[ILLUSTRATION]
I'd been in Ravenhurst's office on the mountain-sized planetoid called
Raven's Rest only twice before. The third time was no better; Shalimar
Ravenhurst was one of the smartest operators in the Belt, but when it
came to personal relationships, he was utterly incompetent. He could
make anyone dislike him without trying.
When I entered the office, he was sitting behind his mahogany desk,
his eyes focused on the operation he was going through with a wineglass
and a decanter. He didn't look up at me as he said:
"Sit down, Mr. Oak. Will you have some Madeira?"
I decided I might as well observe the pleasantries. There was no point
in my getting nasty until he did. "Thank you, Mr. Ravenhurst, I will."
He kept his eyes focused on his work: It isn't easy to pour wine on a
planetoid where the gee-pull is measured in fractions of a centimeter
per second squared. It moves slowly, like ropy molasses, but you have
to be careful not to be fooled by that. The viscosity is just as low
as ever, and if you pour it from any great height, it will go scooting
right out of the glass again. The momentum it builds up is enough to
make it splash right out again in a slow-motion gush which gets it all
over the place.
Besides which, even if it didn't splash, it would take it so long to
fall a few inches that you'd die of thirst waiting for it.
Ravenhurst had evolved a technique from long years of practice.
He tilted the glass and the bottle toward each other, their edges
touching, like you do when you're trying to pour beer without putting a
head on it. As soon as the wine wet the glass, the adhesive forces at
work would pull more wine into the wine glass. To get capillary action
on a low-gee asteroid, you don't need a capillary, by any means. The
negative meniscus on the wine was something to see; the first time
you see it, you get the eerie feeling that the glass is spinning and
throwing the wine up against the walls by centrifugal force.
I took the glass he offered me (Careful! Don't slosh!) and sipped at
it. Using squirt tubes would have been a hell of a lot easier and
neater, but Ravenhurst liked to do things his way.
He put the stopper back in the decanter, picked up his own glass and
sipped appreciatively. Not until he put it back down on the desk again
did he raise his eyes and look at me for the first time since I'd come
in.
"Mr. Oak, you have caused me considerable trouble."
"I thought we'd hashed all that out, Mr. Ravenhurst," I said, keeping
my voice level.
"So had I. But it appears that there were more ramifications to your
action than we had at first supposed." His voice had the texture of
heavy linseed oil.
He waited, as if he expected me to make some reply to that. When
I didn't, he sighed slightly and went on. "I fear that you have
inadvertently sabotaged McGuire. You were commissioned to prevent
sabotage, Mr. Oak, and I'm afraid that you abrogated your contract."
I just continued to keep my voice calm. "If you are trying to get back
the fee you gave me, we can always take it to court. I don't think
you'd win."
"Mr. Oak," he said heavily, "I am not a fool, regardless of what your
own impression may be. If I were trying to get back that fee, I would
hardly offer to pay you another one."
I didn't think he was a fool. You don't get into the managerial
business and climb to the top and stay there unless you have brains.
Ravenhurst was smart, all right; it was just that, when it came to
personal relationships, he wasn't very wise.
"Then stop all this yak about an abrogated contract and get to the
point," I told him.
"I shall. I was merely trying to point out to you that it is through
your own actions that I find myself in a very trying position, and that
your sense of honor and ethics should induce you to rectify the damage."
"My honor and ethics are in fine shape," I said, "but my interpretation
of the concepts might not be quite the same as yours. Get to the
point."
He took another sip of Madeira. "The robotocists at Viking tell
me that, in order to prevent any further ... ah ... sabotage by
unauthorized persons, the MGYR-7 was constructed so that, after
activation, the first man who addressed orders to it would thenceforth
be considered its ... ah ... master.
"As I understand it, the problem of defining the term 'human being'
unambiguously to a robot is still unsolved. The robotocists felt that
it would be much easier to define a single individual. That would
prevent the issuing of conflicting orders to a robot, provided the
single individual were careful in giving orders himself.
