Henry Ohm, staid scientist, found he couldn't
keep his mind on his work--with that girl around.
Such was the development of her--ah--personality
that even the robots began getting ideas!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Winter 1946.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Henry Ohm leaped to his feet, stared across the intervening ground at
igloo number 2, plainly visible through the clear plastic walls. Its
door had just been flung violently open. Then Sofi Jokai scooted out
and fled madly across the jagged surface of the asteroid.
Hard on the girl's heels pounded R-7. The robot, Hen saw with a gulp,
was waving a large wrench in one metal fist.
"Oh-oh!" Hen muttered and plunged down the incline for the airlock.
He shot a second glance through the transparent curved walls, slowed
down. The robot would never catch Sofi. Even burdened by her oxygen
suit, the girl was leaving R-7 far in the rear.
At the airlock, Henry Ohm paused, regarding the chase with sober,
deep-set black eyes. He was a tall, thin young man, nearing thirty.
His face was narrow; prominent cheek bones and a thin, straight nose
gave his features an angular pleasant mould. He made no move to don
the emergency oxygen helmet beside the lock, but waited with a vague
expression of annoyance.
Sofi reached the airlock, burst inside, sealed and locked the outer
door behind her. The air had scarcely filled the chamber before she
flung open the inner door, confronted Henry Ohm, and exploded into a
flood of angry words. Not a sound escaped her plastic helmet which she
had forgotten to remove.
He let her rattle away silently inside her helmet, nodding at
intervals, rubbing his chin until she paused for breath.
"That's what you get for trying to run a mine all alone on this
god-forsaken asteroid," he informed her, "even if you are a
yellow-haired hell cat."
Sofi looked at him blankly.
Ohm rapped with his knuckles on her helmet. "If you'd take that thing
off, you could hear me. But you're the excitable type. Probably have an
overactive thyroid."
Sofi jerked off her helmet. She had a mass of fine wavy yellow hair cut
like a halo about her oval face. Her features were delicately moulded,
her eyes large and blue. She was only a few inches shorter than Henry
Ohm, but more slenderly built.
"What the hell were you saying?" she demanded suspiciously.
"I wanted to know what you'd been doing to the robots this time?"
"Me?"
"What happened in the mine?"
"Rational robots!" Sofi Jokai planted hands on slender but ample hips.
"I was an idiot to listen to you, Hen."
He repressed a chuckle. His glance flicked to the surface of the
asteroid beyond the plastic walls of the igloo. R-7, he saw, had taken
a stance at the lock like a cat at a mouse hole.
* * * * *
Although built along the general design of man, the robot was no
grotesque copy. He was a complex functional piece of machinery as
beautiful in his way as the cobwebby spans of a bridge, a streamlined
jet plane, or a fine watch.
"But Sofi, they're still in the experimental stage. They--"
"Experimental's right," the girl interrupted passionately. "D'you
realize what R-7 has done now?"