'Nuts,' said Ronson. 'Kallner's got no body under that gold braid. Strip him and you'll find only a conveyor belt dribbling orders downward and shooting responsibility upward.'
Black found himself at the point of a grin but squeezed it down. He said, 'What about the Madam Doctor?'
'Dr. Susan Calvin of U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men, Incorporated,' intoned the reporter. 'The lady with hyper-space where her heart ought to be and liquid helium in her eyes. She'd pass through the sun and come out the other end encased in frozen flame.'
Black came even closer to a grin. 'How about Director Schloss, then?'
Ronson said glibly, 'He knows too much. Between spending his time fanning the feeble intelligence of his listener and dimming his own brains for fear of blinding said listener permanently by sheer force of brilliance, he ends up saying nothing.'
Black showed his teeth this time. 'Now suppose you tell me why you pick on me.'
'Easy, doctor. I looked at you and figured you're too ugly to be stupid and too smart to miss a possible opportunity at some good personal publicity.'
'Remind me to knock you down someday,' said Black. 'What do you want to know?'
The man from Interplanetary Press pointed into the pit and said, 'Is that thing going to work?'
Black looked downward too, and felt a vague chill riffle over him like the thin night wind of Mars. The pit was one large television screen, divided in two. One half was an over-all view of It. On Its pitted gray surface was the Parsec, glowing mutedly in the feeble sunlight. The other half showed the control room of the Parsec. There was no life in that control room. In the pilot's seat was an object the vague humanity of which did not for a moment obscure the fact that it was only a positronic robot.
Black said, 'Physically, mister, this will work. That robot will leave and come back. Space! how we succeeded with that part of it. I watched it all. I came here two weeks after I took my degree in etheric physics and I've been here, barring leave and furloughs, ever since. I was here when we sent the first piece of iron wire to Jupiter's orbit and back through hyperspace—and got back iron filings. I was here when we sent white mice there and back and ended up with mincemeat.
'We spent six months establishing an even hyperfield after that. We had to wipe out lags of as little as tenths of thousandths of seconds from point to point in matter being subjected to hypertravel. After that, the white mice started coming back intact. I remember when we celebrated for a week because one white mouse came back alive and lived ten minutes before dying. Now they live as long as we can take proper care of them.'
Ronson said, 'Great!'
Black looked at him obliquely. 'I said, physically it will work. Those white mice that come back———'
'Well?'
'No minds. Not even little white mice-type minds. They won't eat. They have to be force-fed. They won't mate. They won't run. They sit. They sit. They sit. That's all. We finally worked up to sending a chimpanzee. It was pitiful. It was too close to a man to make watching it bearable. It came back a hunk of meat that could make crawling motions. It could move its eyes and sometimes it would scrabble. It whined and sat in its own wastes without the sense to move. Somebody shot it one day, and we were all grateful for that. I tell you this, fella, nothing that ever went into hyperspace has come back with a mind.'
'Is this for publication?'
'After this experiment, maybe. They expect great things of it.' A corner of Black's mouth lifted.
'You don't?'
'With a robot at the controls? No.' Almost automatically Black's mind went back to that interlude, some years back, in which he had been unwittingly responsible for the near loss of a robot. He thought of the Nestor robots that filled Hyper Base with smooth, ingrained knowledge and perfectionist shortcomings. What was the use of talking about robots? He was not, by nature, a missionary.
But then Ronson, filling the continuing silence with a bit of small talk, said, as he replaced the wad of gum in his mouth by a fresh piece, 'Don't tell me you're anti-robot. I've always heard that scientists are the one group that aren't anti-robot.'
Black's patience snapped. He said, 'That's true, and that's the trouble. Technology's gone robot-happy. Any job has to have a robot, or the engineer in charge feels cheated. You want a doorstop; buy a robot with a thick foot. That's a serious thing.' He was speaking in a low, intense voice, shoving the words directly into Ronson's ear.
