Space Pioneers

by Hank Davis

  If he hurried, he might make it. But he’d have to hurry, for the ship wouldn’t stay longer than it took to unload the consignment for this place and take on new cargo.

  He got up from the chair, still only half-decided.

  And suddenly he remembered how, standing in the swirling mistiness, he had seen the ship as a diagram rather than a ship, and as he thought about it, something clicked inside his brain and he leaped toward the door.

  For now he knew what had been wrong with the spaceship’s diagram—an injector valve was somehow out of kilter; he had to get back there before the ship took off again.

  He went through the door and down the corridor. He caught sight of the ancient robot’s startled face as he ran across the lobby and out into the street. Pounding steadily toward the spaceport, he tried to get the diagram into his mind again, but it would not come complete—it came in bits and pieces, but not all of it.

  And even as he fought for the entire diagram, he heard the beginning take-off rumble.

  “Wait!” he yelled. “Wait for me! You can’t . . .”

  There was a flash that turned the world pure white and a mighty invisible wave came swishing out of nowhere and sent him reeling down the street, falling as he reeled. He was skidding on the cobblestones and sparks were flying as his metal scraped along the stone. The whiteness reached a brilliance that almost blinded him and then it faded swiftly and the world was dark.

  He brought up against a wall of some sort, clanging as he hit, and he lay there, blind from the brilliance of the flash, while his mind went scurrying down the trail of the diagram.

  The diagram, he thought—why should he have seen a diagram of the ship he’d ridden through space, a diagram that had shown an injector out of whack? And how could he, of all robots, recognize an injector, let alone know there was something wrong with it. It had been a joke back home, among the Barringtons, that he, a mechanical thing himself, should have no aptitude at all for mechanical contraptions. And he could have saved those people and the ship—he could have saved them all if he’d immediately recognized the significance of the diagram. But he’d been too slow and stupid and now they all were dead.

  The darkness had receded from his eyes and he could see again and he got slowly to his feet, feeling himself all over to see how badly he was hurt. Except for a dent or two, he seemed to be all right.

  There were robots running in the street, heading for the spaceport, where a dozen fires were burning and where sheds and other structures had been flattened by the blast.

  Someone tugged at his elbow and he turned around. It was the ancient robot.

  “You’re the lucky one,” the ancient robot said. “You got off it just in time.”

  Richard Daniel nodded dumbly and had a terrible thought: What if they should think he did it? He had gotten off the ship; he had admitted that he was on the lam; he had rushed out suddenly, just a few seconds before the ship exploded. It would be easy to put it all together—that he had sabotaged the ship, then at the last instant had rushed out, remorseful, to undo what he had done. On the face of it, it was damning evidence.

  But it was all right as yet, Richard Daniel told himself. For the ancient robot was the only one that knew—he was the only one he’d talked to, the only one who even knew that he was in town.

  There was a way, Richard Daniel thought—there was an easy way. He pushed the thought away, but it came back. You are on your own, it said. You are already beyond the law. In rejecting human law, you made yourself an outlaw. You have become fair prey. There is just one law for you—self-preservation.

  But there are robot laws, Richard Daniel argued. There are laws and courts in this community. There is a place for justice.

  Community law, said the leech clinging in his brain, provincial law, little more than tribal law—and the stranger’s always wrong.

  Richard Daniel felt the coldness of the fear closing down upon him and he knew, without half-thinking, that the leech was right.

  He turned around and started down the street, heading for the transients barracks. Something unseen in the street caught his foot and he stumbled and went down. He scrambled to his knees, hunting in the darkness on the cobblestones for the thing that tripped him. It was a heavy bar of steel, some part of the wreckage that had been hurled this far. He gripped it by one end and arose.

  “Sorry,” said the ancient robot. “You have to watch your step.”

  And there was a faint implication in his words, a hint of something more than the words had said, a hint of secret gloating in a secret knowledge.

  You have broken other laws, said the leech in Richard Daniel’s brain. What of breaking just one more? Why, if necessary, not break a hundred more. It is all or nothing. Having come this far, you can’t afford to fail. You can allow no one to stand in your way now.

  The ancient robot half-turned away and Richard Daniel lifted up the bar of steel, and suddenly the ancient robot no longer was a robot, but a diagram. There, with all the details of a blueprint, were all the working parts, all the mechanism of the robot that walked in the street before him. And if one detached that single bit of wire, if one burned out that coil, if—

  Even as he thought it, the diagram went away and there was the robot, a stumbling, falling robot that clanged on the cobblestones.

  Richard Daniel swung around in terror, looking up the street, but there was no one near.

  He turned back to the fallen robot and quietly knelt beside him. He gently put the bar of steel down into the street. And he felt a thankfulness—for, almost miraculously, he had not killed.

  The robot on the cobblestones was motionless. When Richard Daniel lifted him, he dangled. And yet he was all right. All anyone had to do to bring him back to life was to repair whatever damage had been done his body. And that served the purpose, Richard Daniel told himself, as well as killing would have done.

