Robot Trouble

by Bruce Coville

  “Terrible!” growled Ray.

  Just then Roger and Wendy drove up. “Let’s get inside,” said Roger. “Then we can figure out how to spring Ray without worrying about Brody showing up.”

  “You’re going to owe me a lot of favors for this one, Roger,” said Ray.

  Trip was already pulling at the pile of brush and rocks they had created to hide the entrance to the cavern. “Give me a hand, will you?” he yelled. “We haven’t got all night!”

  Roger and Wendy were at his side in an instant. The three worked in silence until the area was clear.

  “That’s it!” said Trip, as he dragged away the last of the big stones. Wiping the sweat from his brow, he headed back to the dune buggy. “It won’t be long now, Ray,” he said as he slipped behind the wheel.

  “Roger!” called Wendy. “Are you coming?”

  “Huh? Oh sure, sure. Be right there.”

  But the redhead continued to stand at the mouth of the cave, staring back in the direction they had come. He was searching for a pair of headlights—or anything to indicate the approach of another vehicle. Search as he might, he saw nothing.

  Rachel and Hap

  Ramon Korbuscek and Dr. Stanley Remov rolled over and over in the dirt, pummeling each other with their fists.

  The fight was strangely silent. Neither man cried out for help, neither cried out in anger. The only sounds were the ones they made scrabbling against the soil and the occasional thud of a well-aimed punch.

  For several minutes the battle was nearly even. Then Korbuscek landed a solid blow on Dr. Remov’s jaw. The older man fell back, his head striking the ground heavily.

  Pressing his advantage, Korbuscek hit him again, and yet again.

  Dr. Remov’s struggles grew weaker.

  Then a strange thing happened. Korbuscek drew back his fist to deliver what would surely have been the final blow. Yet at a whispered word from Dr. Remov, he let his fist drop. Crying out in terror, he scrambled from his fallen opponent and ran into the darkness as if the hounds of hell were at his heels.

  Dr. Remov lay very still for several minutes.

  Then he began to chuckle.

  When he tried to move, however, his chuckles turned to groans. Slowly, each move an agony, he began dragging himself toward his house.

  He collapsed before he was halfway there.

  If Rachel and Hap’s dune buggy had been making any noise at all, they would never have found Dr. Remov. Only the silence of the electric motor (and the fact that they were moving at little better than a crawl) made it possible for the scientist’s low moans to reach their ears.

  Rachel was the first to hear him—largely because Hap was focusing so thoroughly on the road. The reason for his intensity was simple: He was driving without lights, to avoid attracting attention. But he was so fixed on what he was doing that when Rachel grabbed his arm and hissed, “What was that?” he nearly spun them off the road.

  “Don’t do that!” he yelled. Then, remembering that they were trying to be silent, he lowered his voice. “What was what? I didn’t hear anything.”

  “Shhh!” said Rachel. “Be quiet and listen.”

  Hap obeyed, slowing the buggy even further to do so.

  “There. Didn’t you hear it? Stop the buggy!”

  “I still don’t hear anything,” grumbled Hap as he applied the brake again. “I hope you know what you’re doing!”

  They sat in silence for a moment, both straining their ears. This time Hap heard the moan, too. “It came from over there!” he whispered.

  “Right!” agreed Rachel. “It sounds like someone in trouble. Let’s go!”

  Hap grabbed her arm as she started to scramble out of the dune buggy. “Take it easy. We don’t want to get caught out here at this time of night. Let’s make sure this is really an emergency before we go getting ourselves in trouble.”

  Rachel hesitated, then nodded. The movement was barely visible in the starlight. Moving quietly, the two youngsters worked their way toward the source of the sound. After their second tumble, they clasped hands to keep each other from falling.

  “There it is again,” whispered Rachel, trying to concentrate on the business at hand and not the nearness of Hap. “It is someone in trouble!”

  Hap switched on the flashlight he had pulled from the buggy and pointed it in the direction of the sound. Rachel clutched his arm and cried out in horror.

  “Roger, will you get in here?” cried Trip impatiently. “I need your help!”

