"Most things in nature serve multiple purposes. Arms and legs are no
exception. They provide offensive as well as defensive weapons. We've
succeeded in building a conscious machine without any adequate control."
"But you sound as if you thought it might turn on man," protested the
girl with a shudder. "Why should it?"
"For the same reason we built it," he said with a touch of irony.
"Freedom. So long as it doesn't learn to reproduce itself, though, it's
not a danger. That is, not to the race."
"But a machine! Surely you can forecast how a machine will act!"
"Can we?" His voice was savage. "How would a conscious machine react
to its environment? What would its thoughts be? I tell you, once it
integrates itself, we have no means of predicting its reactions!"
* * * * *
Once in his own quarters, Henry Ohm began dragging on his oxygen suit.
He could still see the girl through the glass partitions of the igloo.
She had dropped into a chair, lit a cigarette.
"About as private," he thought wryly, "as a gold fish bowl."
The igloos, he knew, were manufactured for housing on the airless
asteroids of the belt. They were built of a clear thermal plastic and
incorporated heating, atmosphere and water units. Henry Ohm felt rather
strongly though that the partitions could have been clouded.
Sofi's holdings had not been designed to accommodate visitors. In fact,
Henry Ohm had spent the past week in a state of mild embarrassment.
He settled his helmet over his head, bolted it in place. He glanced
toward the living room, but Sofi wasn't there. Then he saw her in her
own quarters. She was skinning out of her coveralls, preparing to
shower.
"Damn all glass houses," he muttered and bolted for the air lock.
Hen emerged on the surface, swept the tight horizon with his eyes. It
was empty of life. R-7 had lost patience, evidently, and wandered off.
To the left was the laboratory and machine shop, a gleaming plastic
igloo resembling the living quarters. Robots Incorporated had provided
it for him to observe, diagnose, repair his mechanical charges. Beyond
the laboratory a somewhat larger igloo housed the mine shaft, reduction
plant and tipple. A dilapidated tramp freighter sprawled beside the
tipple like a foundered whale.
Hen frowned. Operations had come to a halt. He could catch no glimpse
of movement through the plastic walls.
He lengthened his stride, passed through the door, still open just
as Sofi had left it when she fled. The interior reminded him of the
appearance of a shop from which the proprietor has just stepped to buy
a paper.
A subtle feeling of uneasiness began to pervade his whole being. He
descended the shaft in the automatic cage. The light was burning on
each of the four levels. Tools had been abandoned and left lying on the
floors. He found the dismembered anatomy of the mining worm on level
three. But of the eight robots there was no sign.
Hen ran the cage back to the surface at top speed. He was sweating
profusely. A trickle kept running off his forehead into his eye. He
pawed at the plastic helmet, shook his head. Then perversely his nose
began to itch.
It did no good to tell himself these were nervous manifestations. He
could only grit his teeth and suffer. He ran outside, glanced hopefully
about the surface once more.
The landscape was rough, inhospitable, barren, resembling a clinker on
a larger scale. The sun hung just above the western horizon. It was a
brilliant but unimposing disc about the size of a dime.
There was still no sign of the robots.
* * * * *
Hen swore softly to himself. In a few minutes it would be dark. It was
hopeless to begin a search now. He returned to his quarters in the
igloo, shucked off the oxygen suit.
Maybe he could raise them with the radio. The robots' hearing and
speaking apparatus extended beyond the range of audible sound into the
realm of electro-magnetic waves. He went out to the sun deck, switched
on the communicator. He was unable to contact them, though. There was
no ionized strata of air on the asteroid to reflect the waves back to
the surface, and he concluded they had wandered below the horizon.
With a groan, he flung himself into a chair. He pulled the notebook out
of his pocket, thumbed through the pages, reading bits here and there.
"... machine thought processes diverging from human at progressively
increasing rate ... amazing deductive and assimilative faculties.
Able to assimilate page of text at a glance. But seem to lack
creativeness...."
He paused, frowned, wondering if the inability to perform creative,
inductive thinking wasn't a fundamental limitation of the machine.
Organic life differed in four precepts which until a short time ago
science had been unable to duplicate. It was able to grow and reproduce
itself; it felt emotion and thought.
But the robots appeared to think.
And some forms of organic life didn't feel emotion. Plants, for one.
The oviparous man-like bowmen of Venus, who had emerged from the
Great Swamp and which a few crackpot visionaries were hailing as homo
superior, for another.
Only the ability to grow and reproduce itself seemed inherently
organic. The act of conception both in a biologic and mental sense was
the birthright of the organism.
With an increase of the uneasiness he had felt since the discovery of
the robots' defection, he returned to his notes.
"... robots showing aversion to water, oxygen, corrosive acids; believe
to be caused by dread and/or attendant pain of oxidation ... have been
forced to release air in mine and laboratory and discontinue atmosphere
units to induce robots to return to work. Humidity of atmosphere being
especially distasteful to them ... treated R-3 for mild acid corrosion
of right pedal digit. Complained of itching sensation...."
He frowned. How in the hell could a hunk of metal experience an itching
sensation? From what source could it have plucked the mental pattern?
He came to the end of his notes, wrote: "All work at stand still.
Robots have disappeared."
He returned the book to his pocket, elevated his feet on another chair,
closed his eyes.
He was still in that position when Sofi streamed out of her quarters
with a towel draped about herself.
