He moved back through the dome, hardly looking. But his eyes were open, and his mind gradually began to add the evidence. There was no way to tell how long he had been unconscious; he had no feeling of any time. But there was dust over everything—dust that had been disturbed by the outrushing air, but that had still patina-plated itself on metal firmly enough to remain. And some of the metal showed traces of corrosion. That must have taken years!
He stopped abruptly, checking his battery power. The cobalt-platinum cell had been fully charged when he lay down. Now it was at less than half-charge. Such batteries had an extremely slow leakage. Even allowing for residual conductance through his circuits, it would have taken at least thirty years for such a loss!
Thirty years! And the men had not come back.
A groan came to his ears, and he turned quickly. But it had only been his own voice. And now he began shouting. He was still trying to shout hi the airless void as he reached the surface. He caught himself, bracing his back against the dome as his balance circuits reacted to some wild impulse from his brain.
Men would never desert him. They had to come back to the Moon to finish their work, and the first thing they would do would be to find him. Men couldn’t just leave him there! Only in the wild fiction could that happen, and even there only the postulated evil men would do such a thing. His men would never dream of it!
He stared up at Earth. The dome was in night again, and Earth was a great orb in the sky, glowing blue and white, with touches of brown in a few places. He saw the outline of continents through the cloud cover, and looked for the great city that must lie within the thin darkened area. There should have been lights visible
there, even against the contrast of brighter illumination from the lighted are)^. But there was no sign of the city.
He sighed soundlessly again, and now he felt himself relaxing. The attackers must still be hovering there! The dangerous Ufo-things from space. Men were still embattled and unable to return to him. Thirty years of that for them, and here he was losing balance over what had been only a year of his conscious time!
He faced the worst of possibilities more calmly now. He even forced himself to admit that men might have been so badly crippled by the war that they could not return to him—perhaps not for more time than he could think of. Smithers had said they were abandoning space, at a time when the attack had not yet come. How long would it take to recover and regain their lost territory?
He went back into the dome, but the radio was silent. Hesitantly, he initiated a call to the orbital station. After half an hour, he gave up. The men there, if men were still there, must be keeping radio silence.
“All right,” he said slowly into the silence of the dome. “All right, face it. Men aren’t coming back for a robot. Ever!”
It was a speech out of the fiction he had read, rather than out of rationality. But somehow saying it loudly made it easier to face. Men could not come to him. He wasn’t that valuable to them.
He shook his head over that, remembering the time he had been taken back to Earth after twenty years out of the creche and on the Moon. The Mark One robots had all been destroyed in the accidents and difficulties of getting the Base established, except for Sam. Supposedly better Mark Two robots were sent to replace them, but those had been beset by some circuit flaws that made them more prone to accident and less useful than the first models. More than a hundred had been sent in all—and none had survived. It was then that they called Sara back to study him.
On Earth, deep in the security-hidden underground robot development workshops, he had been tested in every way they knew to help them in designing the Mark Three robots. And there old Stephen DeMatre had interviewed him for three whole days. At the end of that time, the man who had first introduced him to his work with men had put a hand on his metal shoulder and smiled at him.
“You’re unique, Sam,” he’d said. “A lucky combination of all the wild guesses we used in making each Mark One individually, as well as some unique conditioning while among that first Base staff. We don’t dare duplicate you yet, but some day the circuit control computer is going to want to get your pattern in full for later brains. So take good care of yourself. I’d keep you here, but… You take care of yourself, Sam. You hear me?”
Sam had nodded. “Yes, sir. Do you mean you can make other brains exactly like mine?”
“Technically, the control computer can duplicate ypur design,” DeMatre had answered. “It won’t be just like your brain. Too many random factors in any really advanced mechanical mind unit. But with similar capabilities. That’s why you’re worth more money than this whole project without you. You’re worth quite a few million dollars, and it’s up to you to see that valuable property like that isn’t destroyed. Right, Sam?”
Sam had agreed and been shipped back to the Moon, along with the first of the Mark Three robots. And maybe his trip to the research center had been of some use, since the new Mark Three models worked as well as their limitations permitted. They were far better than the preceding models.
Maybe he wasn’t valuable enough to men for them to come for him now. But by DeMatre’s own words, he was one of their most valuable possessions. If it was up to him to see that he wasn’t destroyed, then it was up to him also to see that he wasn’t lost to men.
If they couldn’t come for him, he had to get to them. The question was: How? He couldn’t project himself by mind power like John Carter. He had to have a rocket!
With the thought, he went dashing out through the entrance and heading toward the old wreck. It stood exactly as it had after the landing that had ruined it, with half its hull plating ripped off and most of its rocket
motors broken. It could never be flown again. Nor could the old supply capsules. They had burned out their tubes in getting here, being of minimum construction. There wasn’t even space inside one for him.
Sam considered it, making measurements and doing the hardest thinking of his existence. Without the long study of all the technical manuals of the dome library, he could never have found an answer. But eventually he nodded.
