by H. B. Fyfe
There was a frenzy of thrashing and splashing in the dimly lighted water at his feet, accompanied by coughs and spluttering demands that he “do something!”
Robert reached down with one hand, caught his hostess by the wrist, and heaved her up to solid ground.
“My robots are digging you a little swimming hole,” he told her. “They brought the water from the brook by a trench. You can finish it with concrete or plastics later; it’s only fifteen by thirty feet.”
He expected some sort of acknowledgment of his efforts, and peered at her through the gloom when none was forthcoming. He thus caught a glimpse of the full-swinging slap aimed at his face. He tried to duck.
There was another splash, followed by more floundering about.
“Reach up,” said Robert patiently, “and I’ll pull you out again. I didn’t expect you to like it this much.”
Marcia-Joan scrambled up the bank, tugged viciously at her sodden robe, and headed for the nearest pathway without replying. Robert followed along.
As they passed under one of the lights, he noticed that the red reflections of the wet material, where it clung snugly to the girl’s body, were almost the color of some of his robots.
The tennis robot, he thought, and the moving targets for archery—in fact, all the sporting equipment.
“You talk about food for the figure,” he remarked lightly. “You should see yourself now! It’s really funny, the way—”
He stopped. Some strange emotion stifled his impulse to laugh at the way the robe clung.
Instead, he lengthened his stride, but he was still a few feet behind when she charged through the front entrance of the house. The door, having opened automatically for her, started to swing closed. Robert sprang forward to catch it.
“Wait a minute!” he cried.
Marcia-Joan snapped something that sounded like “Get out!” over her shoulder, and squished off toward the stairs. As Robert started through the door to follow, the striped robot hastened toward him from its post in the hall.
“Do not use the front door!” it warned him.
“Out of my way!” growled Robert.
The robot reached out to enforce the command. Robert seized it by the forearm and put all his weight into a sudden tug. The machine tottered off balance. Releasing his grip, he sent it staggering out the door with a quick shove.
A hasty glance showed Marcia-Joan flapping wetly up the last steps. Robert turned to face the robot.
“Do not use that door!” he quoted vindictively, and the robot halted its rush indecisively. “Only Marcia-Joan uses it.”
The major-domo hesitated. After a moment, it strode off around the corner of the house. First darting one more look at the stairs, Robert thrust his head outside and shouted: “Blue Two!”
He held the door open while he waited. There was an answer from the shrubbery. Presently, his own supervisor hurried up.
“Fetch the emergency toolbox!” Robert ordered. “And bring a couple of others with you.”
“Naturally, Robert. I would not carry it myself.”
A moment after the robot had departed on the errand, heavy steps sounded at the rear of the hall. Marcia-Joan’s robot had dealt with the mechanism of the back door.
Robert eyed the metal mask as the robot walked up to him. He found the color contrast less pleasant than ever.
“I am not using the door,” he said hastily. “I am merely holding it open.”
“Do you intend to use it?”
“I haven’t decided.”
“I shall carry you out back,” the robot decided for him.
“No, you don’t!” exclaimed Robert, leaping backward.
The door immediately began to swing shut as he passed through.
Cursing, he lunged forward. The robot reached for him.
This time, Robert missed his grip. Before he could duck away, his wrist was trapped in a metal grasp.
The door will close, he despaired. They’ll be too late.
Then, suddenly, he felt the portal drawn back and heard Blue Two speak.
“What does Robert wish?”
“Throw this heap out the door!” gasped Robert.
Amid a trampling of many feet, the major-domo was raised bodily by Blue Two and another pair of Robert’s machines and hustled outside. Since the grip on Robert’s wrist was not relaxed, he involuntarily accompanied the rush of metal bodies.
“Catch the door!” he called to Blue Two.
When the latter sprang to obey, the other two took the action as a signal to drop their burden. The pink-and-blue robot landed full length with a jingling crash. Robert was free.
With the robots, he made for the entrance. Hearing footsteps behind him as the major-domo regained its feet, he slipped hastily inside.
“Pick up that toolbox!” he snapped. “When that robot stops in the doorway, knock its head off!”
Turning, he held up a finger.
“Do not use the front door!”
The major-domo hesitated.
The heavy toolbox in the grip of Blue Two descended with a thud. The pink-and-blue robot landed on the ground a yard or two outside the door as if dropped from the second floor. It bounced once, emitted a few sparks and pungent wisps of smoke, lay still.
“Never mind, that’s good enough,” said Robert as Blue Two stepped forward. “One of the others can drag it off to the repair shop. Have the toolbox brought with us.”
“What does Robert wish now?” inquired Blue Two, trailing the man toward the stairway.
“I’m going upstairs,” said Robert. “And I intend to be prepared if any more doors are closed against me!”
He started up, the measured treads of his own robots sounding reassuringly behind him.…
* * * *
It was about a week later that Robert sat relaxed in the armchair before his own telescreen, facing Henry’s wizened visage.
