"Hell, neither do I," admitted Mike. "But we're not going to get down
any other way. We managed to take off without jets; we'll manage to land
without them."
"Yessir," said Multhaus, "but we took off _with_ the grain of Earth's
magnetic field. We're landing _across_ the grain."
"Sure," said Mike. "So what? If we overlook the motors, that's okay. We
may never be able to get off the planet with this ship again, but we
aren't supposed to anyway.
"Come on, Multhaus, don't worry about it. I know you hate to burn up a
ship, but this one is supposed to be expendable. You may never have
another chance like this."
Multhaus tried to keep from grinning, but he couldn't. "Awright,
Commander. You have appealed to my baser instincts. My subconscious
desire to wreck a spaceship has been brought to the surface. I can't
resist it. Am I nutty, maybe?"
"Not now, you're not," Mike said, grinning back.
"We'll have a bitch of a job getting through the plasmasphere, though,"
said the chief. "That fraction of a second will--"
"It'll jolt us," Mike agreed, interrupting. "But it won't wreck us.
Let's get going."
"Aye, sir," said Multhaus.
* * * * *
The seas of Eisberg were liquid methane containing dissolved ammonia.
Near the equator, they were liquid; farther north, the seas became
slushy with crystallized ammonia.
The site picked for the new labs of the Computer Corporation of Earth
was in the northern hemisphere, at 40 deg. north latitude, about the same
distance from the equator as New York or Madrid, Spain, would be on
Earth. The _Brainchild_ would be dropping through Eisberg's magnetic
field at an angle, but it wouldn't be the ninety-degree angle of the
equator. It would have been nice if the base could have been built at
one of the poles, but that would have put the labs in an uncomfortable
position, since there was no solid land at either pole.
Mike the Angel didn't like the idea of having to land on Eisberg without
jets any more than Multhaus did, but he was almost certain that the ship
would take the strain.
He took the companionway up to the Control Bridge, went in, and handed
the landing sheet to Black Bart. The captain scowled at it, shrugged,
and put it on his desk.
"Will we make it, sir?" Mike said. "Any word from the _Fireball_?"
Black Bart nodded. "She's orbiting outside the atmosphere. Captain
Wurster will send down a ship to pick us up as soon as we've finished
our business here."
The _Fireball_, being much faster than the clumsy _Brainchild_, had left
Earth later than the slower ship, and had arrived earlier.
"_Now hear this! Now hear this! Third Warning! Landing orbit begins in
one minute! Landing begins in one minute!_"
Sixty seconds later the _Brainchild_ began her long, logarithmic drop
toward the surface of Eisberg.
Landing a ship on her jets isn't an easy job, but at least an ion rocket
is built for the job. Maybe someday the Translation drive will be
modified for planetary landings, but so far such a landing has been, as
someone put it, "50 per cent raw energy and 50 per cent prayer." The
landing was worse than the take-off, a truism which has held since the
first glider took off from the surface of Earth in the nineteenth
century. What goes up doesn't necessarily have to come down, but when it
does, the job is a lot rougher than getting up was.
The plasmasphere of Eisberg differed from that of Earth in two ways.
First, the ionizing source of radiation--the primary star--was farther
away from Eisberg than Sol was from Earth, which tended to reduce the
total ionization. Second, the upper atmosphere of Eisberg was pretty
much pure hydrogen, which is somewhat easier to ionize than oxygen or
nitrogen. And, since there was no ozonosphere to block out the UV
radiation from the primary, the thickness of the ionosphere beneath the
plasmasphere was greater.
Not until the _Brainchild_ hit the bare fringes of the upper atmosphere
did she act any differently than she had in space.
But when she hit the outer fringes of the ionosphere--that upper layer
of rarified protons, the rapidly moving current of high velocity ions
known as the plasmasphere--she bucked like a kicked horse. From deep
within her vitals, the throb began, a strumming, thrumming sound with a
somewhat higher note imposed upon it, making a sound like that of a bass
viol being plucked rapidly on its lowest string.
It was not the intensity of the ionosphere that cracked the drive of the
_Brainchild_; it was the duration. The layer of ionization was too
thick; the ship couldn't make it through the layer fast enough, in spite
of her high velocity.