  He stood with the robot in his arms, looking for a place to hide him. He spied an alley between two buildings and darted into it. One of the buildings, he saw, was set upon stone blocks sunk into the ground, leaving a clearance of a foot or so. He knelt and shoved the robot underneath the building. Then he stood up and brushed the dirt and dust from his body.

  Back at the barracks and in his cubicle, he found a rag and cleaned up the dirt that he had missed. And, he thought hard.

  He’d seen the ship as a diagram and, not knowing what it meant, hadn’t done a thing. Just now he’d seen the ancient robot as a diagram and had most decisively and neatly used that diagram to save himself from murder—from the murder that he was fully ready to commit.

  But how had he done it? And the answer seemed to be that he really had done nothing. He’d simply thought that one should detach a single wire, burn out a single coil—he’d thought it and it was done.

  Perhaps he’d seen no diagram at all. Perhaps the diagram was no more than some sort of psychic rationalization to mask whatever he had seen or sensed. Seeing the ship and robot with the surfaces stripped away from them and their purpose and their function revealed fully to his view, he had sought some explanation of his strange ability, and his subconscious mind had devised an explanation, an analogy that, for the moment, had served to satisfy him.

  Like when he’d been in hyperspace, he thought. He’d seen a lot of things out there he had not understood. And that was it, of course, he thought excitedly. Something had happened to him out in hyperspace. Perhaps there’d been something that had stretched his mind. Perhaps he’d picked up some sort of new dimension-seeing, some new twist to his mind.

  He remembered how, back on the ship again, with his mind wiped clean of all the glory and the knowledge, he had felt like weeping. But now he knew that it had been much too soon for weeping. For although the glory and the knowledge (if there’d been a knowledge) had been lost to him, he had not lost everything. He’d gained a new perceptive device and the ability to use it somewhat fumblingly—and it didn’t really matter that he still was at a loss a
s to what he did to use it. The basic fact that he possessed it and could use it was enough to start with.

  Somewhere out in front there was someone calling—someone, he now realized, who had been calling for some little time . . .

  “Hubert, where are you? Hubert, are you around? Hubert . . .”

  Hubert?

  Could Hubert be the ancient robot? Could they have missed him already?

  Richard Daniel jumped to his feet for an undecided moment, listening to the calling voice. And then sat down again. Let them call, he told himself. Let them go out and hunt. He was safe in this cubicle. He had rented it and for the moment it was home and there was no one who would dare break in upon him.

  But it wasn’t home. No matter how hard he tried to tell himself it was, it wasn’t. There wasn’t any home.

  Earth was home, he thought. And not all of Earth, but just a certain street and that one part of it was barred to him forever. It had been barred to him by the dying of a sweet old lady who had outlived her time; it had been barred to him by his running from it.

  He did not belong on this planet, he admitted to himself, nor on any other planet. He belonged on Earth, with the Barringtons, and it was impossible for him to be there.

  Perhaps, he thought, he should have stayed and let them reorient him. He remembered what the lawyer had said about memories that could become a burden and a torment. After all, it might have been wiser to have started over once again.

  For what kind of future did he have, with his old outdated body, his old outdated brain? The kind of body that they put a robot into on this planet by way of punishment. And the kind of brain—but the brain was different, for he had something now that made up for any lack of more modern mental tools.

  He sat and listened, and he heard the house—calling all across the light years of space for him to come back to it again. And he saw the faded living room with all its vanished glory that made a record of the years. He remembered, with a twinge of hurt, the little room back of the kitchen that had been his very own.

  He arose and paced up and down the cubicle—three steps and turn, and then three more steps and turn for another three.

  The sights and sounds and smells of home grew close and wrapped themselves about him and he wondered wildly if he might not have the power, a power accorded him by the universe of hyperspace, to will himself to that familiar street again.

  He shuddered at the thought of it, afraid of another power, afraid that it might happen. Afraid of himself, perhaps, of the snarled and tangled being he was—no longer the faithful, shining servant, but a sort of mad thing that rode outside a spaceship, that was ready to kill another being, that could face up to the appalling sweep of hyperspace, yet cowered before the impact of a memory.

  What he needed was a walk, he thought. Look over the town and maybe go out into the country. Besides, he remembered, trying to become practical, he’d need to get that plastication job he had been warned to get.

  He went out into the corridor and strode briskly down it and was crossing the lobby when someone spoke to him.

  “Hubert,” said the voice, “just where have you been? I’ve been waiting hours for you.”

  Richard Daniel spun around and a robot sat behind the desk. There was another robot leaning in a corner and there was a naked robot brain lying on the desk.

  “You are Hubert, aren’t you?” asked the one behind the desk.

  Richard Daniel opened up his mouth to speak, but the words refused to come.

  “I thought so,” said the robot. “You may not recognize me, but my name is Andy. The regular man was busy, so the judge sent me. He thought it was only fair we make the switch as quickly as possible. He said you’d served a longer term than you really should. Figures you’d be glad to know they’d convicted someone else.”

  Richard Daniel stared in horror at the naked brain lying on the desk.

  The robot gestured at the metal body propped into the corner.

