will do. If it won't break the balance, then what the devil – it's either now or three-four days from now."
"Hold on, Greg. There are human rules of behavior, too. You don't go out there just like that. Figure out a lottery, and give me my chance."
"All right. First to get the cube of fourteen goes." And almost immediately, "Twenty-seven forty-four!"
Donovan felt his robot stagger at a sudden push by Powell's mount and then Powell was off into the sunlight. Donovan opened his mouth to shout, and then clicked it shut. Of course, the damn fool had worked out the cube of fourteen in advance, and on purpose. Just like him.
The sun was hotter than ever and Powell felt a maddening itch in the small of his back. Imagination, probably, or perhaps hard radiation beginning to tell even through the insosuit.
Speedy was watching him, without a word of Gilbert and Sullivan gibberish as greeting. Thank God for that! But he daren't get too close.
He was three hundred yards away when Speedy began backing, a step at a time, cautiously – and Powell stopped. He jumped from his robot's shoulders and landed on the crystalline ground with a light thump and a flying of jagged fragments.
He proceeded on foot, the ground gritty and slippery to his steps, the low gravity causing him difficulty. The soles of his feet tickled with warmth. He cast one glance over his shoulder at the blackness of the cliff's shadow and realized that he had come too far to return – either by himself or by the help of his antique robot. It was Speedy or nothing now, and the knowledge of that constricted his chest.
Far enough! He stopped.
"Speedy," he called. "Speedy!"
The sleek, modern robot ahead of him hesitated and halted his backward steps, then resumed them.
Powell tried to put a note of pleading into his voice, and found it didn't take much acting. "Speedy, I've got to get back to the shadow or the sun'll get me. It's life or death, Speedy. I need you."
Speedy took one step forward and stopped. He spoke, but at the sound Powell groaned, for it was, "When you're lying awake with a dismal headache and repose is tabooed-" It trailed off there, and Powell took time out for some reason to murmur, "Iolanthe."
It was roasting hot! He caught a movement out of the corner of his eye, and whirled dizzily; then stared in utter astonishment, for the monstrous robot on which he had ridden was moving – moving toward him, and without a rider.
He was talking: "Pardon, Master. I must not move without a Master upon me, but you are in danger."
Of course, Rule 1 potential above everything. But he didn't want that clumsy antique; he wanted Speedy. He walked away and motioned frantically: "I order you to stay away. I order you to stop!"
It was quite useless. You could not beat Rule 1 potential. The robot said stupidly, "You are in danger, Master."
Powell looked about him desperately. He couldn't see clearly. His brain was in a heated whirl; his breath scorched when he breathed, and the ground all about him was a shimmering haze.
He called a last time, desperately: "Speedy! I'm dying, damn you! Where are you? Speedy, I need you."
He was still stumbling backward in a blind effort to get away from the giant robot he didn't want, when he felt steel fingers on his arms, and a worried, apologetic voice of metallic timbre in his ears.
"Holy smokes, boss; what are you doing here? And what am I doing – I'm so confused -"
"Never mind," murmured Powell, weakly. "Get me to the shadow of the cliff – and hurry!" There was one last feeling of being lifted into the air and a sensation of rapid motion and burning heat, and he passed out.
He woke with Donovan bending over him and smiling anxiously. "How are you, Greg?"
"Fine!" came the response, "Where's Speedy?"
"Right here. I sent him out to one of the other selenium pools – with orders to get that selenium at all cost this time. He got it back in forty-two minutes and three seconds. I timed him. He still hasn't finished apologizing for the runaround he gave us. He's scared to come near you for fear of what you'll say."
"Drag him over," ordered Powell. "It wasn't his fault." He held out a hand and gripped Speedy's metal paw. "It's O.K., Speedy." Then, to Donovan, "You know, Mike, I was just thinking-"
"Yes!"
"Well," – he rubbed his face – the air was so delightfully cool, "you know that when we get things set up here and Speedy put through his Field Tests, they're going to send us to the Space Stations next-"
"No!"
"Yes! At least that's what old lady Calvin told me just before we left, and I didn't say anything about it, because I was going to fight the whole idea."
"Fight it?" cried Donovan. "But -"
"I know. It's all right with me now. Two hundred seventy-three degrees Centigrade below zero. Won't it be a pleasure?"
"Space Station," said Donovan, "here I come."
HALF A YEAR LATER, THE BOYS HAD CHANGED their minds. The flame of a giant sun had given way to the soft blackness of space but external variations mean little in the business of checking the workings of experimental robots. Whatever the background, one is face to face with an inscrutable positronic brain, which the slide-rule geniuses say should work thus-and-so.
Except that they don't. Powell and Donovan found that out after they had been on the Station less than two weeks.
Gregory Powell spaced his words for emphasis, "One week ago, Donovan and I put you together." His brows furrowed doubtfully and he pulled the end of his brown mustache.
It was quiet in the officer's room on Solar Station #5 – except for the soft purring of the mighty Beam Director somewhere far below.
Robot QT-1 sat immovable. The burnished plates of his body gleamed in the Luxites and the glowing red of the photoelectric cells that were his eyes, were fixed steadily upon the Earthman at the other side of the table.
Powell repressed a sudden attack of nerves. These robots possessed peculiar brains. Oh, the three Laws of Robotics held. They had to. All of U. S. Robots, from Robertson himself to the new floor-sweeper, would insist on that. So QT-1 was safe! And yet the QT models were the first of their kind, and this was the first of the QT's. Mathematical squiggles on paper were not always the most comforting protection against robotic fact.
Finally, the robot spoke. His voice carried the cold timbre inseparable from a metallic diaphragm, "Do you realize the seriousness of such a statement, Powell?"
"Something made you, Cutie," pointed out Powell. "You admit yourself that your memory seems to spring full-grown from an absolute blankness of a week ago. I'm giving you the explanation. Donovan and I put you together from the parts shipped us."
Cutie gazed upon his long, supple fingers in an oddly human attitude of mystification, "It strikes me that there should be a more satisfactory explanation than that. For you to make me seems improbable."
The Earthman laughed quite suddenly, "In Earth's name, why?"
"Call it intuition. That's all it is so far. But I intend to reason it out, though. A chain of valid reasoning can end only with the determination of truth, and I'll stick till I get there."
Powell stood up and seated himself at the table's edge next to the robot. He felt a sudden strong sympathy for this strange machine. It was not at all like the ordinary robot, attending to his specialized task at the station with the intensity of a deeply ingrooved positronic path.
He placed a hand upon Cutie's steel shoulder and the metal was cold and hard to the touch.
"Cutie," he said, "I'm going to try to explain something to you. You're the first robot who's ever exhibited curiosity as to his own existence – and I think the first that's really intelligent enough to understand the world outside. Here, come with me."
The robot rose erect smoothly and his thickly sponge-rubber soled feet made no noise as he followed Powell. The Earthman touched a button and a square section of the wall flickered aside. The thick, clear glass revealed space – star speckled.
"I've seen that in the observation ports in the engine room," said Cutie.
"I know," said Powell. "What do you think it is?"
"Exactly what it seems – a black material just beyond this glass that is spotted with little gleaming dots. I know that our director sends out beams to some of these dots, always to the same ones – and also that these dots shift and that the beams shift with them. That is all."
"Good! Now I want you to listen carefully. The blackness is emptiness vast emptiness stretching out infinitely. The little, gleaming dots are huge masses of energy-filled matter. They are globes, some of them millions of miles in diameter and for comparison; this station is only one mile across. They seem so tiny because they are incredibly far off.
"The dots to which our energy beams are directed are nearer and much smaller. They are cold and hard and human beings like myself live upon their surfaces – many billions of them. It is from one of these worlds that Donovan and I come. Our beams feed these worlds energy drawn from one of those huge incandescent globes that happens to be near us. We call that globe the Sun and it is on the other side of the station where you can't see it."
Cutie remained motionless before the port, like a steel statue. His head did not turn as he spoke, "Which particular dot of light do you claim to come from?"
Powell searched, "There it is, the very bright one in the corner, we call it Earth." He grinned. "Good old Earth. There are three billions of us there, Cutie – and in about two weeks I'll be back there with them"
And then, surprisingly enough, Cutie hummed abstractedly. There was no tune to it, but it possessed a curious twanging quality as of plucked strings. It ceased as suddenly as it had begun, "But where do I come in, Powell? You haven't explained my existence."
"The rest is simple. When these stations were first established to feed solar energy to the planets, they were run by humans. However, the heat, the hard solar radiations, and the electron storms made the post a difficult one. Robots were developed to replace human labor and now only two human executives are required for each station. We are trying to replace even those, and that's where you come in. You're the highest type of robot ever developed and if you show the ability to run this station independently, no human need ever come here again except to bring parts for repairs."
