10
The _Brainchild_ lifted from Antarctica at exactly 2100 hours, Greenwichtime. For three days the officers and men of the ship had worked asthough they were the robots instead of their passenger--or cargo,depending on your point of view.
Supplies were loaded, and the great engine-generators checked andrechecked. The ship was ready to go less than two hours before take-offtime.
The last passenger aboard was Snookums, although, in a more propersense, he had always been aboard. The little robot rolled up to theelevator on his treads and was lifted into the body of the ship. MissCrannon was waiting for him at the air lock, and Mike the Angel wasstanding by. Not that he had any particular interest in watchingSnookums come aboard, but he did have a definite interest in LedaCrannon.
"Hello, honey," said Miss Crannon as Snookums rolled into the air lock."Ready for your ride?"
"Yes, Leda," said Snookums in his contralto voice. He rolled up to herand took her hand. "Where is my room?"
"Come along; I'll show you in a minute. Do you remember CommanderGabriel?"
Snookums swiveled his head and regarded Mike.
"Oh yes. He tried to help me."
"Did you need help?" Mike growled in spite of himself.
"Yes. For my experiment. And you offered help. That was very nice. Ledasays it is nice to help people."
Mike the Angel carefully refrained from asking Snookums if he thought hewas people. For all Mike knew, he did.
Mike followed Snookums and Leda Crannon down the companionway.
"What did you do today, honey?" asked Leda.
"Mostly I answered questions for Dr. Fitzhugh," said Snookums. "He askedme thirty-eight questions. He said I was a great help. I'm nice, too."
"Sure you are, darling," said Miss Crannon.
"Ye gods," muttered Mike the Angel.
"What's the trouble, Commander?" the girl asked, widening her blue eyes.
"Nothing," said Mike the Angel, looking at her innocently with eyes thatwere equally blue. "Not a single solitary thing. Snookums is a sweetlittle tyke, isn't he?"
Leda Crannon gave him a glorious smile. "I think so. And a lot of fun,too."
Very seriously, Mike patted Snookums on his shiny steel skull. "How oldare you, little boy?"
Leda Crannon's eyes narrowed, but Mike pretended not to notice whileSnookums said: "Eight years, two months, one day, seven hours,thirty-three minutes and--ten seconds. But I am not a little boy. I am arobot."
Mike suppressed an impulse to ask him if he had informed Leda Crannon ofthat fact. Mike had been watching the girl for the past three days (atleast, when he'd had the time to watch) and he'd been bothered by thegirl's maternal attitude toward Snookums. She seemed to have wrappedherself up entirely in the little robot. Of course, that might simply beher method of avoiding Mike the Angel, but Mike didn't quite believethat.
"Come along to your room, dear," said Leda. Then she looked again atMike. "If you'll wait just a moment, Commander," she said ratherstiffly, "I'd like to talk to you."
Mike the Angel touched his forehead in a gentlemanly salute. "Later,perhaps, Miss Crannon. Right now, I have to go to the Power Section toprepare for take-off. We're really going to have fun lifting this bruteagainst a full Earth gee without rockets."
"Later, then," she said evenly, and hurried off down the corridor withSnookums.
Mike headed the other way with a sigh of relief. As of right then, hedidn't feel like being given an ear-reaming lecture by a beautifulredhead. He beetled it toward the Power Section.
* * * * *
Chief Powerman's Mate Multhaus was probably the only man in the crew whocame close to being as big as Mike the Angel. Multhaus was two inchesshorter than Mike's six-seven, but he weighed in at two-ninety. As apowerman, he was tops, and he gave the impression that, as far as powerwas concerned, he could have supplied the ship himself by turning thecrank on a hand generator.
But neither Mike nor Multhaus approached the size of the Supply Officer,Lieutenant Keku. Keku was an absolute giant. Six-eight, three hundredfifty pounds, and very little of it fat.
When Mike the Angel opened the door of the Power Section's instrumentroom, he came upon a strange sight. Lieutenant Keku and Chief Multhauswere seated across a table from each other, each with his right elbow onthe table, their right hands clasped. The muscles in both massive armsstood out beneath the scarlet tunics. Neither man was moving.
"Games, children?" asked Mike gently.
_Whap!_ The chief's arm slammed to the table with a bang that sounded asif the table had shattered. Multhaus had allowed Mike's entrance todistract him, while Lieutenant Keku had held out just an instant longer.
Both men leaped to their feet, Multhaus valiantly trying not to nursehis bruised hand.
"Sorry, sir," said Multhaus. "We were just--"
"Ne' mind. I saw. Who usually wins?" Mike asked.
Lieutenant Keku grinned. "Usually he does, Commander. All this beefdoesn't help much against a guy who really has pull. And Chief Multhaushas it."
