The Project Gutenberg eBook of The head hunters
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Title: The head hunters
Author: Joseph Samachson
Frederik Pohl
Illustrator: Ed Emshwiller
Release date: July 23, 2026 [eBook #79166]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: King-Size Publications, Inc., 1955
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79166
Credits: Tom Trussel (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HEAD HUNTERS ***
The Head Hunters
by William Morrison and Frederik Pohl
_When such a superlatively gifted storyteller as William
Morrison--remember his_ HOLLYWOOD HABIT, _and_ DATE OF PUBLICATION,
2083 A. D._?--joins quills with Frederik Pohl of Ballantine pocket
book fame an entertainment special is virtually assured. Here’s a
documentary-type saga of interplanetary engineering and space hazards
incalculable that starts brilliantly, gathers momentum with every
breathtaking development on the frontiers of tomorrow, and ends with
a smash climax that will set you to pondering for a long, long time._
=The best “man” for a really tough engineering job in space may be a
headless robot. But human courage rates a few shining medals too!=
It was dull work, changing circuits in a vacuum, where every
current-carrying atom had to be insulated against the spark-over of
space. John Tinker stood up, yawned, and glanced through the tangle of
equipment at the robots walking about outside.
He said into his helmet radio: “Chop, chop, chop.”
He couldn’t see the girl’s face, but her voice was disconcerted.
“Chop--what are you talking about?”
“Them.” He waved at the robots. “Carrying their heads like old Anne
Boleyn.” He sang: “With ’er ’ead tooked underneath ’er arm, she walks
the bleddy Tower--”
The girl said: “They aren’t heads. They’re apex-mounted sense
receptors. They aren’t arms. They’re powered torsional manipulators.
They aren’t ‘tucked.’ The heads are plug-in. I mean--the receptors are
plug-in, bayonet-mounted, and they fit at the apex while in use or in a
dummy female base under the manipulator for carrying.”
Tinker said simply, “S. Cottrell, I love you.”
He thought he heard a snort over the radio, and he sighed. All the
same, it gave him a queer feeling to see the headless creatures with
the steel skulls clasped casually under their arms.
He had tried to tell his partner, Drake, about it once; but Drake was
not a sensitive man. He had pointed out very quickly that there was
nothing feminine or fragile about the robots, and had elaborated on the
remark with a long obscene outburst about the lack of females on the
asteroids.
Tinker, listening, had marveled; some of the words he had never heard
before. No doubt a man had to go through Drake’s special training--in
six jails--to learn them.
The girl said resentfully, “Are you going to help me or not?”
“It’s time to take a break,” Tinker objected. “Let’s watch the robots.”
He waved at them as he spoke.
She hesitated, but she stood up and joined him. He wished he could see
her face through the helmet of the space suit. She said: “I’d think
you’d be used to them by now.”
“I don’t spend much time here,” he reminded her. “As you know, Drake
and I have our quarters on Asteroid B, and we only come over here for
trouble-shooting or checkups--half an hour or an hour at a time. It
isn’t safe to stay long.”
“You’ve been here five hours already.”
“I won’t be here for six, though. Not if Drake will get off his back
and show up.” He added: “Anyway, this is a special occasion. It’s worth
taking on a little extra radioactivity to be with somebody like you.”
“Sure, somebody female,” the girl agreed. “_Anybody_ female.”
He shrugged. It was true, in a way. It had been three months since he
had seen a woman, any woman--or any man or child, for that matter,
except himself and his partner. And Drake didn’t count. Tinker,
striving to be just, had to face the fact that Drake wasn’t a man. He
was a rat, with the fierce and treacherous disposition of a rat. In
effect, Tinker lived alone and he didn’t like it.
But on the other hand, he liked this girl, even though he had never
seen her face. Her voice alone made her seem maddeningly desirable--it
was so warm and friendly.
He stared at her, trying to see through the faceplate, and quickly
realizing that it was flatly impossible, unless he focused his headlamp
directly in her eyes. There was no refracted light to illuminate the
inside of her helmet, since refraction cannot take place in the absence
of air. He could only determine with certainty, under the helmet and
the protective armor, that she did have a face--and that she could
stand on her own two legs. Whether the face was pretty, whether the
legs would get a second look from him on Earth, he couldn’t tell--and
it was posing a threat to his sanity.
She said, half-laughing, “I thought you were watching the robots.”
“I’d rather watch you.” Her laughter became wholly unconstrained.
“You’re space happy,” she warned. “I could easily be three times your
age. You don’t even know what I look like.”
“You sound incredibly young,” he told her. “Anyway, you aren’t too
old to be charming. They don’t send hundred-year-old women to the
asteroids.”
“No,” she admitted. “But the retirement age is sixty.”
