Robot Trouble

by Bruce Coville

Ramon Korbuscek opened his eyes and checked the position of the moon outside his window. It confirmed what his internal clock had told him: It was time to start the night’s activities. Swinging his feet off his bed, he stood and stretched, his movements so smooth and silent his sleeping roommate didn’t even stir.

  Korbuscek glanced over at the snoring man. A pleasant-enough fellow, but in the way. It was time for him to go.

  It was also time to find out something about these kids. Every time he turned around, he seemed to be crossing paths with them. The rumors he was hearing about their past escapades made him wonder if they might be more of a threat than he had anticipated.

  Moving on the balls of his feet, he crossed to his roommate’s dresser. It took only a moment to find what he needed.

  Seconds later he had lowered himself out the window and was on his way.

  After walking unnoticed through a network of streets, Korbuscek easily entered the Gammand residence. When he had finished there, he went on and prowled through the Swenson home.

  When he reached his third target, however, Korbuscek hesitated before slipping the thin slice of metal he was using to open locks into the doorframe. From what he had been able to ascertain, this house was usually empty during the day. Perhaps it would be safer to come back then.

  But he had already been in two homes tonight, and he was beginning to get a sense of the kind of things these kids were involved with. Not only was he feeling strong with success, his curiosity was operating at a high level.

  Besides, there was one more thing he had to accomplish before he quit for the night.

  So—inside it would be. Enjoying the familiar tingle of excitement, he slid the strip of metal along the edge of the door and popped the lock.

  Drawing on years of practice, he opened the door without a sound. After he stepped into the house he stood for a long time, doing nothing but listening. The breathing told him that all three occupants of the house were asleep.

  Heading away from the heavier breathing, he came to a door that was slightly open. The soft glow of a night-light showed through the crack. Giving the door a slight nudge with his fingers, he peered into the room.

  Incredible! thought the spy. I’ve seen bomb sites that had less rubble.

  He was looking, of course, into Wendy Wendell’s bedroom.

  The Intruder

  Ramon Korbuscek touched a button at the side of his electronic flashlight and played a low beam across the incredibly cluttered floor. There! A clear spot he could put one foot on! He stepped in and looked around. Another!

  He grimaced. This was like finding stepping-stones to cross a stream.

  The spy glanced over at the bed. The night-light showed a round, lightly freckled face. Pigtails stuck out at crazy angles from its sides.

  Turning away from the bed, he raised his flashlight and played it along the opposite wall. It was lined with shelves, the shelves themselves cluttered with a strange mixture of electronic parts and childish toys, including a rather dilapidated-looking teddy bear.

  Unaware of the photoreceptors Wendy had installed behind the bear’s eyes, Korbuscek let his flashlight linger on the toy while he tried to make sense of all this.

  To his alarm, the bear suddenly lurched its feet and growled, “Time to get up, Captain Wendy!”

  Activated by its voice, Blondie the fashion doll stood up, too. “Morning already?” she cried. “That’s gross!”

  “Hey, Wendy!” bellowed a sweet-faced baby doll on the other side of the bear. “Move yer butt!”

  Wendy snorted and flopped over in her bed.

  Horrified, Korbuscek bolted for the door, tripped over an open toolbox, and crashed to the floor.

  “Whazzat?” cried Wendy, sitting bolt upright. “Whozere?”

  Korbuscek scrambled across the floor and out of the room, then down the hall and through the front door. On the bottom step of the porch he hesitated, then decided to take one last risk. Drawing a heavy object from the pack strapped on his back, he stooped and pressed it into the soft soil of the flower bed beside the step.

  As he stood again he heard someone stumbling toward the door.

  Korbuscek sprinted away from the house and faded into the darkness. He was long gone by the time Wendy’s father, Dr. Werner Watson, opened the door and craned his head from side to side, seeking the intruder.

  In her bedroom, Wendy flopped back and forth and a few more times, then began to snore again.

  Trip Davis watched his father’s long, paint-stained fingers deftly peel the shell from a hard-boiled egg.