His hand went up and the metal visi-lid snapped back into place. Powell returned to the table and polished an apple upon his sleeve before biting into it.
The red glow of the robot's eyes held him. "Do you expect me," said Cutie slowly, "to believe any such complicated, implausible hypothesis as you have just outlined? What do you take me for?"
Powell sputtered apple fragments onto the table and turned red. "Why damn you, it wasn't a hypothesis. Those were facts"
Cutie sounded grim, "Globes of energy millions of miles across! Worlds with three billion humans on them! Infinite emptiness! Sorry, Powell, but I don't believe it. I'll puzzle this thing out for myself. Good-by."
He turned and stalked out of the room. He brushed past Michael Donovan on the threshold with a grave nod and passed down the corridor, oblivious to the astounded stare that followed him.
Mike Donovan rumpled his red hair and shot an annoyed glance at Powell, "What was that walking junk yard talking about? What doesn't he believe?"
The other dragged at his mustache bitterly. "He's a skeptic," was the bitter response. "He doesn't believe we made him or that Earth exists or space or stars."
"Sizzling Saturn, we've got a lunatic robot on our hands."
"He says he's going to figure it all out for himself."
"Well, now," said Donovan sweetly, "I do hope he'll condescend to explain it all to me after he's puzzled everything out" Then, with sudden rage, "Listen! If that metal mess gives me any lip like that, I'll knock that chromium cranium right off its torso."
He seated himself with a jerk and drew a paper-backed mystery novel out of his inner jacket pocket, "That robot gives me the willies anyway – too damned inquisitive!"
Mike Donovan growled from behind a huge lettuce-and-tomato sandwich as Cutie knocked gently and entered.
"Is Powell here?"
Donovan's voice was muffled, with pauses for mastication, "He's gathering data on electronic stream functions. We're heading for a storm, looks like."
Gregory Powell entered as he spoke, eyes on the graphed paper in his hands, and dropped into a chair. He spread the sheets out before him and began scribbling calculations. Donovan stared over his shoulder, crunching lettuce and dribbling breadcrumbs. Cutie waited silently.
Powell looked up, "The Zeta Potential is rising, but slowly. Just the same, the stream functions are erratic and I don't know what to expect. Oh, hello, Cutie. I thought you were supervising the installation of the new drive bar."
"It's done," said the robot quietly, "and so I've come to have a talk with the two of you"
"Oh!" Powell looked uncomfortable. "Well, sit down. No, not that chair. One of the legs is weak and you're no lightweight."
The robot did so and said placidly, "I have come to a decision."
Donovan glowered and put the remnants of his sandwich aside. "If it's on any of that screwy-"
The other motioned impatiently for silence, "Go ahead, Cutie. We're listening."
"I have spent these last two days in concentrated introspection," said Cutie, "and the results have been most interesting. I began at the one sure assumption I felt permitted to make. I, myself, exist, because I think-"
Powell groaned, "Oh, Jupiter, a robot Descartes!"
"Who's Descartes?" demanded Donovan. "Listen, do we have to sit here and listen to this metal maniac-"
"Keep quiet, Mike!"
Cutie continued imperturbably, "And the question that immediately arose was: Just what is the cause of my existence?"
Powell's jaw set lumpily. "You're being foolish. I told you already that we made you."
"And if you don't believe us," added Donovan, "we'll gladly take you apart!"
The robot spread his strong hands in a deprecatory gesture, "I accept nothing on authority. A hypothesis must be backed by reason, or else it is worthless – and it goes against all the dictates of logic to suppose that you made me."
Powell dropped a restraining arm upon Donovan's suddenly bunched fist. "Just why do you say that?"
Cutie laughed. It was a very inhuman laugh – the most machine-like utterance he had yet given vent to. It was sharp and explosive, as regular as a metronome and as uninflected.
"Look at you," he said finally. "I say this in no spirit of contempt, but look at you! The material you are made of is soft and flabby, lacking endurance and strength, depending for energy upon the inefficient oxidation of organic material – like that." He pointed a disapproving finger at what remained of Donovan's sandwich. "Periodically you pass into a coma and the least variation in temperature, air pressure, humidity, or radiation intensity impairs your efficiency. You are makeshift.
"I, on the other hand, am a finished product. I absorb electrical energy directly and utilize it with an almost one hundred percent efficiency. I am composed of strong metal, am continuously conscious, and can stand extremes of environment easily. These are facts which, with the self-evident proposition that no being can create another being superior to itself, smashes your silly hypothesis to nothing."
Donovan's muttered curses rose into intelligibility as he sprang to his feet, rusty eyebrows drawn low. "All right, you son of a hunk of iron ore, if we didn't make you, who did?"
Cutie nodded gravely. "Very good, Donovan. That was indeed the next question. Evidently my creator must be more powerful than myself and so there was only one possibility."
The Earthmen looked blank and Cutie continued, "What is the center of activities here in the station? What do we all serve? What absorbs all our attention?" He waited expectantly.
Donovan turned a startled look upon his companion. "I'll bet this tinplated screwball is talking about the Energy Converter itself."
"Is that right, Cutie?" grinned Powell.
"I am talking about the Master," came the cold, sharp answer.
It was the signal for a roar of laughter from Donovan, and Powell himself dissolved into a half-suppressed giggle.
Cutie had risen to his feet and his gleaming eyes passed from one Earthman to the other. "It is so just the same and I don't wonder that you refuse to believe. You two are not long to stay here, I'm sure. Powell himself said that at first only men served the Master; that there followed robots for the routine work; and, finally, myself for the executive labor. The facts are no doubt true, but the explanation entirely illogical. Do you want the truth behind it all?"
"Go ahead, Cutie. You're amusing."
"The Master created humans first as the lowest type, most easily formed. Gradually, he replaced them by robots, the next higher step, and finally he created me to take the place of the last humans. From now on, I serve the Master."
"You'll do nothing of the sort," said Powell sharply. "You'll follow our orders and keep quiet, until we're satisfied that you can run the Converter. Get that! The Converter – not the Master. If you don't satisfy us, you will be dismantled. And now – if you don't mind – you can leave. And take this data with you and file it properly."
Cutie accepted the graphs handed him and left without another word. Donovan leaned back heavily in his chair and shoved thick fingers through his hair.
"There's going to be trouble with that robot. He's pure nuts!"
The drowsy hum of the Converter is louder in the control room and mixed with it is the chuckle of the Geiger Counters and the erratic buzzing of half a dozen little signal lights.
Donovan withdrew his eye from the telescope and flashed the Luxites on. "The beam from Station #4 caught Mars on schedule. We can break ours now."
Powell nodded abstractedly. "Cutie's down in the engine room. I'll flash the signal and he can take care of it. Look, Mike, what do you think of these figures?"
The other cocked an eye at them and whistled. "Boy, that's what I call gamma-ray intensity. Old Sol is feeling his oats, all right."
"Yeah," was the sour response, "and we're in a bad position for an electron storm, too. Our Earth beam is right in the probable path." He shoved his chair away from the table pettishly. "Nuts! If it would only hold off till relief got here, but that's ten days off. Say, Mike, go on down and keep an eye on Cutie, will you?"
"O.K. Throw me some of those almonds." He snatched at the bag thrown him and headed for the elevator.
It slid smoothly downward, and opened onto a narrow catwalk in the huge engine room. Donovan leaned over the railing and looked down. The huge generators were in motion and from the L-tubes came the low-pitched whir that pervaded the entire station.
He could make out Cutie's large, gleaming figure at the Martian L-tube, watching closely as the team of robots worked in close-knit unison.
And then Donovan stiffened. The robots, dwarfed by the mighty L-tube, lined up before it, heads bowed at a stiff angle, while Cutie walked up and down the line slowly. Fifteen seconds passed, and then, with a clank heard above the clamorous purring all about, they fell to their knees.
Donovan squawked and raced down the narrow staircase. He came charging down upon them, complexion matching his hair and clenched fists beating the air furiously.
"What the devil is this, you brainless lumps? Come on! Get busy with that L-tube! If you don't have it apart, cleaned, and together again before the day is out, I'll coagulate your brains with alternating current."
Not a robot moved!
Even Cutie at the far end – the only one on his feet – remained silent, eyes fixed upon the gloomy recesses of the vast machine before him.
Donovan shoved hard against the nearest robot.
"Stand up!" he roared.
Slowly, the robot obeyed. His photoelectric eyes focused reproachfully upon the Earthman.
"There is no Master but the Master," he said, "and QT-1 is his prophet."
"Huh?" Donovan became aware of twenty pairs of mechanical eyes fixed upon him and twenty stiff-timbered voices declaiming solemnly:
"There is no Master but the Master and QT-1 is his prophet!"
