The door chime pinged solemnly.
I took a peek through the door camera and saw a man in a bellboy’s uniform, holding a large traveling case. I recognized the face, so I let him in.
“The rest of your luggage, sir,” he said with a straight face.
“Thank you very much,” I told him. I handed him a tip, and he popped off.
This stuff was special equipment that I hadn’t wanted Ravenhurst or anybody else to get his paws into.
I opened it carefully with the special key, slid a hand under the clothing that lay on top for camouflage, and palmed the little detector I needed. Then I went around the room, whistling gently to myself.
The nice thing about an all-metal room is that it’s impossible to hide a self-contained bug in it that will be of any use. A small, concealed broadcaster can’t broadcast any farther than the walls, so any bug has to have wires leading out of the room.
I didn’t find a thing. Either Ravenhurst kept the room clean or somebody was using more sophisticated bugs than any I knew about. I opened the traveling case again and took out one of my favorite gadgets. It’s a simple thing, really: a noise generator. But the noise it generates is non-random noise. Against a background of “white,” purely random noise, it is possible to pick out a conversation, even if the conversation is below the noise level, simply because conversation is patterned. But this little generator of mine was non-random. It was the multiple recording of ten thousand different conversations, all meaningless, against a background of “white” noise. Try that one on your differential analyzers.
By the time I got through, nobody could tap a dialogue in that room, barring, as I said, bugs more sophisticated than any the United Nations knew about.
* * * *
Then I went over and tapped on the communicating door between my room and Jack Ravenhurst’s. There was no answer.
I said, “Jack, I’m coming in. I have a key.”
She said, “Go away. I’m not dressed. I’m going to bed.”
“Grab something quick,” I told her. “I’m coming in.”
I keyed open the door.
She was no more dressed for bed than I was, unless she made a habit of sleeping in her best evening togs. Anger blazed in her eyes for a second, then that faded, and she tried to look all sweetness and light.
“I was trying on some new clothes,” she said innocently.
A lot of people might have believed her. The emotional field she threw out, encouraging utter belief in her every word, was as powerful as any I’d ever felt. I just let it wash past me and said: “Come into my room for a few minutes, Jack; I want to talk to you.”
I didn’t put any particular emphasis into it. I don’t have to. She came.
Once we were both inside my shielded room with the walls vibrating with ten thousand voices and a hush area in the center, I said patiently, “Jack, I personally don’t care where you go or what you do. Tomorrow, you can do your vanishing act and have yourself a ball, for all I care. But there are certain things that have to be done first. Now, sit down and listen.”
She sat down, her eyes wide. Evidently, nobody had ever beaten her at her own game before.
“Tonight, you’ll stay here and get some sleep. Tomorrow, we go for a tour of Viking, first thing in the morning. Tomorrow afternoon, as soon as I think the time is ripe, you can sneak off. I’ll show you how to change your appearance so you won’t be recognized. You can have all the fun you want for twenty-four hours. I, of course, will be hunting high and low for you, but I won’t find you until I have finished my investigation.
“On the other hand, I want to know where you are at all times, so that I can get in touch with you if I need you. So, no matter where you are, you’ll keep in touch by phoning BANning 6226 every time you change location. Got that number?”
She nodded. “BANning 6226,” she repeated.
“Fine. Now, Brock’s agents will be watching you, so I’ll have to figure out a way to get you away from them, but that won’t be too hard. I’ll let you know at the proper time. Meanwhile, get back in there, get ready for bed, and get some sleep. You’ll need it. Move.”
She nodded rather dazedly, got up, and went to the door. She turned, said goodnight in a low, puzzled voice, and closed the door.
Half an hour later, I quietly sneaked into her room just to check. She was sound asleep in bed. I went back to my own room, and got some sack time myself.
* * * *
“It’s a pleasure to have you here again, Miss Ravenhurst,” said Chief Engineer Midguard. “Anything in particular you want to see this time?” He said it as though he actually enjoyed taking the boss’ teenage daughter through a spacecraft plant.
