Sprockets (8 page)

And it was not purplishly beautiful. It was more on the scaryish side.

It twisted all around and in and out of itself, glowing scaryishly green in places, and scaryishly blue in others; and even the black parts—the most scaryish of all—shone like shiny black velvet. Far inside was an area of bright glinting stretches that looked like lakes of frozen quicksilver, which they were. And all around the lakes were strange black buildings that made everyone think of crumbling castles—curiously spindly crumbling castles.

“Wow!” cried Jim in an awed voice. “So this is where the Moon people used to live!”

“Magnificent!” burbled the doctor, his hair beginning to stand straight up, stiff as a brush.

“Magneeficently dreadful,” said Don José, his mustachios quivering. “Such a place, she gives me the jeebee-heebees. My poor camera, how can she take peectures here?” He shook his head. “I would need an atomic lens, with night vision.”

“Sprockets,” said the doctor, “ask Ilium where the quantic moonstones are found, and why they don't make as many as they want in the atomic transmuter?”

“Sir,” said Sprockets, who had his answers all ready, “quantic moonstones are the the only things in the universe made of quantic atoms, and therefore they cannot be reproduced. Ilium says that only nine have ever been found, and only in this area of the quicksilver lakes. They can be anywhere around here—on the shores of the lakes, in the castles, or even in the nests of the
things
.”

“Eh?” said the doctor. “What about these
things
? Are they dangerous?”

“Not exactly, sir. But Ilium says they are unpurplishly disconcerting. They are simply huge, sir, and being made of nonmatter, they can fly right through one when they are confused. They live up in the darker and more crumbly parts of the castles and, according to Ilium's description, I would say they closely resemble certain Earth creatures of the order Chiroptera.”

“Chiroptera?” said Jim. “Why, that's bats. They're nothing but Moon bats!”

“Bless me!” said the doctor. “Naturally, in a place like this, there would be Moon bats. And naturally, they would be large. Fortunately I brought climbing sticks for all of us, so we can easily chase them off.”

“But, sir,” Sprockets told him dolefully, “one does not chase them off with sticks. Ilium says they have to be thought away.”

“Eh? What's this? You have to
think
them away?”

“Yes, sir.
Things
always have to be
thought
away.” Sprockets' little voice was suddenly very solemn. “It seems, sir, that human thought, properly directed, is a very potent weapon. But I am not so sure about positronic thought. It may be, sir, that the thinking of a small robot like myself will be dreadfully ineffectual.”

Jim said: “I'll bet if you turn on your cerebration button, you can chase a whole flock of 'em away. Anyway, Sprockets, I'll stay close to you. And if there's any trouble—”

“How can we communicate? The Moon is airless, and sound does not travel in a vacuum.”

“Oh, Daddy brought wrist radios for us. Better strap yours on. We're going to land.”

“I don't need one,” Sprockets said. “I have a special microscopic positronic one built into my circuits. How is your stomachache?”

“I've been practicing on thinking it away. After all, an ache is only a form of nonmatter, and I'm not going to let it keep me from being the first boy to set foot on the Moon. Well—here we are!”

9

He Encounters Moon Bats

The purple saucer floated down and came to a rest a few feet above the shore of one of the quicksilver lakes. On either side rose black crumbling castles with greenishly dark openings where almost anything could be watching.

“Turn on your wrist radios,” ordered the doctor. “Testing, testing—can everyone hear me?”

“We hear you,” said Jim and Don José.

“I hear you, sir,” said Sprockets, adjusting the radio button on the side of his head.

“Sprockets,” said the doctor, “test with Ilium and Leli. You are our connecting link with them, and we must all remain closely in touch every moment we are on the Moon.”

“Yes, sir.” Sprockets did as directed, and then replied, “Everything is purplishly well, sir.”

“Very good,” said the doctor. “Turn on your force globes.”

Instantly everyone in the saucer was surrounded by a shimmering bubble of protecting force.

“Now,” said the doctor, his voice tingling with suppressed eagerness, his hair standing up wildly in his force globe, “we will descend upon the Moon. Jim, you and Sprockets stay together, and Don José will stay with me. Never let your partner out of your sight. Test every step you take with your climbing sticks, and report to me every minute on your radios.”

Ilium thought a command to the saucer, and the slender stairway opened below them and touched the floor of the Moon cave. They all filed slowly, carefully, through the purple veil of light that served as an air lock and down the stairway—all but Jim, who gave a little jump, bounced, and rose several feet before he touched again.

“Jumping jeepers!” Jim spluttered. “I forgot I don't weigh anything here!”

“You weigh one sixth what you do at home,” Sprockets told him. “In spite of the plums.”

Ilium sang: “I will close the saucer so that
things
will not enter it while we are absent. I hope you have wonderfully purplish luck and find a quantic moonstone.”

“Thank you most spectrumly,” said Sprockets with eagerness, “and I hope you find several.”

“That is too much to hope for,” Leli answered. “They are the most purplishly rare gems in the universe.”

Ilium and Leli went half floating, half running, like two glowing bubbles, around the shore of the lake. Soon they vanished in the darkness of one of the castles. The doctor and Don José chose another crumbling structure, and presently they, too, were lost to sight.