A motor from the big ship could be fitted to a capsule. The frame would be barely strong enough. But the plating could be removed to lighten the little ship; Sam needed no protection from space, as some of the cargo had required. And the automatic guidance system could be removed to make enough room for him. He could operate it manually, since his reaction and integrating time were faster than that of even the system.
Fuel would be a problem, though there was enough oxygen in the dome storage tanks. It would have to be hydrogen, since he could find rocks from which that could be released by the power of the generator. Fortunately, lunar gravity was easier to escape than that of Earth.
He went back to the dome and found paper and pencil. He was humming softly to himself as he began laying out his plan. It wasn’t easy. He might not be skilled enough to pilot the strange craft to the station. And it would take a great deal of time. But Sam was going to the men who wouldn’t come to him!
4
It takes experience to turn engineering theory into practice. Almost three years had passed since Sam’s awakening before the orbital station swam slowly into view before him. And the erratic takeoff and flight had been one that no human body could have stood. But now he sighted on the huge metal doughnut before him, estimating its orbit carefully. There were only a few gallons of fuel remaining in the tanks behind him, and he had to reach the landing net on the first try.
His first calculations seemed wrong. He glanced down at the huge orb of Earth and flipped sun filters over his eyes. Something was wrong. The station was not holding its bottom pointed exactly at the center of Earth as it should have done; it was turning very slowly, and even its spin was uneven, as if the water used to balance it against wobbling had not been distributed properly. Beside it, the little ferry ship used between station and ships from below was jerking slightly on the silicone-plastic line that held it.
&nb
sp; Sam felt an unpleasant stirring in his chest where most of his brain circuits lay. But he forced it down and computed his blast for all the factors. He had learned something of the behavior of his capsule during the minutes of takeoff and the later approach to the station. His fingers moved delicately, and fuel metered out to the cranky little motor.
It was not a perfect match, but he managed to catch himself in the net around the entrance to the hub. He pulled himself free and began scrambling up to the lock as the capsule drifted off. A moment later, he was standing hi the weightlessness of the receiving section. And from the sounds of his feet, there was still air in the station.
He froze motionless as he let himself realize he had made it. Then he began looking for the men who should have seen his approach and be coming to question him.
There was no sound of steps or of any other activity, except for his own movements. Nor was there any light from the bulbs above him. The only illumination was from a thick quartz port that faced the sun.
Sam cut on the lamp built into his chest and began sweeping the sections of the hub with its light. Dust had formed a patina here, too. He sighed softly into the air. Then he moved toward the outer sections, his steps determined.
Halfway down the tube that ran from the hub to the outer hull, Sam stopped and cut off his light. Ahead of him, there was a glow! Lights were still burning!
He let out a yell to call the men and began running, adjusting for th^j increasing feeling of weight as he moved outwariSv’Then he was under the bulb. He stared up at it—a single bulb burning among several others that were black, though they were on the same circuit. How long did it take for these bulbs to burn out? Years surely, and probably decades. Yet most of the station was in darkness, though there was still power from the atomic generator.
He found a few other bulbs burning in the outer station, but not many. The great reception and recreation room was empty. Beyond that, the offices were mostly open and vacant. Some held a litter of paper and other stuff, as if someone had gone through carelessly, not bothering to put anything back hi place. The living section with its tiny sleeping cubicles was worse. Some of the rooms were simply bare, but others were in complete disorder. Four showed signs of long occupancy, with the sleeping nets worn almost through and not replaced. But nothing showed how recently they had been left.
He went through another section devoted to station machinery and came to a big room that was apparently now used for storage. Sam had seen a plan of the station in one of the technical books in the dome. He placed this room as one designed as a storage for hydrogen bombs once. But that had been from the precivi-lized days of men, and the bombs had been dismantled and destroyed more than sixty years before.
It was in the hydroponics room that he was forced to face the truth. The plants there had been the means of replacing the oxygen in the air for the men, and now the tanks were dry and the vegetation had been dead so long that only desiccated stalks remained. There could be no men here. He didn’t need the sight of the bare food section for confirmation. Some men had stayed here until the food was gone before they left the un-tended plants to die. It must have been many years ago that they had abandoned the station.
Sam shook his head in anger at himself. He should have guessed it when he saw that there were none of the winged rocket ships waiting outside the station. So long as men were here, they would have kept some means for return to Earth.
The observatory was dark, but there was still power for the electronic telescope. The screen lighted at his touch, showing only empty space. He had to wait nearly two hours before the slow tumble of the station brought Earth into full view.
Most of it was in daylight, and there was only a thin cloud cover. Once a thousand cities could have been scanned plainly from here. When seeing was best, even streams of moving cars could be seen. But now there were no cities and no signs of movement!
