Astounding Science Fiction Stories Vol 1

by Anthology

  "Wait there!" exclaimed Robert as she reached the shrubs.

  "What? Are you trying to tell me where I can go or not go? I--YI!"

  The shriek was followed by a tremendous splash. Robert stepped forward in time to be spattered by part of the flying spray. It was cold.

  Naturally, being drawn from the brook, he reflected. Oh, well, the sun will warm it tomorrow.

  There was a frenzy of thrashing and splashing in the dimly lighted water at his feet, accompanied by coughs and spluttering demands that he "do something!"

  Robert reached down with one hand, caught his hostess by the wrist, and heaved her up to solid ground.

  "My robots are digging you a little swimming hole," he told her. "They brought the water from the brook by a trench. You can finish it with concrete or plastics later; it's only fifteen by thirty feet."

  He expected some sort of acknowledgment of his efforts, and peered at her through the gloom when none was forthcoming. He thus caught a glimpse of the full-swinging slap aimed at his face. He tried to duck.

  There was another splash, followed by more floundering about.

  "Reach up," said Robert patiently, "and I'll pull you out again. I didn't expect you to like it this much."

  Marcia-Joan scrambled up the bank, tugged viciously at her sodden robe, and headed for the nearest pathway without replying. Robert followed along.

  As they passed under one of the lights, he noticed that the red reflections of the wet material, where it clung snugly to the girl's body, were almost the color of some of his robots.

  The tennis robot, he thought, and the moving targets for archery--in fact, all the sporting equipment.

  "You talk about food for the figure," he remarked lightly. "You should see yourself now! It's really funny, the way--"

  He stopped. Some strange emotion stifled his impulse to laugh at the way the robe clung.

  Instead, he lengthened his stride, but he was still a few feet behind when she charged through the front entrance of the house. The door, having opened automatically for her, started to swing closed. Robert sprang forward to catch it.

  "Wait a minute!" he cried.

  Marcia-Joan snapped something that sounded like "Get out!" over her shoulder, and squished off toward the stairs. As Robert started through the door to follow, the striped robot hastened toward him from its post in the hall.

  "Do not use the front door!" it warned him.

  "Out of my way!" growled Robert.

  The robot reached out to enforce the command. Robert seized it by the forearm and put all his weight into a sudden tug. The machine tottered off balance. Releasing his grip, he sent it staggering out the door with a quick shove.

  * * * * *

  A hasty glance showed Marcia-Joan flapping wetly up the last steps. Robert turned to face the robot.

  "Do not use that door!" he quoted vindictively, and the robot halted its rush indecisively. "Only Marcia-Joan uses it."

  The major-domo hesitated. After a moment, it strode off around the corner of the house. First darting one more look at the stairs, Robert thrust his head outside and shouted: "Blue Two!"

  He held the door open while he waited. There was an answer from the shrubbery. Presently, his own supervisor hurried up.

  "Fetch the emergency toolbox!" Robert ordered. "And bring a couple of others with you."

  "Naturally, Robert. I would not carry it myself."

  A moment after the robot had departed on the errand, heavy steps sounded at the rear of the hall. Marcia-Joan's robot had dealt with the mechanism of the back door.

  Robert eyed the metal mask as the robot walked up to him. He found the color contrast less pleasant than ever.

  "I am not using the door," he said hastily. "I am merely holding it open."

  "Do you intend to use it?"

  "I haven't decided."

  "I shall carry you out back," the robot decided for him.

  "No, you don't!" exclaimed Robert, leaping backward.

  The door immediately began to swing shut as he passed through.

  Cursing, he lunged forward. The robot reached for him.

  This time, Robert missed his grip. Before he could duck away, his wrist was trapped in a metal grasp.

  The door will close, he despaired. They'll be too late.

  Then, suddenly, he felt the portal drawn back and heard Blue Two speak.

  "What does Robert wish?"

  "Throw this heap out the door!" gasped Robert.