Jim looked doubtfully at a third castle, rising tall and gaunt beside the quicksilver lake. It had many dark openings and a flight of ruined steps that wound dizzily up one side.

“What do you think, Sprockets?” he radioed.

“It looks dismally dark,” Sprockets replied.

“It sure does. Dreadfully, dismally dark,” Jim agreed.

“It's probably full of Moon dust,” said Sprockets. “And
things
.”

“Well, we really could save it till the last.”

“That might be wise,” said Sprockets. “After all, there's
lots
more space outside to hunt in than inside.”

“So there is,” answered Jim. “Let's start walking in circles, around and around, and look in all the little holes.”

So they began moving around and around, poking their climbing sticks into every crack and crevice where a stray quantic moonstone might have been dropped by whoever had dropped it a million years ago. Every minute, regularly, Sprockets would sing out to Ilium and Leli, and then report to the doctor: “All is well, sir, and no one has found anything yet.”

Walking in his force globe was surprisingly easy, for it changed shape to fit every movement, and gave an extra bounce to his feet. Since he weighed so little on the Moon, he discovered it was no trick at all to leap a dozen feet upward to explore a ledge or the top of a crumbling wall. Quantic moonstones, he was beginning to realize, were not at all easy to find.

Their circling carried them closer and closer to the gaunt castle with the ruined stairway. Finally they stood directly in front of the largest opening, which was much smaller than the doors of dwellings at home. Far back in the darkness beyond it something gleamed faintly.

“D'you suppose that's a quantic moonstone?” Jim whispered.

“It's sort of green,” said Sprockets, “so I doubt it. Ilium says quantic moonstones are purple.”

“It looks sort of purplish to me,” Jim said. “Do you think we ought to investigate it?”

“That's up to you,” said Sprockets. “Somehow I don't feel curious about it at all.”

“Well, whatever it is, it might make a nice present for Mom.” Jim moved closer to the opening and peered inside. “Er—I'm willing to go in if you are.”

“I—I'm always willing,” Sprockets answered faintly, and wished he hadn't been made that way. Having a built-in willingness could be very trying at times, and this was definitely one of the times. He didn't have to touch his instinct button to know that the door in front of him was a very bad door to enter, and that it would be much better to stay out of it.

Before Sprockets could think of a good excuse not to enter, Jim had stepped hesitantly inside. Sprockets was almost forced to follow.

Suddenly Jim exclaimed: “It
must
be a quantic moonstone! Look how it shines!” And he went bouncing over the rubble on the floor to get it.

Sprockets was certain by now that it wasn't what Jim thought it was, and at the same moment he realized what a foolish little robot he had been. He knew exactly how to find what they were all looking for, and he would have been able to find it for them by this time if only he had used his positronic wits.

My circuits must be affected by the Moon, he told himself, by way of an excuse. Otherwise I surely would have thought of it before.

He saw Jim pick up the shiny green stone, stand looking at it a moment, then glance overhead, startled.

“Y—ee—ee—ow!” Jim shrieked. “Run, Sprockets! Run!
Moon bats
!”

Sprockets didn't have a chance to run, for Jim, in his sudden fright, had collided with him and they both fell sprawling. He scrambled quickly to his feet, managed to turn on his cerebration button, and tried mightily to think away the dozens of black flapping shadow things that all at once were filling the lower part of the castle.

His positronic thinking didn't seem to help a bit, even with his cerebration button turned on to the last notch.

All his cerebration button did for him was bring them more quickly to a perfectly awful conclusion.

He
attracted
Moon bats!

There was no doubt about it. He attracted them, and the reason was his atomic battery. They were coming in through all the openings in the place, flapping their great transparent wings, and crowding closer about him, crowding hungrily.

They looked very much like Earth bats, except that they were big, big, big, and he could see right through them because they were made of nonmatter.

“Go away!” he screamed at them in his high, tinny little voice. “Go away! Run, Jim! Run!”

He couldn't tell what Jim was doing because there were so many bats, suddenly, that they made a swirling black mass of shadows about him, and he could actually begin to feel them draining his battery like nonmatter vampires. The thought of Jim frightened him. Maybe
one
Moon bat couldn't hurt a human being—but dozens and dozens of them might be very dangerous to Jim.

To protect Jim, there was only one thing to do.

As quick as a wink, before he had time even to give a
tock
at the thought of what he was doing, he felt behind him and opened his switch box.

CLICK
!

Sprockets had turned himself off.

Almost at the same moment he was aware that the edge of the floor beside him was crumbling. There had once been a flight of stairs leading downward here, but for a million years the stairs had been turning to dust. Now, as he fell, helpless, there was nothing to stop him and he continued to fall down, down, down.

His force globe, which was still turned on, helped cushion his fall a little when he bounced past piles of rubble and scraped over broken steps. Even so, in spite of the fact that his Moon weight was only one sixth his normal weight, he would have been smashed to an unrecognizable clutter of cogs, sprockets, wires, and circuits if he had landed upon anything solid.

Instead, the bottom of the black dungeon-like pit into which he fell was yards deep in Moon dust, and he settled into it as softly as if he had popped into a black feather bed.