by Jerry
It was one of those accidents that can occur easily in space. The passengers and the two crewmen on that particular waking shift (including Jakdane) were eating lunch on the center-deck. Quest picked up his bulb of coffee, but inadvertently pressed it before he got it to his lips. The coffee squirted all over the front of Asrange’s clean white tunic.
“I’m sorry!” exclaimed Quest in distress.
The man’s eyes went wide and he snarled. So quickly it seemed impossible, he had unbuckled himself from his seat and hurled himself backward from the table with an incoherent cry. He seized the first object his hand touched—it happened to be a heavy wooden cane leaning against Jakdane’s bunk—propelled himself like a projectile at Quest.
Quest rose from the table in a sudden uncoiling of movement. He did not unbuckle his safety belt—he rose and it snapped like a string.
For a moment Trella thought he was going to meet Asrange’s assault. But he fled in a long leap toward the companionway leading to the astrogation deck above. Landing feet-first in the middle of the table and rebounding, Asrange pursued with the stick upraised.
In his haste, Quest missed the companionway in his leap and was cornered against one of the bunks. Asrange descended on him like an avenging angel and, holding onto the bunk with one hand, rained savage blows on his head and shoulders with the heavy stick.
Quest made no effort to retaliate. He cowered under the attack, holding his hands in front of him as if to ward it off. In a moment, Jakdane and the other crewman had reached Asrange and pulled him off.
When they had Asrange in irons, Jakdane turned to Quest, who was now sitting unhappily at the table.
“Take it easy,” he advised. “I’ll wake the psychosurgeon and have him look you over. Just stay there.”
Quest shook his head.
“Don’t bother him,” he said. “It’s nothing but a few bruises.”
“Bruises? Man, that club could have broken your skull! Or a couple of ribs, at the very least.”
“I’m all right,” insisted Quest; and when the skeptical Jakdane insisted on examining him carefully, he had to admit it. There was hardly a mark on him from the blows.
“If it didn’t hurt you any more than that, why didn’t you take that stick away from him?” demanded Jakdane. “You could have, easily.”
“I couldn’t,” said Quest miserably, and turned his face away.
Later, alone with Trella on the control deck, Jakdane gave her some sober advice.
“If you think you’re in love with Quest, forget it,” he said.
“Why? Because he’s a coward? I know that ought to make me despise him, but it doesn’t any more.”
“Not because he’s a coward. Because he’s an android!”
“What? Jakdane, you can’t be serious!”
“I am. I say he’s an android, an artificial imitation of a man. It all figures.
“Look, Trella, he said he was born on Jupiter. A human could stand the gravity of Jupiter, inside a dome or a ship, but what human could stand the rocket acceleration necessary to break free of Jupiter? Here’s a man strong enough to break a spaceship safety belt just by getting up out of his chair against it, tough enough to take a beating with a heavy stick without being injured. How can you believe he’s really human?”
Trella remembered the thug Kregg striking Quest in the face and then crying that he had injured his hand on the bar.
“But he said Dr. Mansard was his father,” protested Trella.
“Robots and androids frequently look on their makers as their parents,” said Jakdane. “Quest may not even know he’s artificial. Do you know how Mansard died?”
“The oxygen equipment failed, Quest said.”
“Yes. Do you know when?”
“No. Quest never did tell me, that I remember.”
“He told me: a year before Quest made his rocket flight to Ganymede! If the oxygen equipment failed, how do you think Quest lived in the poisonous atmosphere of Jupiter, if he’s human?”
Trella was silent.
“For the protection of humans, there are two psychological traits built into every robot and android,” said Jakdane gently. “The first is that they can never, under any circumstances, attack a human being, even in self defense. The second is that, while they may understand sexual desire objectively, they can never experience it themselves.
“Those characteristics fit your man Quest to a T, Trella. There is no other explanation for him: he must be an android.”
