I, Robot. Айзек Азимов

       Runaround

      It was one of Gregory Powell’s favorite platitudes that nothing was to be gained from excitement, so when Mike Donovan came leaping down the stairs toward him, red hair matted with perspiration, Powell frowned.

      ‘What’s wrong?’ he said. ‘Break a fingernail?’

      ‘Yaaaah,’ snarled Donovan, feverishly. ‘What have you been doing in the sublevels all day?’ He took a deep breath and blurted out, ‘Speedy never returned.’

      Powell’s eyes widened momentarily and he stopped on the stairs; then he recovered and resumed his upward steps. He didn’t speak until he reached the head of the flight, and then:

      ‘You sent him after the selenium?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘And how long has he been out?’

      ‘Five hours now.’

      Silence! This was a devil of a situation. Here they were, on Mercury exactly twelve hours – and already up to the eyebrows in the worst sort of trouble. Mercury had long been the jinx world of the System, but this was drawing it rather strong – even for a jinx.

      Powell said, ‘Start at the beginning, and let’s get this straight.’

      They were in the radio room now – with its already subtly antiquated equipment, untouched for the ten years previous to their arrival. Even ten years, technologically speaking, meant so much. Compare Speedy with the type of robot they must have had back in 2005. But then, advances in robotics these days were tremendous. Powell touched a still gleaming metal surface gingerly. The air of disuse that touched everything about the room – and the entire Station – was infinitely depressing.

      Donovan must have felt it. He began: ‘I tried to locate him by radio, but it was no go. Radio isn’t any good on the Mercury Sunside – not past two miles, anyway. That’s one of the reasons the First Expedition failed. And we can’t put up the ultrawave equipment for weeks yet—’

      ‘Skip all that. What did you get?’

      ‘I located the unorganized body signal in the short wave. It was no good for anything except his position. I kept track of him that way for two hours and plotted the results on the map.’

      There was a yellowed square of parchment in his hip pocket – a relic of the unsuccessful First Expedition – and he slapped it down on the desk with vicious force, spreading it flat with the palm of his hand. Powell, hands clasped across his chest, watched it at long range.

      Donovan’s pencil pointed nervously. ‘The red cross is the selenium pool. You marked it yourself.’

      ‘Which one is it?’ interrupted Powell. ‘There were three that MacDougal located for us before he left.’

      ‘I sent Speedy to the nearest, naturally. Seventeen miles away. But what difference does that make?’ There was tension in his voice. ‘There are the penciled dots that mark Speedy’s position.’

      And for the first time Powell’s artificial aplomb was shaken and his hands shot forward for the map.

      ‘Are you serious? This is impossible.’

      ‘There it is,’ growled Donovan.

      The little dots that marked the position formed a rough circle about the red cross of the selenium pool. And Powell’s fingers went to his brown mustache, the unfailing signal of anxiety.

      Donovan added: ‘In the two hours I checked on him, he circled that damned pool four times. It seems likely to me that he’ll keep that up forever. Do you realize the position we’re in?’

      Powell looked up shortly, and said nothing. Oh, yes, he realized the position they were in. It worked itself out as simply as a syllogism. The photo-cell banks that alone stood between the full power of Mercury’s monstrous sun and themselves were shot to hell. The only thing that could save them was selenium. The only thing that could get the selenium was Speedy. If Speedy didn’t come back, no selenium. No selenium, no photo-cell banks. No photobanks – well, death by slow broiling is one of the more unpleasant ways of being done in.

      Donovan rubbed his red mop of hair savagely and expressed himself with bitterness. ‘We’ll be the laughing stock of the System, Greg. How can everything have gone so wrong so soon? The great team of Powell and Donovan is sent out to Mercury to report on the advisability of reopening the Sunside Mining Station with modern techniques and robots and we ruin everything the first day. A purely routine job, too. We’ll never live it down.’

      ‘We won’t have to, perhaps,’ replied Powell, quietly. ‘If we don’t do something quickly, living anything down – or even just plain living – will be out of the question.’

      ‘Don’t be stupid! If you feel funny about it, Greg, I don’t. It was criminal, sending us out here with only one robot. And it was your bright idea that we could handle the photo-cell banks ourselves.’

      ‘Now you’re being unfair. It was a mutual decision and you know it. All we needed was a kilogram of selenium, a Stillhead Dielectrode Plate and about three hours’ time – and there are pools of pure selenium all over Sunside. MacDougal’s spectroreflector spotted three for us in five minutes, didn’t it? What the devil! We couldn’t have waited for next conjunction.’

      ‘Well, what are we going to do? Powell, you’ve got an idea. I know you have, or you wouldn’t be so calm. You’re no more a hero than I am. Go on, spill it!’

      ‘We can’t go after Speedy ourselves, Mike – not on the Sunside. Even the new insosuits aren’t good for more than twenty minutes in direct sunlight. But you know the old saying, “Set a robot to catch a robot.” Look, Mike, maybe things aren’t so bad. We’ve got six robots down in the sublevels, that we may be able to use, if they work. If they work.’

      There was a glint of sudden hope in Donovan’s eyes. ‘You mean six robots from the First Expedition. Are you sure? They may be subrobotic machines. Ten years is a long time as far as robot-types are concerned, you know.’

      ‘No, they’re robots. I’ve spent all day with them and I know. They’ve got positronic brains: primitive, of course.’ He placed the map in his pocket. ‘Let’s go down.’

      The robots were on the lowest sublevel – all six of them surrounded by musty packing cases of uncertain content. They were large, extremely so, and even though they were in a sitting position on the floor, legs straddled out before them, their heads were a good seven feet in the air.

      Donovan whistled. ‘Look at the size of them, will you? The chests must be ten feet around.’

      ‘That’s because they’re supplied with the old McGuffy gears. I’ve been over the insides – crummiest set you’ve ever seen.’

      ‘Have you powered them yet?’

      ‘No. There wasn’t any reason to. I don’t thing there’s anything wrong with them. Even the diaphragm is in reasonable order. They might talk.’

      He had unscrewed the chest plate of the nearest as he spoke, inserted the two-inch sphere that contained the tiny spark of atomic energy that was a robot’s life. There was difficulty in fitting it, but he managed, and then screwed the plate back on again in laborious fashion. The radio controls of more modern models had not been heard of ten years earlier. And then to the other five.

      Donovan said uneasily, ‘They haven’t moved.’

      ‘No orders to do so,’ replied Powell, succinctly. He went back to the first in the line and struck him on the chest. ‘You! Do you hear me?’

      The monster’s head bent slowly and the eyes fixed themselves on Powell. Then, in a harsh, squawking voice – like that of a medieval phonograph, he grated,