"Now, it appears that _you_, Mr. Oak, were the first man to speak to
McGuire after he had been activated. Is that correct?"
"Is that question purely rhetorical," I asked him, putting on my best
expression of innocent interest. "Or are you losing your memory?" I had
explained all that to him two weeks before, when I'd brought McGuire
and the girl here, so that Ravenhurst would have a chance to cover up
what had really happened.
* * * * *
My sarcasm didn't faze him in the least. "Rhetorical. It follows that
you are the only man whose orders McGuire will obey."
"Your robotocists can change that," I said. This time, I was giving him
my version of "genuine" innocence. A man has to be a good actor to be
a competent double agent, and I didn't want Ravenhurst to know that I
knew a great deal more about the problem than he did.
He shook his head, making his jowls wobble. "No, they cannot. They
realize now that there should be some way of making that change, but
they failed to see that it would be necessary. Only by completely
draining McGuire's memory banks and refilling them with new data can
this bias be eliminated."
"Then why don't they do that?"
"There are two very good reasons," he said. And there was a shade of
anger in his tone. "In the first place, that sort of operation takes
time, and it costs money. If we do that, we might as well go ahead and
make the slight changes in structure necessary to incorporate some of
the improvements that the robotocists now feel are necessary. In other
words, they might as well go ahead and build the MGYR-8, which is
precisely the thing I hired you to prevent."
"It seems you have a point there, Mr. Ravenhurst." He'd hired me
because things were shaky at Viking. If he lost too much more money on
the McGuire experiment, he stood a good chance of losing his position
as manager. If that happened some of his other managerial contracts
might be canceled, too. Things like that can begin to snowball, and
Ravenhurst might find himself out of the managerial business entirely.
"But," I went on, "hasn't the additional wasted time already cost you
money?"
"It has. I was reluctant to call you in again--understandably enough, I
think."
"Perfectly. It's mutual."
He ignored me. "I even considered going through with the rebuilding
work, now that we have traced down the source of failure of the first
six models. Unfortunately, that isn't feasible, either." He scowled at
me.
"It seems," he went on, "that McGuire refuses to allow his brain to
be tampered with. The self-preservation 'instinct' has come to the
fore. He has refused to let the technicians and robotocists enter his
hull, and he has threatened to take off and leave Ceres if any further
attempts are made to ... ah ... disrupt his thinking processes."
"I can't say that I blame him," I said. "What do you want me to do? Go
to Ceres and tell him to submit like a good boy?"
"It is too late for that, Mr. Oak. Viking cannot stand any more of
that kind of drain on its financial resources. I have been banking on
the McGuire-type ships to put Viking Spacecraft ahead of every other
spacecraft company in the System." He looked suddenly very grim and
very determined. "Mr. Oak, I am _certain_ that the robot ship is the
answer to the transportation problems in the Solar System. For the sake
of every human being in the Solar System, we must get the bugs out of
McGuire!"
_What's good for General Bull-moose is good for everybody_, I quoted
to myself. I'd have said it out loud, but I was fairly certain that
Shalimar Ravenhurst was not a student of the classics.
"Mr. Oak, I would like you to go to Ceres and co-operate with the
robotocists at Viking. When the MGYR-8 is finally built, I want it to
be the prototype for a fast, safe, functional robot spaceship that can
be turned out commercially. You can be of great service, Mr. Oak."
"In other words, I've got you over a barrel."
"I don't deny it."
"You know what my fees are, Mr. Ravenhurst. That's what you'll be
charged. I'll expect to be paid weekly; if Viking goes broke, I don't
want to lose more than a week's pay. On the other hand, if the MGYR-8
is successful, I will expect a substantial bonus."
"How much?"
"Exactly half of the cost of rebuilding. Half what it would take to
build a Model 8 right now, and taking a chance on there being no bugs
in it."
