The Collected Stories

by Earl

  Not that he didn’t watch me, too. I was hoping for some kind of break, but he had that spark-gun ready for me all the time.

  “Why isn’t your cousin along?” I asked, wondering whether Warren intended to share his treasure.

  WARREN grinned. It turned me cold.

  “My cousin is dead. He’s lying—or was lying—under a table at the Orion Club.”

  “Murder!” I gasped. “You let him spend twenty years of his life translating the map, then killed him for it!” Warren drew himself up. He fastened his beady eyes on me.

  “Say your prayers, Blaine,” he said right out. “Dead men tell no tales!” About what I could have expected. I gulped, but didn’t say a thing. What could I say? Besides, there was Della, still piling that jewelry on her. She looked up for a second, then went right back to her greedy sorting.

  “As for you, Sally,” Warren said to her, “I think you and I understand each other, eh?”

  She nodded, still slipping strings of precious beads on. She didn’t care when I went out. The sooner the better, for her.

  Warren raised the spark-gun, pressing the trigger.

  “Wait!”

  Della stood straight suddenly. There was so much stuff on her that her shoulders sagged.

  “What?” Warren said.

  “You can’t kill Blaine!” Della said. “I won’t let you. I—I love him!”

  You could have heard an electron drop, it was so quiet for a second. Warren’s face twisted like a gorilla’s when he saw that she had fooled him all along.

  “Then you’ll die too, Sally!” he barked. “With Blaine.” And he swung the gun on her.

  Then Della did a queer, unbelievable thing. She walked straight toward the gun!

  “Stop, you little fool!” I screamed. “He’ll shoot—”

  Warren did shoot. The gun shot out a long spark. It would hit Della, burn all her skin and half her insides. Electrocution, they call it. I tried to put my hands in front of my eyes, but I was paralyzed.

  The spark leaped at Della. A funny thing happened. It spread all over her, leaping across the strings of jewelry. It hissed around for a second, then grounded into the dirt.

  And Della wasn’t touched!

  Warren stood like a fish out of water, gasping. He had no chance to shoot again.

  Then I was there—in one ten-foot, flying tackle. He crashed down. His head banged hard against the treasure-chest. He went limp.

  IN one minute I had Warren trussed up with cord tom from Della’s silque dress. And I had his gun. The tables were turned.

  “He’ll get the anesthetic-chair when we bring him back to civilization,” I said, “for murder.”

  “What about the treasure?” Della wanted to know.

  “We’ll split it with the cousin’s family,” I said. “You don’t need all that stuff on you, do you?”

  “Not now,” she said.

  “Brave girl,” I said.

  “Uh—” she said, fainting in my arms. But she was up and around in five minutes, chipper as ever.

  “Lucky you had that jewelry on,” I told her.

  “Lucky!” she snorted. “I like that! I planned it. Most of this stuff is strung together with beryllium filigree. Beryllium is one of the best conductors of electricity known. The spark simply followed them, and grounded, leaving me alone.”

  “You figured it out beforehand?” I grunted. “Say, where did you learn so much? I never thought a society dame—”

  “But I’m not a society dame,” she informed me gently. “I was an entertainer at the Orion Club. Singing and dancing. And plenty sick of that life too. All that jewelry I had is imitation. I’m just a plain working girl!”

  “Well, that’s one mystery solved,” I said calmly. I can be calm like that at the strangest times, even when inside I’m yelling like an Indian on the warpath. But I didn’t want to let on too much how I felt about her.

  I saw her glance at the map, where it said: “The treasure is hidden on the ninth body in size in the Solar System.”

  “And the other mystery, too,” she said. “We’re on—”

  “Mercury!” I yelled, timing it just right to beat her.

  “Are we?” Della said sweetly—too sweetly.

  Then I got real red in the face, wishing I’d stopped to think a minute. Mercury had no moons, though it did have ancient canals. And Mercury was hot.

  This wasn’t Mercury.

  “Gosh, I’m a dimwit,” I said. “It’s—well, we both know now, don’t we, so I don’t have to say it.”

  She nodded.