“You aren’t sixty either,” he said positively. “You might even be under
thirty.”
There really was some danger on Asteroid A. The automatic isotope
plants, robot-run and remotely located in space, were a vital cog in
the wheel of isotope manufacture. If anything went wrong on A, it could
explode and destroy everything on its surface. But even if it took its
nearest planetary neighbor--Asteroid Y-335 B--with it, the only lives
at stake would be Tinker’s and his partner’s. And his partner, he was
convinced, would be no great loss.
Of course, an explosion was unlikely. But there _had_ been a disastrous
blowup on Venus which had caused the Main Office hastily to set about
locating new plantsites in the asteroid belt. So it was possible,
theoretically--and even without a blowup, there was constant radiation
seepage on A.
The healthiest man was better off if he stayed a maximum of six hours
at a stretch--twenty-four would certainly have been fatal--and sick and
decrepit individuals weren’t supposed to be there at all. Sixty? No,
Tinker told himself, she couldn’t be a day over thirty. Well, forty,
maybe....
“What’s your first name?” he demanded suddenly.
“My what?”
“Your first name. You said it was S. Cottrell. What does the ‘S.’ stand
for?”
She said dubiously, “Siria. My father was--”
“I know,” he said exultantly. “You’re twenty-five! Your father named
you in honor of the Sirius Expedition--you and possibly ten thousand
other unfortunates. So it follows, as a mathematical corollary, that
you can’t be a day over twenty-five.”
She said stiffly, “I happen to be twenty-three.”
“Even better,” said Tinker. “Siria, will you marry me?”
“No. Now, do we get back to work? Or do I get back to work and you go
home?”
II
Tinker wasn’t a fool, for all that he liked to play games. The two of
them went back to work. Around them, as they labored at the difficult
task of rearranging the circuits in accordance with Siria Cottrell’s
wiring diagrams, fresh from the Home Office, the robots moved
mechanically about their affairs. They were making isotopes, and it
was no concern of their electronic brains if human visitors decided to
change the way in which they made them.
In vast, open-walled buildings on the far side of the asteroid, atomic
nuclei were reacting. The process was slow, by atomic standards, but
it was steady, and it went on day and night, week and month and year
without end. The cascade refiners turned out a constant stream of
ultra-pure, long-life isotope ingots, and the unmanned space ships came
in a steady stream to the little five-mile chunks of rock, arriving
empty, and departing with full loads.
It was a scene of never-ceasing activity, but soundless--without
air--and the busiest components of the landscape, the reactors and
refiners, remained out of sight. Equally invisible was the radiation
range, except for a comparatively tiny seepage.
Of course, the seepage didn’t bother the robots, for their special
sensory receptors--the instruments which Tinker called the
“heads”--were in dummy sockets and not plugged in at the apex. Their
usual sense organs, located in the torso itself, had what the manuals
described as “_Class I adjacent-band interference rejection_.” In other
words, they weren’t very sensitive.
But the heads, designed to pick up minute sparks from defective
equipment, and used only for diagnosing breakdowns, were so abnormally
sensitive that they were eventually certain to pick up constant static
signals from the reactors.
That meant, of course, that they couldn’t be worn all the time. The
robot “neural” system was almost inflexible but constant faint signals
would derange it, confuse the robot reflexes and eventually lead to a
condition that the manuals defined as “_crystalline neurosis_.”
Crystalline neurosis indeed! But Tinker knew what it meant in practice,
at least. It meant that something had gone wrong that the robots
themselves couldn’t repair, and that was why he and Drake were handily
next door, sweating out their contract time in a well-insulated space
house equipped with air and water purifiers, on Asteroid B.
The radio crackled in Tinker’s ear. “What’s the matter with that one?”
the girl demanded.
Tinker looked up. The girl was standing over him, working on an
overhead grouping of the circuits--except that she wasn’t actually
working. She was staring out at the scene beyond the shed, where one of
the robots was down on the rock, kicking feebly.
Tinker said, “Our excellent friend is busted. A part wore out, I
suppose. We may as well watch, and see how they fix it.”
Scarcely a minute later two more robots appeared and moved purposefully
toward the fallen one. As they advanced the two new arrivals tugged
their heads free from under their arms, and shifted them to their broad
metal “shoulders.” A slight twist, and they were no longer headless.
The girl said humbly, “Tinker, explain it to me, please? I know all
about the manuals--I helped write parts of them. But it all looks so
different out here in the field.”
Tinker said, “Glad to oblige. You’re familiar with central control--the
computer that programs all the robots? Well, when one of them breaks
down, the nearest adjacent unit gets a distress signal. Instantly our
dutiful friends stick their heads on--just as those two did. And--well,
look.”