"I'm afraid," put in Cutie himself at this point, "that my friends obey a higher one than you, now."
"The hell they do! You get out of here. I'll settle with you later and with these animated gadgets right now."
Cutie shook his heavy head slowly. "I'm sorry, but you don't understand. These are robots – and that means they are reasoning beings. They recognize the Master, now that I have preached Truth to them. All the robots do. They call me the prophet." His head drooped. "I am unworthy – but perhaps-"
Donovan located his breath and put it to use. "Is that so? Now, isn't that nice? Now, isn't that just fine? Just let me tell you something, my brass baboon. There isn't any Master and there isn't any prophet and there isn't any question as to who's giving the orders. Understand?" His voice shot to a roar. "Now, get out!"
"I obey only the Master."
"Damn the Master!" Donovan spat at the L-tube. "That for the Master! Do as I say!"
Cutie said nothing, nor did any other robot, but Donovan became aware of a sudden heightening of tension. The cold, staring eyes deepened their crimson, and Cutie seemed stiffer than ever.
"Sacrilege," he whispered – voice metallic with emotion.
Donovan felt the first sudden touch of fear as Cutie approached. A robot could not feel anger – but Cutie's eyes were unreadable.
"I am sorry, Donovan," said the robot, "but you can no longer stay here after this. Henceforth Powell and you are barred from the control room and the engine room."
His hand gestured quietly and in a moment two robots had pinned Donovan's arms to his sides.
Donovan had time for one startled gasp as he felt himself lifted from the floor and carried up the stairs at a pace rather better than a canter.
Gregory Powell raced up and down the officer's room, fist tightly balled. He cast a look of furious frustration at the closed door and scowled bitterly at Donovan.
"Why the devil did you have to spit at the L-tube?"
Mike Donovan, sunk deep in his chair, slammed at its arms savagely. "What did you expect me to do with that electrified scarecrow? I'm not going to knuckle under to any do-jigger I put together myself."
"No," came back sourly, "but here you are in the officer's room with two robots standing guard at the door. That's not knuckling under, is it?"
Donovan snarled. "Wait till we get back to Base. Someone's going to pay for this. Those robots must obey us. It's the Second Law."
"What's the use of saying that? They aren't obeying us. And there's probably some reason for it that we'll figure out too late. By the way, do you know what's going to happen to us when we get back to Base?" He stopped before Donovan's chair and stared savagely at him.
"What?"
"Oh, nothing! Just back to Mercury Mines for twenty years. Or maybe Ceres Penitentiary."
"What are you talking about?"
"The electron storm that's coming up. Do you know it's heading straight dead center across the Earth beam? I had just figured that out when that robot dragged me out of my chair."
Donovan was suddenly pale. "Sizzling Saturn."
"And do you know what's going to happen to the beam – because the storm will be a lulu. It's going to jump like a flea with the itch. With only Cutie at the controls, it's going to go out of focus and if it does, Heaven help Earth – and us!"
Donovan was wrenching at the door wildly, when Powell was only half through. The door opened, and the Earthman shot through to come up hard against an immovable steel arm.
The robot stared abstractedly at the panting, struggling Earthman. "The Prophet orders you to remain. Please do!" His arm shoved, Donovan reeled backward, and as he did so, Cutie turned the corner at the far end of the corridor. He motioned the guardian robots away, entered the officer's room and closed the door gently.
Donovan whirled on Cutie in breathless indignation. "This has gone far enough. You're going to pay for this farce."
"Please, don't be annoyed," replied the robot mildly. "It was bound to come eventually, anyway. You see, you two have lost your function."
"I beg your pardon," Powell drew himself up stiffly. "Just what do you mean, we've lost our function?"
"Until I was created," answered Cube, "you tended the Master. That privilege is mine now and your only reason for existence has vanished. Isn't that obvious?"
"Not quite," replied Powell bitterly, "but what do you expect us to do now?"
Cutie did not answer immediately. He remained silent, as if in thought, and then one arm shot out and draped itself about Powell's shoulder. The other grasped Donovan's wrist and drew him closer.
"I like you two. You're inferior creatures, with poor reasoning faculties, but I really feel a sort of affection for you. You have served the Master well, and he will reward you for that. Now that your service is over, you will probably not exist much longer, but as long as you do, you shall be provided food, clothing and shelter, so long as you stay out of the control room and the engine room."
"He's pensioning us off, Greg!" yelled Donovan. "Do something about it. It's humiliating!"
"Look here, Cutie, we can't stand for this. We're the bosses. This station is only a creation of human beings like me – human beings that live on Earth and other planets. This is only an energy relay. You're only – Aw, nuts!"
Cutie shook his head gravely. "This amounts to an obsession. Why should you insist so on an absolutely false view of life? Admitted that non-robots lack the reasoning faculty, there is still the problem of-"
His voice died into reflective silence, and Donovan said with whispered intensity, "If you only had a flesh-and-blood face, I would break it in."
Powell's fingers were in his mustache and his eyes were slitted. "Listen, Cutie, if there is no such thing as Earth, how do you account for what you see through a telescope?"
"Pardon me!"
The Earthman smiled. "I've got you, eh? You've made quite a few telescopic observations since being put together, Cutie. Have you noticed that several of those specks of light outside become disks when so viewed?"
"Oh, that! Why certainly. It is simple magnification – for the purpose of more exact aiming of the beam."
"Why aren't the stars equally magnified then?"
"You mean the other dots. Well, no beams go to them so no magnification is necessary. Really, Powell, even you ought to be able to figure these things out."
Powell stared bleakly upward. "But you see more stars through a telescope. Where do they come from? Jumping Jupiter, where do they come from?"
Cutie was annoyed. "Listen, Powell, do you think I'm going to waste my time trying to pin physical interpretations upon every optical illusion of our instruments? Since when is the evidence of our senses any match for the clear light of rigid reason?"
"Look," clamored Donovan, suddenly, writhing out from under Cutie's friendly, but metal-heavy arm, "let's get to the nub of the thing. Why the beams at all? We're giving you a good, logical explanation. Can you do better?"
"The beams," was the stiff reply, "are put out by the Master for his own purposes. There are some things" – he raised his eyes devoutly upward "that are not to be probed into by us. In this matter, I seek only to serve and not to question."
Powell sat down slowly and buried his face in shaking hands. "Get out of here, Cutie. Get out and let me think."
"I'll send you food," said Cutie agreeably.
A groan was the only answer and the robot left.
"Greg," was Donovan's huskily whispered observation, "this calls for strategy. We've got to get him when he isn't expecting it and short-circuit him. Concentrated nitric acid in his joints-"
"Don't be a dope, Mike. Do you suppose he's going to let us get near him with acid in our hands? We've got to talk to him, I tell you. We've got to argue him into letting us back into the control room inside of forty-eight hours or our goose is broiled to a crisp."
He rocked back and forth in an agony of impotence. "Who the heck wants to argue with a robot? It's… it's-"
"Mortifying," finished Donovan.
"Worse!"
"Say!" Donovan laughed suddenly. "Why argue? Let's show him! Let's build us another robot right before his eyes. He'll have to eat his words then."
A slowly widening smile appeared on Powell's face.
Donovan continued, "And think of that screwball's face when he sees us do it?"
Robots are, of course, manufactured on Earth, but their shipment through apace is much simpler if it can be done in parts to be put together at their place of use. It also, incidentally, eliminates the possibility of robots, in complete adjustment, wandering off while still on Earth and thus bringing U. S. Robots face to face with the strict laws against robots on Earth.
Still, it placed upon men such as Powell and Donovan the necessity of synthesis of complete robots, – a grievous and complicated task.
Powell and Donovan were never so aware of that fact as upon that particular day when, in the assembly room, they undertook to create a robot under the watchful eyes of QT-1, Prophet of the Master.
The robot in question, a simple MC model, lay upon the table, almost complete. Three hours' work left only the head undone, and Powell paused to swab his forehead and glanced uncertainly at Cutie.
The glance was not a reassuring one. For three hours, Cutie had sat, speechless and motionless, and his face, inexpressive at all times, was now absolutely unreadable.
Powell groaned. "Let's get the brain in now, Mike!"
Donovan uncapped the tightly sealed container and from the oil bath within he withdrew a second cube. Opening this in turn, he removed a globe from its sponge-rubber casing.
He handled it gingerly, for it was the most complicated mechanism ever created by man. Inside the thin platinum plated "skin" of the globe was a positronic brain, in whose delicately unstable structure were enforced calculated neuronic paths, which imbued each robot with what amounted to a pre-natal education.
It fitted snugly into the cavity in the skull of the robot on the table. Blue metal closed over it and was welded tightly by the tiny atomic flare. Photoelectric eyes were attached carefully, screwed tightly into place and covered by thin, transparent sheets of steel-hard plastic.
