Rivets and Sprockets

by Alexander Key

  “Yes? Yes?”

  “Maybe for a Something,” said Jim.

  “H’mm! Ah, h’mmmm! Bless me, that could be it!”

  “Then, Daddy, why don’t we just fly around Mars, and look for places where the lichens have been picked? Maybe it will show us where the Something lives.”

  “Sometimes,” said Dr. Bailey, “you show signs of, ah, an almost tolerable mentality—as naturally you should, since I’m your father. Sprockets, ask Ilium to take us around the daylight side of the planet. We must look for a place where lichens have been picked. Everybody on his toes! Sing out immediately if you see anything unusually unusual.”

  Since Mars is only a middling planet, and the daylight half of it little wider than from here to there, relatively speaking—or no more than a quickish zip from New York to London—they were able to zip back and forth from the edge of night to the edge of dawn in a very short time.

  On the first four zips they saw nothing at all unusually unusual. On the fifth zip they saw a dust storm. It came up so fast, and spread over so much of the planet, and it was so thick and red and boiling, that searching for signs of a Something in it was impossible. There was nothing to do but zip around to the night side of Mars and wait till dawn.

  While they waited, Ilium and Leli taught Rivets how to play curious games with the floating space marbles. Jim wanted to play, but he couldn’t keep his hands out of the lunch basket. Dr. Bailey kept pacing the saucer, impatiently snapping his fingers.

  Finally Sprockets said, “Sir, it occurs to me that we might save time by trying to signal the Something.”

  “Eh? Signal it? How? Has the saucer a radio?”

  “Not one that we could use, sir. The saucer’s radio works by thought. But since we’re right here on Mars, I believe my special positronic hookup might be adequate—if I give it full power and send the proper signal.”

  “What kind of signal would you send?”

  “I believe, sir, I can best get the Something’s attention by repeating the message we heard over Jim’s do-jigger.”

  “Impossible! Those sounds would abble a tape recorder! How could you remember them?”

  “Sir, I remember the sounds perfectly. My difficulty will be to repeat them. If you’ll turn on your wrist radio and listen, I’ll make the attempt.”

  The doctor was suddenly all eagerness. “Attention, everybody! Turn on your radios—Sprockets is going to signal the Something!”

  Sprockets gave his radio button a double turn, adjusted his voice button, and raised his head. In a deep, grinding, rumbling—though slightly tinny—tone, he called: “Grullu-grullu-grulluwug! Hiddewoggo-hiddewoggo-buskrozor-r-r! Guwulluggowrozorkorohiddewoggobuskrozor-r-r-r-r-r-r!”

  He knew it wasn’t quite grinding enough, but he repeated it three times, and waited hopefully.

  A second passed. Suddenly there was a little hum, and from everyone’s radio poured a terrible voice. It was rumbling, deep, and grinding, and so awful to hear that Jim turned pale and put his fingers in his ears.

  When it was over, the doctor’s mop of white hair was standing straight up, stiff as a brush. “Heaven preserve us!” he whispered. “I’m not at all sure I care to meet the owner of that voice face to face.”

  “I’ll take the lichens,” Jim muttered. “Any time.”

  But Leli sang gaily to Sprockets: “Wasn’t it the most spectrumly wonderful thing to hear? We simply must get acquainted with this Something.”

  With much reluctance Dr. Bailey said, “Er, ah, were you able to get the direction of it, Sprockets?”

  “Yes, sir,” Sprockets replied, turning off his special perceptors and pointing out into the Martian night. “It is approximately three hundred and seven miles, six hundred and fifty feet to the southeast. Shall I tell Ilium to take us there, sir?”

  “Um, ah, well, I suppose so,” said the doctor.

  So the saucer zipped southeastward, where the Martian dawn was paling the horizon. Presently it stopped and hung poised on the slope of a great rounded red hill. Below the hill stretched a desert that might have been a sea bottom when Mars was young. One of the ancient canals ran straight through it. In the vague light everyone could see that the distant canal was dotted with lichens.

