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Isaac Asimov's Robot City Book 5: Refuge, by Rob Chilson

ISAAC ASIMOV’S

ROBOT

CITY

BOOK 5: REFUGE

ROB CHILSON

CITIES

ISAAC ASIMOV

Through eighty percent of the history of Homo sapiens, all human beings were hunters and gatherers. Of necessity,

they were wanderers, for to stay in one place would mean gathering all there was of vegetable food and driving away

all there was of animal food—and starvation would follow.

The only habitations such wanderers (or “nomads”) could have would have to be either parts of the environment,

such as caves, or light and movable artifacts, such as tents.

Agriculture, however, came into being some ten thousand years ago and that introduced a great change.

Farms, unlike human beings and animals, are not mobile. The need to take care of farms and agricultural produce

nailed the farmers to the ground. The more they grew dependent upon the harvest to maintain their swollen numbers

(too great for most to survive if they had to return to hunting and gathering), the more hopelessly immobile they

became. They could not run away, except for brief intervals, from wild animals, and they could not run away at all

from nomadic raiders who wished to help themselves to the copious foodstores that they had not worked for.

It followed that farmers had to fight off their enemies; they had no choice. They had to band together and build their

houses in a huddle, for in unity there was strength. Forethought or, failing that, bitter experience, caused them to

build the huddle of houses on an elevation where there was a natural water supply, and to lay in foodstores and then

build a wall about the whole. Thus were built the first cities.

Once farmers learned to protect themselves and their farms, and became reasonably secure, they found they could

produce more food than they required for their own needs. Some of the city-dwellers, therefore, could do work of

other types and exchange their products for some of the excess food produced by the farmers. The cities became the

homes of artisans, merchants, administrators, priests, and so on. Human existence came to transcend the bare search

for food, clothing, and shelter. In short, civilization became possible and the very word “civilization” is from the

Latin for “citydweller.”

Each city was developed into a political unit, with some sort of ruler, or decision-maker, for this was required if

defense of homes and farms was to be made efficient and successful. The necessity of being prepared for battle

against nomads led to the development of soldiers and weapons which, during peaceful periods, could be used to

police and control the city population itself. Thus, there developed the “city-state.”

As population continued to grow, each city-state tried to extend the food-growing area under its control. Inevitably,

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Isaac Asimov's Robot City Book 5: Refuge, by Rob Chilson

neighboring city-states would collide and there would be disputes, which became armed wars.

The tendency would be for one city-state to grow at the expense of others, with the result that an “empire” would be

established. Such large units tended to be more effective than smaller ones, for reasons that are easy to explain.

Consider that agriculture requires fresh water, and that the surest supply of that is to be found in a sizable river. For

that reason, early farming communities were built along the shores of rivers such as the Nile, the Euphrates, the

Indus, and the Hwang-Ho. (The rivers also served as easy avenues for commerce, transportation, and

communication.)

Rivers, however, took work. Dikes had to be built along the shores to confine the river and prevent ruin through

floods. Irrigation ditches had to be built to bring a controlled supply of water directly to the farms. To dike a river

and to maintain a system of irrigation requires cooperation not only of individuals within a given city-state, but

among the city-states themselves. If one city-state allowed its own system to deteriorate, the flood that might follow

would disastrously affect all other city-states downstream. An empire that controls many city-states can, more

effectively, enforce the necessary cooperation and maintain a general prosperity.

An empire, however, usually means the domination of many people by one conquering group, and resentment builds

up, and struggles for “liberty” break out. Eventually, under weak rulers, an empire is therefore likely to break up.

World history seems to demonstrate an oscillation between empires (often prosperous, but despotic), and

decentralized political units (often producing a high culture, but quarrelsome and militarily weak).

On the whole, though, the tendency has been in the direction not only of large units, but of larger and larger ones, as

advancing technology made transportation and communication easier and more efficient, and as overall population

increase heightened the perceived value of security and prosperity over liberty and squabbling.

As population grew, cities grew larger and more populous, too. Memphis-Thebes-Nineveh-Babylon—and then,

eventually, Rome, which at its peak in the second century A.D. may have been the first city to have a population of

one million.

The multi-million city became a feature of the modem world after the Industrial Revolution introduced enormous

advances in transportation and communication. The nineteenth century saw cities of four million people and the early

twentieth century saw cities of six and seven million people.