  “Taxi, lady?” I said. “I know the way home!”

  CLUES AND SOLUTION

  TO

  MYSTERY WORLD

  By EANDO BINDER

  (See pages 85-95)

  There are 37 bodies or worlds in the Solar System, including the nine planets and 28 satellites. “Mystery World” is one of those 37. Clues as follows:

  1. Venus and Pluto are eliminated when Tom Blaine tests the gravity, by jumping, and finds it is one-fifth to two-fifths of Earth’s gravity. Venus and Pluto have gravities closer to Earth’s.

  2. Neptune with only one moon, and Mercury with no moons are eliminated when Blaine and Della notice the two moons overhead.

  3. Uranus is out of the running when they observe that one of the moons is retrograde (revolving in a direction opposite to the planet’s rotation). All four of Uranus’ moons are retrograde. Therefore, since by inference one of the observed moons is non-retrograde, it can’t be Uranus.

  4. Mars is eliminated when the third moon rises, since Mars has only two moons.

  5. Saturn drops out when Blaine and Della notice that the Earth-Uranus Express liner is accelerating, on the way to Uranus. Saturn is close to 1,000 million miles from Earth (one billion) on the average. But any ship heading from Earth to Uranus, and passing Saturn, would have to be decelerating, for the remaining distance is only about 750 million miles. Therefore, it can only be Jupiter they are observing from, since going past Jupiter the ship would still be accelerating.

  At this point, all the planets are eliminated except Jupiter. The reader knows it can’t be Jupiter itself, since gravity there is terrific. Therefore, it is a moon of Jupiter. Which one? Only four are eligible, of Jupiter’s eleven. Ganymede, Callisto, Io, and Europa. The others are so small that their gravity would be less than one-fifth Earth’s.

  6. The final clue is at the end of the story, in the treasure-map. The ninth body in size in the Solar System (exclusive of the Sun) is not Mercury! Ganymede is larger than Mercury. (Mercury’s diameter—3,100 miles; Ganymede, 3,500 miles.) Even Callisto is larger than Mercury, with a diameter of 3,300 miles. Thus, Mercury is only the 11th body in size. Ganymede is the ninth, following Mars. Thus, the identity of the mystery world is—Ganymede!

  ADAM LINK FACES A REVOLT

  Fired with the idea of creating a Utopia/ Adam Link built an amazing perfect city. But he found that it is quite possible for robots to be as imperfect as humans.

  “UTOPIA?” Eve said, startled.

  II I had just used the word. We had been talking for twenty-four hours straight, discussing our next “move” in the world of humans. We had just returned, a week before, from our adventure in the past. I had gone to seek out Thor, the legendary robot, and compare notes with him.

  I had come back dazed, for I was Thor! It was one of Time’s profound paradoxes. I did not like to dwell on it too much. It offered no solution, anyway, to my present-day problem.

  “Utopia?” Eve repeated. “What misty, romantic nonsense are you toying with in your mind? Erewhon—nowhere! Let’s keep the discussion sane, Adam. This can lead you to a blind wall.”

  But the idea had fired me.

  “I mean a poetical Utopia. A Utopia of science and machines. Put humans in a Utopia and they might very well be near to gods.”

  Eve shook her head, as though I were an obstinate child.

  “Adam, it won’t work, not without social advan
cement. Humans aren’t ready for Utopia. And you couldn’t achieve it single-handedly, anyway.” After a moment she added, “Even if you are Adam Link!”

  No, I couldn’t. But the word “Utopia” still mulled around in my mind, refusing to leave.

  Eve went on with a sigh.

  “It is a wonderful thought, though. There could be Utopia all over Earth, if once they made up their minds to it. Or if they let us lead them to it. But the humans have rejected us, scorned us, even tried to destroy us. We are an orphan form of life, Adam. That is our fate.”

  I might have agreed a while before. But a blazing thought struck me.

  “Utopia!” I breathed. “All over Earth—no. But what about a private Utopia?”

  “What?” Eve was puzzled.