  “Bless me,” said the doctor. “What a lonesome spot! There’s nothing here! Are you sure this is the right place, Sprockets?”

  “Positive, sir.”

  Jim said: “But where could anything, even a Something, live around here? A Something has to live somewhere, if it’s only a cave.”

  “It is very puzzling,” Sprockets admitted, peering out. “I see neither a cave nor an opening in the hill. Perhaps, if I signaled again—”

  “Oh, no,” the doctor said quickly. “Don’t bother to bother. We’ll, er, look around a bit first.”

  Jim said, “I’m not putting foot outside till I know what Sprockets’ instinct button has to tell us.”

  Sprockets turned on his instinct button. “Wow!” he exclaimed. “There’s something around here—only it’s way down under us. It has to be the Something.”

  “Is—is it inhospitable to humans?” the doctor asked.

  “W-e-l-l, not exactly. I don’t feel any particular danger—at least at the moment.”

  Ilium and Leli had already snapped on their force globes and were hurrying eagerly out into the dawn to explore. The doctor peered uneasily at the hill, then his nose began to twitch. “Let’s get going!” he said.

  They turned on their force globes and followed Ilium and Leli outside.

  “At least,” said Jim, “there are no lichens here on the hill. But there’s nothing else, either. I don’t know what to look for.”

  At that moment Sprockets gave a little tock, and silently pointed at something on the smooth red rock ahead.

  It was a fragment of a lichen. It looked as if it had been cut by a mowing machine.

  “Jeepers!” came Jim’s whispered voice over the radio. “How did that get here?”

  Suddenly the voices of Ilium and Leli were singing in Sprockets’ receiver. “Something has been this way! It dropped pieces of lichen.”

  All at once the trail was plain. It led halfway up the hill, then stopped abruptly before a high, curving expanse of rock that blocked their way. Along the bottom of the rock were small pieces of dead and dried lichen. It was almost as if they had fallen from some conveyance going through a door.

  But there was no door here, not the faintest sign of a door. There was only the bare red rock of the hillside, scoured smooth by countless Martian dust storms.

  The doctor stared at the blank rock in front of him. “Sprockets, turn on your special perceptors. Maybe you can see something we can’t.”

  “I’ve already tried that, sir. All I can see is solid rock.”

  Then Sprockets heard Leli singing: “Isn’t this the most spectrumly clever way for a Something to hide his outer door?”

  “It’s most spectrumly flumdiddling,” Sprockets sang back. “How do you know this is his outer door?”

  “It just has to be. This isn’t the first Something we’ve investigated.”

  “But how—”

  “You have another button,” she said. “Why don’t you use it?”

  Sprockets remembered the special button on the side of his head that controlled his ultraviolet perceptors. It was so very special that he wasn’t supposed to touch it except under the most ultraspecial circumstances, and then for only a few seconds at a time.

  Certainly this was a most ultraspecial circumstance.

  Sprockets turned the button. Instantly he shone all over with a strange violet fire. Violet fires danced about his head and shot in blazing streaks from his eyes. He looked like a hot hobgoblin. The sight of him would have scared a stranger out of seven years’ growth. But Leli clapped her hands in delight and sang, “Oh, Sprockets, I didn’t know you could be so positively purplishly beautiful!”

  Sprockets hardly heard her. He was able to look right through the
rock. It really was a door, though a most curious one, and it opened into a large room within the hill.

  7

  They Enter a Door

  Sprockets turned off his very special button and slumped down before the rock, feeling a little limp. The problem facing him was enough to give any small robot a limpish feeling, and he doubted that he could solve it with all his buttons turned on full.

  The others crowded about him, questioning.

  “The entire rock is a door,” he answered, trying not to sound as baffled as he felt. “I was unable to detect any possible way it could be opened from the outside. It’s nine feet thick, and it must weigh thousands of tons—even here on Mars.”

  “Oh, dear me!” muttered the doctor, and slumped down beside him, shaking his head. “This is most unsettling.”

  “Aw, there must be a trick to it,” Jim said, approaching confidently. “Did you notice any locks?”

  “Neither locks nor hinges. It seems to slide inward in some manner strange to me,” said Sprockets.