He considered that, looking grimmer than ever. Then he said: "I will
do it on the condition that the bonus be paid off in installments, one
each six months for three years after the first successful commercial
ship is built by Viking."
"My lawyer will nail you down on that wording," I said, "but it's a
deal. Is there anything else?"
"No."
"Then I think I'll leave for Ceres before you break a blood vessel."
"You continue to amaze me, Mr. Oak," he said. And the soft oiliness of
his voice was the oil of vitriol. "Your compassion for your fellowman
is a facet of your personality that I had not seen before. I shall
welcome the opportunity to relax and allow my blood pressure to
subside."
I could almost see Shalimar Ravenhurst suddenly exploding and adding
his own touch of color to the room.
And, on that gladsome thought, I left. I let him have his small verbal
triumph; if he'd known that I'd have taken on the job for almost
nothing, he'd really have blown up.
* * * * *
Ten minutes later, I was in my vacuum suit, walking across the glaring,
rough-polished rectangle of metal that was the landing field of
Raven's Rest. The sun was near the zenith in the black, diamond-dusted
sky, and the shadow of my flitterboat stood out like an inkblot on
a bridal gown. I climbed in, started the engine, and released the
magnetic anchor that held the little boat to the surface of the
nickel-iron planetoid. I lifted her gently, worked her around until I
was stationary in relation to the spinning planetoid, oriented myself
against the stellar background, and headed toward the first blinker
beacon on my way to Ceres.
For obvious economical reasons, it it impracticable to use full-sized
spaceships in the Belt. A flitterboat, with a single gravitoinertial
engine and the few necessities of life--air, some water, and a very
little food--still costs more than a Rolls-Royce automobile does on
Earth, but there has to be some sort of individual transportation in
the Belt.
They can't be used for any great distances because a man can't stay
in a vac suit very long without getting uncomfortable. You have to
hop from beacon to beacon, which means that your _average_ velocity
doesn't amount to much, since you spend too much time accelerating
and decelerating. But a flitterboat is enough to get around the
neighborhood in, and that's all that's needed.
I got the GM-187 blinker in my sights, eased the acceleration up to one
gee, relaxed to watch the radar screen while I thought over my coming
ordeal with McGuire.
Testing spaceships, robotic or any other kind, is strictly not my
business. The sign on the door of my office in New York says: _DANIEL
OAK, Confidential Expediter_; I'm hired to help other people Get Things
Done. Usually, if someone came to me with the problem of getting a
spaceship test-piloted, I'd simply dig up the best test pilot in the
business, hire him for my client, and forget about everything but
collecting my fee. But I couldn't have refused this case if I'd wanted
to. I'd already been assigned to it by someone a lot more important
than Shalimar Ravenhurst.
Every schoolchild who has taken a course in Government Organization and
Function can tell you that the Political Survey Division is a branch of
the System Census Bureau of the UN Government, and that its job is to
evaluate the political activities of various sub-governments all over
the System.
[Illustration]
And every one of those poor tykes would be dead wrong.
The Political Survey Division _does_ evaluate political activity, all
right, but it is the Secret Service of the UN Government. The vast
majority of the System's citizens don't even know the Government has
a Secret Service. I happen to know only because I'm an agent of the
Political Survey Division.
The PSD was vitally interested in the whole McGuire project. Robots of
McGuire's complexity had been built before; the robot that runs the
traffic patterns of the American Eastern Seaboard is just as capable
as McGuire when it comes to handling a tremendous number of variables
and making decisions on them. But that robot didn't have to be given
orders except in extreme emergencies. Keeping a few million cars moving
and safe at the same time is actually pretty routine stuff for a robot.
And a traffic robot isn't given orders verbally; it is given any orders
that may be necessary via teletype by a trained programming technician.
Those orders are usually in reference to a change of routing due to
repair work on the highways or the like. The robot itself can take care
of such emergencies as bad weather or even an accident caused by the
malfunctioning of an individual automobile.