A man can hold a red-hot bit of steel in his hand for a fraction of a
second without even feeling it. But if he has to hold a hot baked potato
for thirty seconds, he's likely to get a bad burn.
So it was with the _Brainchild_. The passage through Earth's ionosphere
during take-off had been measured in fractions of a second. The
_Brainchild_ had reacted, but the exposure to the field had been too
short to hurt her.
The ionosphere of Eisberg was much deeper and, although the intensity
was less, the duration was much longer.
The drumming increased as she fell, a low-frequency, high-energy sine
wave that shook the ship more violently than had the out-of-phase beat
that had pummeled the ship shortly after her take-off.
Dr. Morris Fitzhugh, the roboticist, screamed imprecations into the
intercom, but Captain Sir Henry Quill cut him off before anyone took
notice and let the scientist rave into a dead pickup.
"How's she coming?"
The voice came over the intercom to the Power Section, and Mike the
Angel knew that the question was meant for him.
"She'll make it, Captain," he said. "She'll make it. I designed this
thing for a 500 per cent overload. She'll make it."
"Good," said Black Bart, snapping off the intercom.
Mike exhaled gustily. His eyes were still on the needles that kept
creeping higher and higher along the calibrated periphery of the meters.
Many of them had long since passed the red lines that marked the
allowable overload point. Mike the Angel knew that those points had been
set low, but he also knew that they were approaching the real overload
point.
He took another deep breath and held it.
* * * * *
Point for point, the continent of Antarctica, Earth, is one of the most
deadly areas ever found on a planet that is supposedly non-inimical to
man. Earth is a nice, comfortable planet, most of the time, but
Antarctica just doesn't cater to Man at all.
Still, it just happens to be the _worst_ spot on the _best_ planet in
the known Galaxy.
Eisberg is different. At its best, it has the continent of Antarctica
beat four thousand ways from a week ago last Candlemas. At its worst, it
is sudden death; at its best, it is somewhat less than sudden.
Not that Eisberg is a really _mean_ planet; Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, or
Neptune can kill a man faster and with less pain. No, Eisberg isn't
mean--it's torturous. A man without clothes, placed suddenly on the
surface of Eisberg--_anywhere_ on the surface--would die. But the
trouble is that he'd live long enough for it to hurt.
Man can survive, all right, but it takes equipment and intelligence to
do it.
When the interstellar ship _Brainchild_ blew a tube--just one tube--of
the external field that fought the ship's mass against the space-strain
of the planet's gravitational field, the ship went off orbit. The tube
blew when she was some ninety miles above the surface. She dropped too
fast, jerked up, dropped again.
When the engines compensated for the lost tube, the descent was more
leisurely, and the ship settled gently--well, not exactly _gently_--on
the surface of Eisberg.
Captain Quill's voice came over the intercom.
"We are nearly a hundred miles from the base, Mister Gabriel. Any
excuse?"
"No excuse, sir," said Mike the Angel.
20
If you ignite a jet of oxygen-nitrogen in an atmosphere of
hydrogen-methane, you get a flame that doesn't differ much from the
flame from a hydrogen-methane jet in an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere. A
flame doesn't particularly care which way the electrons jump, just so
long as they jump.
All of which was due to give Mike the Angel more headaches than he
already had, which was 100 per cent too many.
Three days after the _Brainchild_ landed, the scout group arrived from
the base that had been built on Eisberg to take care of Snookums. The
leader, a heavy-set engineer named Treadmore, who had unkempt brownish
hair and a sad look in his eyes, informed Captain Quill that there was a
great deal of work to be done. And his countenance became even sadder.
Mike, who had, perforce, been called in to take part in the conference,
listened in silence while the engineer talked.
The officers' wardroom, of which Mike the Angel was becoming heartily
sick, seemed like a tomb which echoed and re-echoed the lugubrious voice
of Engineer Treadmore.
"We were warned, of course," he said, in a normally dismal tone, "that
it would be extremely difficult to set down the ship which carried
Snookums, and that we could expect the final base to be anywhere from
ten to thirty miles from the original, temporary base." He looked round
at everyone, giving the impression of a collie which had just been
kicked by Albert Payson Terhune.