All through the last ten thousand years, in other words, the world has become more and more urbanized, and after

World War II, the process became a runaway cancer. In the last forty years, the world population has doubled and the

population of the developing countries, where the birth rate remained high, has considerably more than doubled. We

now have cities, like Mexico City, São Paulo, Calcutta, with populations climbing toward the twenty million mark

and threatening to go higher still. Such cities are becoming squalid expanses of shantytowns, endlessly polluted,

without adequate sanitation, and with the very technological factors that encourage the growth beginning to break

down.

Where do we go from here? Anywhere other than decay, breakdown and dissolution?

I tackled the problem of the future city in my novel The Caves of Steel, which first appeared as a three-part serial in

Galaxy Science Fiction in 1953. I was influenced in my thinking by the fact that I happen to be a claustrophile. I feel

comfortable in crowded and enclosed environments.

Thus, I enjoy living in the center of Manhattan. I move about its crowded canyons with ease and with no sensation of

discomfort. I like to work in a room with the blinds pulled down, and at a desk that faces a blank wall, so that I

increase my feeling of enclosure.

Naturally, then, I pictured my future New York as a kind of much more extreme version than the present New York.

Some people marveled at my imagination.

“How could you think up such a nightmare existence as that in The Caves of Steel?”

To which I would reply in puzzled surprise, “What nightmare existence?”

I had added one novelty, to be sure. I had the entire huge city of the future built underground.

Perhaps that was what made it seem a nightmare existence, but there are advantages to underground life, if you stop

to think of it.

First, weather would no longer be important, since it is primarily a phenomenon of the atmosphere. Rain, snow, and

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Isaac Asimov's Robot City Book 5: Refuge, by Rob Chilson

fog would not trouble the underground world. Even temperature variations are limited to the open surface and would

not exist underground. Whether day or night, summer or winter, temperatures in the underground city would remain

equable and nearly constant. In place of spending energy on heating and cooling, you would have to spend energy on

ventilation, to be sure, but I think that this would involve a large net saving. Electrified transportation would be

required to avoid the pollution of the internal-combustion engine, but then walking (considering the certainty of good

weather) would become much more attractive and that, too, would not only save energy, but would promote better

health.

The only adverse environmental conditions that would affect the underground world would be volcanoes,

earthquakes, and meteoric impacts. However, we know where volcanoes exist and where earthquakes are common

and might avoid those areas. And perhaps we will have a space patrol to destroy any meteoric objects likely to bring

them uncomfortably close.

Second, local time would no longer be important. On the surface, the tyranny of day and night cannot be avoided,

and when it is morning in one place, it is noon in another, evening in still another and midnight in yet another. The

rhythm of human life is therefore out of phase. Underground, where artificial light will determine the day, we can if

we wish make a uniform time the planet over. This would certainly simplify global cooperation and would eliminate

jet lag. (If a global day and global night turn out to have serious deficiencies, any other system can be set up. The

point is it will be our system and not one forced on us by the accident of Earth’s rotation.)

Third, the ecological structure could be stabilized. Right now, with humanity on the planetary surface, we encumber

the Earth. Our enormous numbers take up room, as do all the structures we build to house ourselves and our

machines, to make possible our transportation and communication, to offer ourselves rest and recreation. All these

things distort the wild, depriving many species of plants and animals of their natural habitat—and sometimes,

involuntarily, favoring a few, such as rats and roaches.

If humanity and its structures are removed below ground —well below the level of the natural world of the

burrowing animals—Man would still occupy the surface with his farms, his forestry, his observation towers, his air

terminals and so on, but the extent of that occupation would be enormously decreased. Indeed, as one imagines the

underground world becoming increasingly elaborate, one can visualize much of the food supply eventually deriving

from soilless crops grown in artificially illuminated areas underground. The Earth’s surface might be increasingly

turned over to park and to wilderness, maintained at ecological stability.

Nor would we be depriving ourselves of nature. Indeed, it would be closer. It might seem that to withdraw

underground is to withdraw from the natural world, but would that be so? Would the withdrawal be more complete

than it is now, when so many people work in city buildings that are often windowless and artificially conditioned?

Even where there are windows, what is the prospect one views (if one bothers to), but sun, sky, and buildings to the

horizon—plus some limited greenery?

And to get away from the city now? To reach the real countryside? One must travel horizontally for miles and miles,

first across city pavements and then across suburban sprawls. And the countryside we would be viewing would be

steadily retreating and steadily undergoing damage.

In the underground world, we might have areas of greenery, too, even parks—and tropical growth in greenhouses.

But we don’t have to depend on these makeshift attempts, comforting though they may be to many. We need only go

straight up, a mere couple of hundred yards above the level of “Main Street, Underground” and—there you are.

