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Sprockets
A Little Robot
Alexander Key
TO MY SON,
who naturally knows much more about robots than I, and keeps me properly informed.
To Dr. Isaac Asimov, the father of modern robotics who conceived the positronic brain, I offer no apologies, but much respect and many thanks.
A.K.
Contents
1. He Escapes
2. He Is Adopted Temporarily
3. He Becomes Partially Educated
4. He Has Trouble in Mexico
5. He Meets Professor Katz
6. He Finds the Saucer
7. He Goes Space Traveling
8. He Visits the Dark Side
9. He Encounters Moon Bats
10. He Uses His Buttons
Preview: Rivets and Sprockets
About the Author
1
He Escapes
Sprockets was born on the assembly line at the robot factory owned by the Consolidated Mechanical Men Corporation. His birth, or rather his putting together, was entirely an accident, and was the last thing anyone wanted. Here is how it happened:
The assembly line at the robot factory was a mile long and possibly longer, for it had to handle a million different parts—rods and wires, nuts and bolts, bulbs and sockets, springs, sprockets, and little wheels and cogs, not to speak of nine hundred thousand other things that go into a robot. Whenever the big boss robot pressed the button at the beginning of the line, there would be a mighty whirring clatter, a quick zipping and purring, and a thousand mechanical hands would begin punching, twisting, turning, driving, pounding, brazing, and fitting things together. Then like magic, zip, zip, zip, one new robot after another would take shape on the speeding belt. That is, this zip-zipping was usually the way it went when new robots were ordered.
But on this dismal day of days at the robot factory something went wrong. Perhaps the big boss robot missed a zip. Perhaps a spring was sprung or a spark went sput. Anyway, a roll of metal didn’t roll, and suddenly there just wasn’t enough metal for the assembly line to turn out the usual full-size, clanking, half-ton model that was the specialty of the Consolidated Mechanical Men Corporation.
The assembly line did the best it could with the scraps on hand, but the only thing that appeared on the mile-long moving belt was one little pint-size model no larger than a smallish boy with a biggish head. Nor was that the worst of it.
The worst of it (which in reality was the best of it) was his brain. The ordinary brain box, used for ordinary robots, wouldn’t fit the new shape of this robot’s head. That, however, did not bother the assembly line. It merely reached forth a tentacle and plucked down a special box from a special shelf marked SPECIAL BRAINS, TO BE USED ONLY ON SPECIAL MODELS. It was a genuine Asimov Positronic Brain that had taken a whole year to make, for it contained twenty trillion microscopic printed circuits. Into the little robot’s head went the special brain, and he plopped off the end of the assembly line all ready to be oiled, numbered, inspected, registered, given his orders, crated, and shipped away.
It was now that the trouble started.
The inspector was a real man, not a mechanical one. At the sight of Sprockets, who was yet to be named, his eyes widened. Then angrily he stopped the machinery and bellowed for his assistant.
“What’s the matter with this factory?” he roared. “Can’t it do an honest day’s work without wasting good parts? Call the salvage robots! Have them haul that junk bundle of sprockets into the salvage room and take it apart!”
Sprockets not only heard what was said, but he understood it because, in rolling off the assembly line, his switch had been accidentally turned on. It was like coming awake and finding himself alive. In an instant he sat up, ticking like a clock. His eyes lighted and the row of buttons across his forehead flashed with color. The words “salvage” and “take it apart” shot with deadly meaning through the upper circuits of his brain. In less time than it takes for a human to bat an eye, he was on his little feet and running.
Haul him to the salvage room and take him apart, would they? Oh, no! Never as long as he had a spark left in his atomic battery!
Now, a robot is not supposed to run away or to disobey authority. But Sprockets was not actually disobeying anyone, because as yet he had not been given a proper registered name or a number, and no one thought to speak to him directly or give him orders. And a robot—especially one with an Asimov Positronic Brain—knows he is a very valuable mechanism and must protect himself from harm.
So Sprockets ran. Behind him all he heard were the hoarse cries of men and robots calling to each other. “Stop him! Stop him! Don’t let him get away!” This, naturally, only made him run faster.
He darted through the first open door. Three big robots clanked and thumped close at his heels. He evaded them by dashing under a table and streaking down a long passage and through a succession of doors. Suddenly, before he realized where he was, he found himself outside.
It was night. Sprockets had never seen night and the city before nor traffic on a busy street, but his special brain knew about such things from the basic learning tapes that had been fed into it. He paused just long enough to study the street and pick what seemed a safe direction. Then the approaching shouts drove him on.
In less than a minute, however, he realized this was a poor way to escape. People stared at him and he had to slow down, not merely to attract less attention but to avoid running into someone and possibly hurting him—for never, never, must a robot hurt a human being. As he turned a corner he almost ran into a policeman.
The policeman blinked at him, astounded.
“Now what would the likes o’ you be after in such a hurry, an’ all alone at night?”
It was only the very special fast-thinking positronic brain that saved Sprockets now. In another second the policeman would be ordering him to halt, and of course he would have to obey. He would be questioned, and he would have to give truthful answers, for a robot cannot lie. It would all end with the policeman returning him to the robot factory where every nut, bolt, cog, and sprocket of him would be taken apart.