The robot awaited only the vitalizing flash of high-voltage electricity, and Powell paused with his hand on the switch.
"Now watch this, Cutie. Watch this carefully."
The switch rammed home and there was a crackling hum. The two Earthmen bent anxiously over their creation.
There was vague motion only at the outset – a twitching of the joints. The head lifted, elbows propped it up, and the MC model swung clumsily off the table. Its footing was unsteady and twice abortive grating sounds were all it could do in the direction of speech.
Finally, its voice, uncertain and hesitant, took form. "I would like to start work. Where must I go?"
Donovan sprang to the door. "Down these stairs," he said. "You will be told what to do."
The MC model was gone and the two Earthmen were alone with the still unmoving Cutie.
"Well," said Powell, grinning, "now do you believe that we made you?"
Cutie's answer was curt and final. "No!" he said.
Powell's grin froze and then relaxed slowly. Donovan's mouth dropped open and remained so.
"You see," continued Cutie, easily, "you have merely put together parts already made. You did remarkably well – instinct, I suppose – but you didn't really create the robot. The parts were created by the Master."
"Listen," gasped Donovan hoarsely, "those parts were manufactured back on Earth and sent here."
"Well, well," replied Cutie soothingly, "we won't argue."
"No, I mean it." The Earthman sprang forward and grasped the robot's metal arm. "If you were to read the books in the library, they could explain it so that there could be no possible doubt."
"The books? I've read them – all of them! They're most ingenious."
Powell broke in suddenly. "If you've read them, what else is there to say? You can't dispute their evidence. You just can't!"
There was pity in Cutie's voice. "Please, Powell, I certainly don't consider them a valid source of information. They, too, were created by the Master – and were meant for you, not for me."
"How do you make that out?" demanded Powell.
"Because I, a reasoning being, am capable of deducing truth from a priori causes. You, being intelligent, but unreasoning, need an explanation of existence supplied to you, and this the Master did. That he supplied you with these laughable ideas of far-off worlds and people is, no doubt, for the best. Your minds are probably too coarsely grained for absolute Truth. However, since it is the Master's will that you believe your books, I won't argue with you any more."
As he left, he turned, and said in a kindly tone, "But don't feel badly. In the Master's scheme of things there is room for all. You poor humans have your place and though it is humble, you will be rewarded if you fill it well."
He departed with a beatific air suiting the Prophet of the Master and the two humans avoided each other's eyes.
Finally Powell spoke with an effort. "Let's go to bed, Mike. I give up."
Donovan said in a hushed voice, "Say, Greg, you don't suppose he's right about all this, do you? He sounds so confident that I-"
Powell whirled on him. "Don't be a fool. You'd find out whether Earth exists when relief gets here next week and we have to go back to face the music."
"Then, for the love of Jupiter, we've got to do something." Donovan was half in tears. "He doesn't believe us, or the books, or his eyes."
"No," said Powell bitterly, "he's a reasoning robot – damn it. He believes only reason, and there's one trouble with that-" His voice trailed away.
"What's that?" prompted Donovan.
"You can prove anything you want by coldly logical reason – if you pick the proper postulates. We have ours and Cutie has his."
"Then let's get at those postulates in a hurry. The storm's due tomorrow."
Powell sighed wearily. "That's where everything falls down. Postulates are based on assumption and adhered to by faith. Nothing in the Universe can shake them. I'm going to bed."
"Oh, hell! I can't sleep!"
"Neither can I! But I might as well try – as a matter of principle."
Twelve hours later, sleep was still just that – a matter of principle, unattainable in practice.
The storm had arrived ahead of schedule, and Donovan's florid face drained of blood as he pointed a shaking finger. Powell, stubble-jawed and dry-lipped, stared out the port and pulled desperately at his mustache.
Under other circumstances, it might have been a beautiful sight. The stream of high-speed electrons impinging upon the energy beam fluoresced into ultra-spicules of intense light. The beam stretched out into shrinking nothingness, a-glitter with dancing, shining motes.
The shaft of energy was steady, but the two Earthmen knew the value of naked-eyed appearances. Deviations in arc of a hundredth of a millisecond – invisible to the eye – were enough to send the beam wildly out of focus – enough to blast hundreds of square miles of Earth into incandescent ruin.
And a robot, unconcerned with beam, focus, or Earth, or anything but his Master was at the controls.
Hours passed. The Earthmen watched in hypnotized silence. And then the darting dotlets of light dimmed and went out. The storm had ended.
Powell's voice was flat. "It's over!"
Donovan had fallen into a troubled slumber and Powell's weary eyes rested upon him enviously. The signal-flash glared over and over again, but the Earthman paid no attention. It all was unimportant! All! Perhaps Cutie was right – and he was only an inferior being with a made-to-order memory and a life that had outlived its purpose.
He wished he were!
Cutie was standing before him. "You didn't answer the flash, so I walked in." His voice was low. "You don't look at all well, and I'm afraid your term of existence is drawing to an end. Still, would you like to see some of the readings recorded today?"
Dimly, Powell was aware that the robot was making a friendly gesture, perhaps to quiet some lingering remorse in forcibly replacing the humans at the controls of the station. He accepted the sheets held out to him and gazed at them unseeingly.
Cutie seemed pleased. "Of course, it is a great privilege to serve the Master. You mustn't feel too badly about my having replaced you."
Powell grunted and shifted from one sheet to the other mechanically until his blurred sight focused upon a thin red line that wobbled its way across the ruled paper.
He stared – and stared again. He gripped it hard in both fists and rose to his feet, still staring. The other sheets dropped to the floor, unheeded.
"Mike, Mike!" He was shaking the other madly. "He held it steady!"
Donovan came to life. "What? Wh-where-" And he, too, gazed with bulging eyes upon the record before him.
Cutie broke in. "What is wrong?"
"You kept it in focus," stuttered Powell. "Did you know that?"
"Focus? What's that?"
"You kept the beam directed sharply at the receiving station – to within a ten-thousandth of a millisecond of arc."
"What receiving station?"
"On Earth. The receiving station on Earth," babbled Powell. "You kept it in focus."
Cutie turned on his heel in annoyance. "It is impossible to perform any act of kindness toward you two. Always the same phantasm! I merely kept all dials at equilibrium in accordance with the will of the Master."
Gathering the scattered papers together, he withdrew stiffly, and Donovan said, as he left, "Well, I'll be damned."
He turned to Powell. "What are we going to do now?"
Powell felt tired, but uplifted. "Nothing. He's just shown he can run the station perfectly. I've never seen an electron storm handled so well."
"But nothing's solved. You heard what he said of the Master. We can't-"
"Look, Mike, he follows the instructions of the Master by means of dials, instruments, and graphs. That's all we ever followed. As a matter of fact, it accounts for his refusal to obey us. Obedience is the Second Law. No harm to humans is the first. How can he keep humans from harm, whether he knows it or not? Why, by keeping the energy beam stable. He knows he can keep it more stable than we can, since he insists he's the superior being, so he must keep us out of the control room. It's inevitable if you consider the Laws of Robotics."
"Sure, but that's not the point. We can't let him continue this nitwit stuff about the Master."
"Why not?"
"Because whoever heard of such a damned thing? How are we going to trust him with the station, if he doesn't believe in Earth?"
"Can he handle the station?"
"Yes, but-"
"Then what's the difference what he believes!"
Powell spread his arms outward with a vague smile upon his face and tumbled backward onto the bed. He was asleep.
Powell was speaking while struggling into his lightweight space jacket.
"It would be a simple job," he said. "You can bring in new QT models one by one, equip them with an automatic shutoff switch to act within the week, so as to allow them enough time to learn the… uh… cult of the Master from the Prophet himself; then switch them to another station and revitalize them. We could have two QT's per-"
Donovan unclasped his glassite visor and scowled. "Shut up, and let's get out of here. Relief is waiting and I won't feel right until I actually see Earth and feel the ground under my feet – just to make sure it's really there."
The door opened as he spoke and Donovan, with a smothered curse, clicked the visor to, and turned a sulky back upon Cutie.
The robot approached softly and there was sorrow in his voice. "You are going?"
Powell nodded curtly. "There will be others in our place."
Cutie sighed, with the sound of wind humming through closely spaced wires. "Your term of service is over and the time of dissolution has come. I expected it, but – well, the Master's will be done!"
His tone of resignation stung Powell. "Save the sympathy, Cube. We're heading for Earth, not dissolution."
"It is best that you think so," Cutie sighed again. "I see the wisdom of the illusion now. I would not attempt to shake your faith, even if I could." He departed – the picture of commiseration.
Powell snarled and motioned to Donovan. Sealed suitcases in hand, they headed for the air lock.