Trella did not want to believe Jakdane was right, but his reasoning was unassailable. Looking upon Quest as an android, many things were explained: his great strength, his short, broad build, his immunity to injury, his refusal to defend himself against a human, his inability to return Trella’s love for him.
It was not inconceivable that she should have unknowingly fallen in love with an android. Humans could love androids, with real affection, even knowing that they were artificial. There were instances of android nursemaids who were virtually members of the families owning them.
She was glad now that she had not told Quest of her mission to Ganymede. He thought he was Dr. Mansard’s son, but an android had no legal right of inheritance from his owner. She would leave it to Dom Blessing to decide what to do about Quest.
Thus she did not, as she had intended originally, speak to Quest about seeing him again after she had completed her assignment. Even if Jakdane was wrong and Quest was human—as now seemed unlikely—Quest had told her he could not love her. Her best course was to try to forget him.
Nor did Quest try to arrange with her for a later meeting.
“It has been pleasant knowing you, Trella,” he said when they left the G-boat at White Sands. A faraway look came into his blue eyes, and he added: “I’m sorry things couldn’t have been different, somehow.”
“Let’s don’t be sorry for what we can’t help,” she said gently, taking his hand in farewell.
Trella took a fast plane from White Sands, and twenty-four hours later walked up the front steps of the familiar brownstone house on the outskirts of Washington.
Dom Blessing himself met her at the door, a stooped, graying man who peered at her over his spectacles.
“You have the papers, eh?” he said, spying the brief case. “Good, good. Come in and we’ll see what we have, eh?”
She accompanied him through the bare, windowless anteroom which had always seemed to her such a strange feature of this luxurious house, and they entered the big living room. They sat before a fire in the old-fashioned fireplace and Blessing opened the brief case with trembling hands.
“There are things here,” he said, his eyes sparkling as he glanced through the notebooks. “Yes, there are things here. We shall make something of these, Miss Trella, eh?”
“I’m glad they’re something you can use, Mr. Blessing,” she said. “There’s something else I found on my trip, that I think I should tell you about.”
She told him about Quest.
“He thinks he’s the son of Dr. Mansard,” she finished, “but apparently he is, without knowing it, an android Dr. Mansard built on Jupiter.”
“He came back to Earth with you, eh?” asked Blessing intently.
“Yes. I’m afraid it’s your decision whether to let him go on living as a man or to tell him he’s an android and claim ownership as Dr. Mansard’s heir.”
Trella planned to spend a few days resting in her employer’s spacious home, and then to take a short vacation before resuming her duties as his confidential secretary. The next morning when she came down from her room, a change had been made.
Two armed men were with Dom Blessing at breakfast and accompanied him wherever he went. She discovered that two more men with guns were stationed in the bare anteroom and a guard was stationed at every entrance to the house.
“Why all the protection?” she asked Blessing.
“A wealthy man must be careful,” said Blessing cheerfully. “When we don’t understand all t
he implications of new circumstances, we must be prepared for anything, eh?”
There was only one new circumstance Trella could think of. Without actually intending to, she exclaimed:
“You aren’t afraid of Quest? Why, an android can’t hurt a human!”
Blessing peered at her over his spectacles.
“And what if he isn’t an android, eh? And if he is—what if old Mansard didn’t build in the prohibition against harming humans that’s required by law? What about that, eh?”
Trella was silent, shocked. There was something here she hadn’t known about, hadn’t even suspected. For some reason, Dom Blessing feared Dr. Eriklund Mansard . . . or his heir . . . or his mechanical servant.
She was sure that Blessing was wrong, that Quest, whether man or android, intended no harm to him. Surely, Quest would have said something of such bitterness during their long time together on Ganymede and aspace, since he did not know of Trella’s connection with Blessing. But, since this was to be the atmosphere of Blessing’s house, she was glad that he decided to assign her to take the Mansard papers to the New York laboratory.
Quest came the day before she was scheduled to leave.
