Asimov's Future History Volume 1 (35 page)

Wrong tense.
Had
built a ship!

For Lanning said, “The robots have stopped. Not one has moved today.”

“It’s completed then? Definitely?” asked Powell.

“Now how can I tell?” Lanning was peevish, and his eyebrows curled down in an eye-hiding frown. “It
seems
done. There are no spare pieces about, and the interior is down to a gleaming finish.”

“You’ve been inside?”

“Just in, then out. I’m no space-pilot. Either of you two know much about engine theory?”

Donovan looked at Powell, who looked at Donovan.

Donovan said, “I’ve got my license, sir, but at last reading it didn’t say anything about hyper-engines or warp-navigation. Just the usual child’s play in three dimensions.”

Alfred Lanning looked up with sharp disapproval and snorted the length of his prominent nose.

He said frigidly, “Well, we have our engine men.”

Powell caught at his elbow as he walked away, “Sir, is the ship still restricted ground?”

The old director hesitated, then rubbed the bridge of his nose, “I suppose not. For you two anyway.”

Donovan looked after him as he left and muttered a short, expressive phrase at his back. He turned to Powell, “I’d like to give him a literary description of himself, Greg.”

“Suppose you come along, Mike.”

The inside of the ship was finished, as finished as a ship ever was; that could be told in a single eye-blinking glance. No martinet in the system could have put as much spit-and-polish into a surface as those robots had. The walls were of a gleaming silvery finish that retained no fingerprints.

There were no angles; walls, floors, and ceiling faded gently into each other and in the cold, metallic glittering of the hidden lights, one was surrounded by six chilly reflections of one’s bewildered self.

The main corridor was a narrow tunnel that led in a hard, clatter-footed stretch along a line of rooms of no interdistinguishing features.

Powell said, “I suppose furniture is built into the wall. Or maybe we’re not supposed to sit or sleep.”

It was in the last room, the one nearest the nose, that the monotony broke. A curving window of non-reflecting glass was the first break in the universal metal, and below it was a single large dial, with a single motionless needle hard against the zero mark.

Donovan said, “Look at that!” and pointed to the single word on the finely-marked scale.

It said, “Parsecs” and the tiny figure at the right end of the curving, graduated meter said “1,000,000.”

There were two chairs; heavy, wide-flaring, uncushioned. Powell seated himself gingerly, and found it molded to the body’s curves, and comfortable.

Powell said, “What do you think of it?”

“For my money, The Brain has brain-fever. Let’s get out.”

“Sure you don’t want to look it over a bit?”

“I have looked it over. I came, I saw, I’m through!” Donovan’s red hair bristled into separate wires, “Greg, let’s get out of here. I quit my job five seconds ago, and this is a restricted area for non-personnel.”

Powell smiled in an oily self-satisfied manner and smoothed his mustache, “O.K., Mike, turn off that adrenalin tap you’ve got draining into your bloodstream. I was worried, too, but no more.”

“No more, huh? How come, no more? Increased your insurance?”

“Mike, this ship can’t fly.”

“How do you know?”

“Well, we’ve been through the entire ship, haven’t we?”

“Seems so.”

“Take my word for it, we have. Did you see any pilot room except for this one port and the one gauge here in parsecs? Did you see any controls?”

“No.”

“And did you see any engines?”

“Holy Joe, no!”

“Well, then! Let’s break the news to Lanning, Mike.”

They cursed their way through the featureless corridors and finally hit-and-missed their way into the short passage to the air lock.

Donovan stiffened, “Did you lock this thing, Greg?”

“No, I never touched it. Yank the lever, will you?”

The lever never budged, though Donovan’s face twisted appallingly with exertion.

Powell said, “I didn’t see any emergency exits. If something’s gone wrong here, they’ll have to melt us out.”

“Yes, and we’ve got to wait until they find out that some fool has locked us in here,” added Donovan, frantically.

“Let’s get back to the room with the port. It’s the only place from which we might attract attention.”

But they didn’t.

In that last room, the port was no longer blue and full of sky. It was black, and hard yellow pin-point stars spelled
space
.

There was a dull, double thud, as two bodies collapsed separately into two chairs.

Alfred Lanning met Dr. Calvin just outside his office. He lit a nervous cigar and motioned her in.