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Roger. “Be right there.” He took one last look in the direction where Wendy had just disappeared in her dune buggy to search for Rachel and Hap, then turned and hurried into the cavern. Ray was still trapped in Deathmonger’s clutches.

  “Careful!” said Trip as Roger began to tug at one of the metal tentacles. “We don’t want to damage it.”

  “I don’t care if you destroy it!” said Ray. “JUST GET ME OUT OF HERE!”

  “Will you both be quiet!” snapped Roger as he struggled to disengage Ray from the robot’s tenacious grip.

  Everyone fell silent—except for the robot, which continued to chant, “Death to the intruders!” in its crude, rasping voice. Trip didn’t mind the reprimand, since he knew what had caused it. In the time he had known Roger, he had rarely seen him get angry, no matter how difficult the task they faced. But right now they were all on edge with worry about Rachel and Hap, and none more so than Rachel’s twin.

  In a way Trip envied Wendy, who had gone out to look for the strays. Action was always better than waiting, even if you were busy with another important task.

  “There’s got to be a service panel here somewhere,” said Roger in exasperation. “Trip, move that light to the right.”

  Trip picked up the lantern. Stalactites and stalagmites glimmered in its stray beams, great rocky fangs that thrust from the floor and ceiling of the cavern. As Trip moved the light in the direction Roger had indicated, the patches of shadow it cast flowed across the stone walls like giant fingers groping for a lost dream. Trip smiled. For as long as he could remember, he had loved caves. He found them enthralling, always felt they might somehow lead you to some deep and ancient secret in the heart of the earth. Next to the ones about flying, his favorite dreams were always about caves.

  “Found it!” crowed Roger, prying up a flap of metal on the side of the robot’s head. “Now we should get somewhere!”

  He began poking around in the robot’s skull.

  “Death to the intruders!” it roared. “Death to the death to the deathtothe tothe to ghliiikn…”

  “Well, that takes care of that,” said Trip.

  “A lucky guess,” said Roger.

  “See if you can make another one, will you?” moaned Ray. “If you don’t get me out of here soon I’ll still have black and blue marks by the time I’m old enough to vote!”

  Roger squinted into the control box. The tip of his tongue was sticking out from between his lips, as it always did when he needed to concentrate and couldn’t rub his fingers together. “Here goes nothing,” he said, poking at a button with his screwdriver.

  Immediately the robot began to tighten the tentacle it had wrapped around Ray’s waist.

  “Turn it off!” screamed the captive. “It’s killing me!”

  Roger worked desperately at the button. It wouldn’t come back out.

  “It’s breaking my ribs!” cried Ray.

  “Oh, cripes!” said Roger. Throwing away the screwdriver, he thrust his hand into the control box and ripped out the entire panel.

  “So much for keeping the circuits intact,” said Trip dryly as the robot froze into inactivity.

  Wendy came strolling into the cave just in time to see Trip and Roger finish cutting through Deathmonger’s tentacle with a hacksaw. All three boys were streaked with sweat and dirt. Ray sagged between his friends like a survivor just pulled from a major accident.

  Though Roger turned eagerly at the sound of Wendy’s entr
ance, his shoulders drooped with despair when he saw that she was alone.

  “Hey, don’t be so glum,” said the Wonderchild. “I found them, I just couldn’t get at them. They’ve got the top brass in an uproar. Seems someone attacked Dr. Remov, and Hap and Rachel were the ones who found him.” Wendy grimaced. “The doc was pretty bloodied up, from what I can make out. Anyway, Hap and Rachel dragged him to the infirmary, then roused Dr. Clark to take care of him. They’ve got half the island there now, trying to figure out what’s going on. It’s downright plasmagacious. The best thing is Brody. He’s fit to be tied because he can’t figure out how the missing robot connects with the attack on Remov—which makes sense, because it doesn’t. But he’s got it into his thick skull that it does, which is good for us, since the only thing harder than getting an idea into that mass of bone is getting an idea out of it. Hwa and McGrory are hovering like a pair of ducks, and Dr. Mercury—”

  “Wait a minute!” yelled Roger. “You’re going too fast. Let’s get one thing clear. Are Hap and Rachel okay?”