Ronson managed to extricate his arm. He said, 'Hey, I'm no robot. Don't take it out on me. I'm a man. Homo sapiens. You just broke an arm bone of mine. Isn't that proof?'
Having started, however, it took more than frivolity to stop Black. He said, 'Do you know how much time was wasted on this setup? We've had a perfectly generalized robot built and we've given it one order. Period. I heard the order given. I've memorized it. Short and sweet. "Seize the bar with a firm grip. Pull it towards you firmly. Firmly! Maintain your hold until the control board informs you that you have passed through hyperspace twice."
'So at zero time, the robot will grab the control bar and pull it firmly toward himself. His hands are heated to blood temperature. Once the control bar is in position, heat expansion completes contact and hyperfield is initiated. If anything happens to his brain during the first trip through hyperspace, it doesn't matter. All he needs to do is maintain position one microinstant and the ship will come back and the hyperfield will flip off. Nothing can go wrong. Then we study all its generalized reactions and see what, if anything, has gone wrong.'
Ronson looked blank. 'This all makes sense to me.'
'Does it?' asked Black bitterly. 'And what will you learn from a robot brain? It's positronic, ours is cellular. It's metal, ours is protein. They're not the same. There's no comparison. Yet I'm convinced that on the basis of what they learn, or think they learn, from the robot, they'll send men into hyperspace. Poor devils!—Look, it's not a question of dying. It's coming back mindless. If you'd seen the chimpanzee, you'd know what I mean. Death is clean and final. The other thing——'
The reporter said, 'Have you talked about this to anyone?'
Black said, 'Yes. They say what you said. They say I'm anti-robot and that settles everything—Look at Susan Calvin there. You can bet she isn't anti-robot. She came all the way from Earth to watch this experiment. If it had been a man at the controls, she wouldn't have bothered. But what's the use!'
'Hey,' said Ronson, 'don't stop now. There's more.'
'More what?'
'More problems. You've explained the robot. But why the security provisions all of a sudden?'
'Huh?'
'Come on. Suddenly I can't send dispatches. Suddenly ships can't come into the area. What's going on? This is just another experiment. The public knows about hyperspace and what you boys are trying to do, so what's the big secret?'
The backwash of anger was still seeping over Black, anger against the robots, anger against Susan Calvin, anger at the memory of that little lost robot in his past. There was some to spare, he found, for the irritating little newsman and his irritating little questions.
He said to himself, Let's see how he takes it.
He said, 'You really want to know?'
'You bet.'
'All right. We've never initiated a hyperfield for any object a millionth as large as that ship, or to send anything a millionth as far. That means that the hyperfield that will soon be initiated is some million million times as energetic as any we've ever handled. We're not sure what it can do.'
'What do you mean?'
'Theory tells us that the ship will be neatly deposited out near Sirius and neatly brought back here. But how large a volume of space about the Parsec will be carried with it? It's hard to tell. We don't know enough about hyperspace. The asteroid on which the ship sits may go with it and, you know, if our calculations are even a little off, it may never be brought back here. It may return, say, twenty billion miles away. And there's a chance that more of space than just the astero
id may be shifted.'
'How much more?' demanded Ronson.
'We can't say. There's an element of statistical uncertainty. That's why no ships must approach too closely. That's why we're keeping things quiet till the experiment is safely over.'
Ronson swallowed audibly. 'Supposing it reaches to Hyper Base?'
'There's a chance of it,' said Black with composure. 'Not much of a chance or Director Schloss wouldn't be here, I assure you. Still, there's a mathematical chance.'
The newsman looked at his watch. 'When does this all happen?'
'In about five minutes. You're not nervous, are you?'
'No,' said Ronson, but he sat down blankly and asked no more questions.
Black leaned outward over the railing. The final minutes were ticking off.
The robot moved!