  “Better than when we took you out of it,” he said with a throaty chuckle. “Fixed it up and polished it and got out all the dents. Even modernized it some. Brought it strictly up to date. You’ll have a better body than you had when they stuck you into that monstrosity.”

  “I don’t know what to say,” said Richard Daniel, stammering. “You see, I’m not . . .”

  “Oh, that’s all right,” said the other happily. “No need for gratitude. Your sentence worked out longer than the judge expected. This just makes up for it.”

  “I thank you, then,” said Richard Daniel. “I thank you very much.”

  And was astounded at himself, astonished at the ease with which he said it, confounded at his sly duplicity. But if they forced it on him, why should he refuse? There was nothing that he needed more than a modern body!

  It was still working out, he told himself. He was still riding luck. For this was the last thing that he needed to cover up his tracks.

  “All newly plasticated and everything,” said Andy. “Hans did an extra special job.”

  “Well, then,” said Richard Daniel, “let’s get on with it.”

  The other robot grinned. “I don’t blame you for being anxious to get out of there. It must be pretty terrible to live in a pile of junk like that.”

  He came around from behind the desk and advanced on Richard Daniel.

  “Over in the corner,” he said, “and kind of prop yourself. I don’t want you tipping over when I disconnect you. One good fall and that body’d come apart.”

  “All right,” said Richard Daniel. He went into the corner and leaned back against it and planted his feet solid so that he was propped.

  He had a rather awful moment when Andy disconnected the optic nerve and he lost his eyes and there was considerable queasiness in having his skull lifted off his shoulders and he was in sheer funk as the final disconnections were being swiftly made.

  Then he was a blob of greyness without a body or a head or eyes or anything at all. He was no more than a bundle of thoughts all wrapped around themselves like a pail of worms and this pail of worms was suspended in pure nothingness.

  Fear came to him, a taunting, terrible fear. What if this were just a sort of ghastly gag? What if they’d found out who he really was and what he’d done to Hubert? What if they took his brain and tucked it away somewhere for a year or two—or for a hundred years? It might be, he told himself, nothing more than their simple way of justice.

  He hung onto himself and tried to fight the fear away, but the fear ebbed back and forth like a restless tide.

  Time stretched out and out—far too long a time, far more time than one would need to switch a brain from one body to another. Although, he told himself, that might not be true at all. For in his present state he had no way in which to measure time. He had no external reference points by which to determine time.

  Then suddenly he had eyes.

  And he knew everything was all right. One by one his senses were restored to him and he was back inside a body and he felt awkward in the body, for he was unaccustomed to it.

  The first thing that he saw was his old and battered body propped into its corner and he felt a sharp regret at the sight of it and it seemed to him that he had played a dirty trick upon it. It deserved, he told himself, a better fate than this—a better fate than being left behind to serve as a shabby jailhouse on this outlandish planet. It had served him well for six hundred years and he should not be deserting it. But he was deserting it. He was, he told himself in contempt, becoming very expert at deserting his old friends. First the house back home and now his faithful body.

  Then he remembered something else—all that money in the body!

  “What’s the matter, Hubert?” Andy asked.

  He couldn’t leave it there, Richard Daniel told himself, for he needed it. And besides, if he left it there, someone would surely find it later and it would be a giveaway. He couldn’t leave it there and it might not be safe to forthrightly claim it. If he did, this other ro
bot, this Andy, would think he’d been stealing on the job or running some side racket. He might try to bribe the other, but one could never tell how a move like that might go. Andy might be full of righteousness and then there’d be hell to pay. And, besides, he didn’t want to part with any of the money.’

  All at once he had it—he knew just what to do. And even as he thought it, he made Andy into a diagram.

  That connection there, thought Richard Daniel, reaching out his arm to catch the falling diagram that turned into a robot. He eased it to the floor and sprang across the room to the side of his old body. In seconds, he had the chest safe open and the money safely out of it and locked inside his present body.

  Then he made the robot on the floor become a diagram again and got the connection back the way that it should be.

  Andy rose shakily off the floor. He looked at Richard Daniel in some consternation.

  “What happened to me?” he asked in a frightened voice.

  Richard Daniel sadly shook his head. “I don’t know. You just keeled over. I started for the door to yell for help, then I heard you stirring and you were all right.”

  Andy was plainly puzzled. “Nothing like this ever happened to me before,” he said.

  “If I were you,” counseled Richard Daniel, “I’d have myself checked over. You must have a faulty relay or a loose connection.”

  “I guess I will,” the other one agreed. “It’s downright dangerous.”

  He walked slowly to the desk and picked up the other brain, started with it toward the battered body leaning in the corner.

  Then he stopped and said: “Look, I forgot. I was supposed to tell you. You better get up to the warehouse. Another ship is on its way. It will be coming in any minute now.”

  “Another one so soon?”

  “You know how it goes,” Andy said, disgusted. “They don’t even try to keep a schedule here. We won’t see one for months and then there’ll be two or three at once.”

  “Well, thanks,” said Richard Daniel, going out the door.

  He went swinging down the street with a newborn confidence. And he had a feeling that there was nothing that could lick him, nothing that could stop him.