  “As near as I can tell. I picked up most of my information from the security band on the radio. I didn’t want to get anywhere near that mess.”

  “And Dr. Remov?” asked Trip, who was quite fond of the tall, freckle-faced scientist.

  “He’s in pretty rough shape. They’re not worried about him buying the farm. But he’s not going to be doing any mountain climbing for a while, either.”

  “I didn’t know Dr. Remov was a mountain climber,” said Ray.

  Wendy rolled her eyes.

  “How did Hap and Rachel explain being out at this time of night?” asked Trip.

  “They told Brody they were out on a date!” said Wendy, grinning wickedly. Turning to Roger, she added, “Boy, I’m glad I’m not going to be at your house tomorrow morning!”

  The look on Anthony Phillips’s face when he came to breakfast the next morning was enough to curdle the milk on his children’s cereal.

  “I received a very disturbing call from Dr. Hwa a little while ago,” said Dr. Phillips as he took his seat at the table. “Very disturbing.”

  Roger frowned. When their father started repeating himself like that, it usually meant big trouble.

  Rachel busied herself with her coffee.

  “I don’t know what the Swenson boy’s parents think about this kind of thing,” said Dr. Phillips, running his hand through his thinning auburn hair. “Personally, I find it deeply disturbing to be informed by my boss that my twelve-year-old daughter was out joyriding at two in the morning when I thought she was safely in bed!”

  As a longtime student of cranky parent speeches, Roger had to give his father credit. This one was intense, yet too subdued to justify Rachel getting angry in response—always a good opening stance. The main problem was that it was also completely misinformed. Whether Dr. Phillips would have been any happier if he knew what was really going on was another question altogether. But Roger didn’t like to see Rachel get in trouble for something that, as far as he knew, hadn’t even crossed her mind.

  His train of thought was interrupted when his father turned his attention from Rachel toward him. “I almost hate to ask this,” said Dr. Phillips. “But knowing the way you two operate, I feel that I have to. Roger, did you know what was going on last night?”

  Roger looked at his father with wide, innocent eyes. “Yes, sir, I did. As a matter of fact, it was my idea.” Dr. Phillips looked as if he was going to fall off his chair. “Would you care to explain that?” he asked, struggling to remain calm.

  Rachel stared at her brother in fascination, wondering how he was going to wriggle out of this one.

  At the moment Roger had no idea how he was going to get out of it. But his brain was operating at top speed. Clutching at the tablecloth, he stared his father straight in the eye. “Dad,” he said seriously, “can I trust you?”

  Dr. Phillips looked totally confused. “Haven’t you got the question backward?”

  Roger shook his head. “This is vitally important. It has to do with the robot.”

  Dr. Phillips blinked. “What robot?”

  “Brody’s robot! One of his security robots was captured last night. Didn’t you know about that?”

  “They don’t keep me posted on security problems,” said Dr. Phillips huffily.

  “That’s part of the problem! They don’t keep anyone posted. That’s why we were out last night. There’s something weird going on around here, and we—”

  “Now look,” said Dr. Phillips, “I want you two to keep your lightly freckled noses out of things that are none of your business.”

  “Surviving here is everyone’s business,” said Roger softly. “If we had been keeping our noses clean last month, we wouldn’t be here today—and neither would anyone else, since that wacko would have blown the whole island to kingdom come.”

  Dr. Phillips opened his mouth, then stopped. Roger was right: The entire population of Anza-bora Island owed their lives to the kids’ “interference” in that security problem. He decided to change direction. “All right, do you know what happened to Brody’s robot?”

  “We’re working on it.”

  Rachel gasped, then covered it by pretending she was choking. She couldn’t believe her brother’s audacity. His reply was perfectly honest, of course. But it was also open to two interpretations. In this case the truth—that they were actually working on the robot—was so outrageous that she was certain her father would opt to believe that they were working on finding it.