"We understand, naturally, that you could not help landing so far from
our original base," he said, giving them absolution with faint damns,
"but it will entail a great deal of extra labor. A hundred and nine
miles is a great distance to carry equipment, and, actually, the
distance is a great deal more, considering the configuration of the
terrain. The...."
The upshot of the whole thing was that only part of the crew could
possibly be spared to go home on the _Fireball_, which was orbiting high
above the atmosphere. And, since there was no point in sending a small
load home at extra expense when the _Fireball_ could wait for the
others, it meant that nobody could go home at all for four more weeks.
The extra help was needed to get the new base established.
It was obviously impossible to try to move the _Brainchild_ a hundred
miles. With nothing to power her but the Translation drive, she was as
helpless as a submarine on the Sahara. Especially now that her drive was
shot.
The Eisberg base had to be built around Snookums, who was, after all,
the only reason for the base's existence. And, too, the power plant of
the _Brainchild_ had been destined to be the source of power for the
permanent base.
It wasn't too bad, really. A little extra time, but not much.
The advance base, commanded by Treadmore, was fairly well equipped. For
transportation, they had one jet-powered aircraft, a couple of
'copters, and fifteen ground-crawlers with fat tires, plus all kinds of
powered construction machinery. All of them were fueled with liquid
HNO_{3}, which makes a pretty good fuel in an atmosphere that is
predominantly methane. Like the gasoline-air engines of a century
before, they were spark-started reciprocating engines, except for the
turbine-powered aircraft.
The only trouble with the whole project was that the materials had to be
toted across a hundred miles of exceedingly hostile territory.
Treadmore, looking like a tortured bloodhound, said: "But we'll make it,
won't we?"
Everyone nodded dismally.
* * * * *
Mike the Angel had a job he emphatically didn't like. He was supposed to
convert the power plant of the _Brainchild_ from a spaceship driver into
a stationary generator. The conversion job itself wasn't tedious; in
principle, it was similar to taking the engine out of an automobile and
converting it to a power plant for an electric generator. In fact, it
was somewhat simpler, in theory, since the engines of the _Brainchild_
were already equipped for heavy drainage to run the electrical systems
aboard ship, and to power and refrigerate Snookums' gigantic brain,
which was no mean task in itself.
But Michael Raphael Gabriel, head of one of the foremost--if not _the_
foremost--power design corporations in the known Galaxy, did not like
degrading something. To convert the _Brainchild's_ plant from a
spaceship drive to an electric power plant seemed to him to be on the
same order as using a turboelectric generator to power a flashlight. A
waste.
To make things worse, the small percentage of hydrogen in the
atmosphere got sneaky sometimes. It could insinuate itself into places
where neither the methane nor the ammonia could get. Someone once called
hydrogen the "cockroach element," since, like that antediluvian insect,
the molecules of H_{2} can insidiously infiltrate themselves into places
where they are not only unwelcome, but shouldn't even be able to go. At
red heat, the little molecules can squeeze themselves through the
crystalline interstices of quartz and steel.
Granted, the temperature of Eisberg is a long way from red hot, but
normal sealing still won't keep out hydrogen. Add to that the fact that
hydrogen and methane are both colorless, odorless, and tasteless, and
you have the beginnings of an explosive situation.
The only reason that no one died is because the Space Service is what it
is.
Unlike the land, sea, and air forces of Earth, the Space Service does
not have a long history of fighting other human beings. There has never
been a space war, and, the way things stand, there is no likelihood of
one in the foreseeable future.
But the Space Service _does_ fight, in its own way. It fights the
airlessness of space and the unfriendly atmospheres of exotic planets,
using machines, intelligence, knowledge, and human courage as its
weapons. Some battles have been lost; others have been won. And the war
is still going on. It is an unending war, one which has no victory in
sight.
It is, as far as we can tell, the only war in human history in which
Mankind is fully justified as the invading aggressor.
It is not a defensive war; neither space nor other planets have attacked
Man. Man has invaded space "simply because it is there." It is war of a
different sort, true, but it is nonetheless a war.
The Space Service was used to the kind of battle it waged on Eisberg. It
was prepared to lose men, but even more prepared to save them.
