Space Pioneers

by Hank Davis

  He swung about and came out of the cave, seething. He had only to look at the ground to see where the other robots had gone. He knew, in any case. Where had the vision-plate come from if not from the wrecked spaceship? Where had the robots gone, if not to the same place?

  Steve made for that spaceship. He knew how to find it. He followed the six fresh sets of footprints in the dust of Calypso’s surface. He used the skating gait in which a space-suited human being seems to glide just above the surface with a sort of magic ease. He moved swiftly.

  He saw the spaceship while still a mile or more away. It was exactly as it had been shown him in the vision-plate, but it was no longer smashed. Five brisk, graceful figures moved busily about it. They put shattered plates together, and something glowed fiercely along the jagged line of the break for the barest fraction of an instant and the plates were whole again. The ship had been wrecked. Markings in the dust told of fragments flung here and there. Those fragments now were gone. They had been fitted back into place.

  Steve came up to the scene of activity. The five golden figures turned to face him. They were impassive, of course, but one moved as if to allow him a clearer view of the spaceship on which they worked. He had the feeling of an elaborate courtesy extended to him. His rage deepened. He felt that he was being patronized—and by robots!

  “Very nice!” he snarled within his helmet. “Make fun of me, let that partner of yours kid me along to get the trick of finding more fuel and fix up your own ship! But what good will it do you? There’s not enough to do you any good! You don’t know that!”

  He found a door leading into the ship. He stalked in. His helmet-lights showed the interior as the very perfection of functional design. Everything within him that was engineer or artist responded. But he raged.

  The robots followed him in, politely. They made way for him without servility. One of them pointed as if proudly to the focus of all the design within the ship. It was a machine whose principle was inscrutable. Its function, though, was plain. It was the space-drive.

  The few visible parts had that beautiful precision of workmanship that a machine which is both simple and efficient must have, and an insane jealousy came to Steve. This ship and that machine and these gallant golden figures were the products of a civilization Earth could not match. He could not believe that his own helplessness for lack of rocket fuel had not been understood and discounted by the metal men. They had a purpose now. He had wakened one, and that one had wakened the rest, and now they prepared to return to their home planet, while he would remain behind to die.

  He was jealous because he counted as nothing, either to the slender figures here about him, or their fellow in his own spaceship. He was jealous because they moved in brisk and comradely companionship, with apparent certain hope, and he was lonely to the brink of madness as he waited to die.

  Since he had given them life and hope, he could take it away. There was a massive bar of metal lying beside the space-drive. He seized it. He raised it in a savage, hate-filled swing to destroy the space-drive utterly.

  And he was helpless. Mechanical muscles move more swiftly and more strongly than human ones. Two of the metal men held him fast. Without effort. Without even any appearance of resentment. Just as they would have restrained a child.

  He struggled, while a choking maniacal fury swept him, beside which despair was calmness. He felt the metal bar wrested from his space-gloves in a gentle withdrawal.

  Then there was stillness. The five slim metal figures looked at him. They looked at each other, and Steve hated them because they could communicate with each other and he knew nothing of what they said.

  One moved away. He returned with a flat plate which was the duplicate of the one that had been brought to the space-cruiser. He held it before Steve. A picture formed on it.

  It was a picture of Steve in the space-cruiser, putting rocket-fuel into the tiny double tank of the first robot’s torso. It was the happening which had meant the revival of all six.

  That picture faded, and another formed. This was of Steve striking savage blows at the mechanism now before him with the metal bar. That faded in turn and a completely arbitrary symbol took its place.

  Suddenly, he was released. One of the five metal men handed the metal bar to him. All of them stood back and looked at him. It was so astounding a thing that if shocked him back to calm.

  “You mean,” he growled furiously, “I woke you up, so I’m entitled to smash your drive. It’s an equation, eh? That’s what that symbol meant. All right—”

  He raised the bar. None of the metal men stirred. They waited to see their space-drive smashed. Steve glared at them and flung the bar to one side.

  “You know where you can go!” he said bitterly. “All of you!”

  He stalked out of the spaceship. None of the metal men followed. He turned and stared back at it, then headed for the cruiser.

  On the way, his bitterness increased. He began to see many things. His companion in the space-cruiser had discarded the tiny catalyzer he’d built, because it was inefficient. With sudden startled insight, Steve awoke to the sort of efficiency that would enable the metal men to fuel their ship for operation with the contents of such minute reservoirs of fuel. What would enable one metal man to share a pint of fuel with five companions, and have power to weld and repair metal—?

  The detonation of a single molecule of rocket-compound will raise the temperature of that molecule close to the hundred-thousand-degree mark. And it was not difficult to envision—though Steve could not design—a forcefield which would raise a molecule already at that temperature to disintegration temperature.

  Ordinary matter would never reach such a temperature, which is usually found only in stars. Only rocket fuel or something similar, fed molecule by molecule into a tiny disintegration chamber, would, by its detonation, acquire a starting temperature the field could carry to the breakdown point.

