Sprockets (10 page)

He pressed the object into Jim's hand, and said, faintly: “Run—give it to Leli. It's a quantic moonstone—it will save Ilium—”

Slowly, feebly, Sprockets started back to the saucer, surrounded by a growing cloud of Moon bats. Somehow he made it as far as the saucer's stairway, and then he collapsed.

Poor little Sprockets was completely used up.

Naturally, being used up, he had no memory afterward of being hauled into the saucer, and of Ilium's miraculous recovery with the help of the quantic moonstone. Nor was he aware of the rapid flight home, which took only sixteen and a half minutes.

Poor little Sprockets was so used up that he didn't even respond to the hot shot that Mrs. Bailey tearfully gave him, and it was only after he had been visited by seven robot doctors from the Consolidated Mechanical Men Corporation, and two positronic experts wearing white jackets and thick glasses, that he began to tick again.

When he finally sat up, blinking his eye lights, Mrs. Bailey tucked him right back under the covers, with happy tears in her eyes, and said: “Just lie quietly, dear, and take your medicine. A special inductive sizzle every hour on the half, and you'll be fit as a fiddle in no time.”

“You are so kind, ma'am,” he replied, taking his sizzle, which was really quite pleasant and soothing. “Where are Ilium and Leli?”

“They had to be on their way, but they left you a message tape. Do you feel strong enough to hear it?”

“Oh, please! Put it in my slot.”

Mrs. Bailey did so, and he heard Leli singing happily through his circuits. It was a long message, and quite purplishly glowingly spectrumly beautiful. Since it was a private message, it cannot be given here—except to say that Ilium and Leli promised to return soon and give him a present.

“Now,” said Mrs. Bailey, “I have a little surprise for you. Barnabas says you have behaved tolerably. Quite tolerably. When Barnabas says tolerably, he really means super, super. So we decided to keep you for keeps. Your name is now Sprockets Bailey.”

“Oh, ma'am!” Sprockets was almost overcome with joy.

“Furthermore,” said Mrs. Bailey, “we didn't want you to be lonesome after Jim starts back to school, so we put in a special order at the factory. Jim,” she called. “Bring him in.”

The door opened. Walking timidly in front of Jim was a small robot who looked very much like Sprockets, only he wasn't quite as big.

“Sprockets,” said Mrs. Bailey, “this is your little brother, Rivets.”

Sprockets sat up, blinking ninety to the second, he was so surprised. “Why—why—this is wonderful!”

“Just wonnerful!” little Rivets agreed, blinking back. “I never thought I'd have a real brudder with a genuine Asimov Positronic brain! Mine's only semipositronic.”

“That's plenty,” said Sprockets, “because between the two of us that makes a brain and a half, which is really super. We're going to have a lot of fun!”

And, naturally, they did.

Turn the page to begin reading from the sequel to
Sprockets

1

They Are in Disgrace

Sprockets, the Baileys' little robot, and his brother, Rivets, the Baileys' least robot, were lying helpless on the laboratory floor, quivering from shock. Their circuits were overheating, and in ten seconds—unless someone speedily turned off their switches—their brains would sizzle and pop, and they would be robot dummies for the rest of their lives. They had done a dreadful thing, much too awful for any proper robot to think about.

Here is what they did, and why it was so very bad:

Three days earlier—three days, five hours, fifty-two minutes, and seven seconds earlier, according to the clock in Sprockets' special brain—Dr. Bailey's son, young Jim Bailey, had made a great discovery. Jim was in the laboratory, fiddling with a radio he had built from odd parts, when suddenly he exclaimed: “Daddy, I'm getting a message from Mars! Daddy, listen!”

“I will not,” said the doctor. “And you are not getting a message from Mars. Don't interrupt me. Can't you see I'm thinking deeply?”

The doctor was a tall, thin man with thick glasses on the end of his nose, a thick mop of white hair that flopped in all directions when he thought deeply, and a perpetual frown that came from solving too many puzzles. His greatest puzzle, how to finish his Super-Magna Space Probe, was still unsolved.

“But, Daddy,” Jim insisted, “I
am
getting a message, and I'm
sure
it's from Mars! I aimed a signal there, and I'm getting a reply. Ask Sprockets. He's
never
wrong.”

“Humph!” grunted the doctor. He looked suspiciously at Sprockets, who had been made by accident at the robot factory and given a brain that no little robot put together from scraps should have had. It was forever upsetting him with its answers.

“What's this nonsense about?” the doctor demanded.

Sprockets and his smaller brother, Rivets—they were about the size of smallish boys with biggish heads—were standing respectfully to one side as proper robots should, wide awake and ticking while they awaited orders. Each was wearing a pair of Jim's cast-off overalls, neatly pressed; their joints were carefully oiled so they would not squeak, and there wasn't a speck of dust or rust on them, for Mrs. Bailey was very particular about their appearance. Their eye lights were bright, and the rows of buttons across their foreheads glowed with color. Rivets, whose brain was only semi-positronic, didn't have as many buttons as Sprockets, but in the short time he had been with the Baileys he had managed very well by keeping his pay-attention button turned on most of the time.

“Sir,” said Sprockets in his earnest little voice, answering the doctor's question, “according to my calculations—and I am well educated in several onomies, including astronomy—it
is
true that Jim is getting a message from Mars. And, sir, it sounds like a perfect dilly. If you will permit me—”

“Absolutely not,” said the doctor. “If there were anything on Mars, which there isn't, and if Jim were old enough to have the comprehension to know it, which he isn't and doesn't, he couldn't possibly hear it without my Super-Magna Space Probe, which I haven't quite properly perfected.”