McGuire was different. In the first place, he was mobile. He was in
command of a spacecraft. In a sense, he _was_ the spacecraft, since it
served him in a way that was analogous to the way a human body serves
the human mind. And he wasn't in charge of millions of objects with a
top velocity of a hundred and fifty miles an hour; he was in charge
of a single object that moved at velocities of thousands of miles per
second. Nor did he have a set, unmoving highway as his path; his paths
were variable and led through the emptiness of space.
Unforeseen emergencies can happen at any time in space, most of them
having to do with the lives of passengers. A cargo ship would be
somewhat less susceptible to such emergencies if there were no humans
aboard; it doesn't matter much to a robot if he has no air in his hull.
But with passengers aboard, there may be times when it would be
necessary to give orders--_fast_! And that means verbal orders, orders
that can be given anywhere in the ship and relayed immediately by
microphone to the robot's brain. A man doesn't have time to run to a
teletyper and type out orders when there's an emergency in space.
That meant that McGuire had to understand English, and, since there has
to be feedback in communication, he had to be able to speak it as well.
And that made McGuire more than somewhat difficult to deal with.
* * * * *
For more than a century, robotocists have been trying to build Asimov's
famous Three Laws of Robotics into a robot brain.
_First Law: A robot shall not, either through action or inaction, allow
harm to come to a human being._
_Second Law: A robot shall obey the orders of a human being, except
when such orders conflict with the First Law_.
_Third Law: A robot shall strive to protect its own existence, except
when this conflicts with the First or Second Law._
Nobody has succeeded yet, because nobody has yet succeeded in defining
the term "human being" in such a way that the logical mind of a robot
can encompass the concept.
A traffic robot is useful only because the definition has been rigidly
narrowed down. As far as a traffic robot is concerned, "human beings"
are the automobiles on its highways. Woe betide any poor sap who tries,
illegally, to cross a robot-controlled highway on foot. The robot's
only concern would be with the safety of the automobiles, and if the
only way to avoid destruction of an automobile were to be by nudging
the pedestrian aside with a fender, that's what would happen.
And, since its orders only come from one place, I suppose that a
traffic robot thinks that the guy who uses that typer is an automobile.
With the first six models of the McGuire ships, the robotocists
attempted to build in the Three Laws exactly as stated. And the first
six went insane.
If one human being says "jump left," and another says "jump right,"
the robot is unable to evaluate which human being has given the more
valid order. Feed enough confusing and conflicting data into a robot
brain, and it can begin behaving in ways that, in a human being, would
be called paranoia or schizophrenia or catatonia or what-have-you,
depending on the symptoms. And an insane robot is fully as dangerous
as an insane human being controlling the same mechanical equipment, if
not more so.
So the seventh model had been modified. The present McGuire's brain was
impressed with slight modifications of the First and Second Laws.
If it is difficult to define a human being, it is much more difficult
to define a _responsible_ human being. One, in other words, who can
be relied upon to give wise and proper orders to a robot, who can be
relied upon not to drive the robot insane.
The robotocists at Viking Spacecraft had decided to take another
tack. "Very well," they'd said, "if we can't define all the members
of a group, we can certainly define an individual. We'll pick one
responsible person and build McGuire so that he will take orders only
from that person."
As it turned out, I was that person. Just substitute "Daniel Oak"
for "human being" in the First and Second Laws, and you'll see how
important I was to a certain spaceship named McGuire.
* * * * *
When I finally caught the beam from Ceres and set my flitterboat down
on the huge landing field that had been carved from the nickel-iron
of the asteroid with a focused sun beam, I was itchy with my own
perspiration and groggy tired. I don't like riding in flitterboats,
sitting on a bucket seat, astride the drive tube, like a witch on a
broomstick, with nothing but a near-invisible transite hull between me
and the stars, all cooped up in a vac suit. Unlike driving a car, you
can't pull a flitterboat over and take a nap; you have to wait until
you hit the next beacon station.