  The metal men, then, had atomic power, using an organic-base fuel and working on individual molecules so that they could make power-units for individual robots—or for spaceships or giant machines which could shift planets.

  “Fine thing!” raged Steve. He’d given the first robot a pint of rocket fuel. Used in atomic-power generators, that would fuel all six for thousands of years. No wonder they could afford to let him smash their space-drive if he wished! With ten thousand years in which to repair it—he’d be dead in less than two months. They could take the space-cruiser apart, inch by inch, and find the rocket-fuel he had left. They would have all the time there was—

  “I can set it off!” snarled Steve. “Then let ’em try to laugh at me!” He moved onward, vengefully. He reached the space-cruiser.

  His companion, the one he had thought of as a friend to comfort him until his air was gone, that companion rose and looked at him.

  Steve got out of his spacesuit, scowling. The slender golden figure reached for the flat vision-plate. He held it out to Steve. Pictures formed on it. Steve would not look at them.

  “Take it away!” he said bitterly. “You’ve been laughing at me! I don’t want to see what you’ve got to say! Get out! I’m going to get rid of you!”

  There were loose papers where the robot had been sitting. Looking at everything, it had found paper and notes in Steve’s handwriting, and pens and pencils to write with. It had experimented, and it had been writing. Steve saw diagrams, each with a minute and beautifully executed sketch beside it to make it lucid.

  “Going to amuse me, eh?” he snarled. “You’re going to get out!”

  He was jealous. He was lonely. He was bitter. And he was humiliated that the metal men had been prepared to let him smash their space-drive because he had brought them back to life. He went savagely into the engine room. He wrenched at fastenings. He came back with two tubes of rocket-fuel, the amount that should be left over after the servicing of the ship past his death. He thrust the tubes angrily upon the slender metal man.

  “Get out!” he r
aged. “You’re not my friend! I won’t be patronized by a pack of clockworks! I won’t let ’em feel superior! Take this to your friends and don’t come back!”

  He shoved the quietly yielding robot to the airlock. He thrust him in. He worked the controls which opened the outer door swiftly, wasting a lockful of air.

  Minutes later he saw the robot marching sturdily across the desolate, airless surface of Calypso, carrying the tubes of fuel.

  Steve drove himself to eat. He smoked, prodigally wasting his air. He coddled his rage, because there was no sense in being reasonable. He saw moving things on the flat vision-plate, but for a long time he would not look. Presently he yielded. He saw the robots’ spaceship lift from its resting place. He saw the ring-mountains of Calypso from that spaceship in flight. Then he looked down upon his own space-cruiser as it would be seen from above. It enlarged swiftly, as if the ship which saw it was descending.

  There was an indescribable crunching vibration underfoot, and he knew. He scowled out the port. The other spaceship had landed close beside his own. Metal figures got out of it. One carried a burden, lightly. They advanced to the cruiser’s airlock.

  Steve stood still, frozen. He heard metal footprints on metal plates. The soughing of air. The metal man he had thrust out a few hours since came back—and another.

  The second man carried a contrivance which looked remarkably like an ordinary metal bar, but it had been finished since Steve had planned to use it as a maul. Now it was a space-drive like the one on the robots’ own ship, though smaller. It had been made while the repair work on the space-ship was under way.

  The golden figure which carried it moved assuredly toward the engine room. The other made a somehow appealing gesture to Steve and offered the vision-plate urgently. With an attempt at cold dignity, Steve uncompromisingly looked. Presently he swore softly.

  “The devil! You looked at all my vision records, eh? You know what people are like. So you are people too! But we build houses to live in, and you build robots. And then we make cities for our houses to be in, and you make cities for your robots to occupy. Of course,” he said generously, “you’ve an advantage in that you’re not material, and you use that black stuff in your skull cases as a way of affecting matter—”

  Then he paused. A moment later he said awkwardly, “But, after all, we’re not material either. We use the gray stuff in our skull cases to affect matter, too. Only our robots, our bodies, aren’t as tough as yours. But we’re pretty much alike—”

  The second golden figure came out of the engine room, with a strand of compacted wires trailing behind it. It paid them out carefully and went into the control room.

  “You aren’t a dummy, though. If you were,” said Steve uncomfortably, “I couldn’t accept a favor from you. I wouldn’t be beholden to a machine! But since you’re people, why, I can. So, thanks. Maybe when our two races get together we’ll be friends. I hope so—”

  The other robot came out of the control room. Steve knew exactly what had been done. A new space-drive had been attached to the old one, which served now purely as a mounting. A bare two ounces of rocket fuel, included in the space-drive device, would drive his ship half a dozen times across the solar system.

  From a man with a ship which was useless because it had only twelve hours’ one-gravity drive left, he had become a man who’d given the robots means to cross the galaxy, and still had a ship more prodigally fueled than any other spaceship ever made by men.

  He had, moreover, the design of the drive and the conversion-unit which made rocket fuel into atomic power. And his essential instruments had been connected to the new drive so that he could operate his ship exactly as before. He could drive the cruiser at three gravities all the way to the halfway point, and decelerate as recklessly, so that his air would be more than ample.