Never that!
In a flash, before the policeman’s big hand could grab him, Sprockets streaked away. At the same instant his finger reached for one of the lighted buttons in the row across his forehead. This particular button controlled his hearing antennae, which he wasn’t supposed to touch except in an emergency. Sprockets figured this was an emergency of the most desperate kind, and he was considerably relieved when his sound apparatus went completely blank. So he ran, blessedly unable to hear the policeman’s orders not to do so.
In the next block he found a deserted alley and raced through the darkness of it for several minutes before turning on his hearing button. There was no sound of pursuit. He slowed to a walk.
Now what should he do?
Suddenly he stopped. Just what does a little robot do when he has managed to escape and has no place to go?
It was a perplexing problem, and to add to his troubles was the realization that it had begun to rain. He didn’t know much about rain, but he had the vague feeling that it wasn’t at all good for his circuits.
“To get out of the rain,” he told himself, “I will have to go where there are people. People will ask questions, then they will send me right back to the robot factory. If I want to save my cogs and sprockets, I’d better do some positive positronic cerebration.”
Immediately he sat down in a puddle in the pouring rain and touched the middle button on his forehead. It was
his cerebration button. On the instant all the buttons on his forehead began to flash in a dozen colors, and he was plunged into the deepest thought. So deep and so vast was his thinking that his brain began snapping and clicking like a runaway clock. At this moment he could have solved some of the most difficult problems in the world.
His own problem, however, appeared to have but a single answer, and that answer seemed utterly impossible.
“A robot,” he said in his thoughtful little voice, “cannot wander uselessly and do nothing. A robot’s purpose in life is to help human beings. Therefore I must find a human being who will not send me back to the robot factory to lose all my sprockets.”
He thought a moment longer, and said: “In this city, according to my learning tapes, there are ten million human beings. If only one person in ten is friendly enough to accept my services and has real need of me, I must consider the other nine persons as unfriendly. It follows, therefore, that my predicament is dire, for I am alone in the midst of nine million enemies.”
Sprockets gulped, or rather his wheels and circuits gave a loud tock that amounted to a gulp, and he wiped rain from his blinking eye lights. Abruptly, and a little stiffly, he lurched to his feet. With a hand that was not quite steady he turned off his cerebration button and clicked on his radar vision so he could see better in the black downpour. He began to walk.
“Nine million enemies,” he repeated. “And I must evade them all until I can find a friend. I wonder why my hand trembles and my legs feel so odd. I am not exactly afraid, for a robot isn’t supposed to feel fear. Maybe it is because I am such a little robot. Or can it be the rain, and the fact that I need oiling? Maybe I’d better switch on my instinct button and see where it takes me.”
He turned on his instinct button and moved valiantly ahead.
The rain continued. The night grew darker. Sprockets walked bravely on, following his positronic instincts, but his feet moved slower and slower. His brain clock ticked off the minutes and hours. By the time his distance computer had registered thirty-five thousand six hundred and forty-two steps, or exactly ten miles from his cerebration point, he realized he could go no farther. Something was very wrong with him. He had been so busy evading millions of enemies and following his positronic instincts that he had been unable to search for a single friend. Nor had he but the haziest idea of his location except that he was in a parklike area of trees and shrubs exactly three hundred and twenty-one and a half degrees north of the robot factory, and that off in the trees was a big dark house where everyone was asleep except the dog. A dog was barking and coming toward him.
Sprockets tried his best to turn and run. He could not. He felt himself slipping, his knees folding.
He did not know that his little switch box, which was built in the middle of his back, was still exposed. Ordinarily, had he been a proper-size robot, and properly inspected, the inspector would have covered his switch box with a plate stamped with a number and all kinds of special information about voltage and oiling and the like, and what to do about dampness and short circuits and other matters that pertained to his anatomy.
But he had no plate for protection. Now, as his knees folded, a twig from a shrub behind him caught on his exposed switch and turned him off.
Instantly the row of lighted buttons on his forehead went out. His eyes dimmed to a very faint glow and it was impossible for him to twitch a finger. Only his positronic brain remained awake, but it might just as well have been asleep for all the good it did him.
The rain stopped, although it mattered little to him now in his present condition.
He sat on the wet ground in front of the shrubbery, motionless and helpless.
2
He Is Adopted Temporarily
Long minutes ticked away in Sprockets’ head. The dog raced around him, barking furiously. Sprockets was dimly aware of the barking dog and, finally, of two figures approaching in the night. Although his brain was awake, it wasn’t able to do much more than add long columns of large imaginary numbers, full of sevens and nines, just to keep its trillions of circuits in working order.
Now he stopped adding numbers and tried to concentrate on the approaching figures. It was very hard with the dog barking in front of him.
A light flashed. A man’s voice said: “Enough of that barking, Yapper! What have we here?”
“It’s a robot!” exclaimed a boy, very much excited. “A little robot! Oh, Daddy, can I keep him? Huh, Daddy, can I?”
“Why, bless me, it is a robot!” said the man. “And hardly as big as you.”