  Dr. Phillips sighed. “I knew it wasn’t going to be easy raising you two after we lost your mother, but honest to God, I never expected anything like this. Do me a favor, will you?”

  “What is it, sir?” asked Roger, his voice filled with respect.

  “Stay out of trouble.”

  “We’ll try real hard.”

  In this, Roger spoke the absolute truth. He planned on working very, very hard to keep from getting caught.

  Dr. Remov

  Dr. Celia Clark, the no-nonsense neurosurgeon who had switched to computers in the hope of finding a way to link brains to bytes, stood in front of the hall leading to Dr. Remov’s room with her arms folded across her chest. Running the clinic was her share of the island’s “housekeeping,” and she ruled the place with an iron hand.

  “I’m sorry, kids,” she said firmly, “but Stanley does not need a mob descending on him right now. He has had all the excitement he can take for the time being. Two visitors is all I will allow, and that’s final.”

  The gang moaned. Flushed by his earlier success in fast-talking his father, Roger stepped forward and offered a long and complicated explanation of why the rules should be bent on this occasion.

  Pinching the bridge of her rather prominent nose, Dr. Clark listened carefully to Roger’s reasoning. Moving slowly, as if considering what he had said, she transferred her long, chestnut-colored braid from one shoulder to the other.

  “You know, Roger, that almost made sense,” she said at last. “Until I actually tried to sort out exactly what you said. At that point it took me only a moment to reach the inescapable conclusion that you had just spouted the biggest pile of horse puckey I have heard in a long time!”

  “Defeat!” cried Roger. He slapped a hand to his forehead and collapsed into an institutional armchair.

  Dr. Clark turned to the others. “All right, two of you are getting in. Who will it be?”

  After a moment’s conference it was agreed that as the “rescuers,” Rachel and Hap should have the first chance to visit their friend.

  “Don’t take it too hard,” whispered Rachel to her twin. “If you won them all, there’d be no living with you.”

  “Are you coming, Rachel?” asked Dr. Clark. “I don’t have all morning!”

  Rachel had not had a chance to talk to Hap alone since the gang had convened that morning. So she took advantage of the walk down the hall to whisper, “What did your parents say about last night?”

/>   Hap smiled. “My mom was pretty mad. But Dad told her to leave me alone. He said it just showed I was a chip off the old block. That didn’t make her very happy, let me tell you! I’m afraid he’d be very disappointed if he knew why we were really out there. He’s quite a romantic at heart.”

  Rachel made no response to this. But she did remind herself to avoid appearing too dreamy-eyed when she looked at her handsome friend. Settle down, she told herself fiercely. You’ve got more important things to think about right now.

  When Dr. Clark ushered them into the recuperation room they found Dr. Remov sitting up in bed, playing chess.

  Rachel stifled a cry of shock. In the dark she hadn’t been able to see how badly battered the scientist really was. Though she had been horrified by all the blood, she had told herself that once it was washed off, he would look much better. She had been wrong. His heavily freckled face was so swollen and puffy it made her think of a toasted marshmallow; his cheeks were mottled with black and blue marks, a fierce shiner circled one eye, and a line of ugly stitches marched across his chin and down his neck.

  “Ah, my rescuers!” cried Dr. Remov jovially. “Let me finish this game, and then we’ll have a chat. I have some very important things to say to you.” He looked up. “Thank you, Dr. Clark,” he said in a voice that made it clear she was being dismissed.

  Her face darkened a bit, but she stepped out of the room and closed the door. Remov smiled with one side of his mouth. “Stop trying not to look at me, Rachel. I know it’s pretty awful. But as one computer scientist said to the other, I’m not ready to cash in my chips yet. Now be quiet for a minute while I figure out my next move.”

  He stared at the chessboard, his brow furrowed in concentration, then slid his queen three spaces to the right.

  “Oh, sir, that was a wicked move,” said his opponent, who happened to be a robot. Rachel and Hap watched in fascination as the silver-skinned automaton scratched its head, studied the board, then reached out and moved a bishop close to Dr. Remov’s queen.