by Duncan Long
“Just a minute,” I said. ” I had some bots like these over here in my lab.” I bounced over to the mechanicals. “Yeah, these are standard lab bots in space man’s clothing. Let me pop one open and check its energy pack.” I pulled off the plastic sheeting that surrounded it and tried the activation switch on the off chance that Jake had picked a malfunctioning bot. But like the other, this bot failed to come on line.
I spent the next few seconds trying to remove the battery cover so I could see inside the power compartment. Suit lights are sure awkward; I had to do a contortionist imitation before I could see. ” It has batteries but they aren’t charged.”
“How are we going to—”
“Shouldn’t be too hard,” I said. “We can run a cable off the van’s generating system. It’ll take a while but it should work. Let’s start moving the bots to the front door.”
“I’ll go get the van,” Nikki said and bounded out of the room and down the dark hallway behind us.
“Let’s try to use this model,” I told Jake. ” It will be easiest to charge since I know how it operates. Unfortunately, the van’s too big to back down here where the bots are.”
“Nothing’s easy.” Jake came over and grabbed one side of the bot and I took the other.
Through a series of spastic hops, we finally got it coordinated in our movements and rapidly brought it to the entrance to the storage area as Nikki brought the van down as far as it would fit in the narrow passageway.
“You know,” Nikki said as she stepped out of the van, “if you could recharge a couple of these units, we could program them to drag the other bots to the entrance. It’d save a lot of work in the long run.”
“Good idea,” I said. I hated taking the time to program a bot, but the task was fairly simple and I hated carrying bots even more than programming them.
I pulled up the hood of the van and removed the coiled electrical cable that I had stored there.
Setting the voltage regulator (that had come to us thanks to Jake’s surplus gear) to the correct setting, I plugged one end of the cable into the bot’s recharge panel and the other to the regulator.
In five minutes, the bot was functional.
“Either of you know how to program one of these?” I asked.
“No.”
“’Fraid not.”
So while Nikki and Jake played explorer, I got to play nursemaid to some very dimwitted machines. About a half hour later, the bot was finally dragging another bot out of the storage area and setting it by the van. I was relieved to see that it hadn’t smashed its brother in the process.
By transferring the program from the first bot to the second, I was able to have two bots bringing out the others. I could have programmed several more, but found that with just the two working, I was able to charge a bot by the time they dragged out a new bot. I decided having a bot recharge the others was a little more risk than I wanted to take since the voltage regulator seemed to vary a lot and had to be constantly watched.
Eventually I choose three models of bots to take with us after double checking to be sure I could recharge all of them as needed. One type was the cylinder-looking lab bot that I was familiar with. The two other models looked like they’d probably both been designed for the low gravity of the Moon since they had spidery legs. One was about the size of a small dog and had
“Go-4” ("Gopher,” get it?) stenciled on the side of it while the other had a body the size of a man’s with eight meter-long appendages which it could use as feet or hands or which could have power tools mounted on it. The crazy things could move on two appendages like a man or—if they had a heavy load—on four or more legs which gave them a real bug look. In my mind at least, it looked like a spider.
After two hours of charging bots, I was finally finished. The bots stood beside the van waiting for more instructions. During that time I had been listening to Jake and Nikki on the radio. They’d managed to get the computer running in the control room and pulled out a list of what was in the storage area. Now they were making sounds that you’d expect from two kids in a candy store as they inspected the manifest of the storage area.
“I’m finished up out here if you two want to help load up,” I said.
Moments later, Nikki bounced up to me, “Look at this.” She handed me a computer print out.
I read some of the list. “Food, tools, medicine… Looks like we could be set up for quite some time. My only question is, will we be endangering some upcoming expedition if we use any of this?”
“Yeah, that’s an angle we haven’t really considered,” Jake said. ” I’d hate to move this out and cause some group to starve to death. I really think it’s only an outside chance that anyone’s planning on ever coming back, though. They’ve dismantled the space development and exploration.”
“Even if a group came up from Earth that wouldn’t be a problem,” Nikki said. ” If we can start up the mining operation, and make some rods, we’ll be able to transport food and equipment up from Earth like there’s no tomorrow. The need of a storage dump like this will be a thing of the past.”
“Catering service. There’s an angle.” I handed the list to Nikki. “At any rate, we won’t be needing these supplies for a while given what’s in the other site. But it’ll be good to know that they’re here if we should need them.”
“It’s hard to believe that they abandoned all this.”
“That’s the problem with chemical rockets,” Jake said. “They’re too expensive. It was cheaper to leave all this stuff here than take it back. Just think of how things are going to change when the rods become available. A jump to the Moon will be as easy as a rocket flight to another part of the Earth.”
“It is hard to imagine the effect the rods would have if we ever get enough made to make them available,” I agreed.
“And once the public knows about them, we’ll be out of danger,” Nikki said.