  “I’ll tell you, Tripper,” said Mr. Davis, trying to sound casual, “I’m not sure how much time you should be spending with those friends of yours.”

  Trip stared at his father in astonishment. “You’ve spent years telling me I should make more friends! Now that I’ve got some, you want me to give them up?”

  “Oh, not necessarily give them up,” said his mother, sliding her hand onto her husband’s arm for support. “But maybe you should be more careful of what you let them talk you into. We just don’t want you getting into a lot of trouble, sweetheart.”

  Trip took a deep breath to help keep him from saying something he shouldn’t. He looked at his parents—his dark-haired, dreamy-eyed father and his ice-blond mother who could make a computer roll over and beg if she wanted to—and wondered if they really knew anything about him.

  The unwelcome question that followed immediately on its heels was How much do I know about them? Trip tried to force the thought out of his mind. He didn’t even want to consider the possibility that one of them might be the spy. But why were they so anxious for him to sever his ties with the gang? Did they know something he didn’t? Was one of them plotting some trouble for his friends?

  Trip felt his head begin to whirl. “I can’t believe you people!” he shouted, pushing himself away from the table. “I just can’t believe you!”

  To his own surprise, he went stomping out of the house.

  The scene at the Wendell-Watson breakfast table was not much calmer than that at the Davis house. However it was not Wendy who was at the center of this storm, but her nemesis, Sergeant Artemus P. Brody.

  “What do you mean, you don’t know?” cried Dr. Werner Watson, staring at Brody. “It’s your business to know!”

  Dr. Watson was still in his bathrobe. His jet-black hair, unruly at its best, looked like a battered bird’s nest—its usual preshower condition. By contrast his wife, Dr. Wendy Wendell II, looked like a shampoo ad. Every strand of her shimmering golden hair was perfectly in place.

  Both of Wendy’s parents were staring scornfully at Sergeant Brody, who sat at their table with a steaming cup of coffee in his hands and a look of abject misery on his face.

  “I’m sorry,” repeated Brody. “I just don’t know who could have broken into your house. And there’s not a clue to be found.”

  “What about the footprint beside the front porch?” asked Wendy, always pleased with an opportunity to show Brody up.

  “I must have overlooked that, missy,” he said between his teeth. “Why don’t you show it to me?”

  “Gladly,” said Wendy.

  Dr. Remov looked up from his chessboard as Trip and Ray scurried into his room at the clinic.

  “Have we got news for you!” said Ray, who looked as if he was about to burst.

  “Another clue about Korbuscek,” whispered Trip, closing the door so they wouldn’t be overheard.

  Speaking quickly, the boys detailed the story of the break-in at the Wendell house and Wendy’s discovery of the footprint near her front door.

  “Are you sure?” asked Dr. Remov when they had finished their recital.

  “Absolutely,” said Trip. “After Wendy showed Brody the footprint, he made a plaster cast of it. It’s a regulation issue boot, the type used by the security guards. Size nine and a half.”

  “Get those folders,” ordered Dr. Remov.

  “They’re right here, sir,” said Ray
. “I was expecting you would ask for them.”

  Adjusting his pillows behind his back, the freckle-spattered scientist pored through the files, checking a certain page in each one. “Get me the chart!” he said abruptly.

  “You’re holding it,” replied Ray. “Bottom folder, last page.”

  Dr. Remov took it out and made a few rapid marks with a pencil. When he was finished, it looked like this:

  “Well,” said Dr. Remov. “There you have it. Five men with size nine and a half boots. Five men with sandy-brown hair. And six right-handers. But only one man with all three of those traits.”

  “Then Graham Tidewater is our spy?” asked Ray eagerly.

  Dr. Remov nodded.

  Hap Swenson swallowed nervously. When the gang had asked him to enlist his father’s help with the rocket project, he had agreed without a fuss. But now that it was time to ask, he was feeling a little nervous. His father was very practical. How he would react to such a “far out” idea was anybody’s guess.