21
Mike the Angel stepped into the cargo air lock of the _Brainchild_,
stood morosely in the center of the cubicle, and watched the outer door
close. Eight other men, clad, like himself, in regulation Space Service
spacesuits, also looked wearily at the closing door.
Chief Multhaus, one of the eight, turned his head to look at Mike the
Angel. "I wish that thing would close as fast as my eyes are going to in
about fifteen minutes, Commander." His voice rumbled deeply in Mike's
earphones.
"Yeah," said Mike, too tired to make decent conversation.
Eight hours--all of them spent tearing down the spaceship and making it
a part of the new base--had not been exactly exhilarating to any of
them.
The door closed, and the pumps began to work. The men were wearing Space
Service Suit Three. For every environment, for every conceivable
emergency, a suit had been built--if, of course, a suit _could_ be built
for it. Nobody had yet built a suit for walking about in the middle of a
sun, but, then, nobody had ever volunteered to try anything like that.
They were all called "spacesuits" because most of them could be worn in
the vacuum of space, but most of them weren't designed for that type of
work. Suit One--a light, easily manipulated, almost skin-tight covering,
was the real spacesuit. It was perfect for work in interstellar space,
where there was a microscopic amount of radiation incident to the suit,
no air, and almost nil gravity. For exterior repairs on the outside of a
ship in free fall a long way from any star, Spacesuit One was the proper
garb.
But, a suit that worked fine in space didn't necessarily work on other
planets, unless it worked fine on the planet it was used on.
A Moon Suit isn't a Mars Suit isn't a Venus Suit isn't a Triton Suit
isn't a....
Carry it on from there.
Number Three was insulated against a frigid but relatively non-corrosive
atmosphere. When the pumps in the air lock began pulling out the
methane-laden atmosphere, they began to bulge slightly, but not
excessively. Then nitrogen, extracted from the ammonia snow that was so
plentiful, filled the room, diluting the remaining inflammable gases to
a harmless concentration.
Then that mixture was pumped out, to be replaced by a mixture of
approximately 20 per cent oxygen and 80 per cent nitrogen--common, or
garden-variety, air.
Mike the Angel cracked his helmet and sniffed. "_Guk_," he said. "If I
ever faint and someone gives me smelling salts, I'll flay him alive with
a coarse rasp."
"Yessir," said Chief Multhaus, as he began to shuck his suit. "But if I
had my druthers, I'd druther you'd figure out some way to get all the
ammonia out of the joints of this suit."
The other men, sniffing and coughing, agreed in attitude if not in
voice.
It wasn't really as bad as they pretended; indeed, the odor of ammonia
was hardly noticeable. But it made a good griping point.
The inner door opened at last, and the men straggled through.
"G'night, Chief," said Mike the Angel.
"Night, sir," said Multhaus. "See you in the morning."
"Yeah. Night." Mike trudged toward the companionway that led toward the
wardroom. If Keku or Jeffers happened to be there, he'd have a quick
round of _Uma ni to_. Jeffers called the game "double solitaire
for three people," and Keku said it meant "horses' two heads," but Mike
had simply found it as a new game to play before bedtime.
He looked forward to it.
But he had something else to do first.
Instead of hanging up his suit in the locker provided, he had bunched it
under his arm--except for the helmet--and now he headed toward
maintenance.
He met Ensign Vaneski just coming out, and gave him a broad smile.
"Mister Vaneski, I got troubles."
Vaneski smiled back worriedly. "Yes, sir. I guess we all do. What is it,
sir?"
Mike gestured at the bundle under his arm. "I abraded the sleeve of my
suit while I was working today. I wish you'd take a look at it. I'm
afraid it'll need a patch."
For a moment, Vaneski looked as though he'd suddenly developed a
headache.
"I know you're supposed to be off duty now," Mike said soothingly, "but
I don't want to get myself killed wearing a leaky suit tomorrow. I'll
help you work on it if--"
Vaneski grinned quickly. "Oh no, sir. That'll be all right. I'll give it
a test, anyway, to check leaks. If it needs repair, it shouldn't take
too long. Bring it in, and we'll take a look at it."
They went back into the Maintenance Section, and Vaneski spread the suit
out on the worktable. There was an obvious rough spot on the right
sleeve. "Looks bad," said Vaneski. "I'll run a test right away."