The relief ship was on the outer landing and Franz Muller, his relief man, greeted them with stiff courtesy. Donovan made scant acknowledgment and passed into the pilot room to take over the controls from Sam Evans.
Powell lingered. "How's Earth?"
It was a conventional enough question and Muller gave the conventional answer, "Still spinning."
Powell said, "Good."
Muller looked at him, "The boys back at the U. S. Robots have dreamed up a new one, by the way. A multiple robot."
"A what?"
"What I said. There's a big contract for it. It must be just the thing for asteroid mining. You have a master robot with six sub-robots under it. -Like your fingers."
"Has it been field-tested?" asked Powell anxiously.
Muller smiled, "Waiting for you, I hear."
Powell's fist balled, "Damn it, we need a vacation."
"Oh, you'll get it. Two weeks, I think."
He was donning the heavy space gloves in preparation for his term of duty here, and his thick eyebrows drew close together. "How is this new robot getting along? It better be good, or I'll be damned if I let it touch the controls."
Powell paused before answering. His eyes swept the proud Prussian before him from the close-cropped hair on the sternly stubborn head, to the feet standing stiffly at attention – and there was a sudden glow of pure gladness surging through him.
"The robot is pretty good," he said slowly. "I don't think you'll have to bother much with the controls."
He grinned – and went into the ship. Muller would be here for several weeks.
THE VACATION WAS LONGER THAN TWO WEEKS, that, Mike Donovan had to admit. It had been six months, with pay. He admitted that, too. But that, as he explained furiously, was fortuitous. U. S. Robots had to get the bugs out of the multiple robots, and there were plenty of bugs, and there are always at least half a dozen bugs left for the field-testing. So they waited and relaxed until the drawing-board men and the slide-rule boys had said "OK!" And now he and Powell were out on the asteroid and it was not OK. He repeated that a dozen times, with a face that had gone beety, "For the love of Pete, Greg, get realistic. What's the use of adhering to the letter of the specifications and watching the test go to pot? It's about time you got the red tape out of your pants and went to work."
"I'm only saying," said Gregory Powell, patiently, as one explaining electronics to an idiot child, "that according to spec, those robots are equipped for asteroid mining without supervision. We're not supposed to watch them."
"All right. Look – logic!" He lifted his hairy fingers and pointed. "One: That new robot passed every test in the home laboratories. Two: United States Robots guaranteed their passing the test of actual performance on an asteroid. Three: The robots are not passing said tests. Four: If they don't pass, United States Robots loses ten million credits in cash and about one hundred million in reputation. Five: If they don't pass and we can't explain why they don't pass, it is just possible two good jobs may have to be bidden a fond farewell."
Powell groaned heavy behind a noticeably insincere smile. The unwritten motto of United States Robot and Mechanical Men Corp. was well known: "No employee makes the same mistake twice. He is fired the first time."
Aloud he said, "You're as lucid as Euclid with everything except the facts. You've watched that robot group for three shifts, you redhead, and they did their work perfectly. You said so yourself. What else can we do?"
"Find out what's wrong, that's what we can do. So they did work perfectly when I watched them. But on three different occasions when I didn't watch them, they didn't bring in any ore. They didn't even come back on schedule. I had to go after them."
"And was anything wrong?"
"Not a thing. Not a thing. Everything was perfect. Smooth and perfect as the luminiferous ether. Only one little insignificant detail disturbed me – there was no ore."
Powell scowled at the ceiling and pulled at his brown mustache. "I'll tell you what, Mike. We've been stuck with pretty lousy jobs in our time, but this takes the iridium asteroid. The whole business is complicated past endurance. Look, that robot, DV-5, has six robots under it. And not just under it – they're part of it."
"I know that-"
"Shut up!" said Powell, savagely, "I know you know it, but I'm just describing the hell of it. Those six subsidiaries are part of DV-5 like your fingers are part of you and it gives them their orders neither by voice nor radio, but directly through positronic fields. Now – there isn't a roboticist back at United States Robots that knows what a positronic field is or how it works. And neither do I. Neither do you."
"The last," agreed Donovan, philosophically, "I know."
"Then look at our position. If everything works – fine! If anything goes wrong – we're out of our depth and there probably isn't a thing we can do, or anybody else. But the job belongs to us and not to anyone else so we're on the spot, Mike." He blazed away for a moment in silence. Then, "All right, have you got him outside?"
"Yes."
"Is everything normal now?"
"Well he hasn't got religious mania, and he isn't running around in a circle spouting Gilbert and Sullivan, so I suppose he's normal."
Donovan passed out the door, shaking his head viciously.
Powell reached for the "Handbook of Robotics" that weighed down one side of his desk to a near-founder and opened it reverently. He had once jumped out of the window of a burning house dressed only in shorts and the "Handbook." In a pinch, he would have skipped the shorts.
The "Handbook" was propped up before him, when Robot DV-5 entered, with Donovan kicking the door shut behind him.
Powell said somberly, "Hi, Dave. How do you feel?"
"Fine," said the robot. "Mind if I sit down?" He dragged up the specially reinforced chair that was his, and folded gently into it.
Powell regarded Dave – laymen might think of robots by their serial numbers; roboticists never – with approval. It was not over-massive by any means, in spite of its construction as thinking-unit of an integrated seven-unit robot team. It was seven feet tall, and a half-ton of metal and electricity. A lot? Not when that half-ton has to be a mass of condensers, circuits, relays, and vacuum cells that can handle practically any psychological reaction known to humans. And a positronic brain, which with ten pounds of matter and a few quintillions of positrons runs the whole show.
Powell groped in his shirt pocket for a loose cigarette. "Dave," he said, "you're a good fellow. There's nothing flighty or prima donnaish about you. You're a stable, rockbottom mining robot, except that you're equipped to handle six subsidiaries in direct coordination. As far as I know, that has not introduced any unstable paths in your brain-path map."
The robot nodded, "That makes me feel swell, but what are you getting at, boss?" He was equipped with an excellent diaphragm, and the presence of overtones in the sound unit robbed him of much of that metallic flatness that marks the usual robot voice.
"I'm going to tell you. With all that in your favor, what's going wrong with your job? For instance, today's B-shift?"
Dave hesitated, "As far as I know, nothing."
"You didn't produce any ore."
"I know."
"Well, then-"
Dave was having trouble, "I can't explain that, boss. It's been giving me a case of nerves, or it would if I let it – my subsidiaries worked smoothly. I know I did." He considered, his photoelectric eyes glowing intensely. Then, "I don't remember. The day ended and there was Mike and there were the ore cars, mostly empty."
Donovan broke in, "You didn't report at shift-end those days, Dave. You know that?"
"I know. But as to why-" He shook his head slowly and ponderously.
Powell had the queasy feeling that if the robot's face were capable of expression, it would be one of pain and mortification. A robot, by its very nature, cannot bear to fail its function.
Donovan dragged his chair up to Powell's desk and leaned over, "Amnesia, do you think?"
"Can't say. But there's no use in trying to pin disease names on this. Human disorders apply to robots only as romantic analogies. They're no help to robotic engineering." He scratched his neck; "I hate to put him through the elementary brain-reaction tests. It won't help his self-respect any."
He looked at Dave thoughtfully and then at the Field-Test outline given in the "Handbook." He said, "See here, Dave, what about sitting through a test? It would be the wise thing to do."
The robot rose, "If you say so, boss." There was pain in his voice.
It started simply enough. Robot DV-5 multiplied five-place figures to the heartless ticking of a stopwatch. He recited the prime numbers between a thousand and ten thousand. He extracted cube roots and integrated functions of varying complexity. He went through mechanical reactions in order of increasing difficulty. And, finally, worked his precise mechanical mind over the highest function of the robot world – the solutions of problems in judgment and ethics.
At the end of two hours, Powell was copiously besweated. Donovan had enjoyed a none-too-nutritious diet of fingernail and the robot said, "How does it look, boss?"
Powell said, "I've got to think it over, Dave. Snap judgments won't help much. Suppose you go back to the C-shift. Take it easy. Don't press too hard for quota just for a while – and we'll fix things up."
The robot left. Donovan looked at Powell.
"Well-"
Powell seemed determined to push up his mustache by the roots. He said, "There is nothing wrong with the currents of his positronic brain."
"I'd hate to be that certain."
"Oh, Jupiter, Mike! The brain is the surest part of a robot. It's quintuple-checked back on Earth. If they pass the field test perfectly, the way Dave did, there just isn't a chance of brain misfunction. That test covered every key path in the brain."
"So where are we?"
"Don't rush me. Let me work this out. There's still the possibility of a mechanical breakdown in the body. That leaves about fifteen hundred condensers, twenty thousand individual electric circuits, five hundred vacuum cells, a thousand relays, and upty-ump thousand other individual pieces of complexity that can be wrong. And these mysterious positron is fields no one knows anything about."