Mike looked into the big man's brown eyes. "Try doing push-ups. With allyour weight, it'd really put brawn into you. Sit down and light up.We've got time before take-off. That is, we do if Multhaus haseverything ready for the check-off."
"I'm ready any time you are, sir," Multhaus said, easing himself into achair.
"We'll have a cigarette and then run 'em through."
Keku settled his bulk into a chair and fired up a cigarette. Mike sat onthe edge of the table.
"Philip Keku," Mike said musingly. "Just out of curiosity, what kind ofa name is Keku?"
"Damfino," said the lieutenant. "Sounds Oriental, doesn't it?"
Mike looked the man over carefully, but rapidly. "But you're notOriental--or at least, not much. You look Polynesian to me."
"Hit it right on the head, Commander. Hawaiian. My real name'sKekuanaoa, but nobody could pronounce it, so I shortened it to Keku whenI came in the Service."
Mike gave a short laugh. "That accounts for your size. Kekuanaoa. Abranch of the old Hawaiian royal family, as I recall."
"That's right." The big Hawaiian grinned. "I've got a kid sister thatweighs as much as you. And my granddad kicked off at ninety-fourweighing a comfortable four-ten."
"What'd he die of, sir?" Multhaus asked curiously.
"Concussion and multiple fractures. He slammed a Ford-Studebaker into apalm tree at ninety miles an hour. Crazy old ox; he was bigger than thedam' automobile."
The laughter of three big men filled the instrument room.
After a few more minutes of bull throwing, Keku ground out his cigaretteand stood up. "I'd better get to my post; Black Bart will be callingdown any minute."
At that instant the PA system came alive.
"_Now hear this! Now hear this! Take-off in fifteen minutes! Take-off infifteen minutes!_"
Keku grinned, saluted Mike the Angel, and walked out the door.
Multhaus gazed after him, looking at the closed door.
"A blinking prophet, Commander," he said. "A blinking prophet."
* * * * *
The take-off of the _Brainchild_ was not so easy as it might haveappeared to anyone who watched it from the outside. As far as theexterior observers were concerned, it seemed to lift into the air witha loud, thrumming noise, like a huge elevator rising in an invisibleshaft.
It had been built in a deep pit in the polar ice, built around the hugecryotronic stack that was Snookums' brain. As it rose, electric motorsslid back the roof that covered the pit, and the howling Antarctic windsroared around it.
Unperturbed, it went on rising.
Inside, Mike the Angel and Chief Multhaus watched worriedly as themeters wiggled their needles dangerously close to the overload mark. Thethrumming of the ship as it fought its way up against the pull ofEarth's gravity and through the Earth's magnetic field, using the fabricof space itself as the fulcrum against which it applied its power, was
like the vibration of a note struck somewhere near the bottom of a pianokeyboard, or the rumble of a contra bassoon.
As the intensity of the gravitational field decreased, the velocity ofthe ship increased--not linearly, but logarithmically. She shriekedthrough the upper atmosphere, quivering like a live thing, and emergedat last into relatively empty space. When she reached a velocity of alittle over thirty miles per second--relative to the sun, andperpendicular to the solar ecliptic--Mike the Angel ordered her enginescut back to the lowest power possible which would still retain theone-gee interior gravity of the ship and keep the anti-accelerationfields intact.
"How does she look, Multhaus?" he asked.
Both of the men were checking the readings of the instruments. Acomputerman second class was punching the readings into the small tablecalculator as Multhaus read off the numbers.
"I think she weathered it, sir," the chief said cautiously, "but shesure took a devil of a beating. And look at the power factor readings!We were tossing away energy as though we were S-Doradus or something."
They worked for nearly an hour to check through all the circuits to findwhat damage--if any--had been done by the strain of Earth'sgravitational and magnetic fields. All in all, the _Brainchild_ was inpretty good shape. A few circuits needed retuning, but no replacementswere necessary.
Multhaus, who had been understandably pessimistic about the ship'sability to lift herself from the surface of even a moderate-sized planetlike Earth, looked with new respect upon the man who had designed thepower plant that had done the job.
Mike the Angel called the bridge and informed Captain Quill that theship was ready for full acceleration.
Under control from the bridge, the huge ship yawed until her nose--andthus the line of thrust along her longitudinal axis--was pointed towardher destination.
"Full acceleration, Mister Gabriel," said Captain Quill over theintercom.
Mike the Angel watched the meters climb again as the ship speared awayfrom the sun at an ever-increasing velocity. Although the apparentinternal acceleration remained at a cozy one gee, the acceleration inrelation to the sun was something fantastic. When the ship reached thevelocity of light, she simply disappeared, as far as external observerswere concerned. But she still kept adding velocity with her tremendousacceleration.
Finally her engines reached their performance peak. They could drive the_Brainchild_ no faster. They simply settled down to a steady growl andpushed the ship at a steady velocity through what the mathematicianstermed "null-space."
The _Brainchild_ was on her way.