"Okay," said Mike. "I'll leave it to you. Can I pick it up in the
morning?"
"I think so. If it needs a patch, we'll have to test the patch, of
course, but we should be able to finish it pretty quickly." He shrugged.
"If we can't, sir, you'll just have to wait. Unless you want us to start
altering a suit to your measurements."
"Which would take longer?"
"Altering a suit."
"Okay. Just patch this one, then. What can I do?"
"I'll get it out as fast as possible, sir," said Vaneski with a smile.
"Fine. I'll see you later, then." Mike, like Cleopatra, was not prone to
argue. He left maintenance and headed toward the wardroom for a game of
_Uma ni to_. But when he met Leda Crannon going up the stairway,
all thoughts of card games flitted from his mind with the careless
nonchalance of a summer butterfly.
"Hullo," he said, pulling himself up a little straighter. He was tired,
but not _that_ tired.
Her smile brushed the cobwebs from his mind. But a second look told him
that there was worry behind the smile.
"Hi, Mike," she said softly. "You look beat."
"I am," admitted Mike. "To a frazzle. Have I told you that I love you?"
"Once, I think. Maybe twice." Her eyes seemed to light up somewhere from
far back in her head. "But enough of this mad passion," she said. "I
want an invitation to have a drink--a stiff one."
"I'll steal Jeffers' bottle," Mike offered. "What's the trouble?"
Her smile faded, and her eyes became grave. "I'm scared, Mike; I want to
talk to you."
"Come along, then," Mike said.
* * * * *
Mike the Angel poured two healthy slugs of Pete Jeffers' brandy into a
pair of glasses, added ice and water, and handed one to Leda Crannon
with a flourish. And all the time, he kept up a steady line of gentle
patter.
"It may interest you to know," he said chattily, "that the learned
Mister Treadmore has been furnishing me with the most fascinating
information." He lifted up his own glass and looked into its amber
depths.
They were in his stateroom, and this time the door was closed--at her
insistence. She had explained that she didn't want to be overheard, even
by passing crew members.
He swizzled the ice around in his glass, still holding it up to the
light. "Indeed," he rambled on, "Treadmore babbled for Heaven knows how
long on the relative occurrence of parahydrogen and orthohydrogen on
Eisberg." He took his eyes from the glass and looked down at the girl
who was seated demurely on the edge of his bunk. Her smile was
encouraging.
"He said--and I quote"--Mike's voice assumed a gloomy, but stilted
tone--"normal hydrogen gas consists of diatomic molecules. The nuclear,
or proton, spin of these atoms--ah--that is, of the two atoms that
compose the molecule--may be oriented in the same direction or in
opposite directions."
He held a finger in the air as if to make a deep philosophical point.
"If," he said pontifically, "they are oriented in the same direction, we
refer to the substance as _orthohydrogen_. If they are oriented in
opposite directions, it is _parahydrogen_. The _ortho_ molecules rotate
with _odd_ rotational quantum numbers, while the _para_ molecules rotate
with _even_ quantum numbers.
"Since conversion does not normally occur between the two states, normal
hydrogen may be considered--"
Leda Crannon, snickering, waved her hand in the air. "Please!" she
interrupted. "He can't be that bad! You make him sound like a dirge
player at a Hindu funeral. What did he tell you? What did you find out?"
"_Hah!_" said Mike. "What did I find out?" His hand moved in an airy
circle as he inscribed a flowing cipher with a graceful Delsarte wave.
"Nothing. In the first place, I already knew it, and in the second, it
wasn't practical information. There's a slight difference in diffusion
between the two forms, but it's nothing to rave about." His expression
became suddenly serious. "I hope your information is a bit more
revealing."
She glanced at her glass, nodded, and drained it. Mike had extracted a
promise from her that she would drink one drink before she talked. He
could see that she was a trifle tense, and he thought the liquor would
relax her somewhat. Now he was ready to listen.
She handed him her empty, and while he refilled it, she said: "It's
about Snookums again."
Mike gave her her glass, grabbed the nearby chair, turned it around, sat
down, and regarded her over its back.
"I've lived with him so long," she said after a minute. "So long. It
almost seems as though I've grown up with him. Eight years. I've been a
mother to him, and a big sister at the same time--and maybe a maiden
aunt. He's been a career and a family all rolled in together." She still
watched her writhing hands, not raising her eyes to Mike's.