Maybe he did, at that. He was a paunchy, graying man in his sixties, who had probably been a rather handsome lady-killer for the first half-century of his life, but he was approaching middle age now, which has a predictable effect on the telly-idol type.
Jack Ravenhurst was at her regal best, with the kind of noblesse oblige that would bring worshipful gratitude to the heart of any underling. “Oh, just a quick run-through on whatever you think would be interesting, Mr. Midguard; I don’t want to take up too much of your time.”
Midguard allowed as how he had a few interesting things to show her, and the party, which also included the watchful and taciturn Colonel Brock, began to make the rounds of the Viking plant.
There were three ships under construction at the time: two cargo vessels and a good-sized passenger job. Midguard seemed to think that every step of spacecraft construction was utterly fascinating—for which, bully for him—but it was pretty much of a drag as far as I was concerned. It took three hours.
Finally, he said, “Would you like to see the McGuire-7?”
Why, yes, of course she would. So we toddled off to the new ship while Midguard kept up a steady line of patter.
“We think we have all the computer errors out of this one, Miss Ravenhurst. A matter of new controls and safety devices. We feel that the trouble with the first six machines was that they were designed to be operated by voice orders by any qualified human operator. The trouble is that they had no way of telling just who was qualified. The brains are perfectly capable of distinguishing one individual from another, but they can’t tell whether a given individual is a space pilot or a janitor. In fact—”
I marked the salient points in his speech. The MG-YR-7 would be strictly a one-man ship. It had a built-in dog attitude—friendly toward all humans, but loyal only to its master. Of course, it was likely that the ship would outlast its master, so its loyalties could be changed, but only by the use of special switching keys.
The robotics boys still weren’t sure why the first six had gone insane, but they were fairly certain that the primary cause was the matter of too many masters. The brilliant biophysicist, Asenion, who promulgated the Three Laws of Robotics in the last century, had shown in his writings that they were unattainable ideals—that they only told what a perfect robot should be, not what a robot actually was.
The First Law, for instance, would forbid a robot to harm a human being, either by action or inaction. But, as Asenion showed, a robot could be faced with a situation which allowed for only two possible decisions, both of which required that a human being be harmed. In such a case, the robot goes insane.
I found myself speculating what sort of situation, what sort of Asenion paradox, had confronted those first six ships. And whether it had been by accident or design. Not that the McGuire robots had been built in strict accord with the Laws of Robotics; that was impossible on the face of it. But no matter how a perfectly logical machine is built, the human mind can figure out a way to goof it up because the human mind is capable of transcending logic.
* * * *
The McGuire ship was a little beauty. A nice, sleek, needle, capable of atmospheric as well as spatial navigation, with a mirror-polished, beryl-blue surface all over the sixty-five feet of her—or his?—length.
It
was standing upright on the surface of the planetoid, a shining needle in the shifting sunlight, limned against the star-filled darkness of space. We looked at it through the transparent viewport, and then took the flexible tube that led to the air lock of the ship.
The ship was just as beautiful inside as it was outside. Neat, compact, and efficient. The control room—if such it could be called—was like no control room I’d ever seen before. Just an acceleration couch and observation instruments. Midguard explained that it wasn’t necessary to be a pilot to run the ship; any person who knew a smattering of astronavigation could get to his destination by simply telling the ship what he wanted to do.
Jack Ravenhurst took in the whole thing with wide-eyed interest.
“Is the brain activated, Mr. Midguard?” she asked.
“Oh, yes. We’ve been educating him for the past month, pumping information in as rapidly as he could record it and index it. He’s finished with that stage now; we’re just waiting for the selection of a test pilot for the final shakedown cruise.” He was looking warily at Jack as he spoke, as if he were waiting for something.