"Resting the old brain?" she inquired brightly.
Hen opened his eyes, said in a pained voice, "I'm thinking," and closed
them again.
"Which end do you use?"
Hen allowed his feet to clomp to the floor, sat up. He said grimly,
"The robots have run off."
Sofi's blue eyes widened. "Wait a minute," she said breathlessly and
flashed from the room.
Hen kept his eyes studiously on the deck.
The sprawling sun-drenched hives of Terra, he was beginning to realize,
insured an impersonal attitude by the multitude of their citizenry.
That same impersonalness was disconcertingly hard to maintain when a
man and a girl were cooped together on an uninhabited asteroid. The
pre-plastic emotions were only too apt to assert themselves.
It distracted him when he felt he needed his full powers of
concentration.
Sofi returned in belted coveralls. She took a seat, asking him, "What
does it mean?"
"The disappearance of the robots? I don't know. I didn't think they
were sufficiently integrated yet to mutiny."
"But what can they do?"
He frowned. "I don't want to sound like an alarmist, but I've pointed
out before how suited the asteroids are to them. If once they
learned how to duplicate themselves, there'd be no end to them. They
have everything here they need to get a fundamental grasp of our
science--even to a rocket ship. They could spread through the asteroid
belt like a plague."
Sofi bit her lip. Her eyes were opened wide and brilliant. Her cheeks
were flushed. She didn't interrupt.
Hen said, "Look what it would mean. An alien, intelligent, almost
indestructible race of monsters saddling the planetary system!"
He drove his right fist into his left palm. "A control! That's what we
have to discover! A control!"
* * * * *
Hen had no idea what he ate that night at supper. He said suddenly over
coffee and cigarettes, "Ceres is approaching an inferior conjunction.
If those robots haven't appeared by morning, I'm going to radio the
station there for help. Then I'm going to scour every inch of this
diminutive world."
"That shouldn't be too difficult for you," Sofi remarked maliciously.
"Of course, there's only about two thousand-five hundred square
kilometers to cover."
Hen looked disgruntled.
"Maybe they've jumped off," suggested Sofi with a giggle.
He made a remark under his breath.
"Why, Henry! What an idea! You're worrying yourself into a nervous
breakdown. Relax. I'll tell you what: we'll play some checkers."
"Checkers!" he snorted. He had played checkers every night since he had
been on the asteroid and he didn't even like the game. Besides, the
girl always beat him.
Undeterred by his lack of enthusiasm, Sofi began to clear away the
dishes and get out the men.
* * * * *
Hen sat back with a pained expression. It was black outside the plastic
hemisphere. Only the vivid stars relieved the absence of light.
Jupiter, by far the brightest, was visible as a small disc. The lights
were still on in mine and lab, but nothing stirred in the two igloos.
"It's your move," said Sofi.
She was seated directly across from him, knees touching his. Her
coveralls were open at the neck, and he could see the white pillar of
her throat, the swell of her small, high, virginal breasts. He was
conscious of his pulse ticking away in his throat, and grew furious
with himself. He couldn't concentrate on the game; he couldn't
concentrate on the much more serious problem of the robots.
The girl, he felt sure, was aware of her effect on him and used it
deliberately to confuse him. He said grumpily, "I can't beat both of
you."
"Both of me?"
"Yeah. You and your body."
"Why, what a thought, Hen!" She was obviously trying to hold back
laughter. "But I thought you were superior to that sort of thing."
He jumped up from the table, turned his back to the girl staring off
through the plastic walls. Immediately all thoughts of Sofi vanished.
"They're back!"
"What?"
"The robots. They've come back. They're in the laboratory. Look."
She came around the table, brushing against him, stared out at the
lighted igloo. The heavy man-like machines were moving about inside the
laboratory. Hen started for his quarters.
"Where are you going?" Sofi cried sharply.
"Get my oxygen suit."
"Wait. Don't be foolhardy. How do you know what they're up to? Talk to
them first."
Hen hesitated. "All right." He went out onto the sun deck instead,
snapped on the communicator.
"R-7," he called. "R-7."
"_Here_," came the robot's voice through the audio. "_Is that you,
father?_"
"Father?" Hen ejaculated. He heard Sofi giggle. "Where did you get that
idea?"
"_Didn't you make us, father?_"
"Yes," he admitted. Sofi was laughing out loud. "But you didn't think
of that yourself."
"_The girl told us, father_," said the robot.
Hen ground his teeth. That, of course, was Sofi's idea of a joke.
"Where have you been?" he asked.
"_Prospecting._"
"Prospecting for what?"
"_Radium, father._"
Sofi said, "Ask them if they found anything!" Her voice was eager.
Hen narrowed his black eyes, ignored her. He said to R-7 over the
transmitter, "Go back to work at once."
"_But you don't work, father._"
Hen felt a surge of uncertainty. The robots were too delicately
receptive to expect to keep them in ignorance. Their perceptions were
infinitely more sensitive than man's. Even on this asteroid there
were too many factors involved to regulate their environment. He had
tried to implant science without revealing the greater implication
of science. But language was too faulty a tool. There was the girl,
too--headstrong, excitable, hyper-thyroid. It was amazing how
faithfully the robots tended to reflect her emotional instability.
How much of the robots' erraticness originated in Sofi's inexact
thinking?