"And--and, I suppose, a husband, too," she continued. "That is, he's
sort of the stand-in for a--well, a somebody to teach--to correct--to
reform. I guess every woman wants to--to _remake_ the man she meets--the
man she wants."
And then her eyes were suddenly on his. "But I don't. Not any more. I've
had enough of it." Then she looked back down at her hands.
Mike the Angel neither accepted nor rejected the statement. He merely
waited.
"He was mine," she said after a little while. "He was mine to mold, to
teach, to form. The others--the roboticists, the neucleonicists, the
sub-electronicists, all of them--were his instructors. All they did was
give him facts. It was I who gave him a personality.
"I made him. Not his body, not his brain, but his mind.
"I made him.
"I knew him.
"And I--I--"
Still staring at her hands, she clasped them together suddenly and
squeezed.
"And I loved him," she finished.
She looked up at Mike then. "Can you see that?" she asked tensely. "Can
you understand?"
"Yes," said Mike the Angel quietly. "Yes, I can understand that. Under
the same circumstances, I might have done the same thing." He paused.
"And now?"
She lowered her head again and began massaging her forehead with the
finger tips of both hands, concealing her face with her palms.
"And now," she said dully, "I know he's a machine. Snookums isn't a _he_
any more--he's an _it_. He has no personality of his own, he only has
what I fed into him. Even his voice is mine. He's not even a psychic
mirror, because he doesn't reflect _my_ personality, but a puppet
imitation of it, distorted and warped by the thousands upon thousands of
cold facts and mathematical relationships and logical postulates. And
none of these _added_ anything to him, as a personality. How could they?
He never had a _person_ality--only a set of behavior patterns that I
drilled into him over a period of eight years."
She dropped her hands into her lap and tilted her head back, looking at
the blank white shimmer of the glow plates.
"And now, suddenly, I see him for what he is--for what _it_ is. A
machine.
"It was never anything _but_ a machine. It is still a machine. It will
never be anything else.
"Personality is something that no machine can ever have. Idiosyncrasies,
yes. No two machines are identical. But any personality that an
individual sees in a machine has been projected there by the individual
himself; it exists only in the human mind.
"A machine can only do what it is built to do, and teaching a robot is
only a building process." She gave a short, hard laugh. "I couldn't even
build a monster, like Dr. Frankenstein did, unless I purposely built it
to turn on me. And in that case I would have done nothing more than the
suicide who turns a gun on himself."
Her head tilted forward again, and her eyes sought those of Mike the
Angel. A rather lopsided grin came over her face.
"I guess I'm disenchanted, huh, Mike?" she asked.
Mike grinned back, but his lips were firm. "I think so, yes. And I think
you're glad of it." His grin changed to a smile.
"Remember," he asked, "the story of the Sleeping Beauty? Did you want to
stay asleep all your life?"
"God forbid and thank you for the compliment, sir," she said, managing a
smile of her own. "And are you the Prince Charming who woke me up?"
"Prince Charming, I may be," said Mike the Angel carefully, "but I'm not
the one who woke you up. You did that yourself."
Her smile became more natural. "Thanks, Mike. I really think I might
have seen it, sooner or later. But, without you, I doubt...." She
hesitated. "I doubt that I'd want to wake up."
"You said you were scared," Mike said. "What are you scared of?"
"I'm scared to death of that damned machine."
_Great love, chameleon-like, hath turned to fear,
And on the heels of fear there follows hate._
Mike quoted to himself--he didn't say it aloud.
"The only reason anyone would have to fear Snookums," he said, "would be
that he was uncontrollable. Is he?"
"Not yet. Not completely. But I'm afraid that knowing that he's been
filled with Catholic theology isn't going to help us much."
"Why not?"
"Because he has it so inextricably bound up with the Three Laws of
Robotics that we can't nullify one without nullifying the other. He's
convinced that the laws were promulgated by God Himself."
"Holy St. Isaac," Mike said softly. "I'm surprised he hasn't carried it
to its logical conclusion and asked for baptism."