There was a mass sway of humanity forward at that sign of motion and the lights dimmed in order to sharpen and heighten the brightness of the scene below. But so far it was only the first motion. The hands of the robot approached the starting bar.
Black waited for the final second when the robot would pull the bar toward himself. Black could imagine a number of possibilities, and all sprang nearly simultaneously to mind.
There would first be the short flicker that would indicate the departure through hyperspace and return. Even though the time interval was exceedingly short, return would not be to the precise starting position and there would be a flicker. There always was.
Then, when the ship returned, it might be found, perhaps, that the devices to even the field over the huge volume of the ship had proved inadequate. The robot might be scrap steel. The ship might be scrap steel.
Or their calculations might be somewhat off and the ship might never return. Or worse still, Hyper Base might go with the ship and never return.
Or, of course, all might be well. The ship might flicker and be there in perfect shape. The robot, with mind untouched, would get out of his seat and signal a successful completion of the first voyage of a man-made object beyond the gravitational control of the sun.
The last minute was ticking off.
The last second came and the robot seized the starting bar and pulled it firmly toward himself———
Nothing!
No nicker. Nothing!
The Parsec never left normal space.
Major General Kallner took off his officer's cap to mop his glistening forehead and in doing so exposed a bald head that would have aged him ten years in appearance if his drawn expression had not already done so. Nearly an hour had passed since the Parsec's failure and nothing had been done.
'How did it happen? How did it happen? I don't understand it.'
Dr. Mayer Schloss, who at forty was the 'grand old man' of the young science of hyperfield matrices, said hopelessly, 'There is nothing wrong with the basic theory. I'll swear my life away on that. There's a mechanical failure on the ship somewhere. Nothing more.' He had said that a dozen times.
'I thought everything was tested.' That had been said too.
'It was, sir, it was. Just the same———' And that.
They sat staring at each other in Kallner's office, which was now out of bounds for all personnel. Neither quite dared to look at the third person present.
Susan Calvin's thin lips and pale cheeks bore no expression. She said coolly, 'You may console yourself with what I have told you before. It is doubtful whether anything useful would have resulted.'
'This is not the time for the old argument,' groaned Schloss.
'I am not arguing. U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men, Inc. will supply robots made up to specification to any legal purchaser for any legal use. We did our part, however. We informed you that we could not guarantee being able to draw conclusions with regard to the human brain from anything that happened to the positronic brain. Our responsibility ends there. There is no argument.'
'Great space,' said General Kallner, in a tone that made the expletive feeble indeed. 'Let's not discuss that.'
'What else was there to do?' muttered Schloss, driven to the subject nevertheless. 'Until we know exactly what's happening to the mind in hyperspace we can't progress. The robot's mind is at least capable of mathematical analysis. It's a start, a beginning. And until we try———' He looked up wildly, 'But your robot isn't the point, Dr. Calvin. We're not worried about him or his positronic brain. Damn it, woman———' His voice rose nearly to a scream.
The robopsychologist cut him to silence with a voice that scarcely raised itself from its level monotone. 'No hysteria, man. In my lifetime I have witnessed many crises and I have never seen one solved by hysteria. I want answers to some questions.'
Schloss's full lips trembled and his deep-set eyes seemed to retreat into their sockets and leave pits of shadow in their places. He said harshly, 'Are you trained in etheric engineering?'
'That is an irrelevant question. I am Chief Robopsychologist of the United States Robots and Mechanical Men, Incorporated. That is a positronic robot sitting at the controls of the Parsec. Like all such robots, it is leased and not sold. I have a right to demand information concerning any experiment in which such a robot is involved.'
'Talk to her, Schloss,' barked General Kallner. 'She's— she's all right.'
Dr. Calvin turned her pale eyes on the general, who had been present at the time of the affair of the lost robot and who therefore could be expected not to make the mistake of underestimating her. (Schloss had been out on sick leave at the time, and hearsay is not as effective as personal experience.) 'Thank you, general,' she said.