  “My own Utopia! The Utopia of Adam Link!” My microphonic voice crackled. “I’ll show the world. I’ll build a segment of Utopia, and set it before their blind eyes. I’ll push it in their stubborn faces. I’ll build it in the middle of a desert, and make them writhe in shame for their backwardness. Utopia, Eve. Do you hear me—Utopia!”

  Beside Eve, half the mountain creatures must have heard, within a radius of a mile. I was shouting, in my new determination. I am typically a man that way, ready to battle anything in my way to put over a new idea.

  Eve looked at me wonderingly, half awed, half skeptical. She is typically a woman that way, startled at her man’s sudden, overwhelming decisions.

  “Adam Link,” she murmured, “Utopia builder!”

  A FLOWER bloomed in the desert.

  In one month the foundations were going up. In three months the project was in full swing. In six months it was done. A city had sprung full-grown from barren sand.

  Eve and I did not do it alone, of course. Nor did I employ human laborers. No human group, of any size or quality, could have accomplished the feat. Robots were the answer.

  To start from the beginning, Eve and I made one hundred new iridium-sponge brains, in our Ozark hideaway, and brought them to “life.” In a week’s time, we taught them to speak, read and write. Robots are able to skip from “birth” to “maturity” as quickly as their full-capacity brains are crammed with knowledge. Conducting classes twenty-four hours a day, Eve and I taught them the main essentials of life and learning, at a rate a hundred times faster than in human schools.

  Curiously, though, they were not all uniform in mental capacity. Some were not as “bright” as others, and learned more slowly. One, in fact, Robot Number Nine, turned out to be a real dullard, failing to learn his ABC’s in less than three hours after creation. I suppose, in his particular iridium-sponge brain, fewer electrons drummed through each thinking cell. Eve and I could not always turn out a perfect sponge from the electrolytic baths that had produced the metal-brains.

  But most were normal, and absorbed the principles of Einstein’s Relativity by the second week. Number Sixty-Six, however, had deduced Einstein relativity in a week—by himself. He became our special pupil, advancing so rapidly that we realized his capacity was close to ours. Our brains, Eve’s and mine, had been made with special care. Mine by Dr. Link, first creator of a robot. Eve’s by myself.

  Progress was rapid, among them all, when they were fully able to read and understand the meanings behind printed words. I let them loose in my library of selected books which sum-totaled the essence of human knowledge.

  Picture, if you can, a hundred shiny metal forms in rows, passing books along. Each robot flipped the pages rapidly, scanning and absorbing whole paragraphs instantly, with their television eyesight. Books were read in a half hour, from cover to cover. By the time a book reached the hundredth robot, it was in tatters from the metal fingers. But the contents of the book were thereafter imprinted indelibly in one hundred photographic minds.

  AT the end of a month, our hundred new companions were full-fledged “adults.” They were ready for any task set before them. Ready to go out in the world. And then I hesitated.

  “What’s the matter, Adam? They’ve turned out splendidly.”

  I looked at Eve strangely.

  “So did those at the silver mine in California. But they ended tragically!”

  Eve knew what I meant. Once again I was creating a body of robots. Launching the robot race. Into what future? What could be their accepted niche in human society? Into what Promised Land could I, their Moses, lead them?

  “Not into the present world, which would misuse them,” Eve said. “But into Utopia, Adam. Into the world of our making. Into a cross-section of the future!”

  My doubts vanished. “Thanks, Eve,” I said, and called my robot tribe before me.

  “Fellow robots,” I addressed them. “There is no place for our kind in the present world. I have told you my story. But we can make a place for ourselves. Not a strictly robot-community, for it would soon be attacked by humans. Rather it will be a city where humans and robots live side by side, in mutual respect and dependence. We’ll build such a place. We’ll show the sadly misguided humans what such a world can be, if only they will accept us as servants and helpers.”

  There were questions, naturally.

  “These humans,” Number Fourteen asked. “They are stupid?”

  “Perhaps just stubborn,” I answered. “They cling to old ideas and outworn traditions.”

  “Tike the letter Q?” Number Sixty-Six said, as usual the quickest to perceive. “And the clumsy foot-and-pound scale of measures?” Then he asked—“But why do they war?”