  Amid a trampling of many feet, the major-domo was raised bodily by Blue Two and another pair of Robert's machines and hustled outside. Since the grip on Robert's wrist was not relaxed, he involuntarily accompanied the rush of metal bodies.

  "Catch the door!" he called to Blue Two.

  When the latter sprang to obey, the other two took the action as a signal to drop their burden. The pink-and-blue robot landed full length with a jingling crash. Robert was free.

  With the robots, he made for the entrance. Hearing footsteps behind him as the major-domo regained its feet, he slipped hastily inside.

  "Pick up that toolbox!" he snapped. "When that robot stops in the doorway, knock its head off!"

  Turning, he held up a finger.

  "Do not use the front door!"

  The major-domo hesitated.

  The heavy toolbox in the grip of Blue Two descended with a thud. The pink-and-blue robot landed on the ground a yard or two outside the door as if dropped from the second floor. It bounced once, emitted a few sparks and pungent wisps of smoke, lay still.

  "Never mind, that's good enough," said Robert as Blue Two stepped forward. "One of the others can drag it off to the repair shop. Have the toolbox brought with us."

  "What does Robert wish now?" inquired Blue Two, trailing the man toward the stairway.

  "I'm going upstairs," said Robert. "And I intend to be prepared if any more doors are closed against me!"

  He started up, the measured treads of his own robots sounding reassuringly behind him....

  * * * * *

  It was about a week later that Robert sat relaxed in the armchair before his own telescreen, facing Henry's wizened visage.

  The elder man clucked sympathetically as he re-examined the scratches on Robert's face and the bruise under his right eye.

  "And so you left there in the morning?"

  "I certainly did!" declared Robert. "We registered a marriage record at the city library by television, of course, but I don't care if I never see her again. She needn't even tell me about the child, if any. I simply can't stand that girl!"

  "Now, now," Henry said.

  "I mean it! Absolutely no consideration for my wishes. Everything in the house was run to suit her convenience."

  "After all," Henry pointed out, "it is her house."

  Robert glared. "What has that to do with it? I don't think I was as unreasonable as she said in smashing that robot. The thing just wouldn't let me alone!"

  "I guess," Henry suggested, "it was conditioned to obey Marcia-Joan, not you."

  "Well, that shows you! Whose orders are to count, anyway? When I tell a robot to do something, I expect it done. How would you like to find robots trying to boss you around?"

  "Are you talking about robots," asked Henry, "or the girl?"

  "Same thing, isn't it? Or it would be if I'd decided to bring her home with me."

  "Conflict of desires," murmured Henry.

  "Exactly! It's maddening to have a perfectly logical action interfered with because there's another person present to insist--insist, mind you--on having her way."

  "And for twenty-odd years, you've had your own way in every tiny thing."

  Somewhere in the back of Robert's lurked a feeling that Henry sounded slightly sarcastic.

  "Well, why shouldn't I?" he demanded. "I noticed that in every disagreement, my view was the right one."

  "It was?"

  "Of course it was! What did you mean by that tone?"

  "Nothing...." Henry seemed lo
st in thought. "I was just wondering how many 'right' views are left on this planet. There must be quite a few, all different, even if we have picked up only a few by television. An interesting facet of our peculiar culture--every individual omnipotent and omniscient, within his own sphere."

  Robert regarded him with indignant incredulity.

  "You don't seem to understand my point," he began again. "I told her we ought to come to my house, where things are better arranged, and she simply refused. Contradicted me! It was most--"

  He broke off.

  "The impudence of him!" he exclaimed. "Signing off when I wanted to talk!"

  * * *

  Contents

  SATELLITE SYSTEM

  By H. B. Fyfe

  Having released the netting of his bunk, George Tremont floated himself out. He ran his tongue around his mouth and grimaced.

  "Wonder how long I slept ... feels like too long," he muttered. "Well, they would have called me."