  “Why don’t we try pushing it?” Jim suggested. “If it’s balanced right, its weight wouldn’t count.”

  Jim and Rivets tried pushing it in a dozen different places. The great rock refused to budge.

  “But if it’s a door, it’s got to open someway,” Jim said. “Sprockets, ask Ilium and Leli what they think.”

  Sprockets did, and answered dolefully: “Ilium says there are only four ways to open a door: by force, by key, by order, and by request. He says the first is most unpurplish and primitive, and that he doesn’t recommend it. And he says the second is quite old-fashioned, and that no intelligent Something would bother with it.”

  “That leaves only order and request. B-but grief and Moses, how do you go about ordering a door like this to open?” asked Jim.

  “Ilium says it can’t be done unless you have mastery over the door,” Sprockets answered.

  Jim slumped down beside his father. “If that’s the case, no one can order the door to open except the Something. Do we have to request the Something to open it for us? How about it, Daddy?”

  “Er, h’mm. Bless me, I’m afraid that’s the only solution.”

  “Sir,” said Sprockets, “shall I signal the Something and—and attempt to make known our, er—”

  “Oh, no!” said the doctor, giving a slight shudder. “Not right now. Let’s all consider the problem deeply.”

  “But, my goodness,” Rivets began. “I can’t see any problem. I’m not awful bright, but I know my manners. If a door is closed, and you want to enter, the proper thing to do is knock.”

  And Rivets strode up to the great stone door and knocked, very politely.

  Almost instantly, it opened. It slid soundlessly out of sight into the hillside, exposing a large cavelike space with another door at the farther end.

  Ilium and Leli clapped their hands in delight, and each took Rivets by an arm and ran inside. “Hurry!” they sang to Sprockets. “It will close in a moment.”

  Dr. Bailey was too astounded to protest when Sprockets caught his hand and drew him in after the others. Before the doctor could turn around and say, “Bless me,” the great stone door had closed behind him.

  “I declare,” muttered the doctor, peering about. The place was dimly lighted by a strange blue light that seemed to come from nowhere. “I—I declare!”

  “Daddy,” said Jim. “We’re in an air lock. I can hear air rushing in from somewhere. We’d better watch the other door.”

  The other door opened as they turned toward it, and everyone hurried through it. They were now in a bright blue circular room covered with curious designs. Directly in front of them were two broad passages sloping downward.

  The passage on the left was lighted by a deep red glow. The one on the right was a rich blue-green, the color of seawater.

  At the sight of the passages the doctor’s nose began to twitch, and his mop of hair began to flop with rising excitement. “Sprockets,” he ordered, “test the air and tell me if it is safe for humans.”

  “One moment, sir.” Sprockets turned off his force globe and adjusted his nose button. Air was something he did not need, but his nose button was extremely sensitive to it, and if it contained the wrong mixtures, he would have known it on the instant.

  “Sir,” he announced, “you will find the air safe, warm, and delicious. It contains a touch of ozone and a whiff of spring blossoms.”

  Everyone turned off his force globe and inhaled deeply. “My!” exclaimed the doctor. “This is positively super! I’m beginning to revise my opinion of the Something. He certainly does well for himself here. Now, let’s all consult and decide. We are faced with a color choice.”

  “Sir,” said Sprockets, “Ilium tells me they are most purplishly curious to explore the red passage, and they would like to take Rivets with them. I think, sir, the red color leads to machinery. With my special audios I can hear a faint hum coming from that direction.”

  “Can you hear anything from the green passage?”

  “Sir, there are several peculiar sounds coming from it. I seem to detect water running, and—and the singing of birds.”

  “Impossible!”

  “That’s what it sounds like, sir.”

  “Then, by all means, let us explore the green route, while our friends try the red one. But we must be very careful, and keep in constant touch by radio.”

  Sprockets watched Rivets trot happily away between Ilium and Leli. It worried him to be separated from his brother, although his instinct button gave no immediate indication of danger.