  “Well,” said Mr. Swenson, “are you going to stand there all day, or are you going to say what’s on your mind?”

  Hap swallowed again, then managed to squeeze out the question.

  Henry Swenson looked at his son in astonishment. “What I like to do what?”

  “Help us build a rocket,” repeated Hap.

  Mr. Swenson put down his wrench and picked up a grease rag. He began wiping his hands. “Jeepers, Hap. You know I like doing hobby-type stuff with you. But you’re old enough now I’d rather you only asked when you really needed me. With most of the men gone, I’ve got a lot to do these days, and—”

  “I don’t think you understand, Dad,” said Hap. “I’m not talking about a model rocket. We’ve got something we want to put into orbit.”

  “I knew it!” cried his father, throwing down the rag. “I knew if you started hanging around with those eggheads from the mainland, you’d end up weird. I told your mother just the other day—”

  “Dad, what’s so weird? It’s metal and motors, your favorite stuff. Just think of it as a very powerful car without the wheels.”

  Mr. Swenson stared at his son for a minute, then broke into a slow smile. “All right, I’ll listen,” he said. “That’s all! Just listen. Now, what’s this doohickey supposed to do?”

  Sergeant Brody was still stinging from his early morning encounter with the Wendell family when he led a handpicked group of guards into the building where his new men were housed.

  At a signal from Brody, the crew stopped outside the door to Ramon Korbuscek’s room.

  “This is it,” said Corporal Peters. “We should find our intruder right in here.”

  “All right, men,” said Brody. “Let’s get him. But be careful. Dr. Remov warned me that this guy will probably have lethal weapons hidden on his body. Ready? And… now!”

  The lead guards kicked down the door and charged into the room, guns at the ready. The two men inside jumped to their feet, crying out in astonishment.

  Without hesitation, two of the guards crossed to the right and grabbed Graham Q. Tidewater.

  “Hey!” he cried. “What’s going on?”

  “You can drop the act, Mr. Korbuscek,” snarled Brody. “I don’t know how you managed to weasel yourself into this position, but we’re wise to you now.” He turned to the man who remained. “Sorry for the disturbance, airman. Look at it this way: You’ll have a private room for a while. Just do me one favor in return and keep your mouth shut about this.”

  “Yes, sir!” said the man. He managed to snap off a stylish salute, despite his obvious astonishment at what had just happened.

  “Okay, boys,” said Brody. “Take him away.”

  The man remaining in the room waited until he was sure the guards and their prisoner had left the barracks. Once he was alone Brock A. Rosemunk—otherwise known as Ramon Korbuscek—permitted himself the luxury of a chuckle. The boot he had “borrowed” from his sandy-haired, right-handed roommate had done its work more efficiently than he anticipated. All he had really expected was to throw suspicion off his own size-ten track for a while.

  Korbuscek’s smile faded. There had to be several guards on the island who wore size nine and a half. The fact that someone—he doubted it was Brody himself; more likely it was Remov—had traced the boot he used last night to its true owner so quickly made him a little nervous.

  On the other hand, now that they thought they had captured him, they would stop looking for him.

  As long as he was careful, that should make his job much, much easier.

  Computer Talk

  Roger hummed contentedly as he ordered the computer to enlarge the cargo section on his rocket design. The colorful image on the screen broke apart as the computer began to reformat the diagram. At the same time the program printed a list on the lower part of the screen of all the ways in which the change would affect the overall performance of the rocket.

  “It’ll never fly, Orville,” said Paracelsus when the new diagram was complete.

  Ignoring the automaton, Roger scanned the list and made notes of the major points. As he had expected, the correction created several new difficulties. He would have to come up with a way to solve them. But that was his job; the computer merely pointed out the problems.

  Sometimes he wondered what people did before they had computer-aided design. CAD functions were so fast and efficient it was hard to imagine how many hours it would have taken in the old days to do things he could now perform in a matter of minutes.

  He thought of something his father liked to say: “The real question isn’t how we got along without such things: It’s what we’re going to do now that we have them!”