Sam emitted a harsh gasping sound as he scanned the continent of North America. He had seen pictures of New York, Chicago, and several other city complexes from this view. Now there was only dark ruin showing where they had been. It came to him with an almost physical shock that perhaps millions of human beings had died in those wrecks of cities.
There were still-smaller towns where he could make out the pattern of houses. But there was no movement, even there.
He cut power from the telescope with an angry flick of his finger, trying to blot the things he had seen from his memory. He moved rapidly away from the observatory, hunting the communications section.
It was in worse shape than most other places. It looked as if some man had deliberately tried to wreck the machinery. A hammer lay tangled in a maze of rum that must once have been the main receiver. There was something that looked like dried blood on a metal cabinet, with a dent that might have fitted a human fist.
The floor was littered with tape that should have held a record of all the communications received and sent, and the drive capstan on the tape player was bent into uselessness. Sam lifted a section of tape and placed it in the slot that gave his face a sad caricature of a mouth. The tape sensors moved into place, and he began scanning the bit of plastic. It was blank, probably wiped of any message by time and the unshielded transformer that was still humming below the control panel.
Most of the tap£ cabinet was empty, and there was nothing on the ^evwlapes within. Sam ripped open drawers, hunting for Uorrte evidence. He finally found a single reel in the top drawer of the main desk. Most of it was a garble of static; stray fields had gotten to it, even through the metal drawer. But towards the end, a few words could barely be picked out from the noise.
“…shelters far enough from the blast… Thought we’d made it… a starving… went mad. Must have been a nerve aerosol, but it didn’t settle as… Mad. Everywhere. Southern hemisphere, too… For God’s sake, stay where you…”
The noise grew worse then, totally ruining intelligibility. Sam caught bits of what might have been sentences, but they were pure gibberish. Then suddenly a small section of the tape near the hub became almost clear.
The voice was high-pitched now, and overmodulated, as if the words had been too loud to be carried by the transmitter. There was a strange, unpleasant quality that Sam had never heard in a human voice before.
“…all shiny and bright. But it couldn’t fool me. I knew it was one of them! They’re all waiting up there, waiting for me to come out. They want to eat my soul. They’re clever now, they won’t let me see them. But when I turn my back, I can feel…”
The tape Came to an end.
Sam could make no sense of it, though he replayed it all again in hopes of finding some other clue. He gave up and reached down to shut off the power in the transformer. It was amazing that the wreckage hadn’t already blown all the fuses to this section. He groped for the switch and flipped it, just as his eyes spotted something under the transformer shelf.
It was a fountain pen, gold and black enamel. He had seen one like it countless times, and now as he turned it over in his hands, familiar lettering appeared on the barrel: RPS. Those were the initials of Dr. Smithers, and the pen could only have been his. He must have been one of those who had waited in the station. The Moon ships had made it back here, and Smithers had stayed on until the food was gone. Then he must have returned to Earth.
Sam reached out to clear the junk from the desk. He found paper in one of the drawers, and the pen still wrote as he sank into the chair.
There was metal sheet enough in the station, and tools to work it. The frame of the little taxi rocket he had seen outside would have to be modified; a nose and wings would have to be added, together with controls. Sam had studied the details of the upper stages of the rockets that went between the station and Earth, together with accounts of the men who flew the early ones. There had been enough books on all aspects of space hi the dome.
He could never duplicate the winged craft accurately, nor could he be sure he could handle one down through the atmo
sphere. But in theory, almost any winged craft with a shallow angle of glide could be brought down slowly enough to avoid burning from the friction of the air. At least he was lucky enough to have fuel here; the emergency station tanks were half-filled with the mono-propellant suited for the little motor in the ferry.
Then he swore, using unprofane but colorful words he had learned from a score of historical novels. It would be at least another year before he could hope to complete his work on the craft.
5
Surprisingly, the modified ferry behaved far better than Sam had dared to hope. It heated badly at the first touches of atmosphere, but the temperature remained within the limits he and the craft could stand. He learned slowly to control the descent to a glide neither too shallow for stability nor too steep to avoid overheating. By the time he was down to thirty miles above the surface, he was almost pleased with the way it handled.
He had set his course to reach the underground creche that had been his home at awakening and during the first three years of his education, before they sent him to the Moonlit was the only home he knew on Earth.
Now he saw ffiai he could never make it. The first fifteen minutes in the upper layers of atmosphere had been at too steep a glide angle, and he could never descend far inland. He might even have trouble reaching the shore at all, he realized; when the clouds thinned, he could see nothing but ocean under him.
He opened the rocket motor behind him gently, letting its thrust raise his speed to the highest his little craft could take at this altitude. But there was too little fuel left to help much. It might have given him an extra twenty miles of glide, but not more.
Sam considered the prospects of landing in the ocean with grim foreboding. He could exist in water for a while, even at fair depths. If he landed near the shore, he might work his way out. But within a limited period of tune, the water would penetrate through his body to some of the vital wiring. Once that was shorted, he would cease to exist.
The Best of Lester del Rey Page 36