He said, “Well, Susan, we’ve come pretty far, and Robertson’s getting jumpy. What are you doing with The Brain?”

Susan Calvin spread her hands, “It’s no use getting impatient. The Brain is worth more than anything we forfeit on this deal.”

“But you’ve been questioning it for two months.”

The psychologist’s voice was flat, but somehow dangerous, “You would rather run this yourself?”

“Now you know what I meant.”

“Oh, I suppose I do,” Dr. Calvin rubbed her hands nervously. “It isn’t easy. I’ve been pampering it and probing it gently, and I haven’t gotten anywhere yet. Its’ reactions aren’t normal. Its answers – they’re queer, somehow. But nothing I can put my finger on yet. And you see, until we know what’s wrong, we must just tiptoe our way through. I can never tell what simple question or remark will just... push him over... and then – Well, and then we’ll have on our hands a completely useless Brain. Do you want to face that?”

“Well, it can’t break the First Law.”

“I would have thought so, but-”

“You’re not even sure of that?” Lanning was profoundly shocked.

“Oh, I can’t be sure of anything, Alfred-”

The alarm system raised its fearful clangor with a horrifying suddenness. Lanning clicked on communications with an almost paralytic spasm. The breathless words froze him.

He said, “Susan... you heard that... the ship’s gone. I sent those two field men inside half an hour ago. You’ll have to see The Brain again.”

Susan Calvin said with enforced calm, “Brain, what happened to the ship?”

The Brain said happily, “The ship I built, Miss Susan?”

“That’s right. What has happened to it?”

“Why, nothing at all. The two men that were supposed to test it were inside, and we were all set. So I sent it off.”

“Oh – Well, that’s nice.” The psychologist felt some difficulty in breathing. “Do you think they’ll be all right?”

“Right as anything, Miss Susan. I’ve taken care of it all. It’s a bee-yootiful ship.”

“Yes, Brain, it
is
beautiful, but you think they have enough food, don’t you? They’ll be comfortable?”

“Plenty of food.”

“This business might be a shock to them, Brain. Unexpected, you know.”

The Brain tossed it off, “They’ll be all right. It ought to be interesting for them.”

“Interesting? How?”

“Just interesting,” said The Brain, slyly.

“Susan,” whispered Lanning in a fuming whisper, “ask him if death comes into it. Ask him what the dangers are.”

Susan Calvin’s expression contorted with fury, “Keep quiet!” In a shaken voice, she said to The Brain, “We can communicate with the ship, can’t we Brain?”

“Oh, they can hear you if you call by radio. I’ve taken care of that.”

“Thanks. That’s all for now.”

Once outside, Lanning lashed out ragingly, “Great Galaxy, Susan, if this gets out, it will ruin all of us. We’ve got to get those men back. Why didn’t you ask it if there was danger of death – straight out?”

“Because,” said Calvin, with a weary frustration, “that’s just what I can’t mention. If it’s got a case of dilemma, it’s about death. Anything that would bring it up badly might knock it completely out. Will we be better off then? Now, look, it said we could communicate with them. Let’s do so, get their location, and bring them back. They probably can’t use the controls themselves; The Brain is probably handling them remotely. Come!”

It was quite a while before Powell shook himself together.

“Mike,” he said, out of cold lips, “did you feel an acceleration?”

Donovan’s eyes were blank, “Huh? No... no.”

And then the redhead’s fists clenched and he was out of his seat with sudden frenzied energy and up against the cold, wide-curving glass. There was nothing to see – but stars.

He turned, “Greg, they must have started the machine while we were inside. Greg, it’s a put-up job; they fixed it up with the robot to jerry us into being the try-out boys, in case we were thinking of backing out.”

Powell said, “What are you talking about? What’s the good of sending us out if we don’t know how to run the machine? How are we supposed to bring it back? No, this ship left by itself, and without any apparent acceleration.” He rose, and walked the floor slowly. The metal walls dinned back the clangor of his steps.

He said tonelessly, “Mike, this is the most confusing situation we’ve ever been up against.”

“That,” said Donovan, bitterly, “is news to me. I was just beginning to have a very swell time, when you told me.”

Powell ignored that. “No acceleration – which means the ship works on a principle different from any known.”

“Different from any we know, anyway.”