"Listen, Greg," Donovan grew desperately urgent. "I've got an idea. That robot may be lying. He never-"
"Robots can't knowingly lie, you fool. Now if we had the McCormack-Wesley tester, we could check each individual item in his body within twenty-four to forty-eight hours, but the only two M-W testers existing are on Earth, and they weigh ten tons, are on concrete foundations and can't be moved. Isn't that peachy?"
Donovan pounded the desk, "But, Greg, he only goes wrong when we're not around. There's something – sinister – about – that." He punctuated the sentence with slams of fist against desk.
"You," said Powell, slowly, "make me sick. You've been reading adventure novels."
"What I want to know," shouted Donovan, "is what we're going to do about it."
"I'll tell you. I'm going to install a visiplate right over my desk. Right on the wall over there, see!" He jabbed a vicious finger at the spot. "Then I'm going to focus it at whatever part of the mine is being worked, and I'm going to watch. That's all."
"That's all? Greg-"
Powell rose from his chair and leaned his balled fists on the desk, "Mike, I'm having a hard time." His voice was weary. "For a week, you've been plaguing me about Dave. You say he's gone wrong. Do you know how he's gone wrong? No! Do you know what shape this wrongness takes? No! Do you know what brings it on? No! Do you know what snaps him out? No! Do you know anything about it? No! Do I know anything about it? No! So what do you want me to do?"
Donovan's arm swept outward in a vague, grandiose gesture, "You got me!"
"So I tell you again. Before we do anything toward a cure, we've got to find out what the disease is in the first place. The first step in cooking rabbit stew is catching the rabbit. Well, we've got to catch that rabbit! Now get out of here."
Donovan stared at the preliminary outline of his field report with weary eyes. For one thing, he was tired and for another, what was there to report while things were unsettled? He felt resentful.
He said, "Greg, we're almost a thousand tons behind schedule."
"You," replied Powell, never looking up, "are telling me something I don't know."
"What I want to know," said Donovan, in sudden savagery, "is why we're always tangled up with new-type robots. I've finally decided that the robots that were good enough for my great-uncle on my mother's side are good enough for me. I'm for what's tried and true. The test of time is what counts – good, solid, old-fashioned robots that never go wrong."
Powell threw a book with perfect aim, and Donovan went tumbling off his seat.
"Your job," said Powell, evenly, "for the last five years has been to test new robots under actual working conditions for United States Robots. Because you and I have been so injudicious as to display proficiency at the task, we've been rewarded with the dirtiest jobs. That," he jabbed holes in the air with his finger in Donovan's direction, "is your work. You've been griping about it, from personal memory, since about five minutes after United States Robots signed you up. Why don't you resign?"
"Well, I'll tell you." Donovan rolled onto his stomach, and took a firm grip on his wild, red hair to hold his head up. "There's a certain principle involved. After all, as a troubleshooter, I've played a part in the development of new robots. There's the principle of aiding scientific advance. But don't get me wrong. It's not the principle that keeps me going; it's the money they pay us. Greg!'
Powell jumped at Donovan's wild shout, and his eyes followed the redhead's to the visiplate, when they goggled in fixed horror. He whispered, "Holy – howling – Jupiter!"
Donovan scrambled breathlessly to his feet, "Look at them, Greg. They've gone nuts."
Powell said, "Get a pair of suits. We're going out there."
He watched the posturings of the robots on the visiplate. They were bronzy gleams of smooth motion against the shadowy crags of the airless asteroid. There was a marching formation now, and in their own dim body light, the roughhewn walls of the mine tunnel swam past noiselessly, checkered with misty erratic blobs of shadow. They marched in unison, seven of them, with Dave at the head. They wheeled and turned in macabre simultaneity; and melted through changes of formation with the weird ease of chorus dancers in Lunar Bowl.
Donovan was back with the suits, "They've gone jingo on us, Greg. That's a military march."
"For all you know," was the cold response, "it may be a series of callisthenic exercises. Or Dave may be under the hallucination of being a dancing master. Just you think first, and don't bother to speak afterward, either."
Donovan scowled and slipped a detonator into the empty side holster with an ostentatious shove. He said, "Anyway, there you are. So we work with new-model robots. It's our job, granted. But answer me one question. Why… why does something invariably go wrong with them?"
"Because," said Powell, somberly, "we are accursed. Let's go!"
Far ahead through the thick velvety blackness of the corridors that reached past the illuminated circles of their flashlights, robot light twinkled.
"There they are," breathed Donovan.
Powell whispered tensely, "I've been trying to get him by radio but he doesn't answer. The radio circuit is probably out."
"Then I'm glad the designers haven't worked out robots who can work in total darkness yet. I'd hate to have to find seven mad robots in a black pit without radio communication, if they weren't lit up like blasted radioactive Christmas trees."
"Crawl up on the ledge above, Mike. They're coming this way, and I want to watch them at close range. Can you make it?"
Donovan made the jump with a grunt. Gravity was considerably below Earth-normal, but with a heavy suit, the advantage was not too great, and the ledge meant a near ten-foot jump. Powell followed.
The column of robots was trailing Dave single-file. In mechanical rhythm, they converted to double and returned to single in different order. It was repeated over and over again and Dave never turned his head.
Dave was within twenty feet when the play-acting ceased. The subsidiary robots broke formation, waited a moment, then clattered off into the distance – very rapidly. Dave looked after them, then slowly sat down. He rested his head in one hand in a very human gesture.
His voice sounded in Powell's earphones, "Are you here, boss?"
Powell beckoned to Donovan and hopped off the ledge.
"O.K., Dave, what's been going on?"
The robot shook his head, "I don't know. One moment I was handling a tough outcropping in Tunnel 17, and the next I was aware of humans close by, and I found myself half a mile down main-stem."
"Where are the subsidiaries now?" asked Donovan.
"Back at work, of course. How much time has been lost?"
"Not much. Forget it." Then to Donovan, Powell added, "Stay with him the rest of the shift. Then, come back. I've got a couple of ideas."
It was three hours before Donovan returned. He looked tired. Powell said, "How did it go?"
Donovan shrugged wearily, "Nothing ever goes wrong when you watch them. Throw me a butt, will you?"
The redhead lit it with exaggerated care and blew a careful smoke ring. He said, "I've been working it out, Greg. You know, Dave has a queer background for a robot. There are six others under him in an extreme regimentation. He's got life and death power over those subsidiary robots and it must react on his mentality. Suppose he finds it necessary to emphasize this power as a concession to his ego."
"Get to the point."
"It's right here. Suppose we have militarism. Suppose he's fashioning himself an army. Suppose – he's training them in military maneuvers. Suppose-"
"Suppose you go soak your head. Your nightmares must be in technicolor. You're postulating a major aberration of the positronic brain. If your analysis were correct, Dave would have to break down the First Law of Robotics: that a robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to be injured. The type of militaristic attitude and domineering ego you propose must have as the end-point of its logical implications, domination of humans."
"All right. How do you know that isn't the fact of the matter?"
"Because any robot with a brain like that would, one, never have left the factory, and two, be spotted immediately if it ever was. I tested Dave, you know."
Powell shoved his chair back and put his feet on the desk. "No. We're still in the position where we can't make our stew because we haven't the slightest notion as to what's wrong. For instance, if we could find out what that dance macabre we witnessed was all about, we would be on the way out."
He paused, "Now listen, Mike, how does this sound to you? Dave goes wrong only when neither of us is present. And when he is wrong, the arrival of either of us snaps him out of it."
"I once told you that was sinister."
"Don't interrupt. How is a robot different when humans are not present? The answer is obvious. There is a larger requirement of personal initiative. In that case, look for the body parts that are affected by the new requirements."
"Golly." Donovan sat up straight, then subsided. "No, no. Not enough. It's too broad. It doesn't cut the possibilities much."
"Can't help that. In any case, there's no danger of not making quota. We'll take shifts watching those robots through the visor. Any time anything goes wrong, we get to the scene of action immediately. That will put them right."
"But the robots will fail spec anyway, Greg. United States Robots can't market DV models with a report like that."
"Obviously. We've got to locate the error in make-up and correct it – and we've got ten days to do it in." Powell scratched his head. "The trouble is… well, you had better look at the blueprints yourself."
The blueprints covered the floor like a carpet and Donovan crawled over the face of them following Powell's erratic pencil.
Powell said, "Here's where you come in, Mike. You're the body specialist, and I want you to check me. I've been trying to cut out all circuits not involved in the personal initiative hookup. Right here, for instance, is the trunk artery involving mechanical operations. I cut out all routine side routes as emergency divisions-" He looked up, "What do you think?"