The two robots had suddenly become mechanics. With incredible, expert
swiftness they had their fallen companion in sections, right there on
the rock. The tiny individual parts were passed before the region where
their eyes would have been--if the “head” had possessed eyes--in a
complex gesture which the girl was sure involved some sort of testing.
It took hardly a minute before one of the newcomers located the faulty
part--a worn out thermocouple. The second quickly detached his head
again, and somehow managed to open a section of it. Out of the cavity
thus exposed came a duplicate thermocouple to replace the old one. In
another minute all three of the robots had their heads off and stored
once more. The damaged one, looking assured, immediately sprang to his
feet, and resumed his interrupted task.
“Clever, isn’t it?” Tinker said. “Tool chest, stockroom, testing
instruments--all in one.”
The girl said doubtfully, “But why do they have their own individual
heads? I should think just a couple scattered around the asteroid would
suffice.”
“Why does every Ford have a jack in the luggage compartment?” Tinker
asked, “Isn’t it obvious? They’re built to be self-sufficient. And
they just about have to be, Siria. This is a very small asteroid.
Quite frequently Drake and I kick ourselves uncomfortably far off the
surface, to where the artificial gravity in our suits won’t bring us
back. The robots don’t even have artificial gravity, and if anything
went wrong with _them_ out in space, they’d have to repair themselves.”
“I see what you mean,” the girl said. “But are you seriously suggesting
that those heads can handle anything that goes wrong?”
“No, of course not,” Tinker said. “Not by themselves, at any rate.
They’re just testing equipment and so on. The brains--the repair
patterns, if you don’t like your robot men so anthropomorphic--are
in the central control system. Do you know,” he went on quite
irrelevantly, “that you have beautiful eyes?”
She laughed after a moment. “It may have been three months since you
saw a woman. But you haven’t forgotten the meaning of a smooth line.
Let’s get back to work.”
A moment later a flicker in the corner of her eye caught the girl’s
attention, and she glanced up, startled. Overhead a large black shape
was blotting out a chunk of the skyful of stars.
Tinker laughed. “B,” he said simply.
* * * * *
She nodded, staring. It had been a growing mountain, off on the
horizon far to her left, a cold asteroid Paricutin, getting taller by
the moment. Now it had separated and was floating free. Even as they
watched, it climbed higher in the sky, looking like some plunging
hell-bomb above a city pin-pointed for atomic disaster on a tragically
conclusive scale.
“It isn’t falling,” Tinker reassured her. “It’s just home sweet
home--Asteroid Y-335 B.”
“I know it isn’t falling,” she breathed, drawing closer to him. “It’s
just that I can’t get used to its being up there at all.”
Tinker sighed. “I have to get used to it because I’d be homeless if it
disappeared. Atmosphere artificial, gravity equally plush-velvet. Time
of revolution for the binary pair, seventy-five minutes. Population,
two--John Tinker, probably lunatic adventurer, and George Drake,
possibly dangerously sane rat.”
She glanced at him thoughtfully. “It’s easy to see that you don’t like
Drake.”
“You haven’t met Drake,” he explained. “Anyway, it’s not as bad as
it might be. There are, I’ll concede, certain physical comforts. The
air is kept fresh, and the food is extremely tasty. The drinks taste
good--even though they’re non-intoxicating. There is continual radio
contact with women on Earth--also non-intoxicating. That’s why,
Siria,” he went on earnestly, “I have been urging you to join our
little band. _You_ are intoxicating. Will you--”
“Tinker,” she said with reproachful insistence, “will you please keep
your mind on business? Will you please--what’s that?”
The B asteroid was still hovering high in the sky but now a tiny black
dot was moving out from it, precisely as the planetoid itself had
separated from the horizon. They watched it wordlessly for a moment.
They could see that it was expanding slowly, changing its shape as it
grew. It shrank, and lengthened, dwindled, and swelled, but always its
longest aspect was greater than it had been a moment before.
“Drake,” said Tinker proudly, “is a rank amateur.”
“An amateur?”
“At the jump,” Tinker explained. “We have jet-assists to get us from
one asteroid to another if we need them. But if we aren’t in a hurry we
jump. It’s just as safe, and far more comfortable.”
“But suppose you miss?”
“We never miss,” Tinker said with quiet dignity. But honesty made
him add: “Anyway, it’s perfectly safe. We have to cut the artificial
gravity in our bootsoles to jump--and if it looks as if we’re drifting
off course we just switch it on again. But Drake’s a clumsy amateur.
Look at the way he spins! Four or five turns a minute, easy.”
“And you?”
“One turn a minute, maximum.” He made a regal gesture. “Don’t applaud,
please. Well--he won’t be here for twenty minutes yet. We might as well
get back to work.”