  The "cabin" was a ninety-degree wedge of a cylinder hardly eight feet high. From one end of its outer arc across to the other was just over ten feet, so that it had been necessary to bevel two corners of the hinged, three-by-seven bunk to clear the sides of the wedge. Lockers flattened the arc behind the bunk.

  Tremont maneuvered himself into a vertical position in the eighteen inches between the bunk and a flat surface that cut off the point of the wedge. He stretched out an arm to remove towel and razor from one of the lockers, then carefully folded the bunk upward and hooked it securely in place.

  With room to turn now, he swung around and slid open a double door in the flat surface, revealing a shaft three feet square whose center was also the theoretical intersection of his cabin walls. Tremont pulled himself into the shaft. From "up" forward, light leaked through a partly open hatch, and he could hear a murmur of voices as he jackknifed in the opposite direction.

  "At least two of them are up there," he grunted.

  He wondered which of the other three cabins was occupied, meanwhile pulling himself along by the ladder rungs welded to one corner of the shaft. He reached a slightly wider section aft, which boasted entrances to two air locks, a spacesuit locker, a galley, and a head. He entered the last, noting the murmur of air-conditioning machinery on the other side of the bulkhead.

  Tremont hooked a foot under a toehold to maintain his position facing a mirror. He plugged in his razor, turned on the exhauster in the slot below the mirror to keep the clippings out of his eyes, and began to shave. As the beard disappeared, he considered the deals he had come to Centauri to put through.

  "A funny business!" he told his image. "Dealing in ideas! Can you really sell a man's thoughts?"

  Beginning to work around his chin, he decided that it actually was practical. Ideas, in fact, were almost the only kind of import worth bringing from Sol to Alpha Centauri. Large-scale shipments of necessities were handled by the Federated Governments. To carry even precious or power metals to Earth or to return with any type of manufactured luxury was simply too expensive in money, fuel, effort, and time.

  On the other hand, traveling back every five years to buy up plans and licenses for the latest inventions or processes--that was profitable enough to provide a good living for many a man in Tremont's business. All he needed were a number of reliable contacts and a good knowledge of the needs of the three planets and four satellites colonized in the Centaurian system.

  Only three days earlier, Tremont had returned from his most recent trip to the old star, landing from the great interstellar ship on the outer moon of Centauri VII. There he leased this small rocket--the Annabel, registered more officially as the AC7-4-525--for his local traveling. It would be another five days before he reached the inhabited moons of Centauri VI.

  He stopped next in the galley for a quick breakfast out of tubes, regretting the greater convenience of the starship, then returned the towel and razor to his cabin. He decided that his slightly rumpled shirt and slacks of utilitarian gray would do for another day. About thirty-eight, an inch or two less than six feet and muscularly slim, Tremont had an air of habitual neatness. His dark hair, thinning at the temples, was clipped short and brushed straight back. There were smile wrinkles at the corners of his blue eyes and grooving his lean cheeks.

  He closed the cabin doors and pulled himself forward to enter the control room through the partly open hatch. The forward bulkhead offered no more head room than did his own cabin, but there seemed to be more breathing space because this chamber was not quartered. Deck space, however, was at such a premium because of the controls, acceleration couches, and astrogating equipment that the hatch was the largest clear area.

  Two men and a girl turned startled eyes upon Tremont as he rose into their view. One of the men, about forty-five but sporting a youngish manner to match his blond crewcut and tanned features, glanced quickly at his wrist watch.

  "Am I too early?" demanded Tremont with sudden coldness. "What are you doing with my case there?"

  The girl, in her early twenties and carefully pretty with her long black hair neatly netted for space, snatched back a small hand from the steel strongbox that was shaped to fit into an attaché case. The second man, under thirty but thick-waisted in a gray tee-shirt, said in the next breath, "Take him!"

  Too late, Tremont saw that the speaker had already braced a foot against the far bulkhead. Then the broad face with its crooked blob of a nose above a ridiculous little mustache shot across the chamber at him. Desperately, Tremont groped for a hold that would help him either to avoid the charge or to pull himself back into the shaft, but he was caught half in and half out.