  Of course, that would be even more true if Project Alpha actually succeeded in turning ADAM into a computer that could actually think instead of merely executing programs.

  But for now it was up to him, and this was just what he had been wanting to do—settle down and get to work. The gang’s various adventures had been fun, but nothing beat the thrill of creating something. With Korbuscek in the brig and no new leads on Black Glove to follow, he could feel free to do just that.

  Besides, with any luck, this rocket would draw their enemy out of hiding.

  While Roger applied himself to designing Euterpe’s rocket, the two female members of the A.I. Gang were hard at work in the neighboring room.

  Wendy was running tests on the control modules she had removed from the security robot. They weren’t that complicated once she had determined the theory behind them. But the work was time-consuming. She glanced over at Rachel, who was humming quietly to herself as she passed page after page of information through the optical scanner they had attached to the Sherlock terminal.

  Wendy scowled and jabbed angrily at the circuit board with her micropliers. She wanted to say something to Rachel, but she didn’t know how. What really bugged her was that she had gone from being the wounded party to being the villain.

  It had happened when Rachel had come to her with an apology the day after she told Dr. Remov about Wendy’s password program. It had been a first-class apology: Rachel had admitted it was all her fault, talked about how awful she felt, and asked to be excused for the error.

  Unfortunately, instead of accepting the apology, Wendy had been scathingly sarcastic and said some things—well, several things—that she now wished she had kept to herself.

  Since then, Rachel hadn’t spoken a word to her unless absolutely necessary.

  The solution, Wendy knew, was simple. It was her turn to apologize. But it made her angry to have to come up with an apology when the whole mess had been Rachel’s fault to begin with.

  Besides, she didn’t do apologies.

  “Hi, guys!” said Ray, bounding through the door with his basketball firmly in his grip. “How’s it going?”

  The most articulate responses came from Norman the Doorman, who said, “Greetings and welcome!” and Rin Tin Stainless Steel, who barked, “Hi, handsome!” />
  The girls looked up and grunted their greetings, but neither actually spoke.

  “Almost ready to rearrange that robot’s brain?” asked Ray, looking over Wendy’s shoulder at the circuit board.

  “Bug off!” she snapped.

  “Right,” said Ray. “I figured you’d say that.”

  Nice work, Wendy, thought the Wonderchild. Keep it up and maybe they’ll find a nice hole for you to work in so you don’t keep offending civilized people.

  Ray dribbled his ball across the room to where Rachel was working. “How’s it going, partner?” he asked, hoping for a friendlier response than he had gotten from Wendy.

  “Jmphgurg,” replied Rachel, trying to talk around the pencil she had clenched between her teeth.

  Ray accurately translated this to mean, “Just a minute—” He put down his basketball and sat on it. His use of the word partner had been deliberate, since he was also assigned to the scanner project.

  He had been assigned to it primarily because of his glitch-spotting abilities. When Rachel was trying to get the computer to actually understand what she had given it to read, it was usually Ray who could spot the break in communications between human and machine. He didn’t know how he did it; it was just an ability he had.

  Rachel finished what she was doing and looked up, then down to where Ray sat. “Hi.”

  “Feeling nonverbal?”

  She shrugged. “Actually, I feel like I’ve got words coming out my ears. I’ve fed a small library into this thing. But I still can’t figure out what ends up in the comprehensive memory and what remains in isolated cells.”

  “What’s comprehensive memory?” asked Hap, who had come in along with Trip just in time to hear the end of Rachel’s comment.

  Wendy looked up from the control panel with a witty remark about ignorant grease monkeys on the tip of her tongue. To her enormous relief, she managed to squelch it before the words escaped and did her more damage.

  “It’s the computer’s general working memory,” said Rachel. “The stuff it can draw on without being instructed to look for it specifically. The comprehensive memory also holds the things it can do without a lot of special instructions: number crunching, word processing, tasks like that. The more comprehensive memory a computer has, the ‘smarter’ it is.”