III
It was nearer twenty-five minutes before Drake’s body, upside down,
floated gently past one of the reaction buildings. He caught at an
edge, righted himself on the fly, and then let himself drift gently
down beside them. On the ground he turned on his bootsole gravitators
and stood upright and at ease.
He took a deep breath.
“Greetings!” his voice rattled in their helmets, with an obvious
attempt at geniality. “Tinker, you skunk, I heard you talking to our
friend on the radio. Why didn’t you tell me she was a girl?”
“I always have been a girl, Mr. Drake,” said Siria.
“I don’t doubt it for a moment,” said Drake. “Well, so long, Tinker.”
Tinker looked at his colleague thoughtfully. “You aren’t by any chance
in a hurry to get rid of me, are you?”
“Of course not, Tinker. Goodbye.”
The girl said, “Thanks for everything, Tinker. You’ve been a real help.
Another hour and we’ll have the new circuits installed, so I guess I
won’t be seeing you again. It really is goodbye.”
Tinker thought out loud, “It’s only been seven hours. Maybe I’ll just
stick around and--”
“No, no,” said Drake hastily. “Don’t take unnecessary risks, Tinker.
Radioactivity’s dangerous stuff.”
“Well,” Tinker looked rather desperately toward the horizon. “I’ll tell
you what,” he said. “Your space ship’s gravity-stabilized, Siria. I’ll
just climb into it for a while. I’ll be safe and insulated against
radiation, and then--”
“Tinker,” said Drake reproachfully, “we’d love to have you stay. But
I started the coffeemaker for you in the spacehouse. You know how
unreasonable that gadget is. If you aren’t there in half an hour it
will spatter coffee all over the kitchen.”
“Damn it, Drake,” Tinker remonstrated angrily. “I ought to wring your
neck.”
The girl was laughing. “Really, Tinker,” she said, “I’ll be perfectly
all right here with Mr. Drake. Go ahead before I start worrying about
you.”
“Will you drop in for a cup of coffee before you go back to Earth?”
“All right,” Siria promised. “Now go ahead!”
Tinker glared at Drake, but no expression was visible through his
partner’s faceplate. It wasn’t like the man to be gallant. From his
long winter-evening reminiscences, extremely primitive lovemaking was
more his style. Still--Siria was pretty well protected by the radiation
field, if nothing else, to say nothing of the lack of atmosphere.
It would take a genius even to get a look at her face under the
circumstances.
And, Tinker admitted to himself, he _was_ undergoing more radiation
exposure than safety considerations could possibly sanction, especially
since he had three months more to go on his tour of duty. Likely enough
Drake was relying on his massive male personality to make an impression
on Siria for some later occasion. “Okay,” Tinker said reluctantly. “But
that’s a promise, Siria. See you later.”
Asteroid B was low on the horizon, but by careful manipulation of the
bootsole gravitators Tinker could spiral after it. He took a little run
to gather speed, cut the gravity and leapt boldly into space.
As he sailed away, spinning in the sedate pace on which he prided
himself, he could see Drake and the girl turning toward the circuit
sheds once more. He caught a few words of explanation from Siria to the
man about the circuits, and then the bulk of Asteroid A came between
him and the two and shadowed the radio waves. He knew that by the time
they were in line-of-sight again, they would be too far from his helmet
radio for their voices to carry.
By carefully timing the amount and direction of gravitator flow Tinker
swung around in a spiral toward the spacehouse on Asteroid B. He made
his corrections early, and as B ascended above the horizon he zeroed
in with error-allowing caution toward the building where he and Drake
lived.
He leaned back against his armor and relaxed in the void.
It was a wonderful feeling to float free from the tug of gravity, to
sail gently upward while heart and lungs and brain relaxed completely.
He stared drowsily at the hard, bright stars....
It was not, however, so wonderful that he could afford to fall asleep,
and risk sailing so far past B that he’d never be able to return. He
shook himself and kept his eyes open, watching the universe spin around
and around while he whirled gently on his own axis.
“That lying skunk!” ranted Tinker. “He just wanted to get me out of the
way!”
He stared in bitter fury at the cold and empty coffeemaker, which had
_not_ been left turned on! He should have known that the last thing in
the universe Drake would ever think of doing was a favor for someone
else.
He started the coffee and then surlily seated himself before the TV
screen. A filmplay was coming through from Deimos Relay, but he was
unable to concentrate on it.
He found himself seeing instead what he imagined to be the face of
Siria Cottrell. He really was getting space-happy, letting himself
become torn up over a girl whose face he had never even seen!
But it was curiously pleasant.
He glanced at his watch. He’d been gone exactly half an hour. Not more
than an hour to wait, at most, before he’d be seeing her again. But he
felt uneasy in an inexplicable way. Not so inexplicable, though, he
realized. It was the thought of Drake alone with the girl that bothered
him. Drake was an unmitigated scoundrel.