The elder man clucked sympathetically as he re-examined the scratches on Robert’s face and the bruise under his right eye.
“And so you left there in the morning?”
“I certainly did!” declared Robert. “We registered a marriage record at the city library by television, of course, but I don’t care if I never see her again. She needn’t even tell me about the child, if any. I simply can’t stand that girl!”
“Now, now,” Henry said.
“I mean it! Absolutely no consideration for my wishes. Everything in the house was run to suit her convenience.”
“After all,” Henry pointed out, “it is her house.”
Robert glared. “What has that to do with it? I don’t think I was as unreasonable as she said in smashing that robot. The thing just wouldn’t let me alone!”
“I guess,” Henry suggested, “it was conditioned to obey Marcia-Joan, not you.”
“Well, that shows you! Whose orders are to count, anyway? When I tell a robot to do something, I expect it done. How would you like to find robots trying to boss you around?”
“Are you talking about robots,” asked Henry, “or the girl?”
“Same thing, isn’t it? Or it would be if I’d decided to bring her home with me.”
“Conflict of desires,” murmured Henry.
“Exactly! It’s maddening to have a perfectly logical action interfered with because there’s another person present to insist—insist, mind you—on having her way.”
“And for twenty-odd years, you’ve had your own way in every tiny thing.”
Somewhere in the back of Robert’s lurked a feeling that Henry sounded slightly sarcastic.
“Well, why shouldn’t I?” he demanded. “I noticed that in every disagreement, my view was the right one.”
“It was?”
“Of course it was! What did you mean by that tone?”
�
��Nothing.…” Henry seemed lost in thought. “I was just wondering how many ‘right’ views are left on this planet. There must be quite a few, all different, even if we have picked up only a few by television. An interesting facet of our peculiar culture—every individual omnipotent and omniscient, within his own sphere.”
Robert regarded him with indignant incredulity.
“You don’t seem to understand my point,” he began again. “I told her we ought to come to my house, where things are better arranged, and she simply refused. Contradicted me! It was most—”
He broke off.
“The impudence of him!” he exclaimed. “Signing off when I wanted to talk!”
LUNA ESCAPADE
With over an hour to go before he needed to start braking for his landing on Luna, Pete Dudley sat at the controls of the rocket freighter and tried to think of anything else that needed checking after his spinning the ship. He drummed absently with the fingers of his right hand upon the buckle of the seat strap which restrained him from floating out of the padded acceleration seat.
“Let’s see, tail’s right out there in front. I got the angle perfect. Guess everything’s okay.”
He noticed his fingers drumming, and stopped.
“Cut that out!” he told himself. “Get nervous now and Jack’ll be sending some other vacuum on the next Mars run. There’s Ericsson dead center in the screen, waiting for you to plop down beside the domes. You couldn’t miss a crater that size if you tried.”
He leaned back and stared speculatively at the curving tip of the Lunar Rockies that ended in one of the largest craters on the far side of Luna. His eyes squinted slightly and there was a crease between them, as if he spent much time peering into instruments. There were deeper lines beside his mouth, but the thin lips and pointed chin neutralized that evidence of frequent smiling.
“Are we nearly there?”
Dudley’s brown eyes opened so wide that the whites gleamed in the dim light from his instruments. Then he shut them tightly and shook his head quickly.
He had thought he heard a woman’s voice, and of course he couldn’t have. Freight rockets were checked out of Terran spaceports with only a pilot aboard. A lonely job for a man, but it was really only a way of keeping in practice. He made six round trips to Luna a year, but the big one was the three-month kick to Mars.
Then he smelled the perfume, so out of place in the machine-crowded compartment. He turned around slowly.
She stood with one hand gripping the lead of a computing machine to keep her feet on the deck. Dudley stared her up and down two or three times before he realized his mouth hung open.
Slim and about five-feet-four, she looked like a nice little girl making her first disastrous experiments with adult make-up. The slack suit of deep blue, revealing a soft white blouse at the neck of the jacket, was in the best of taste, but her heavy application of lipstick was crude.
And her hair isn’t naturally ash-blonde, Dudley thought. Yet she looks like such a kid. Not pretty, but she might be in a few years.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded harshly.
For a second, her eyes were scared. Then the expression was supplanted by a hard, make-believe confidence, leaving him merely with a fading sense of shame at his tone.
“Same as you,” she said boldly. “Going to Luna.”
Dudley snorted. “Then relax,” he growled, “because I can’t stop you now. Where the devil did you spend the last thirty-six hours?”
She tried a grin. “In the little room where the things are that pump the air. I sneaked in the galley once, when you were asleep. Did you miss anything?”
“No,” he admitted, thinking back.
“See? I’m not enough trouble to be noticed!”
Dudley eyed her sourly. There was trouble behind this somewhere, he was willing to bet, or else why had she stowed away? Running from a family fight? When the port checkers at Ericsson saw her—!
“How old are you, kid?” he asked.
“Twenty-one.”