“Say, I’ll bet he’s the robot that escaped from the factory. I heard about it on the radio just before I went to bed. Can I keep him, Daddy?”
“Absolutely not,” the father said. “He doesn’t belong to us. Furthermore, if he’s an escaped robot, he’s undoubtedly aberrated and therefore dangerous. I wouldn’t dream—”
“What’s ‘aberrated’ mean, Daddy?”
“Cuckoo. Now hush and let me examine him. Where are you from, robot?”
When no answer came, the man said, “I declare, I believe his switch is off.” He reached behind Sprockets, found the switch, and turned it on.
Instantly Sprockets awakened as if from a bad dream. His eyes glowed brighter and his forehead buttons flickered with dull color. But when he made an effort to rise, his joints creaked and he could hardly move.
“What’s your name and why did you come here?” the man asked.
Sprockets tried to say that he didn’t have a real name, and that all his cogs and sprockets seemed to be stuck. But the only sound he was able to squeeze through his metal lips was the single word, “—sprockets—”
“So Sprockets is your name, eh? Well, Sprockets, you seem to be in pretty bad shape. Come, Jim, help me get him into the lab. I guess he’ll be harmless enough until I dry him off and oil him. His joints are rusting from the rain, and I imagine he’s full of short circuits.”
After much stumbling and trouble, Sprockets was hauled into a big shop and laboratory in the rear of the house and placed on a stool beside a workbench. While Jim and Yapper, the dog, watched, Jim’s father dried him with a towel and oiled him from neck to toe.
Jim’s father was a very tall, thin man with a thick mop of white hair, thick glasses, and a sort of perpetual frown that comes from trying to solve too many puzzles. Like Jim, he was wearing a blue bathrobe over striped pajamas. The workbench behind him was piled with all kinds of strange apparatus. The clock on the wall above it sang a little tune, and announced sweetly, “It is now four in the morning, and there are no flying saucers in sight.”
Jim’s father scowled at the clock, then frowned at Sprockets and said: “I am Dr. Bailey. Do you understand me, Sprockets?”
“Y-yes, sir,” Sprockets answered weakly. “Are—are y-you a medical d-doctor, sir?”
“Absolutely not,” said Dr. Bailey. “You let me ask the questions. Did you escape from the robot factory?”
“Y-y-yes, sir. I-I-I—”
Dr. Bailey shook his head. “That’s too bad. It is evident by your voice and your actions that you are very, very aberrated. I’d better phone the robot factory immediately to send someone for you.”
“Oh, n-no, sir! Please don’t!” Sprockets fell on his knees. With hands that trembled because of his damp circuits he clutched the doctor’s robe. “P-p-please don’t order me back to the factory! They’ll take me apart and I-I-I-I’ll cease to be!”
They were interrupted by a short, plump little woman, also wearing a blue robe, who came through the shop door. She had a turned-up nose and quick birdlike blue eyes like Jim’s. When she spoke she tried to sound very fierce, but somehow she didn’t quite manage it.
“Barnabas Bailey!” she snapped. “What on earth are you and Jim doing up at this hour? There are no flying saucers gadding about.” Then she saw Sprockets. “My goodness gracious—what is that?”
“It’s the escaped robot, Mom,” said Jim.
“Oh! the p
oor little lost frightened thing! Here, let me—”
“Careful!” cautioned the doctor. “He’s undoubtedly aberrated. He may be dangerous.”
“Pooh and nonsense! You’ve got him scared half to death. He’s been out in the rain all night and he’s famished for something hot in his tummy.”
“My dear Miranda,” the doctor said patiently. “Robots do not eat.”
“Oh, but they do, Barnabas. Robots and boys, they’re just alike. You get either of them cold and wet, and they must have something hot. For boys, it’s hot soup. For robots, it’s a hot shot.” While she spoke she was swiftly doing things with the extension cord on the workbench. She plugged the end of it into the socket in Sprockets’ switch box, touched a control on the bench, and gave a little chuckle.
A wonderful, wonderful, warmth spread suddenly all through Sprockets, and he tingled deliciously from the tips of his toes to the ends of his positronic circuits. His eyes began to shine brightly and all his buttons flashed with brilliant colors.
“You see, Barnabas,” said Mrs. Bailey. “You may be a towering genius in all kinds of ologies, but you don’t know about boys and robots. It takes a mother’s touch. The little dear’s atomic battery was all run down, and it hadn’t had time to recharge itself.”
She stooped in front of Sprockets, smiling. “Now, young fellow,” she began, “tell me all about yourself.”
Sprockets told her, gratefully. “So you see, ma’am,” he finished, “I’m not the least bit aberrated, as you can easily tell, and I escaped only because I had to.” He paused and gave her his most earnest and entreating look. “Please, ma’am, would you consider adopting me? You’ll find me a willing little fellow. I’m highly intelligent and full of capabilities.”
“Well—”
“Oh, Mom, please!” Jim begged. “Can’t we keep him, Mom?”
“That’s up to your father, Jim.”
“Absolutely not,” said the doctor. “In the first place, he doesn’t belong to us. In the second place—”
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