Most of the men the Company assigned to lonely outposts like Binary
Y-335 were carefully picked volunteers. But there were exceptions, and
Drake was one of the really bad ones. An ugly record of convictions for
nine crimes. It was amazing that the authorities had accepted Drake’s
petition for voluntary psychiatric treatment.
Of course, there was such a thing as pressure on the parole board,
Tinker reminded himself, and it was quite possible such pressure had
been applied. At any rate, the “voluntary dangerous labor” assignment
after the psychiatry had turned out to be the same “high-bonus” job
which Tinker had so eagerly volunteered for.
Anyway, even if there had been successful psychiatry, it was down the
drain now. Three months on the lonely asteroid with Tinker had opened
big cracks in Drake’s facade of adjustment. He had become more and more
morose, spiteful, and selfish.
It would have been a difficult enough assignment for even a stable
personality. But for Drake it brought to the surface his enormous
instinct for selfishness--the world-hatred of the compulsive and
rejected man.
Tinker found himself at the window-plate, staring at Asteroid A. But
the buildings where Drake and the girl had joined forces were still
beyond his range of vision. A few minutes later, however, they came
into view and Tinker, no longer even pretending to watch the filmplay,
began grimly hanging on to the eyepiece of the big telescope.
He scanned Asteroid A carefully. The streets were occupied--but only
with the headless robots, still stalking around on their cryptic
errands. The building that housed the great electronic brain looked
empty.
But he found them at last.
They seemed to be walking almost arm in arm, in a sort of ungainly
waltz. But, though the distorted perspective made it hard to see the
pattern of that incredible “dance,” Tinker recognized it for what it
was.
Drake was walking toward the girl’s space ship. And Siria, beside him,
was bobbing aimlessly as his arm tugged her along. He was forcibly
dragging her.
Tinker wasted no time in reproaching himself. He struggled into his
space suit and was outside in a matter of seconds. There was a rocket
launcher just outside, designed for quick emergency transportation from
B to A.
He was facing an emergency now. He stepped into the rocketboots,
cut his gravity, and pulled the switch. Almost immediately Asteroid
A swelled to the dimensions of a celestial melon, mottled and
light-rimmed in the void above him. Swiftly it grew larger, filling the
entire viewscreen, becoming a variegated relief map of familiar design.
IV
Ten minutes later he slammed against Asteroid A’s surface, braked
a trifle by the bootsole gravitators, and guided by precision
calculations and his desperate need to arrive at his destination in
time.
He clawed his way upright just as Drake was lifting the girl to the
hatch of her radiation-insulated space ship.
Drake saw him at once, and sprang toward him. There was no concealment
now. Tinker knew what the cost would be if he lost. There was small
chance that Drake would let him live any longer than he thought
desirable. It would be easy to imprison him in the space ship and send
it rocketing off into outer space forever. The flatbarreled, compact
little gun in Drake’s hand made his intentions perfectly plain.
“Drop it!” Tinker yelled; and the moment’s surprise gave him the
split-second he needed.
Drake hesitated only a tiny fraction of a breath. But drawing and
aiming with space-gauntlets was slow work and before he could get the
weapon into firing position Tinker was at his knees, bringing him down.
Drake kicked out, swearing violently. The heavy boot caught Tinker in
his middle, folding him up. He coughed and gasped and squirmed erect,
clutching for the gun.
The slender metal rod wouldn’t kill him. It wasn’t built for that under
any circumstances, and the heavy shielding of the space suit would
ground most of the charge. But it would stun him at the least, put him
out for minutes--and Drake would need only a few seconds to hack a hole
in the delicate jointure between neck and shoulders, or the vulnerable
spot at the armpits. Then the air in Tinker’s suit would go hissing out
into the void, carrying Tinker’s life with it.
Drake kicked at him again, but he juggled the gun and dropped it.
Without gravity of its own the weapon spun lazily in the air, hanging
and floating slowly like a toy balloon. Drake clutched at it like a
madman grabbing at phantom flies, but Tinker was there before him.
He didn’t try to grab the gun, only to knock it away. And he succeeded.
It clattered against his helmet and bounced off, up and away--meters
high and still going. The chances were good that it was gone forever,
beyond B’s tiny gravity. At the least, it was out of reach for either
Tinker or Drake for a good long while.
Drake copied Tinker’s tactics and butted the smaller man as Tinker had
butted the gun. But Tinker anticipated the move. The moment his partner
thudded into him he switched off his gravity. He went flying against
the side of the ship and scrambled around the hull, kicking against it
until the impact sent him flying back at Drake.