  “I guess,” said Steve, “you’ll be going on. If you had any queer notions about conquest by your race, you wouldn’t turn me loose. So I won’t worry about that! When you’ve taken off, I’ll start home.”

  The erect and gallant small figure before him could not smile, of course. It had probably understood little or nothing of what Steve actually said, but it had looked at a lot of vision-records. It knew a lot about human beings now. It held out a metal, articulated hand.

  Steve understood. He shook hands and swore at the chill of the metal.

  “Cold hands, warm heart,” he growled. “All right, pal! Good luck on the way home!”

  He heard the airlock doors operate, one after the other. He watched from a port as the ship of the metal men lifted and dwindled to a point and vanished.

  Then he lighted a cigarette and strolled into his own control room, to take off and set a course for home.

  ALL THE TRAPS OF EARTH

  by Clifford D. Simak

  Many a pioneer in the past became one in order to get beyond the reach of the law, to avoid jail or even a necktie party. This accidental pioneer was facing something perhaps worse, and the hero’s not being human doesn’t keep this from being a typically warm and, yes, human story by Mr. Simak.

  The inventory list was long. On its many pages, in his small and precise script, he had listed furniture, paintings, china, silverware and all the rest of it—all the personal belongings that had been accumulated by the Barringtons through a long family history.

  And now that he had reached the end of it, be noted down himself, the last item of them all:

  One domestic robot, Richard Daniel, antiquated but in good repair.

  He laid the pen aside and shuffled all the inventory sheets together and stacked them in good order, putting a paper weight upon them—the little exquisitely carved ivory paper weight that Aunt Hortense had picked up that last visit she had made to Peking.

  And having done that, his job came to an end.

  He shoved back the chair and rose from the desk and slowly walked across the living room, with all its clutter of possessions from the family’s past. There, above the mantel, hung the sword that ancient Jonathon had worn in the War Between the States, and below it, on the mantelpiece itself, the cup the Commodore had won with his valiant yacht, and the jar of moon-dust that Tony had brought back from Man’s fifth landing on the Moon, and the old chronometer that had come from the long-scrapped family spacecraft that had plied the asteroids.

  And all around the room, almost cheek by jowl, hung the family portraits, with the old dead faces staring out into the world that they had helped to fashion.

  And not a one of them from the last six hundred years, thought Richard Daniel, staring at them one by one, that he had not known.

  There, to the right of the fireplace, old Rufus Andrew Barrington, who had been a judge some two hundred years ago. And to the right of Rufus, Johnson Joseph Barrington, who had headed up that old lost dream of mankind, the Bureau of Paranormal Research. There, beyond the door that led out to the porch, was the scowling pirate face of Danley Barrington, who had first built the family fortune.

  And many others—administrator, adventurer, corporation chief. All good men and true.

  But this was at an end. The family had run out.

  Slowly, Richard Daniel began his last tour of the house—the family room with its cluttered living space, the den with its old mementos, the library and its rows of ancient books, the dining hall in which the crystal and the china shone and sparkled, the kitchen gleaming with the copper and aluminum and the stainless steel, and the bedrooms on the second floor, each of them with its landmarks of former occupants. And finally, the bedroom where old Aunt Hortense had finally died, at long last closing out the line of Barringtons.

  The empty dwelling held a not-quite-haunted quality, the aura of a house that waited for the old gay life to take up once again. But it was a false aura. All the portraits, all the china and the silverware, everything within the house would be sold at public auction to satisfy the debts. The rooms would be stripped and the possessions would be scattered and, as a last indignity, the house
itself be sold.

  Even he, himself, Richard Daniel thought, for he was chattel, too. He was there with all the rest of it, the final item on the inventory.

  Except that what they planned to do with him was worse than simple sale. For he would be changed before he was offered up for sale. No one would be interested in putting up good money for him as he stood. And, besides, there was the law—the law that said no robot could legally have continuation of a single life greater than a hundred years. And he had lived in a single life six times a hundred years.

  He had gone to see a lawyer and the lawyer had been sympathetic, but had held forth no hope.

  “Technically,” he had told Richard Daniel in his short, clipped lawyer voice, “you are at this moment much in violation of the statute. I completely fail to see how your family got away with it.”

  “They liked old things,” said Richard Daniel. “And, besides, I was very seldom seen. I stayed mostly in the house. I seldom ventured out.”

  “Even so,” the lawyer said, “there are such things as records. There must be a file on you . . .”

  “The family,” explained Richard Daniel, “in the past had many influential friends. You must understand, sir, that the Barringtons, before they fell upon hard times, were quite prominent in politics and in many other matters.”

  The lawyer grunted knowingly.

  “What I can’t quite understand,” he said, “is why you should object so bitterly. You’ll not be changed entirely. You’ll still be Richard Daniel.”

  “I would lose my memories, would I not?”

  “Yes, of course you would. But memories are not too important. And you’d collect another set.”