“I don’t know. If someone wanted to kill me—us—before, they’ll be interested in silencing us rather than letting the public find that they tried to keep the rods under raps. I suspect we’ll steal be on someone’s hit parade.”
“Phil, you always manage to look on the dark side, don’t you?”
“A pessimist is never disappointed.”
Chapter 14
Though the sun had hardly changed position, the Earth above us had rotated almost a half turn and our muscles were starting to complain even with the reduced gravity of the Moon. My stomach rumbled from time to time since I’d avoided trying to use the liquid garbage from the eating tubes in my space suit.
Eventually the van was crammed full of bots. The little gophers filled in the spaces between the larger bots and the “spiders” were stored end wise with all their legs folded. Added to this were the four cylindrical lab bots lashed to each side of the van with four more strapped to the top, along with a case of “brains” for the units back at what had become our home base.
It’ll never fly, I thought, though I knew better. Lifting off was not going to be a problem.
Taking the full crew of humans was. And I knew that no one would take seriously my suggestion of strapping Jake to the hood of the van.
We finally all got scrunched into our seats. Little gophers were fitted in all around each of us.
I felt like a mother Saint Bernard. “You know, this is pretty dangerous,” I warned. “One impact and they’ll never sort the meat from the metal.”
“Don’t worry,” Nikki said. “The computers will handle the whole thing.”
As I tried my best to forget how often my lab computers froze during calculations, we lifted off on yet another terror express journey. Once I got the van over the rim of the crater, the computer locked onto our home beacon and we whisked over the jagged mountain range at almost as great a speed as we’d traveled with before.
“You know, we could program a bot to fly this route and free us up to work at the base,”
Nikki said.
�
��I don’t know… What if something broke down. There we’d be without a way to travel to repair it. It’s a long walk back to the Earth.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right. But once we get to manufacturing the rods, we’d be able to do something like that. Use some of the gear back in the warehouse.”
“We could even build a bot/computer vehicle that could be used just for such tasks.”
“Like the rocket expresses on Earth,” Jake said from behind a pile of bots in the back.
“Don’t remind me of the automated rockets on Earth,” Nikki said, ” I’m still bitter.”
“Getting fired was the best thing that ever happened to you,” I said. “Just think, you wouldn’t be with us if you hadn’t gotten canned. Instead, of riding in a flying junk yard, you’d be sitting at home enjoying yourself.”
“Not being in an itchy, sweat-filled suit wouldn’t be without its finer points,” Nikki said. “But I’m glad I’m here with—”
At that point, the computer failed and we dropped like a rock.
It was only a few moments before the second computer kicked in but I think we all thought we’d had it. Our downward drop was checked with what felt like a quick kick in the seat of the pants. Bots jostled and pushed against us and felt as if they were just this side of crushing us.
I fought to control my bladder, quit screaming in terror, and calmly yelled, “What the hell happened?”
“Computer failed.” Nikki fiddled a moment with the computer that was now off-line.
“Luckily the backup worked. Program’s gone. Must have got hit by a gamma ray.”
I checked my wrist radiation display to be sure I wasn’t being fried like the computer program had been. Still a healthy green. “Jake, you OK?” I asked.
“Banged my nose. Otherwise all right.”
“I’m going to transfer the program back from computer two to one so we’ll have a backup in case that happens again,” Nikki said.
“Is that safe to do?” I asked. “What if—”
“Hold on,” Nikki said.
I gritted my teeth and got ready to take over.
“There,” she said.
“That was kind of a letdown, no sparks, explosions, or falling from the sky,” I said.
“Keep up the letdowns,” Jake said.
“What caused the computer failure? Gamma ray?” I asked.
“Probably. It doesn’t happen often with the new memories but can—rarely—take place. Or the computer might have a more serious problem. I’m having it check itself out now… And… No problems. Must have been a stray gamma ray.”
I eyed a sharp, jagged peak below us and had no trouble imagining my frail body impaled on it.
We reached our base without further mishap. We were all worn out so we called it a day and left the van to be unloaded the next day.
* * *
The next month proved very eventful in that we got the bots organized and succeeded in getting both the mine and hydroponics dome operational. We even managed to assemble the base’s solar furnace without crisping any of us.
After Jake had created wire-drawing dies, we soon had bots making wire and armature-wrapping programs for the gophers. Shortly after that, we had several large generators ready and waiting to give us all the power we could possibly need—once we got the new rods manufactured to power the generators.
The tough part was making those first rods since we were short of power. We spent a lot of time during the long lunar nights using minimal power, trying to conserve. But once we’d gotten those first rods made and mounted to the generators, things got pretty easy. Soon the bots were programmed to continue mining, smelting, and making rods. Ah, the joys of automation.
Three months after we’d reached the Moon, we had a huge stockpile of rods and were ready to return to Earth with the second step of our plan: To let people know that energy could now be virtually free, and also to convince the Earth government to abandon old forms of power generation. The first would be easy. Everyone likes the word “Free.” The second part was going to be tricky since someone—maybe even everyone in power—was already out to keep my discovery a secret. But perhaps naively, we figured that we would offer an ultimatum: Integrate the rods into society or we would release the technology covertly in such a way as to topple the corporations controlling the government.