Both men were out of breath by now. But that was all. It was a crazy
fight, Tinker thought, throwing himself at the other man again. The
space suits were perfect protection against anything they could do to
each other barehanded.
If one of them could have gained a moment to find a gun, a knife--even
a heavy bar--the odds would have shifted in his favor. But barehanded,
they were equal and invulnerable, like two giant herbivorous saurians
thumping each other toothlessly over a luscious patch of weed.
They each had weak spots, of course. But they were hard to get to,
except manually. The gloves were thin and flexible, by comparison, as
they had to be. But both men were aware of that and were careful to
keep their hands out of danger. The result was that neither Tinker nor
Drake, however desperately they struggled and charged, could inflict
decisive punishment. The only outcome, Tinker thought, breathlessly
resentful, would be that one of them would drop of a heart attack.
But he was wrong.
Drake’s clumsiness won him the fight. He lunged at Tinker and slipped
and wriggled free. But Tinker had caught him by the leg and whirled him
around. Drake, panicky, kicked at Tinker’s sensitive hand. And Tinker
let go. The instant he did so Drake went flying through the space above
the incurious, busy robots, straight against the side of the space ship.
Tinker leaped after him, but he was too late. He struck the side of
the ship and bounded away, and before he could right himself Drake was
scuttling into the open hatch.
Tinker, abruptly warned, came hurtling back. But by now the hatch was
closing.
Tinker leaped back a couple of yards and stared. What was Drake up to?
In a moment he found out. The little ship, no more than five yards
long, shuddered and bucked once at the touch of an unfamiliar hand on
the controls.
And then it rose gently into the void and came at Tinker. Tinker
flattened himself against the ground, and the ship missed him by a
hair. But it was small and responsive. It stopped and whirled and came
at him again. He could see Drake’s looming ugly helmet over the control
board, through the forward view plate. He dodged again and stopped down
his gravitators. He ran with zigzag, plunging strides.
But the ship swooped toward him, not fast, but with deadly persistence,
twisting around the corner of a building after him, picking up speed
on the straight-away. He tried to stay close to the building wall, but
even as clumsy a pilot as Drake could put that little ship just where
he wanted it.
Tinker dodged and ducked a fraction of a second too late, and caught
a jolt from the vessel’s underbelly on his shoulder that sent him
spinning into the wall. He rolled over, half dazed, to see the ship
stop dead, and move back toward him with rapidly increasing speed.
The chances were very good that he would be crushed to death then and
there.
There was a space in the building wall beside him. He scrambled
through, just in time. The ship’s hull shook the supporting beams
behind him.
Tinker stood up and looked around for some object that might serve
as a weapon. But it was a hope that quickly died. He could see Siria
lying, motionless, yards away beside another building, and the thought
occurred to him that it was only a question of time before Drake would
get back to her. The fear in his mind became almost unendurable.
There wasn’t much time for thinking. He felt a vibration in his
bootsoles and looked up to see the prow of the ship slicing through the
roof of the building.
There wasn’t any choice. He dodged behind a group of wiring panels,
took a deep breath, and leaped for the girl. He dodged past the
headless robots, who paid him no attention at all, and reached her
while the ship was still methodically crushing the building he had just
left.
Siria was stirring. Tinker dragged her hastily inside another building.
He shook her to get her attention, then held a gauntleted finger up
before his faceplate in an awkward “ssh” gesture. Miraculously, she
understood him. Drake might not have the ship’s radio tuned to the
helmet-talk wavelengths. But it was a circumstance he couldn’t count on.
Beneath the buildings was a partial network of tunnels, built mostly
to serve as ducts for electric and communications cables which could
not be left exposed to the radiation from the reactors and the cosmic
rays. They had been enlarged in some parts to serve as storage space,
and when Tinker hunted for an entrance he quickly found one. They were
safe, at least for the moment.
“We can talk now,” Tinker said reassuringly. “The rock will ground our
radio. How do you feel?”
Her voice sounded shaky. “I have a headache--that much I know. He hit
me with a wrench.”
Tinker nodded thoughtfully. “It had to be something like that. You’re
lucky he didn’t hit harder. But I guess he intended to spare you until
he could get the ship safely off the asteroid.”
He could feel the girl shudder. “I’ve been pursued now and then,” she
said after a moment, “but nothing like this. It’s a frightening thing,
Tinker.”
Tinker said: “I don’t think it was just you, Siria. He’s crazy but--not
that crazy. I think he’s in mortal terror of the law. I guess he
thought it would be a good idea to take you with him, but judging
from the way he’s acting now--” Tinker paused. They could feel the
vibrations of Drake’s ship, still systematically destroying the debris
of the warehouse. “I’m afraid he’s changed his mind,” Tinker went on
grimly. “He’ll probably try to kill us both.”