Evidently, he knew what was coming. “I’d like to talk to him,” Jack said. “It’s so interesting to carry on an intelligent conversation with a machine.”
“I’m afraid that’s impossible, Miss Ravenhurst,” Midguard said rather worriedly. “You see, McGuire’s primed so that the first man’s voice he hears will be identified as his master. It’s what we call the ‘chick reaction’. You know: the first moving thing a newly-hatched bird sees is regarded as the mother, and, once implanted, that order can’t be rescinded. We can change McGuire’s orientation in that respect, but we’d rather not have to go through that. After the test pilot establishes contact, you can talk to him all you want.”
“When will the test pilot be here?” Jack asked, still as sweet as sucrodyne.
“Within a few days. It looks as though a man named Nels Bjornsen will be our choice. You may have heard of him.”
“No,” she said, “but I’m sure your choice will be correct.”
Midguard still felt apologetic. “Well, you know how it is, Miss Ravenhurst; we can’t turn a delicate machine like this over to just anyone for the first trial. He has to be a man of good judgment and fast reflexes. He has to know exactly what to say and when to say it, if you follow me.”
“Oh, certainly; certainly.” She paused and looked thoughtful. “I presume you’ve taken precautions against anyone stealing in here and taking control of the ship.”
Midguard smiled and nodded wisely. “Certainly. Communication with McGuire can’t be established unless and until two keys are used in the activating panel. I carry one; Colonel Brock has the other. Neither of us will give his key up to anyone but the accredited test pilot. And McGuire himself will scream out an alarm if anyone tries to jimmy the locks. He’s his own burglar alarm.”
She nodded. “I see.” A pause. “Well, Mr. Midguard, I think you’ve done a very commendable job. Thank you so much. Is there anything else you feel I should see?”
“Well—” He was smilingly hesitant. “If there’s anything else you want to see, I’ll be glad to show it to you. But you’ve already seen our…ah…piece de resistance, so to speak.”
She glanced at her wrist. It had been over four hours since we’d started. “I am rather tired,” Jack said. “And hungry, too. Let’s call it a day and go get something to eat.”
“Fine! Fine!” Midguard said. “I’ll be honored to be your host, if I may. We could have a little something at my apartment.”
I knew perfectly well that he’d had a full lunch prepared and waiting.
The girl acknowledged his invitation and accepted it. Brock and I trailed along like the bodyguards we were supposed to be. I wondered whether or not Brock suspected me of being more than I appeared to be. If he didn’t, he was stupider than I thought; on the other hand, he could never be sure. I wasn’t worried about his finding out that I was a United Nations agent; that was a pretty remote chance. Brock didn’t even know the United Nations Government had a Secret Service; it was unlikely that he would suspect me of being an agent of a presumably nonexistent body.
But he could very easily suspect that I had been sent to check on him and the Thurston menace, and, if he had any sense, he actually did. I wasn’t going to give him any verification of that suspicion if I could help it.
* * * *
Midguard had an apartment in the executive territory of the Viking reservation, a fairly large place with plastic-lined walls instead of the usual painted nickel-iron. Very luxurious for Ceres.
The meal was served with an air of subdued pretension that made everybody a little stiff and uncomfortable, with the possible exception of Jack Ravenhurst, and the definite exception of myself. I just listened politely to the strained courtesy that passed for small talk and waited for the chance I knew would come at this meal.
After the eating was all over, and we were all sitting around with cigarettes going and wine in our glasses, I gave the girl the signal we had agreed upon. She excused herself very prettily and left the room.
After fifteen minutes, I began to look a little worried. The bathroom was only a room away—we were in a dining area, and the bathroom was just off the main bedroom—and it shouldn’t have taken her that long to brush her hair and powder her face.
I casually mentioned it to Colonel Brock, and he smiled a little.
“Don’t worry, Oak; even if she does walk out of this apartment, my men will be following her wherever she goes. I’d have a report within one minute after she left.”