She smiled and shook her head. "I'm afraid your logic isn't as rigorous
as Snookums' logic. Only angels and human beings have free will;
Snookums is neither, therefore he does not have free will. Whatever he
does, therefore, must be according to the will of God. Therefore
Snookums cannot sin. Therefore, for him, baptism is both unnecessary and
undesirable."
"Why 'undesirable'?" Mike asked.
"Since he is free from sin--either original or actual--he is therefore
filled with the plenitude of God's grace. The purpose of a sacrament is
to give grace to the recipient; it follows that it would be useless to
give the Sacrament to Snookums. To perform a sacrament or to receive it
when one knows that it will be useless is sacrilege. And sacrilege is
undesirable."
"Brother! But I still don't see how that makes him dangerous."
"The operation of the First Law," Leda said. "For a man to sin involves
endangering his immortal soul. Snookums, therefore, must prevent men
from sinning. But sin includes thought--intention. Snookums is trying to
figure that one out now; if he ever does, he's going to be a thought
policeman, and a strict one."
"You mean he's working on _telepathy_?"
She laughed humorlessly. "No. But he's trying to dope out a system
whereby he can tell what a man is going to do a few seconds before he
does it--muscular and nervous preparation, that sort of thing. He hasn't
enough data yet, but he will have it soon enough.
"There's another thing: Snookums is fouling up the Second Law's
operation. He won't take orders that interfere in any way with his
religious beliefs--since that automatically conflicts with the First
Law. He, himself, cannot sin. But neither can he do anything which would
make him the tool of an intent to sin. He refuses to do anything at all
on Sunday, for instance, and he won't let either Fitz or I do anything
that even vaguely resembles menial labor. Slowly, he's coming to the
notion that human beings aren't human--that only God is human, in
relation to the First and Second Laws. There's nothing we can do with
him."
"What will you do if he becomes completely uncontrollable?"
She sighed. "We'll have to shut him off, drain his memory banks, and
start all over again."
Mike closed his eyes. "Eighteen billions down the drain just because a
robot was taught theology. What price glory?"
22
Captain Sir Henry Quill scowled and rubbed his finger tips over the top
of his shiny pink pate. "Your evidence isn't enough to convict, Golden
Wings."
"I know it isn't, Captain," admitted Mike the Angel. "That's why I want
to round everybody up and do it this way. If he can be convinced that we
_do_ have the evidence, he may crack and give us a confession."
"What about Lieutenant Mellon's peculiar actions? How does that tie in?"
"Did you ever hear of Lysodine, Captain?"
Captain Quill leaned back in his chair and looked up at Mike. "No. What
is it?"
"That's the trade name for a very powerful drug--a derivative of
lysurgic acid. It's used in treating certain mental ailments. A bottle
of it was missing from Mellon's kit, according to the inventory Chief
Pasteur took after Mellon's death.
"The symptoms of an overdose of the drug--administered orally--are
hallucinations and delusions amounting to acute paranoia. The final
result of the drug's effect on the brain is death. It wasn't my blow to
the solar plexus, or the sedative that Pasteur gave him, or Vaneski's
shot with a stun gun that killed Mellon. It was an overdose of
Lysodine."
"Can the presence of this drug be detected after death?"
"Pasteur says it can. He won't even have to perform an autopsy. He can
do it from a blood sample."
Captain Quill sighed. "As I said, Mister Gabriel, your evidence is not
quite enough to convict--but it is certainly enough to convince.
Therefore, if Chief Pasteur's analysis shows Lysodine in Lieutenant
Mellon's body, I'll permit this theatrical denouement." Then his eyes
hardened. "Mike, you've done a fine job so far. I want you to bring me
that son of a bitch's head on a platter."
"I will," promised Mike the Angel.
23
Captain Sir Henry Quill, Bart., stood at the head of the long table in
the officers' wardroom and looked everyone over. The way he did it was
quite impressive. His eyes were narrowed, and his heavy, thick, black
brows dominated his face. Beneath the glow plates in the overhead, his
pink scalp gleamed with the soft, burnished shininess of a well-polished
apple.
To his left, in order down the table, were Mike the Angel, Lieutenant
Keku, and Leda Crannon. On his right were Commander Jeffers, Ensign
Vaneski, Lieutenant Commander von Liegnitz, and Dr. Morris Fitzhugh.