“But why?” the girl asked.
Tinker explained, “He’s a criminal. He has three years to go on this
asteroid before he’s technically free. I guess he can’t wait. You see,
he’s never had a chance to get away before, not until you landed in
your ship. The ship’s his passport. And consider the wealth here. These
isotopes are worth a fortune on the black radioactives market. And your
ship is a Company job, with radiation-retarded storage bins--everything
he needs.”
The girl was silent for a moment. “Does he have to kill us?”
“I’m afraid so, Siria,” Tinker said gently. “If he leaves us alive,
we’ll have the law on him in an hour, and the space patrol would nab
him. He needs at least a day’s start. He can’t even destroy the radio
on Asteroid B. If it doesn’t send an automatic check signal every ten
minutes, the Company will think we’ve blown up and the patrol will be
here anyway.”
V
Siria rested while Tinker made a scouting trip to the electronic-brain
shed. From inside its complex array of circuit boards he could see
Drake’s ship, now hovering motionless a few yards over the top of a
building a hundred yards away. Tinker watched for a long minute, but
nothing happened.
He had a worried expression on his face when he rejoined the girl and,
though his countenance was invisible to her, she could hear the strain
in the voice. “How bad is it?” she asked.
Tinker said, “Bad enough. He’s in a pretty favorable spot. So long as
he stays in the ship, we can’t touch him. I’m afraid time’s working for
him. The longer we stay here, the better off he will be. If we stay
here more than twenty-four hours, we’ll die. The radiation _could_ kill
us in fifteen hours.”
She was silent for a moment. “I see,” was all she said.
“On the other hand,” resumed Tinker, more confidently, “there must be
_something_ we can do. Maybe we don’t know what it is, but there never
was a tactical position so strong it couldn’t be attacked. At least
we’ve got that factor working for us.”
She hesitated. “Tinker,” she said uncertainly, “did I understand what
you just said? There’s a weakness in his position, and we don’t know
what it is. We don’t know, but--it helps us?”
“Certainly,” said Tinker, his voice reassuring. “Consider all the
things we might try. First, we could make a jump for the radio on
Asteroid B. That won’t work, because he’d promptly run us down in the
ship. Second, we could attack the ship with our bare hands. That’s out
too, because we couldn’t do it any damage. Third, we could just wait
here until he goes away. That won’t work, because we’d die of radiation
poisoning. Fourth, we could--”
“Tinker!” cried the girl. “You’re cracking!”
He smiled. “Not exactly, dear,” he said. “There _must_ be some weakness
in Drake’s strategic position.”
“But we don’t know what it is. You said so yourself!”
“That’s true,” he conceded. “But you see, Drake doesn’t suspect that
we don’t know. You’ll find that situation described in Clausewitz’s
_Tactics_,” he added encouragingly. “Unless I made it up myself.”
Siria might have had her doubts about Tinker’s sanity, but she grimly
followed orders. Most of her engineering knowledge was from textbooks
and the drawing board, but she put her mind to practical mechanics and
quickly erected the mechanism Tinker had specified out of spare parts
in the storage buildings.
The machine glittered and sparkled. It towered higher than her head. It
was rude and clumsy in construction, but it had a long, deadly-looking
barrel that came out of its vitals and poked threateningly into space.
And it did absolutely nothing.
She was staring at it dourly when Tinker scrambled out of the tunnel
hatch behind her. He turned his radio volume down as far as possible
and, his helmet almost touching hers, asked: “Everything all right?”
“I suppose so,” she whispered, “but--”
“Never mind. Any trouble with the robots?”
She shook her head. “They look the same as ever. But I’ve been staying
out of sight, just as you advised, even if they are perfectly harmless.”
“They aren’t,” he said, surprisingly. “But don’t worry about it right
now.”
He stood up cautiously and peered around. Drake’s ship was methodically
cruising up and down the lanes of buildings, not particularly close.
There were individual robots and groups wandering up and down, their
“heads” under their arms in their accustomed fashion.
But they were slightly different in some respects now, since Tinker had
made certain changes in the master pattern-sets in the electronic brain.
“Drake’s looking for us,” he reported to the girl, sinking down again.
“That’s good. It shows he’s getting edgy. I don’t blame him. He thinks
that once he takes care of us, he’ll be free. But the longer he waits
the greater the chance of some wandering patrol vessel or freighter
blundering in, for some message coming through from the Company that
starts them wondering. So he’s irritable--jumpy. He’s desperately
anxious to get away.”
“So am I,” the girl said.
“All right.” Tinker stood up again, took a last look. The ship was
close at hand, but none of the robots were. Conditions would never
be any better. “This is it, Siria,” he said, bending close. “In case
anything goes wrong, I love you.”