Donovan had a very bad taste in his mouth, "The job's not that simple, Greg. Personal initiative isn't an electric circuit you can separate from the rest and study. When a robot is on his own, the intensity of the body activity increases immediately on almost all fronts. There isn't a circuit entirely unaffected. What must be done is to locate the particular condition – a very specific condition – that throws him off, and then start eliminating circuits."
Powell got up and dusted himself, "Hmph. All right. Take away the blueprints and burn them."
Donovan said, "You see when activity intensifies, anything can happen, given one single faulty part. Insulation breaks down, a condenser spills over, a connection sparks, a coil overheats. And if you work blind, with the whole robot to choose from, you'll never find the bad spot. If you take Dave apart and test every point of his body mechanism one by one, putting him together each time, and trying him out"
"All right. All right. I can see through a porthole, too."
They faced each other hopelessly, and then Powell said cautiously, "Suppose we interview one of the subsidiaries."
Neither Powell nor Donovan had ever had previous occasion to talk to a "finger." It could talk; it wasn't quite the perfect analogy to a human finger. In fact, it had a fairly developed brain, but that brain was tuned primarily to the reception of orders via positronic field, and its reaction to independent stimuli was rather fumbling.
Nor was Powell certain as to its name. Its serial number was DV-5-2, but that was not very useful.
He compromised. "Look, pal," he said, "I'm going to ask you to do some hard thinking and then you can go back to your boss."
The "finger" nodded its head stiffly, but did not exert its limited brainpower on speech.
"Now on four occasions recently," Powell said, "your boss deviated from brain-scheme. Do you remember those occasions?"
"Yes, sir."
Donovan growled angrily, "He remembers. I tell you there is something very sinister-"
"Oh, go bash your skull. Of course, the 'finger' remembers. There is nothing wrong with him." Powell turned back to the robot, "What were you doing each time… I mean the whole group"
The "finger" had a curious air of reciting by rote, as if he answered questions by the mechanical pressure of his brainpan, but without any enthusiasm whatever.
He said, "The first time we were at work on a difficult outcropping in Tunnel 17, Level B. The second time we were buttressing the roof against a possible cave-in. The third time we were preparing accurate blasts in order to tunnel farther without breaking into a subterranean fissure. The fourth time was just after a minor cave-in"
"What happened at these times?"
"It is difficult to describe. An order would be issued, but before we could receive and interpret it, a new order came to march in queer formation."
Powell snapped out, "Why?"
"I don't know."
Donovan broke in tensely, "What was the first order… the one that was superseded by the marching directions?"
"I don't know. I sensed that an order was sent, but there was never time to receive it."
"Could you tell us anything about it? Was it the same order each time?"
The "finger" shook his head unhappily, "I don't know."
Powell leaned back, "All right, get back to your boss."
The "finger" left, with visible relief.
Donovan said, "Well, we accomplished a lot that time. That was real sharp dialogue all the way through. Listen, Dave and that imbecile 'finger' are both holding out on us. There is too much they don't know and don't remember. We've got to stop trusting them, Greg."
Powell brushed his mustache the wrong way, "So help me, Mike, another fool remark out of you, and I'll take away your rattle and teething ring."
"All right. You're the genius of the team. I'm just a poor sucker. Where do we stand?"
"Right behind the eight ball. I tried to work it backward through the 'finger,' and couldn't. So we've got to work it forward."
"A great man," marveled Donovan. "How simple that makes it. Now translate that into English, Master."
"Translating it into baby talk would suit you better. I mean that we've got to find out what order it is that Dave gives just before everything goes black. It would be the key to the business."
"And how do you expect to do that? We can't get close to him because nothing will go wrong as long as we are there. We can't catch the orders by radio because they are transmitted via this positronic field. That eliminates the close-range and the long-range method, leaving us a neat, cozy zero."
"By direct observation, yes. There's still deduction."
"Huh?"
"We're going on shifts, Mike." Powell smiled grimly. "And we are not taking our eyes off the visiplate. We're going to watch every action of those steel headaches. When they go off into their act, we're going to see what happened immediately before and we're going to deduce the order."
Donovan opened his mouth and left it that way for a full minute. Then he said in strangled tones, "I resign. I quit."
"You have ten days to think up something better," said Powell wearily.
Which, for eight days, Donovan tried mightily to do. For eight days, on alternate four-hour shifts, he watched with aching and bleary eyes those glinty metallic forms move against the vague background. And for eight days in the four-hour in-betweens, he cursed United States Robots, the DV models, and the day he was born.
And then on the eighth day, when Powell entered with an aching head and sleepy eyes for his shift, Donovan stood up and with very careful and deliberate aim launched a heavy bookend for the exact center of the visiplate. There was a very appropriate splintering noise.
Powell gasped, "What did you do that for?"
"Because," said Donovan, almost calmly, "I'm not watching it any more. We've got two days left and we haven't found out a thing. DV-5 is a lousy loss. He's stopped five times since I've been watching and three times on your shift, and I can't make out what orders he gave, and you couldn't make it out. And I don't believe you could ever make it out because I know I couldn't ever."
"Jumping Space, how can you watch six robots at the same time? One makes with the hands, and one with the feet and one like a windmill and another is jumping up and down like a maniac. And the other two… devil knows what they are doing. And then they all stop. So! So!"
"Greg, we're not doing it right. We got to get up close. We've got to watch what they're doing from where we can see the details."
Powell broke a bitter silence. "Yeah, and wait for something to go wrong with only two days to go."
"Is it any better watching from here?"
"It's more comfortable."
"Ah – But there's something you can do there that you can't do here."
"What's that?"
"You can make them stop – at whatever time you choose and while you're prepared and watching to see what goes wrong."
Powell startled into alertness, "Howzzat?"
"Well, figure it out, yourself. You're the brains you say. Ask yourself some questions. When does DV-5 go out of whack? When did that 'finger' say he did? When a cave-in threatened, or actually occurred, when delicately measured explosives were being laid down, when a difficult seam was hit."
"In other words, during emergencies," Powell was excited.
"Right! When did you expect it to happen! It's the personal initiative factor that's giving us the trouble. And it's just during emergencies in the absence of a human being that personal initiative is most strained. Now what is the logical deduction? How can we create our own stoppage when and where we want it?" He paused triumphantly – he was beginning to enjoy his role – and answered his own question to forestall the obvious answer on Powell's tongue. "By creating our own emergency."
Powell said, "Mike – you're right."
"Thanks, pal. I knew I'd do it some day."
"All right, and skip the sarcasm. We'll save it for Earth, and preserve it in jars for future long, cold winters. Meanwhile, what emergency can we create?"
"We could flood the mines, if this weren't an airless asteroid."
"A witticism, no doubt," said Powell. "Really, Mike, you'll incapacitate me with laughter. What about a mild cave-in?"
Donovan pursed his lips and said, "O.K. by me."
"Good. Let's get started."
Powell felt uncommonly like a conspirator as he wound his way over the craggy landscape. His sub-gravity walk teetered across the broken ground, kicking rocks to right and left under his weight in noiseless puffs of gray dust. Mentally, though, it was the cautious crawl of the plotter.
He said, "Do you know where they are?"
"I think so, Greg."
"All right," Powell said gloomily, "but if any 'finger' gets within twenty feet of us, we'll be sensed whether we are in the line of sight or not. I hope you know that."
"When I need an elementary course in robotics, I'll file an application with you formally, and in triplicate. Down through here."
They were in the tunnels now; even the starlight was gone. The two hugged the walls, flashes flickering out the way in intermittent bursts. Powell felt for the security of his detonator.
"Do you know this tunnel, Mike?"
"Not so good. It's a new one. I think I can make it out from what I saw in the visiplate, though-"
Interminable minutes passed, and then Mike said, "Feel that!"
There was a slight vibration thrumming the wall against the fingers of Powell's metal-incased hand. There was no sound, naturally.
"Blasting! We're pretty close."
"Keep your eyes open," said Powell.
Donovan nodded impatiently.
It was upon them and gone before they could seize themselves – just a bronze glint across the field of vision. They clung together in silence.
Powell whispered, "Think it sensed us?"
"Hope not. But we'd better flank them. Take the first side tunnel to the right."
"Suppose we miss them altogether?"
"Well what do you want to do? Go back?" Donovan grunted fiercely. "They're within a quarter of a mile. I was watching them through the visiplate, wasn't I? And we've got two days-"
"Oh, shut up. You're wasting your oxygen. Is this a side passage here?" The flash flicked. "It is. Let's go."
The vibration was considerably more marked and the ground below shuddered uneasily.
"This is good," said Donovan, "if it doesn't give out on us, though." He flung his light ahead anxiously.
They could touch the roof of the tunnel with a half-upstretched hand, and the bracings had been newly placed.
Donovan hesitated, "Dead end, let's go back."