Trella was in the living room with Blessing, discussing the instructions she was to give to the laboratory officials in New York. The two bodyguards were with them. The other guards were at their posts.
Trella heard the doorbell ring. The heavy oaken front door was kept locked now, and the guards in the anteroom examined callers through a tiny window.
Suddenly alarm bells rang all over the house. There was a terrific crash outside the room as the front door splintered. There were shouts and the sound of a shot.
“The steel doors!” cried Blessing, turning white. “Let’s get out of here.”
He and his bodyguards ran through the back of the house out of the garage.
Blessing, ahead of the rest, leaped into one of the cars and started the engine.
The door from the house shattered and Quest burst through. The two guards turned and fired together.
He could be hurt by bullets. He was staggered momentarily.
Then, in a blur of motion, he sprang forward and swept the guards aside with one hand with such force that they skidded across the floor and lay in an unconscious heap against the rear of the garage. Trella had opened the door of the car, but it was wrenched from her hand as Blessing stepped on the accelerator and it leaped into the driveway with spinning wheels.
Quest was after it, like a chunky deer, running faster than Trella had ever seen a man run before.
Blessing slowed for the turn at the end of the driveway and glanced back over his shoulder. Seeing Quest almost upon him, he slammed down the accelerator and twisted the wheel hard.
The car whipped into the street, careened, and rolled over and over, bringing up against a tree on the other side in a twisted tangle of wreckage.
With a horrified gasp, Trella ran down the driveway toward the smoking heap of metal. Quest was already beside it, probing it. As she reached his side, he lifted the torn body of Dom Blessing. Blessing was dead.
“I’m lucky,” said Quest soberly. “I would have murdered him.”
“But why, Quest? I knew he was afraid of you, but he didn’t tell me why.”
“It was conditioned into me,” answered Quest “I didn’t know it until just now, when it ended, but my father conditioned me psychologically from my birth to the task of hunting down Dom Blessing and killing him. It was an unconscious drive in me that wouldn’t release me until the task was finished.
“You see, Blessing was my father’s assistant on Ganymede. Right after my father completed development of the surgiscope, he and my mother blasted off for Io. Blessing wanted the valuable rights to the surgiscope, and he sabotaged the ship’s drive so it would fall into Jupiter.
“But my father was able to control it in the heavy atmosphere of Jupiter, and landed it successfully. I was born there, and he conditioned me to come to Earth and track down Blessing. I know now that it was part of the conditioning that I was unable to fight any other man until my task was finished: it might have gotten me in trouble and diverted me from that purpose.”
More gently than Trella would have believed possible for his Jupiter-strong muscles, Quest took her in his arms.
“Now I can say I love you,” he said. “That was part of the conditioning too: I couldn’t love any woman until my job was done.”
Trella disengaged herself.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Don’t you know this, too, now: that you’re not a man, but an android?”
He looked at her in astonishment, stunned by her words.
“What in space makes you think that?” he demanded.
“Why, Quest, it’s obvious,” she cried, tears in her eyes. “Everything about you . . . your build, suited for Jupiter’s gravity . . . your strength . . . the fact that you were able to live in Jupiter’s atmosphere after the oxygen equipment failed. I know you think Dr. Mansard was your father, but androids often believe that.”
He grinned at her.
“I’m no android,” he said confidently. “Do you forget my father was inventor of the surgiscope? He knew I’d have to grow up on Jupiter, and he operated on the genes before I was born. He altered my inherited characteristics to adapt me to the climate of Jupiter . . . even to being able to breathe a chlorine atmosphere as well as an oxygen atmosphere.”
Trella looked at him. He was not badly hurt, any more than an elephant would have been, but his tunic was stained with red blood where the bullets had struck him. Normal android blood was green.
“How can you be sure?” she asked doubtfully.
“Androids are made,” he answered with a laugh. “They don’t grow up. And I remember my boyhood on Jupiter very well.”