Lieutenant Mellon's seat was empty.
Black Bart cleared his throat. "It's been quite a trip, hasn't it? Well,
it's almost over. Mister Gabriel finished the conversion of the power
plant yesterday; Treadmore's men can finish up. We will leave on the
_Fireball_ in a few hours.
"But there is something that must be cleared up first.
"A man died on the way out here. The circumstances surrounding his death
have been cleared up now, and I feel that we all deserve an
explanation." He turned to Mike the Angel. "Mister Gabriel--if you will,
please."
Mike stood up as the captain sat down. "The question that has bothered
me from the beginning has been: Exactly what killed Lieutenant Mellon?
Well, we know now. We know what killed him and why he died.
"He was murdered. Deliberately, and in cold blood."
That froze everybody at the table.
"It was done by a slow-acting but nonetheless deadly drug that took time
to act, but did its job very well.
"There were several other puzzling things that happened that night.
Snookums began behaving irrationally. It is the height of coincidence
that a robot and a human being should both become insane at almost the
same time; therefore we have to look for a common cause."
Lieutenant Commander von Liegnitz raised a tentative hand, and Mike
said: "Go ahead."
"I was under the impression that the robot went mad because Mellon had
filled him full of theological nonsense. It would take a madman to do
anything like that to a fine machine--therefore I see no peculiar
coincidence."
"That's exactly what the killer wanted us to think," Mike said. "But it
wasn't Mellon that fed Snookums theology. Mellon was a devout churchman;
his record shows that. He would never have tried to convert a machine to
Christianity. Nor would he have tried to ruin an expensive machine.
"How do I know that someone else was involved?"
He looked at the giant Lieutenant Keku. "Do you remember when we took
Mellon to his quarters after he tried to brain von Liegnitz? We found
half a bottle of wine. That disappeared during the night--because it was
loaded with Lysodine, and the killer didn't want it analyzed.
"But, more important, as far as Snookums is concerned, is that I looked
over the books on Mellon's desk that night. There weren't many, and I
knew which ones they were. When Captain Quill and I checked Mellon's
books after his death, someone had returned his copy of _The Christian
Religion and Symbolic Logic_. It had not been there the night before."
"Mike," said Pete Jeffers, "why would anybody here want to kill Lew
thataway? What would anybody have against him?"
"That's the sad part about it, Pete. Our murderer didn't even have
anything against Mellon. He wanted--and _still_ wants--to kill _me_."
"I don't quite follow," Jeffers said.
"I'll give it to you piece by piece. The killer wanted no mystery
connected with my death. There are reasons for that, which I'll come to
in a moment. He had to put the blame on someone or something else.
"His first choice was Snookums. It occurred to him that he could take
advantage of the fact that I'm called 'Mike the Angel.' He borrowed
Mellon's books and began pumping theology into Snookums. He figured that
would be safe enough. Mellon would certainly lend him the books if he
pretended an interest in religion; if anything came out afterward, he
could--he thought--claim that Snookums got hold of the books without his
knowing it. And that sort of muddy thinking is typical of our killer.
"He told Snookums that I was an angel, you see. I couldn't be either
hurt or killed. He protected himself, of course, by telling Snookums
that he mustn't reveal his source of data. If Snookums told, then the
killer would be punished--and that effectively shut Snookums up. He
couldn't talk without violating the First Law.
"Unfortunately, the killer couldn't get Snookums to do away with me.
Snookums knew perfectly well that an angel can blast anything at
will--through the operation of God. Witness what happened at Sodom and
Gomorrah. Remember that Snookums has accepted all this data as _fact_.
"Now, if an angel can kill, it is obvious that Snookums would not dare
attack an angel, especially if he had been ordered to do so by a human."
"Just a minute, Commander," said Dr. Fitzhugh, corrugating his face in a
frown. "That doesn't hold. Even if an angel _could_ blast him, Snookums
would attack if ordered to do so. The Second Law of obedience supersedes
the Third Law of self-preservation."
"You're forgetting one thing, Doctor. An angel of God would _know_ who
had ordered the attack. It would be the human who ordered the attack,
not Snookums, who would be struck by Heavenly Justice. And the First Law
supersedes the Second."