“Aw, Daddy,” Jim told him, “Sprockets and I whipped up a do-jigger that takes care of it. It doesn't work too well, but—”

Jim stopped. Louder sounds were coming from the radio. Strange and unearthly sounds that simply had to be Martian because they couldn't be anything else.

“Bless me!” muttered the doctor. Suddenly he dashed to the radio and began twiddling the knobs. “Miranda!” he called. “Come listen to this!”

“I'm right here, listening, Barnabas,” said Mrs. Bailey, who had been sitting there all the time, mending the robots' overalls, which had a way of wearing out at the knees. She was a short, plump little woman with a turned-up nose and quick birdlike blue eyes like Jim's.

“Miranda,” said the doctor, and his mop of white hair was standing almost straight up with excitement. “Do you know what this means?”

“How could I, dear? I don't speak Martian.”

“No, no, no! That isn't the meaning I mean. I mean, do you realize the imperious import of this discovery?”

“What's ‘imperious import' mean, Daddy?” Jim asked.

“It means anything from top drawer to battle stations. Don't interrupt me. Miranda, I must revise my concept of the fourth planet. Miranda,
there is Something on Mars
! I absolutely must get in touch with that Something and find out what it is.”

“My goodness,” said Mrs. Bailey, “from the sound of it I hope you never meet it in the dark. And, dear, I don't think you'd better fiddle too much with Jim's radio. You might burn out his do-jigger, and then you'll never—”

She spoke too late. There was a loud crackling, a flash of sparks, and flame suddenly shot from the tubes. There might have been a bad fire in the laboratory if Sprockets, his hands and feet twinkling as fast as thought, hadn't snatched up a fire extinguisher and smothered the radio with foam.

“Barnabas Bailey!” Mrs. Bailey exclaimed. “Look what you've done! Honestly—”

The doctor stood snapping his fingers, quite vexed. All at once he brightened. “Tut,” he said. “Tut, tut. There's nothing lost.”

“Except my radio,” Jim said dolefully.

“A mere detail,” said his father. “Think nothing of it. What has been made once can always be made again, only bigger and better. Jim, you may have the honor of helping me finish my Super-Magna Space Probe. That is, if you and Sprockets can remember how you put together that er-ah—that do-jigger thing. How about it, Sprockets? Do you remember?”

“Sir,” said Sprockets, lifting his head proudly, “you forget that I have a genuine Asimov Positronic Brain with twenty trillion printed circuits. I remember all.”

“Of course. Naturally. Then let us get busy. Immediately. It is absolutely emphatically imperative that we talk to that Something on Mars. We must find out the who, the what, and the why of it before some infamous and unspeakable rascal beats us to it.”

“Sir,” said Sprockets, “are you referring to Prof. Vladimir Katz, who recently escaped from jail?”

“I am,” snapped the doctor. “And don't mention that unmentionable name in my presence again.”

“But, sir, I regret to inform you that that unmentionable one is now in Mongolia, doing something secret for the Mongolian Planetary Monopoly.”

“
What?
” The doctor seemed staggered. “How did you learn that?”

“From my built-in microscopic positronic radio, sir. I can hear any message in the world when I properly tune my circuits.”

“Great gobbling guns!” cried Dr. Bailey. “If Vladimir Katz is working for the Mongolians, there's no time to lose! He'll find out all about Mars and monopolize it just as sure as purple saucers fly. Everybody to work! Fast!”

As they trotted behind the doctor, Rivets turned on his whisper button and asked, “Spwockets, who ith that unthpeakable, unmenthunable—oh dear, my thkwew ith looth again!”

“Sh-h-h!” Sprockets whispered, and gave a quick
tock
that amounted to a gulp, for poor Rivets had a screw in his head that was always coming loose at the wrong time. It made him sound positively addled, if not actually aberrated—and an aberrated robot was something that no proper robot cared to think about. Sprockets was terribly afraid the doctor might find out about it and send Rivets back to the factory to be exchanged. Never that!

“I'll explain about
that man
some other time,” Sprockets said hurriedly. “Let me fix your screw.”

Out from the pockets of his overalls came a tiny screwdriver and a can of oil, and in two ticks and a tock he had tightened the loose screw and oiled Rivets' tongue.

“We must be on our toes for this job,” he told Rivets. “Is your pay-attention button on full?”

“All the way.”

“Careful button?”

“All the way.”

“Your hurry-up button?”

“All the way.”

“Your balance button?”

“All the way.”

“Then you'd better keep them all the way all the time.”

“But, Sprockets, I may burn out my battery!”

“Oh, no. You have an atomic battery just like mine, and it will recharge itself every night if you lie down for six hours, fifty-seven minutes, and twelve seconds.”

“Aw, if I have to recharge, how can I play marbles at night?”

“A robot shouldn't play marbles when important work is going on.”

“But I
like
to play with marbles!” said Rivets. “It makes me feel almost like a real boy. Didn't
you
ever play with marbles?”

“Certainly not! And you shouldn't—not in the laboratory.”

“I will if I want to,” Rivets pouted. “The doctor hasn't ordered me not to, and you can't order me without orders to do so. You're only a robot, too.”

“Stop that whispering and get busy!” shouted the doctor. “We've got to build the do-jigger and beat the Mongolians!”

They rushed to work.

Never before had the Bailey laboratory been in such a bustle. Rivets helped Sprockets, Sprockets helped Jim, Jim helped the doctor, and the doctor tore about fitting this to that and that to this, and sometimes getting so tangled in the Super-Magna Space Probe that it took everyone to untangle him. The Super-Magna Space Probe, on which the doctor had been fussing for seven years, was a vast tangle of wires and tubes and glass that, quite naturally, looked like nothing on Earth, since it was concerned only with matters far away from Earth. All it needed was Jim's do-jigger—a very big do-jigger—to make it work.