A second later, trundling the imitation machine out into the open, he
wondered just how much he had been deceiving himself. Not very much, he
decided, almost incredulously. But then he didn’t have time to think
for quite a while.
The main problem was to move the machine a substantial distance away
from any building. He hadn’t moved it quite as far as he might have
wished when he saw the nose of the ship come suddenly about and head
toward him. Drake had sighted him.
Tinker gave a splendid five-second performance of the Courageous
Ack-Ack Gunner, sticking to his weapon to the last. He tugged and
strained and twisted dials, and sighted through tubes. It was almost
too realistic to be safe, because he just barely managed to dive aside
in time to dodge Drake’s ship.
It was hare-and-hound for several frantic seconds after that, but
Tinker had picked his spot and he made it to one of the buildings and
into the tunnels. Drake had learned his lesson about the futility of
knocking down buildings. He hung irresolute for a moment, then drifted
back toward the “weapon.”
Tinker stood watching half inside the tunnel for a long moment, with
his heart in his mouth. Then, slowly, the hatch began to open.
Drake had taken the bait.
VI
Tinker was through the tunnel and up beside the girl again in a new
speed record for Asteroid Y-335 A. She was crouched behind a wall, as
good as her word. He tugged at her, and the two of them raced through
the tunnels again to the electronic-brain building.
“Faster!” he urged through the helmet radio. “We don’t want to run into
any robots here!”
She gasped something in protest, but he didn’t bother to answer. Then
they were scrambling up through the hatchway into the computer’s own
building, and he breathed more easily.
“Now,” he said. “We wait. Drake’s following his script like a little
angel. He _had_ to take a look at that thing. If it was real, he had to
know it, for we might have been able to build another.”
“I know,” said the girl, sobbing for breath. “But Tinker, what now?
He’ll just get back in the ship, and we’ll be as badly off as ever.”
“Wait,” said Tinker tensely. He was feeling a reaction now; this was
the key moment. He glanced beseechingly at the computer tubes, winking
their little electronic messages. He said, with a voice that shook
slightly, “I don’t like playing God. I’ve never known what it was
deliberately to take a human life before.”
“Life?” the girl demanded. “When did you take anybody’s life?”
Lights flared up in the computer brain in a blaze, and died again. They
flared more brightly, erratically; and the machine seemed to tremble
slightly.
Tinker sighed a long weary sigh. “Just now,” he said, and began to rip
out the additional control circuits he had so frantically installed.
“We can go up now. Drake’s dead.”
Tinker made the girl wait in the shed for a moment. Then he came back,
walking slowly, and said, “All right, Siria. Let’s go.”
She followed him in silence to the space ship. There was no sign of
Drake, nothing but the meandering robots, their heads tucked underneath
their arms. When they were in the ship and Siria looked back at the
asteroid they were leaving, she thought she saw--
“Tinker,” she said in a voice that shook. “Look back there, where the
ship was--”
He said somberly, “Yes, Siria. That’s Drake. The robots took care of
him.”
“Impossible!” she said. “The robots can’t conceivably harm a human
being! Every control circuit ever designed has--”
“Has its weaknesses, Siria,” Tinker said. “I made a few changes.
No--don’t interrupt. I couldn’t make them attack Drake. But I could
change their repair instructions. I put in a new circuit describing a
new repair problem--crystalline neurosis.
“It was easy enough, for the basic condition was already in the memory
tanks. Robot’s head stuck on shoulder. Too many static bursts accepted
as repair signals, with a resultant neurotic behavior pattern on the
part of the robot affected. That was all standard. The only change
I made was to describe a new type of robot.” He swallowed. “One that
looked like--like a human being in a space suit. I knew about it, so I
kept us out of sight. Drake didn’t.”
“Tinker!” cried the girl.
He nodded. “So they--repaired him. And the way to repair a stuck
apex-mounted receptor, of course, is to take it off and dismember it.”
They were silent for a moment while Tinker slipped the little ship into
a landing next to the spacehouse. Both were looking gray.
“The computer knew something was wrong,” he said, “when they got
the--the apex-mounted receptor apart. It wasn’t a standard design. So
it blew fuses; and that’s when I knew it was over.”
He helped her wordlessly out of the ship, through the landing tube,
into the spacehouse, and tripped the emergency distress signal that
would bring the space patrol and the Company’s ships arrowing toward
them through the interplanetary night.
And then, for the first time, he pushed back her helmet and looked at
her.
“Beautiful,” he said. “I knew you’d be beautiful.”
Transcriber’s Note:
This etext was produced from Fantastic Universe, January 1956 (Vol.
4, No. 6). Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the
U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
Obvious errors have been silently corrected in this version, but
minor inconsistencies have been retained as printed.
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