He took her in his arms again, and this time she did not resist. His lips were very human.
GOODBYE, DEAD MAN!
Tom W. Harris
Mattup had killed a man, so it was logical he should be punished. It was Danny who came up with the idea of leaving him with the prophecy—
IT WAS ORLEY Mattup’s killing of the old lab technician that really made us hate him.
Mattup was a guard at the reactor installation at Bayless, Kentucky, where my friend Danny Hern and I were part of the staff when the Outsiders took everything over. In what god-forsaken mountain hole they had found Mattup, and how they got him to sell out to them, I don’t know. He was an authentic human, though. You can tell an Outsider.
Mattup and Danny and I were playing high-low-jack the night Uncle Pete was killed, sitting on the widewalk where Mattup had a view of the part of the station he was responsible for. High-low-jack is a back-country card game; Danny had learned it in northern Pennsylvania, where he came from, and Mattup loved the game, and they had taught it to me because the game is better three-handed. The evening sessions had been Danny’s idea—I think he figured it might give him a line on Mattup.
On the night in question, Mattup was on a week’s losing streak and was in a foul humor. He was superstitious, and he had called for a new deck twice that evening and walked around his seat four different times. His bidding was getting wilder.
“You’d better cool down,” Danny told him. “Thing to do is ride out the bad luck, not fight it.”
Orley picked his nose and looked at his cards, “Bid four,” he growled.
Four is the highest possible bid. Tim played his cards well and he had good ones. He had sewed up three of his points when we heard somebody moving around down on the reactor floor. It was old Uncle Pete Barker, one of the technicians.
“What you want down there?” bawled Mattup.
“Just left my cap by the control room,” said Uncle Pete, “and thought I’d go get it.”
“You keep the hell away from there,” grunted Mattup.
Uncle Pete stopped and stood gazing up at us. We went on playing. It was the last card of the hand, and would either win the game fo
r Mattup or lose it for him. Orley slapped his card down; it was a crucial card, the jack. Danny took it with a queen and Mattup had lost the game.
I felt like clearing out. Mattup’s face was purple and his eyes looked like wolves’ eyes. He glared at Danny, making a noise in his throat, and then I saw his gaze leave Danny and go to something down by the reactor.
It was Uncle Pete, shuffling along toward the control room.
Mattup didn’t say a word. He stood up and unholstered the thing the Outsiders had given him and pointed it at Uncle Pete. There was a ringing in our ears and Uncle Pete began to twist. Something inside him twisted him, twisting inside his arms, his legs, head, trunk, even his fingers. It was only for a few seconds. Then the ringing stopped, and Uncle Pete sunk to the ground, and there was the silence and the smell.
Mattup made us leave the body there until we had played two more hands. Danny won one; he was a man with good nerves. When we were back in our room he said, “That did it—I’m going to get that guy.”
“I hate his big thick guts,” I said, buttoning my pajama shirt, “but how are you going to get him?”
“I’ll get him,” said Danny. “Meanwhile, we’ll keep playing cards.”
Things went on almost normally at the Bayless reactor. It was a privately-owned pool-type reactor, and we were sent samples of all sorts of material for irradiation from all over the country. Danny was one of the irradiation men; I generally handled controlling. The Outsiders had filled the place with telescreens and guards, and all mail was opened, but there was no real interference with the work. I began to worry a little about Danny. Almost every afternoon he spent an hour alone in our room, with the door closed.
Mattup kept getting worse; an animal with power. He used to go hunting with the damnable Outsider weapon, although the meat killed with it wasn’t fit to eat, and he used it on birds until there wasn’t one left anywhere near the plant. He never killed a bluebird, though. He said it was bad luck. Sometimes he drank moonshine corn liquor, usually alone, because the Outsiders wouldn’t touch it, but sometimes he made some of us drink with him, watching sharply to see we didn’t poison him and craftily picking his nose. When he was drunk he was abusive.