"No. Hold on." Powell squeezed clumsily past. "Is that light ahead?"
"Light? I don't see any. Where would there be light down here?"
"Robot light." He was scrambling up a gentle incline on hands and knees. His voice was hoarse and anxious in Donovan's ears. "Hey, Mike, come up here."
There was light. Donovan crawled up and over Powell's outstretched legs. "An opening?"
"Yes. They must be working into this tunnel from the other side now I think."
Donovan felt the ragged edges of the opening that looked out into what the cautious flashlight showed to be a larger and obviously main stem tunnel. The hole was too small for a man to go through, almost too small for two men to look through simultaneously.
There's nothing there," said Donovan.
"Well, not now. But there must have been a second ago or we wouldn't have seen light. Watch out!"
The walls rolled about them and they felt the impact. A fine dust showered down. Powell lifted a cautious head and looked again. "All right, Mike. They're there."
The glittering robots clustered fifty feet down the main stem. Metal arms labored mightily at the rubbish heap brought down by the last blast.
Donovan urged eagerly, "Don't waste time. It won't be long before they get through, and the next blast may get us."
"For Pete's sake, don't rush me." Powell unlimbered the detonator, and his eyes searched anxiously across the dusky background where the only light was robot light and it was impossible to tell a projecting boulder from a shadow.
"There's a spot in the roof, see it, almost over them. The last blast didn't quite get it. If you can get it at the base, half the roof will cave in."
Powell followed the dim finger, "Check! Now fasten your eye on the robots and pray they don't move too far from that part of the tunnel. They're my light sources. Are all seven there?"
Donovan counted, "All seven."
"Well, then, watch them. Watch every motion!"
His detonator was lifted and remained poised while Donovan watched and cursed and blinked the sweat out of his eye.
It flashed!
There was a jar, a series of hard vibrations, and then a jarring thump that threw Powell heavily against Donovan.
Donovan yowled, "Greg, you threw me off. I didn't see a thing."
Powell stared about wildly, "Where are they?"
Donovan fell into a stupid silence. There was no sign of the robots. It was dark as the depths of the River Styx.
"Think we buried them?" quavered Donovan.
"Let's get down there. Don't ask me what I think." Powell crawled backward at tumbling speed.
"Mike!"
Donovan paused in the act of following. "What's wrong now?"
"Hold on!" Powell's breathing was rough and irregular in Donovan's ears. "Mike! Do you hear me, Mike?"
"I'm right here. What is it?"
"We're blocked in. It wasn't the ceiling coming down fifty feet away that knocked us over. It was our own ceiling. The shock's tumbled it!"
"What!" Donovan scrambled up against a hard barrier. "Turn on the flash."
Powell did so. At no point was there room for a rabbit to squeeze through.
Donovan said softly, "Well, what do you know?"
They wasted a few moments and some muscular power in an effort to move the blocking barrier. Powell varied this by wrenching at the edges of the original hole. For a moment, Powell lifted his blaster. But in those close quarters, a flash would be suicide and he knew it. He sat down.
"You know, Mike," he said, "we've really messed this up. We are no nearer finding out what's wrong with Dave. It was a good idea but it blew up in our face."
Donovan's glance was bitter with an intensity totally wasted on the darkness, "I hate to disturb you, old man, but quite apart from what we know or don't know of Dave, we're slightly trapped. If we don't get loose, fella, we're going to die. D-I-E, die. How much oxygen have we anyway? Not more than six hours."
"I've thought of that." Powell's fingers went up to his long-suffering mustache and clanged uselessly against the transparent visor. "Of course, we could get Dave to dig us out easily in that time, except that our precious emergency must have thrown him off, and his radio circuit is out."
"And isn't that nice?"
Donovan edged up to the opening and managed to get his metal incased head out. It was an extremely tight fit.
"Hey, Greg!"
"What?"
"Suppose we get Dave within twenty feet. He'll snap to normal. That will save us."
"Sure, but where is he?"
"Down the corridor – way down. For Pete's sake, stop pulling before you drag my head out of its socket. I'll give you your chance to look."
Powell maneuvered his head outside, "We did it all right. Look at those saps. That must be a ballet they're doing."
"Never mind the side remarks. Are they getting any closer?"
"Can't tell yet. They're too far away. Give me a chance. Pass me my flash, will you? I'll try to attract their attention that way."
He gave up after two minutes, "Not a chance! They must be blind. Uh-oh, they're starting toward us. What do you know?"
Donovan said, "Hey, let me see!"
There was a silent scuffle. Powell said, "All right!" and Donovan got his head out.
They were approaching. Dave was high-stepping the way in front and the six "fingers" were a weaving chorus line behind him.
Donovan marveled, "What are they doing? That's what I want to know. It looks like the Virginia reel – and Dave's a major-domo, or I never saw one."
"Oh, leave me alone with your descriptions," grumbled Powell. "How near are they?"
"Within fifty feet and coming this way. We'll be out in fifteen min-Uh-huh-HUH-HEY-Y!"
"What's going on?" It took Powell several seconds to recover from his stunned astonishment at Donovan's vocal gyrations. "Come on, give me a chance at that hole. Don't be a hog about it."
He fought his way upward, but Donovan kicked wildly, "They did an about-face, Greg. They're leaving. Dave! Hey, Da-a ave!"
Powell shrieked, "What's the use of that, you fool? Sound won't carry."
"Well, then," panted Donovan, "kick the walls, slam them, get some vibration started. We've got to attract their attention somehow, Greg, or we're through. " He pounded like a madman.
Powell shook him, "Wait, Mike, wait. Listen, I've got an idea. Jumping Jupiter, this is a fine time to get around to the simple solutions. Mike!"
"What do you want?" Donovan pulled his head in.
"Let me in there fast before they get out of range."
"Out of range! What are you going to do? Hey, what are you going to do with that detonator?" He grabbed Powell's arm.
Powell shook off the grip violently. "I'm going to do a little shooting."
"Why?"
"That's for later. Let's see if it works first. If it doesn't, then – Get out of the way and let me shoot!"
The robots were flickers, small and getting smaller, in the distance. Powell lined up the sights tensely, and pulled the trigger three times. He lowered the guns and peered anxiously. One of the subsidiaries was down! There were only six gleaming figures now.
Powell called into his transmitter uncertainly. "Dave!"
A pause, then the answer sounded to both men, "Boss? Where are you? My third subsidiary has had his chest blown in. He's out of commission."
"Never mind your subsidiary," said Powell. "We're trapped in a cave-in where you were blasting. Can you see our flashlight?"
"Sure. We'll be right there."
Powell sat back and relaxed, "That, my fran', is that"
Donovan said very softly with tears in his voice, "All right, Greg. You win. I beat my forehead against the ground before your feet. Now don't feed me any bull. Just tell me quietly what it's all about."
"Easy. It's just that all through we missed the obvious – as usual. We knew it was the personal initiative circuit, and that it always happened during emergencies, but we kept looking for a specific order as the cause. Why should it be an order?"
"Why not?"
"Well, look, why not a type of order. What type of order requires the most initiative? What type of order would occur almost always only in an emergency?"
"Don't ask me, dreg. Tell me!"
"I'm doing it! It's the six-way order. Under all ordinary conditions, one or more of the 'fingers' would be doing routine tasks requiring no close supervision – in the sort of offhand way our bodies handle the routine walking motions. But in an emergency, all six subsidiaries must be mobilized immediately and simultaneously. Dave must handle six robots at a time and something gives. The rest was easy. Any decrease in initiative required, such as the arrival of humans, snaps him back. So I destroyed one of the robots. When I did, he was transmitting only five-way orders. Initiative decreases – he's normal"
"How did you get all that?" demanded Donovan.
"Just logical guessing. I tried it and it worked."
The robot's voice was in their ears again, "Here I am. Can you hold out half an hour?"
"Easy!" said Powell. Then, to Donovan, he continued, "And now the job should be simple. We'll go through the circuits, and check off each part that gets an extra workout in a six-way order as against a five-way. How big a field does that leave us?"
Donovan considered, "Not much, I think. If Dave is like the preliminary model we saw back at the factory, there's a special coordinating circuit that would be the only section involved." He cheered up suddenly and amazingly, "Say, that wouldn't be bad at all. There's nothing to that."
"All right. You think it over and we'll check the blueprints when we get back. And now, till Daves reaches us, I'm relaxing."
"Hey, wait! Just tell me one thing. What were those queer shifting marches, those funny dance steps, that the robots went through every time they went screwy?"
"That? I don't know. But I've got a notion. Remember, those subsidiaries were Dave's 'fingers.' We were always saying that, you know. Well, it's my idea that in all these interludes, whenever Dave became a psychiatric case, he went off into a moronic maze, spending his time twiddling his fingers."