  He met the rush with a fist, but the tangle of bodies immediately became confusing beyond belief as the other pair joined in.

  Something cracked across the back of his head, much too hard to have been accidental.

  When Tremont began to function again, it took him only a few seconds to realize that life had been going on without him for some little time.

  For one thing, the heavy man's nosebleed had stopped, and he was tenderly combing blood from his mustache with a fingertip.

  For another, they had managed to stuff Tremont into a spacesuit and haul him down the shaft to the air lock. Someone had noosed the thumbs of the gauntlets together and tied the cord to the harness supporting the air tanks.

  Tremont twisted his head around to eye the three of them without speaking. He was trying to decide where he had made his mistake.

  Bill Braigh, the elderly youth with the crewcut? Ralph Peters, the pilot who had come with the ship? Dorothy Stauber, the trim brunette who had made the trip from Earth on the same starship as Tremont? He could not make up his mind without more to go on.

  Then he remembered with a sinking sensation that all of them had been clustered about his case of papers and microfilms when he had interrupted them.

  "I trust you aren't thinking of making us any trouble, Tremont," drawled Braigh. "Give up the idea; you've been no trouble at all."

  "Where do you think this is getting you?" demanded Tremont.

  Braigh chuckled.

  "Wherever it would have gotten you," he said. "Only at less expense."

  "Ask him for the combination," growled Peters.

  Braigh scrutinized Tremont's expression.

  "It would probably take us a while, Ralph," he decided regretfully. "It's simpler to put him outside now and be free to use tools on the box."

  Tremont opened his mouth to protest, but Braigh clapped the helmet over his head and screwed it fast.

  "You'll never read the code!" yelled Tremont, struggling to break free. "Those papers are no good to you without me!"

  Someone slammed him against the bulkhead and held him there with his face to it. He could do nothing with his hands, joined as they were, and very little with his feet. It dawned upon him that they could not hear a word, and he fell silent. Twisting his head to peer out the side curve of his vision band, he caught a glimpse of Peters suiting up.

&nb
sp; A few minutes later, they opened the inner hatch of the air lock and shoved Tremont inside. Peters followed, gripping him firmly about the knees from behind.

  "Here we go!" grunted Peters, and Tremont realized that he could communicate again, over their suit radios.

  "You won't get far, trying to read the code I have those papers written in," he warned. "You'd better talk this over before you make a mistake."

  "Ain't no mistake about it," said Peters, pressing toward the outer hatch. "So you chartered the rocket. You felt you oughta go out to see about a heavy dust particle hitting the hull. You fell off an' we never found you."

  "How will you explain not going yourself? Or not finding me by instruments?"

  Peters clubbed Tremont's foot from the tank rack he had hooked with the toe.

  "How could I go? Leave the ship without a pilot? An' the screens are for pickin' up meteorites far enough out to mean somethin' at the speeds they travel. So you were too close to register, leastways till it was way too late. You must have suffocated when your air ran out."

  Tremont scrabbled about with his feet for some kind of hold. The outer hatch began to open. He could see stars out there.

  "Wait!" shouted Tremont.

  It was too late. He felt himself shoot forward as if Peters had thrust a foot into the small of his back and shoved. Tremont tried to grab at the edge of the air lock, but it was gone. A puff of air frosted about him, its human bullet.

  * * * * *

  The stars spun slowly before his eyes. After a moment, the gleaming hull of the Annabel swam into his field of view. It was already thirty feet away and the air lock was closing. He caught a glimpse of a spacesuited figure with the light behind it.

  Then he was looking at the stars again.

  The small, distant brilliance of Alpha Centauri made him squint in the split second before the suit's photoelectric cells caused filters to flip down before his eyes. Then it was stars again, and the filters retracted.

  "They can't do this!" said Tremont. "Peters! Do you hear me? You can't get away with this!"

  There was no answer.