I nodded, apparently satisfied. “I’ve been relying on that,” I said. “Otherwise, I’d have followed her to the door.”
He chuckled and looked pleased.
Ten minutes after that, even he was beginning to look a little worried. “Maybe we’d better go check,” he said. “She might have hurt herself or…or become ill.”
Midguard looked flustered. “Now, just a minute, colonel! I can’t allow you to just barge in on a young girl in the…ah…bathroom. Especially not Miss Ravenhurst.”
Brock made his decision fast; I’ll give him credit for that.
“Get Miss Pangloss on the phone!” he snapped. “She’s just down the corridor. She’ll come down on your orders.”
At the same time, he got to his feet and made a long jump for the door. He grabbed the doorpost as he went by, swung himself in a new orbit, and launched himself toward the front door. “Knock on the bathroom door, Oak!” he bawled as he left.
I did a long, low, flat dive toward the bedroom, swung left, and brought myself up sharply next to the bathroom door. I pounded on the door. “Miss Ravenhurst! Jack! Are you all right?”
No answer.
Good. There shouldn’t have been.
Colonel Brock fired himself into the room and braked himself against the wall. “Any answer?”
“No.”
“My men outside say she hasn’t left.” He rapped sharply on the door with the butt of his stun gun. “Miss Ravenhurst! Is there anything the matter?”
Again, no answer.
I could see that Brock was debating on whether he should go ahead and charge in by himself without waiting for the female executive who lived down the way. He was still debating when the woman showed up, escorted by a couple of the colonel’s uniformed guards.
Miss Pangloss was one of those brisk, efficient, middle-aged career-women who had no fuss or frills about her. She had seen us knocking on the door, so she didn’t bother to do any knocking herself. She just opened the door and went in.
The bathroom was empty.
Again, as it should be.
All hell broke loose then, with me and Brock making most of the blather. It took us nearly ten minutes to find that the only person who had left the area had been an elderly, thin man who had been wearing the baggy protective clothing of a maintenance man.
By that time, Jack Ravenhurst had been gone more than for
ty minutes. She could be almost anywhere on Ceres.
Colonel Brock was furious and so was I. I sneered openly at his assurance that the girl couldn’t leave and then got sneered back at for letting other people do what was supposed to be my job. That phase only lasted for about a minute, though.
Then Colonel Brock muttered: “She must have had a plexiskin mask and a wig and the maintenance clothing in her purse. As I recall, it was a fairly good-sized one.” He didn’t say a word about how careless I had been to let her put such stuff in her purse. “All right,” he went on, “we’ll find her.”
“I’m going to look around, too,” I said. “I’ll keep in touch with your office.” I got out of there.
* * * *
I got to a public phone as fast as I could, punched BANning 6226, and said: “Marty? Any word?”
“Not yet.”
“I’ll call back.”
I hung up and scooted out of there.
I spent the next several hours pushing my weight around all over Ceres. As the personal representative of Shalimar Ravenhurst, who was manager of Viking Spacecraft, which was, in turn, the owner of Ceres, I had a lot of weight to push around. I had every executive on the planetoid jumping before I was through.
Colonel Brock, of course, was broiling in his own juices. He managed to get hold of me by phone once, by calling a Dr. Perelson whom I was interviewing at the time.
The phone chimed, Perelson said, “Excuse me,” and went to answer. I could hear his voice from the other room.
“Mr. Daniel Oak? Yes; he’s here. Well, yes. Oh, all sorts of questions, colonel.” Perelson’s voice was both irritated and worried. “He says Miss Ravenhurst is missing; is that so? Oh? Well, does this man have any right to question me this way? Asking me? About everything!… How well I know the girl, the last time I saw her—things like that. Good heavens, we’ve hardly met!” He was getting exasperated now. “But does he have the authority to ask these questions? Oh. Yes. Well, of course, I’ll be glad to co-operate in any manner I can…Yes…Yes. All right, I’ll call him.”
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