  Dr. Bailey, all eagerness now, was hurrying down the green passage as fast as his long legs could carry him. It sloped sharply and began to spiral, going down, down, down, like a winding stairway.

  “If we had roller skates,” said Jim, “this would be a lot easier. Say, I’m hungry!”

  Sprockets thought: How could he be?—but wisely said nothing.

  “I’m famished myself,” the doctor said presently. “Sprockets, where’s the lunch basket?”

  “In the saucer, sir.”

  “Great sniveling puppies! Why didn’t you bring it? Are you trying to starve us?” asked the doctor.

  “Sir, there was little left in it but three pickles and some chicken bones.” Sprockets glanced accusingly at Jim.

  Jim said: “I meant to make some new food with the saucer’s atomic transmuter. You know, you put a slice of cake or something in one slot, and a pebble in the other, and the pebble turns into more cake, or whatever you want. Only—”

  “Only what?” demanded the doctor. “If you had to be so piggy and eat everything, why didn’t you make some new lunch for the rest of us?”

  “Because I couldn’t find any pebbles! Honest, Daddy, I haven’t seen a pebble on Mars. This is the craziest place. Everything is ground down and worn smooth, and there’s nothing left but bare rock and dust. This planet must be awful old!”

  “I’m not interested in the age of the fourth planet! At the moment my only concern is food.” The doctor sat down, exhausted, for they had been hurrying for a half hour. The winding passage seemed endless. “How in the fuming thunderation,” he complained, “do you expect me to face the Something on an empty stomach?”

  “Sir,” said Sprockets, touching his nose button again, “I think I detect a faint aroma in the distance that might possibly come from something edible.”

  “Praise be!” muttered the doctor, springing to his feet, his exhaustion forgotten.

  It was fully a dozen spirals, however, before they reached the end of the winding passage. Here they stopped abruptly, and for a minute no one could utter a word.

  Before them opened what seemed to be another world. It had been morning outside—but here it was evening, with the setting sun shining through trees. There were birds singing overhead, and beyond them was a brook that came cascading down over mossy rocks to make a series of blue pools bordered with flowers. All the trees had curious leaves of different colo
rs. Some of them were covered with large blossoms; others were heavy with fruit.

  The only living creatures in sight were the bright birds. They sang merrily away, and paid not the slighest attention to the visitors from Earth.

  “Incredible!” Dr. Bailey whispered finally. “I—just—don’t—believe—it!”

  “Sir,” said Sprockets, “my special vision tells me this isn’t real. We are in a cave that’s been carefully arranged to look real. I would deduce—”

  Jim gasped, “I betcha that fruit’s real!” He made a dash for the nearest tree with fruit on it.

  “Don’t eat that!” cried his father, as Jim stuffed something into his mouth. “You don’t know what it is!”

  “Sure I do. U’mmm—yummy! It’s a plapple.”

  “A what?”

  “A plapple, Daddy. It couldn’t be anything else. It’s neither plum nor apple, but it’s like both—only better. So it has to be a plapple. I’m starved!” He stuffed more fruit into his mouth, and moved eagerly to another tree.

  Sprockets blinked at him incredulously. “How can you—after what you’ve eaten? You’ll have the worst stomachache on Mars.”

  “Aw, it must be past suppertime at home,” Jim protested between bites. “And anyhow, I’m a growing boy. U’mmm! Daddy, you should try this kind. It’s a figanana.”

  “Er, you mean like a fig—and a banana?”

  “Yes. And it grows already peeled. Wow!”

  The doctor, with an uneasy glance around as if to assure himself that no Something was watching, was already reaching for a plapple. Presently he, too, was stuffing himself with plapples and figananas.

  It was not until they had finished, and Jim was wading in the brook, that the doctor remembered Ilium and Leli. “My word!” he exclaimed. “Are they all right? I can hear them singing over the radio, but I can’t understand—”

  “Sir,” said Sprockets, “they’ve just found out about the lichens. They’ve located a sort of automatic reaper—it flies out through the air lock, cuts lichens, and brings them to another machine. This other machine takes oxygen from the lichens, and a lot of chemicals that are used here—or were used here once.”