Ceres, the biggest rock in the Belt, is a lot more than just a beacon
station. Like Eros and a few others, it's a city in its own right. And
except for the Government Reservation, Viking Spacecraft owned Ceres,
lock, stock, and mining rights.
Part of the reason for Viking's troubles was envy of that ownership.
There were other companies in the Belt that would like to get their
hands on that plum, and there were those who were doing everything
short of cutting throats to get it. The PSD was afraid it might come to
that, too, before very long.
Ceres is fifty-eight million cubic miles of nickel-iron, but nobody
would cut her up for that. Nickel-iron is almost exactly as cheap as
dirt on Earth, and, considering shipping costs, Earth soil costs a
great deal more than nickel-iron in the Belt.
But, as an operations base, Ceres is second to none. Its surface
gravity averages .0294 Standard Gee, as compared with Earth's .981,
and that's enough to give a slight feeling of weight without unduly
hampering the body with too much load. I weigh just under six pounds
on Ceres, and after I've been there a while, going back to Earth is a
strain that takes a week to get used to. Kids that are brought up in
the Belt are forced to exercise in a room with a one-gee spin on it at
least an hour a day. They don't like it at first, but it keeps them
from growing up with the strength of mice. And an adult with any sense
takes a spin now and then, too. Traveling in a flitterboat will give
you a one-gee pull, all right, but you don't get much exercise.
I parked my flitterboat in the space that had been assigned to me by
Landing Control, and went over to the nearest air-lock dome.
After I'd cycled through and had shucked my vac suit, I went into the
inner room to find Colonel Brock waiting for me.
"Have a good trip, Oak?" he asked, trying to put a smile on his
scarred, battered face.
"I got here alive, if that makes it a good flitterboat trip," I said,
shaking his extended hand.
"That's the definition of a good trip," he told me.
"Then the question was superfluous. Seriously, what I need is a bath
and some sleep."
"You'll get that, but first let's go somewhere where we can talk. Want
a drink?"
"I could use one, I guess. Your treat?"
"My treat," he said. "Come on."
I followed him out and down a ladder to a corridor that led north. By
definition, any asteroid spins toward the east, and all directions
follow from that, regardless of which way the axis may point.
Colonel Harrington Brock was dressed in the black-and-gold "union
suit" that was the uniform of Ravenhurst's Security Guard. My own was
a tasteful green, but some of the other people in the public corridor
seemed to go for more flashiness; besides silver and gold, there were
shocking pinks and violent mauves, with stripes and blazes of other
colors.
A crowd wearing skin-tight cover-alls might shock the gentle people of
Midwich-on-the-Moor, England, but they are normal dress in the Belt.
You can't climb into a vac suit with bulky clothing on, and, if you
did, you'd hate yourself within an hour, with a curse for every wrinkle
that chafed your skin. And, in the Belt, you never know when you might
have to get into a vac suit fast. In a "safe" area like the tunnels
inside Ceres, there isn't much chance of losing air, but there are
places where no one but a fool would ever be more than ten seconds away
from his vac suit.
I read an article by a psychologist a few months back, in which he
claimed that the taste for loud colors in union suits was actually
due to modesty. He claimed that the bright patterns drew attention to
the colors themselves, and away from the base the colors were laid
over. The observer, he said, tends to see the color and pattern of the
suit, rather than the body it clings to so closely. Maybe he's right;
I wouldn't know, not being a psychologist. I _have_ spent summers in
nudist resorts, though, and I never noticed anyone painting themselves
with lavender and chartreuse checks. On the other hand, the people who
go to nudist resorts are a self-screened group. So are the people who
go to the Belt, for that matter, but the type of screening is different.
I'll just leave that problem in the hands of the psychologists, and go
on wearing my immodestly quiet solid-color union suits.