Though things went well on a mechanical level during those three months, the same couldn’t be said about things on a personal level. Though none of us admitted it aloud, I think we were all anxious to get back to Earth. An automated plant isn’t too exciting once it starts going and the Moon, while it has the desolate beauty of a desert, doesn’t have the color, warmth, or safety of Earth.
And I was depressed. Nikki was not unfriendly to me; just not overly friendly. Two men with one well-built woman in a small confined area just doesn’t work out to a balanced equation.
Another month and I suspect Jake and I would have been at each other’s throats. Or maybe Nikki would simply have shot us both to put us out of her misery.
It was time to return to Earth.
Chapter 15
It was a little disconcerting to depart what had become our Copernicus Base with only the bots left in charge; more and more I was beginning to identify with the sorcerer’s apprentice. I could imagine coming back to discover that the whole moon had been converted into gravity rods. But there was no other way; the bots had to be left to their own devices since a huge inventory of rods would be needed for projects we’d been planning for the near future.
Nevertheless, it seemed that more and more my future seemed to hang in the balance of how well these simple machines performed.
We took a few precautions to make sure that we weren’t discovered: We disabled the homing beacon for our base and Jake painted some very realistic looking biological hazard signs which he mounted all over the outside of the base’s domes. It would take a very brave group of people to enter the base if an expedition should arrive from Earth.
We had “air lifted” all of the rovers from the Eratothenes Base by welding gravity rods to them, converting them so they supplied their own power much as my van did. We converted one of the wheeled versions of the rovers further so that we could load it up with odds and ends and take it back to Earth with us. Strangely enough, the hard part wasn’t getting the rover into flying form but rather getting it set up to travel on Earth roads once we got back to terra firma; since the rover had wheels, we hoped to tow it behind the van without raising too much interest. The rover was a lot of work but enabled us to carry a huge number of extra rods back to Earth as well as the stuff we’d be needing for the next steps to get the anti-grav technology released to Earth.
Our “Plan A” was a little simplistic and would require us to improvise a lot along the way.
We hoped to confront whoever was trying to kill us and bargain to release the secret of the rods in exchange for our secrecy about their trying to silence us. In the shuffle, we hoped to bargain for the possession of our Moon base (though we were going to keep it a secret unless we really thought things were going our way).
Obviously, this would take some fast talking and maybe even the threat of releasing the secret of anti-gravity covertly which would—with any luck at all—wreck the world economy in the process.
Which was Plan B: Release the secret of the rods covertly and probably wreck the order of things. Your basic anarchist, teenager style rebellion against authority.
(While the secret of the anti-grav technology could have made us rich, we figured that if we could continue with our automated mining/rod manufacturing operation on the Moon for a while, money wouldn’t be a problem for us anyway.)
While Plan A was a little optimistic perhaps, it would be simpler to do than to try to release the technology as in Plan B. And we knew that Plan B could and most likely would create a major social upheaval that might cause a lot of harm as well as good. And at best it would take forever and a day to carry out su
ccessfully without getting us all killed. But if plan A failed, plan B seemed our only alternative.
Either way, we knew it was going to be tough. You don’t just walk up to someone that’s trying to fill you full of holes and say, “Before you pull the trigger, I’d like to have a few words with your boss.”
At least you don’t try that twice.
So we were going to have to find a way to talk to the “boss man” without getting killed in the process. And we didn’t even know for sure who was out to get us. The world government? The energy cartel? Both? Neither?
We had our work cut out for us as we lifted off from the Moon.
“It’s strange,” Nikki said, ” I’m going to be glad to get back to Earth. But I feel a little sad about leaving.”
“Yeah,” I said, ” I feel that way, too. Guess it’s nice and safe here. Seeing the huge stack of anti-gravity rods the bots are churning up day in and day out is kind of exciting, too.”
“We’re getting enough rods to carry out some fantastic work if we ever get the time and manpower to do it,” Jake said. “Before long, we’re going to have to consider heading out to the asteroids. One chunk of an icy asteroid would take care of all our water needs on the Moon for some time if we attached rods to it and hauled it back.”
“Spoken like a true Spacer,” I said with a chuckle.
“The possibilities really are endless,” Nikki said.
“ If we can get Earth off our backs,” Jake said.
“The big ‘if’ again.”
The rover floated behind our van, working in tandem to our controls. We’d rigged up a tow bar between the vehicles which carried messages from our van’s computer to the one working computer looted from the Eratothenes Base and now mounted in the rover. This enabled it to follow our maneuvers—we hoped. If it came loose or the packaging came apart, there were enough rods aboard it to take off to the next galaxy. We were towing a lot of potential mayhem and destruction. I tried to think about other things.