  I had had them read history, so that all human doings in past and present times were known to them. They had always been most amazed at that queerest, most tragic of human follies—warfare.

  “They do not know why themselves, much less we,” I said bitingly. More practically, I added: “Mainly it is an economic factor. We will eliminate that factor in our model city.”

  “You mean,” said slow-witted Number Nine, “we will build the buildings without that? What is ‘economic.’ Like cement?”

  We all laughed. Robots laugh silently, but nonetheless heartily. And we sense it in each other by little mannerisms—a blink of the eye mirrors, a twitch of a finger, a sidelong glance. Poor Number Nine, the butt of much of our laughter, clinked in embarrassment as he edged back.

  “Ready, men?” I said, as no more question came. “Let’s go, then. On to Utopia!”

  NO, we didn’t march out like an army.

  A hundred shiny robots marching across country would have brought out the militia in every state. Everything was done in accordance with human methods.

  Eve and I detached the heads from the bodies, packed each separately in straw, and shipped the whole in hired trucks. Eve and I, more or less accepted—or tolerated—by the world, could get such things done. We had money, and money talks. I think if a Martian with five heads came out of nowhere, holding out a thousand dollars of Earth money, the average human would sell him something first, and then come around to being startled at the visitation.

  “Money is too much a force in itself,” I said to Eve. “There will be no money, and its evils, in Utopia City.”

  Two weeks later, our hundred robots, reassembled, sparkled under the hot sun of central Nevada. All around us was the scrubby desert, as far as the eye could reach. I had picked the most desolate spot on the map, for my venture. Even my robots, unaffected by heat or thirst, murmured at the utter barrenness.

  “The nearest large city is 500 miles away,” I informed them, stepping on a rattlesnake after it had futilely broken its fangs against my alloy leg. “The nearest railroad junction is 100 miles. The nearest village—and that of Indians—50 miles. The nearest human, if there happens to be a wandering prospector, perhaps ten miles. To humans, this would be the last place in the world to build a city. There are no roads, rivers, farms, or any connection with the outside civilization. We are as alone here as if on Mars.”

  I swept an arm around.

  “Here,” I finished, “We will build Utopia!”

 
; I WILL not go into elaborate detail. With the fleet of trucks I had purchased, certain of my robots drove 100 miles to the nearest railroad terminal. Here they picked up endless loads of materials I had begun ordering. Cement, stone, steel beams, rivets, lumber, nails—all the paraphernalia of architecture.

  The cost meant nothing. I had a dozen minor inventions on the market, all paying me handsome royalties through anonymous sources. I could invent a dozen other trifles, when needed, to ring the cash registers of any industry or factory in the country.

  The ceaseless caravan shuttled back and forth, bringing the bricks of Utopia.

  Those of my robots not engaged in driving began building. Specialized bodies had been ordered for them. Some had superstrong arms, for carrying. Others had rivet-hammer arms, sawing arms, hammer hands, pulley arms, etc. My robots were laborer and machine in one unit. Several were veritable cranes, with long arms attached to wide flat bases. Some were mounted on tractor wheels, to pull loads of cement or steel to the desired spot.

  Tireless, efficient, strong, my hundred robots worked without cease under the burning sun by day, under floodlights by night. Rapidly the city took form and grew. Blue-prints had been memorized by all. Each knew every step. Eve was superintendent, but seldom gave orders.

  Still, there were hitches. Even robots must be allowed mistakes. One day a huge steel girder slipped from the cable hauling it up, and crashed down on Number Fifty-One, smashing his body to bits. But five minutes later his head, attached to a replacement body, was back at work. Also, Number Thirty fell from a height of 300 feet—luckily not on his head—and he was back at work in five minutes with a new body.

  And so, the schedule of construction went on apace. My robots did not complain at the driving pace, except once. I let them have a day off, to loaf, and thereafter gave them one hour out of twenty-four of idleness. Even robots must have moments of mental relaxation.

  A special personal problem came up soon after. Eve shouted at Number Sixty-Six one day, as he seemed about to let one end of a girder slip out of his grasp. He recovered, then came down from his scaffold.