The answer was too pat and quickly given. Even the girl seemed to realize that, and she continued talking. “My name’s Kathi Foster. You’re the next Mars pilot, according to the schedule, aren’t you?”
“What about it?”
She let go of the cable and pushed her weightless body across the control room to his chair.
“What’s it like on Mars?” she asked breathlessly.
What does she expect me to tell her? Dudley wondered cynically. That the whole population of the colony is only about four thousand? That they still live mostly on hope, dreams, and regular rocket service? That every one of them represents such a fantastic transportation expense that the Commission only sends top-notch people?
“It’s pretty tough,” he said.
She hesitated over his unhelpful reply, then plunged ahead.
“How about taking me along to see for myself?”
Dudley smiled with one corner of his mouth.
“You’re not going anywhere except back to Terra on the next rocket,” he predicted flatly. “And I hope your father still has enough hair on his head to own a hair-brush!”
“My father is dead.”
“Then your—.” He paused as she shook her head. “Well, don’t you have any family? Jobs on Luna are…limited. The settlements just aren’t very big. You’re better off down home.”
Kathi’s half-defiant, half-wheedling mask cracked. Her over-painted lips twitched.
“What do you know about where I’m better off? If you knew the kind of family I have—.”
“Oh, calm down!” grunted Dudley, somewhat discomforted by the sight of tears spilling from her blue eyes. “Things are never as bad as you think when you’re just a…when you’re young. When we land, we can say you got left aboard by mistake. They’ll just send you back without any trouble.”
“Like hell they will! I won’t go!”
Dudley stared hard at her, until she dropped her gaze.
“You don’t understand,” she said more quietly. “I…my family has been kicking me around the law courts all my life just because my grandfather left me his money. They’re all trying to get their hands on it, or on me to back up their claims. Do you realize I’m eight—I’m twenty-one and I never lived a happy day in my life? I’d rather die than go back!”
“Yeah, sure,” said Dudley. “What did you really do to make you so scared of going back? Smack up grandpop’s helicopter, maybe, or flunk out of school?”
“No, I got sick and tired of being shoved around. I wanted to get away someplace where I could be myself.”
“Why didn’t you buy a ticket on a passenger rocket, if you had such an urge to visit Luna?”
“My aunts and uncles and cousins have all my money tied up in suits.”
He leaned back by pushing the edge of the control desk.
“Pretty fast with the answers, aren’t you?” he grinned. “I wonder what you’ll think up for the spaceport police when they ask you?”
“You don’t believe—,” she began.
He shook his head and to avoid further argument he picked up his sliderule, muttering something about checking his landing curve. Actually, he was not as convinced as he pretended that her story was all lies.
But what the hell? he thought. I have my own troubles without worrying because some blonde little spiral thinks she can go dramatic over a family spat. She’d better learn that life is full of give and take.
“You better get attached to something around here,” he warned her when the time came for serious deceleration.
“I…I could go back where I was,” she stammered. He suddenly realized that for the past hour she had silently accepted his ignoring her. She asked now, “What happens next?”
“We cut our speed and come down on the tail as near to the domes of the E
ricsson settlement as possible without taking too much of a chance. Then I secure everything for the towing.”
“Towing? I’m sorry; I never read much about the moon rockets.”
“Natural enough,” Dudley retorted dryly. “Anyway, they send out big cranes to lower the rocket to horizontal so they can tow it on wheels under one of the loading domes. Handling cargo goes a lot faster and safer that way. Most of the town itself is underground.”
He began warming up his tele-screen prior to asking the spaceport for observation of his approach. Kathi grabbed his elbow.
“Of course I’m going to talk with them,” he answered her startled question.
“Can they see me here behind you?”
“I guess so. Maybe not too clear, but they’ll see somebody’s with me. What’s the difference? It’ll just save them a shock later.”
“Why should they see me at all? I can hide till after you leave the ship, and—.”
“Fat chance!” grunted Dudley. “Forget it.”
“Please, Dudley! I—I don’t want to get you in any trouble, for one thing. At least, let me get out of sight now. Maybe you’ll change your mind before we land.”
He looked at her, and the anxiety seemed real enough. Knowing he was only letting her postpone the unpleasantness but reluctant to make her face it, he shrugged.
“All right, then! Go somewhere and wipe that stuff off your face. But stop dreaming!”
He waited until she had disappeared into one or another of the tiny compartments behind the control room, then sent out his call to the Lunar settlement.
The problem did not affect his landing; in fact, he did better than usual. His stubby but deft fingers lacked their ordinary tendency to tighten up, now that part of his mind was rehearsing the best way to explain the presence of an unauthorized passenger.
In the end, when he had the rocket parked neatly on the extremities of its fins less than a quarter of a mile from one of the port domes, he had not yet made up his mind.
“Nice landing, Pete,” the ground observer told him. “Buy you a drink later?”
“Uh…yeah, sure!” Dudley answered. “Say, is Jack Fisher anywhere around?”