“Different from
any
known. There are no engines within reach of manual control. Maybe they’re built into the walls. Maybe that’s why they’re thick as they are.”

“What are you mumbling about?” demanded Donovan.

“Why not listen? I’m saying that whatever powers this ship is enclosed, and evidently not meant to be handled. The ship is running by remote control.”

“The Brain’s control?”

“Why not?”

“Then you think we’ll stay out here till The Brain brings us back.”

“It could be. If so, let’s wait quietly. The Brain is a robot. It’s got to follow the First Law. It can’t hurt a human being.”

Donovan sat down slowly, “You figure that?” Carefully, he flattened his hair, “Listen, this junk about the space-warp knocked out Consolidated’s robot, and the longhairs said it was because interstellar travel killed humans. Which robot are you going to trust? Ours had the same data, I understand.”

Powell was yanking madly at his mustache, “Don’t pretend you don’t know your robotics, Mike. Before it’s physically possible in any way for a robot to even make a start to breaking the First Law, so many things have to break down that it would be a ruined mess of scrap ten times over. There’s some simple explanation to this.”

“Oh sure, sure. Just have the butler call me in the morning. It’s all just too, too simple for me to bother about before my beauty nap.”

“Well, Jupiter, Mike, what are you complaining about so far? The Brain is taking care of us. This place is warm. It’s got light. It’s got air. There wasn’t even enough of an acceleration jar to muss your hair if it were smooth enough to be mussable in the first place.”

“Yeah? Greg, you must’ve taken lessons. No one could put Pollyanna that far out of the running without. What do we eat? What do we drink? Where are we? How do we get back? And in case of accident, to what exit and in what spacesuit do we run, not walk? I haven’t even seen a bathroom in the place, or those little conveniences that go along with bathrooms. Sure, we’re being taken care of – but good?”

The voice that interrupted Donovan’s tirade was not Powell’s. It was nobody’s. It was there, hanging in open air – stentorian and petrifying in its effects.

“GREGORY POWELL! MICHAEL DONOVAN! GREGORY POWELL! MICHAEL DONOVAN! PLEASE REPORT YOUR PRESENT POSITIONS. IF YOUR SHIP ANSWERS CONTROLS, PLEASE RETURN TO BASE. GREGORY POWELL! MICHAEL DONOVAN!-”

The message was repetitious, mechanical, broken by regular, untiring intervals.

Donovan said, “Where’s it coming from?”

“I don’t know.” Powell’s voice was an intense whisper, “Where do the lights come from? Where does anything come from?”

“Well, how are we going to answer?” They had to speak in the intervals between the loudly echoing, repeating message.

The walls were bare – as bare and as unbroken as smooth, curving metal can be. Powell said, “Shout an answer.”

They did. They shouted, in turns, and together, “Position unknown! Ship out of control! Condition desperate!”

Their voices rose and cracked. The short businesslike sentences became interlarded and adulterated with screaming and emphatic profanity, but the cold, calling voice repeated and repeated and repeated unwearyingly.

“They don’t hear us,” gasped Donovan. “There’s no sending mechanism. Just a receiver.” His eyes focused blindly at a random spot on the wall.

Slowly the din of the outside voice softened and receded. They called again when it was a whisper, and they called again, hoarsely, when there was silence.

Something like fifteen minutes later, Powell said lifelessly, “Let’s go through the ship again. There must be something to eat somewheres.” He did not sound hopeful. It was almost an admission of defeat.

They divided in the corridor to the right and left. They could follow one another by the hard footsteps resounding, and they met occasionally in the corridor, where they would glare at each other and pass on.

Powell’s search ended suddenly and as it did, he heard Donovan’s glad voice rise boomingly.

“Hey, Greg,” it howled, “The ship
has
got plumbing. How did we miss it?”

It was some five minutes later that he found Powell by hit-and-miss. He was saying, “Still no shower baths, though,” but it got choked off in the middle.

“Food,” he gasped.

The wall had dropped away, leaving a curved gap with two shelves. The upper shelf was loaded with unlabeled cans of a bewildering variety of sizes and shapes. The enameled cans on the lower shelf were uniform and Donovan felt a cold draft about his ankles. The lower half was refrigerated.

“How... how-”

“It wasn’t there, before,” said Powell, curtly. “That wall section dropped out of sight as I came in the door.”