Schloss looked helplessly from one to the other and muttered, 'What do you want to know?'
'Obviously my first question is, What is your problem if the robot is not?'
'But the problem is an obvious one. The ship hasn't moved. Can't you see that? Are you blind?'
'I see quite well. What I don't see is your obvious panic over some mechanical failure. Don't you people expect failure sometimes?'
The general muttered, 'It's the expense. The ship was hellishly expensive. The World Congress— appropriations—— —' He bogged down.
'The ship's still there. A slight overhaul and correction would involve no great trouble.'
Schloss had taken hold of himself. The expression on his face was one of a man who had caught his soul in both hands, shaken it hard and set it on its feet. His voice had even achieved a kind of patience. 'Dr. Calvin, when I say a mechanical failure, I mean something like a relay jammed by a speck of dust, a connection inhibited by a spot of grease., a transistor balked by a momentary heat expansion. A dozen other things. A hundred other things. Any of them can be quite temporary. They can stop taking effect at any moment.'
'Which means that at any moment the Parsec may flash through hyperspace and back after all.'
'Exactly. Now do you understand?'
'Not at all. Wouldn't that be just what you want?'
Schloss made a motion that looked like the start of an effort to seize a double handful of hair and yank. He said, 'You are not an etherics engineer.'
'Does that tongue-tie you, doctor?'
'We had the ship set,' said Schloss despairingly, 'to make a jump from a definite point in space relative to the center of gravity of the galaxy to another point. The return was to be to the original point corrected for the motion of the solar system. In the hour that has passed since the Parsec should have moved, the solar system has shifted position. The original parameters to which the hyperfield is adjusted no longer apply. The ordinary laws of motion do not apply to hyperspace and it would take us a week of computation to calculate a new set of parameters.'
'You mean that if the ship moves now it will return to some unpredictable point thousands of miles away?'
'Unpredictable?' Schloss smiled hollowly. 'Yes, I should call it that. The Parsec might end up in the Andromeda nebula or in the center of the sun. In any case the odds are against our ever seeing it again.'
Su
san Calvin nodded. 'The situation then is that if the ship disappears, as it may do at any moment, a few billion dollars of the tax-payers' money may be irretrievably gone, and—it will be said—through bungling.'
Major General Kallner could not have winced more noticeably if he had been poked with a sharp pin in the fundament.
The robopsychologist went on, 'Somehow, then, the ship's hyperfield mechanism must be put out of action, and that as soon as possible. Something will have to be unplugged or jerked loose or flicked off.' She was speaking half to herself.
'It's not that simple,' said Schloss. 'I can't explain it completely, since you're not an etherics expert. It's like trying to break an ordinary electric circuit by slicing through high-tension wire with garden shears. It could be disastrous. It would be disastrous.'
'Do you mean that any attempt to shut off the mechanism would hurl the ship into hyperspace?'
'Any random attempt would probably do so. Hyper-forces are not limited by the speed of light. It is very probable that they have no limit of velocity at all. It makes things extremely difficult. The only reasonable solution is to discover the nature of the failure and learn from that a safe way of disconnecting the field.'
'And how do you propose to do that, Dr. Schloss?'
Schloss said, It seems to me that the only thing to do is to send one of our Nestor robots———'
'No! Don't be foolish,' broke in Susan Calvin.
Schloss said, freezingly, 'The Nestors are acquainted with the problems of etherics engineering. They will be ideally—'
'Out of the question. You cannot use one of our positronic robots for such a purpose without my permission. You do not have it and you shall not get it.'
'What is the alternative?'
'You must send one of your engineers.'
Schloss shook his head violently, 'Impossible. The risk involved is too great. If we lose a ship and a man———'
'Nevertheless, you may not use a Nestor robot, or any robot.'
The general said, 'I—I must get in touch with Earth. This whole problem has to go to a higher level.'