* * * * *
Brock pushed open the inch-thick metal door beneath a sign that said
"O'Banion's Bar," and I followed him in. We sat down at a table and
ordered drinks when the waiter bustled over. A cop in uniform isn't
supposed to drink, but Brock figures that the head of the Security
Guard ought to be able to get away with a breach of his own rules.
We had our drinks in front of us and our cigarettes lit before Brock
opened up with his troubles.
"Oak," he said, "I wanted to intercept you before you went to the plant
because I want you to know that there may be trouble."
"Yeah? What kind?" Sometimes it's a pain to play ignorant.
"Thurston's outfit is trying to oust Ravenhurst from the managership of
Viking and take over the job. Baedecker Metals & Mining Corporation,
which is managed by Baedecker himself, wants to force Viking out of
business so that BM&M can take over Ceres for large-scale processing of
precious metals.
"Between the two of 'em, they're raising all sorts of minor hell
around here, and it's liable to become major hell at any time. And we
can't stand any hell--or sabotage--around this planetoid just now!"
"Now wait a minute," I said, still playing ignorant, "I thought we'd
pretty well established that the 'sabotage' of the McGuire series was
Jack Ravenhurst's fault. She was the one who was driving them nuts, not
Thurston's agents."
"Perfectly true," he said agreeably. "We managed to block any attempts
of sabotage by other company agents, even though it looked as though we
hadn't for a while." He chuckled wryly. "We went all out to keep the
McGuires safe, and all the time the boss' daughter was giving them the
works." Then he looked sharply at me. "I covered that, of course. No
one in the Security Guard but me knows that Jack was responsible."
"Good. But what about the Thurston and Baedecker agents, then?"
He took a hefty slug of his drink. "They're around, all right. We have
our eyes on the ones we know, but those outfits are as sharp as we
are, and they may have a few agents here on Ceres that we know nothing
about."
"So? What does this have to do with me?"
He put his drink on the table. "Oak, I want you to help me." His
onyx-brown eyes, only a shade darker than his skin, looked directly
into my own. "I know it isn't part of your assignment, and you know I
can't afford to pay you anything near what you're worth. It will have
to come out of my pocket because I couldn't possibly justify it from
operating funds. Ravenhurst specifically told me that he doesn't want
you messing around with the espionage and sabotage problem because he
doesn't like your methods of operation."
"And you're going to go against his orders?"
"I am. Ravenhurst is sore at you personally because you showed him
that Jack was responsible for the McGuire sabotage. It's an irrational
dislike, and I am not going to let it interfere with my job. I'm going
to protect Ravenhurst's interests to the best of my ability, and that
means that I'll use the best of other people's abilities if I can."
I grinned at him. "The last I heard, you were sore at me for blatting
it all over Ceres that Jaqueline Ravenhurst was missing, when she
sneaked aboard McGuire."
He nodded perfunctorily. "I was. I still think you should have told me
what you were up to. But you did it, and you got results that I'd been
unable to get. I'm not going to let a momentary pique hang on as an
irrational dislike. I like to think I have more sense than that."
"Thanks." There wasn't much else I could say.
"Now, I've got a little dough put away; it's not much, but I could
offer you--"
I shook my head, cutting him off. "Nope. Sorry, Brock. For two reasons.
In the first place, there would be a conflict of interest. I'm working
for Ravenhurst, and if he doesn't want me to work for you, then it
would be unethical for me to take the job.
"In the second place, my fees are standardized. Oh, I can allow a
certain amount of fluctuation, but I'm not a physician or a lawyer; my
services are not necessary to the survival of the individual, except
in very rare cases, and those cases are generally arranged through a
lawyer when it's a charity case.
[Illustration]
"No, colonel, I'm afraid I couldn't possibly work for you."
He thought that over for a long time. Finally, he nodded his head very
slowly. "I see. Yeah, I get your point." He scowled down at his drink.
"_But_," I said, "it would be a pleasure to work _with_ you."
[Illustration]