The surface you would visit would be nature—perhaps tamer than it might be, but relatively unspoiled. The surface

would have to be protected from too frequent, or too intense, or too careless visiting, but however carefully restricted

the upward trips might be the chances are that the dwellers in the underground world would see more of the natural

world, under ecologically sounder conditions, than dwellers of surface cities do today.

I am interested to see, by the way, that the notion of underground living has begun to seem more realistic in the

decades since I wrote The Caves of Steel. For instance, many cities in the more northerly latitudes (where cold

weather, ice, and snow inhibit shopping by making it unpleasant) are building underground shopping malls—more

and more elaborate, more and more self-contained, more and more like my own imagined world.

However, my imagination is not the only one the world possesses. Here we have Refuge, by Rob Chilson, in which

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Isaac Asimov's Robot City Book 5: Refuge, by Rob Chilson

my underground city of the future is explored by another science-fiction writer skilled in his craft, who has taken my

underground cities as the starting point for his own.

CHAPTER 1

KAPPA WHALE

The stars gave no light. Derec crawled slowly along the ship’s hull, peering intently through his helmet at the silvery

metal. The ship was below him, or beside him, depending entirely on how one looked at it. He preferred to think of it

as “beside”—he felt less as if he might fall that way.

To his left, to his right, “above” and “below” him, was nothing. But space was nothing new to Derec, whose

memories began only a few months ago in a space capsule—a lifepod, in fact. At the moment he had no time for

memories of the pod, of the ice asteroid, or of capture by the nonhuman pirate Aranimas. He was concentrating on

swimming.

“I’m at the strut,” he announced.

“Good,” said Ariel, her voice booming in his helmet.

Derec hadn’t time to turn his radio down, nor did he wish to let go just yet. His crawl along the hull, helped by the

electromagnets in knees and palms, had been slow, but inexorable. When he seized the strut, his hand stopped but his

body continued on past, like a swimmer carried by a wave. A wave.()f inertia.

Gripping the strut, he found himself slowly swinging around it like a flag, facing back the way he’d come. He had

realized immediately that he shouldn’t have grabbed the strut, but didn’t compound his error by trying to undo it. He

let the swing take him, absorbed his momentum with his arm—it creaked painfully—and came to a stop.

A robot, advancing in its tracks, arrested itself on the other side of the strut in the proper way: a hand braced against

it, the arm soaking up the momentum like a spring. Being a robot, he had no fear of sprained wrists, the most

common injuries in free-fall.

The robot, Mandelbrot, paused courteously while Derec resolved his entanglement with the strut. Derec gripped it

with both hands and bent one elbow while keeping the other straight. His body revolved slowly around the bent arm

until he had reversed himself. Placing his foot against the strut, he tippy-toed away from it, letting go, uncoiling, and

reaching out for the hull.

For a moment Derec was in free, dreamy flight, not touching the ship; then his palms touched down, the magnets

clicking against it as he turned on crawlpower. He slid forward on hands and forearms while his inertia wave was

absorbed by the “beach” of the ship’s hull. His chest and belly and finally his knees touched down painfully, to slide

scraping along.

“Frost!” said Ariel. “What are you doing, sawing the hull in half?”

Derec didn’t reply. Not letting all his momentum be absorbed, he came quickly to hands and knees, reaching and

pulling at the hull. The magnets were computer controlled and clicked on and off alternately in the crawl pattern.

In a few seconds he braked and all the magnets went on. He skittered slowly to a stop. Mandelbrot joined him in a

similar fashion and looked at the hull, then moved aside.

“Right, we’re at the hatch,” said Derec. “It doesn’t look like we’ll need any tools to get in; just a matter of turning

inset screws.”

There were two slits in the hull, each in a small circle. The circles were at one edge of a square outline—the hatch.

Derec stuck two fingers in one of the slits, Mandelbrot copying his motion at the other side, and they twisted the

circles clockwise. There was a pop, and the hatch rode free.

“Got it open,” Derec said.

That was a little premature. He would have to stand up on the hull to raise the hatch, or else move around. But before

he could make up his mind, Mandelbrot reinserted his fingers into one of the slits and pulled. The hatch came free

easily. Mandelbrot bent his arm like a rope, heaving the hatch up over his head, put up his other arm, and the hatch

stood out from the hull.

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Isaac Asimov's Robot City Book 5: Refuge, by Rob Chilson

“Can’t see a frosted thing,” muttered Derec. His helmet light bounced off the shiny underside of the hatch and again

off the huddled machinery exposed, but without air to scatter the light, what he saw was a collection of parallel and

crossing lines of light against velvet blackness. After a moment, however, he made out a handle. These things

weren’t meant only for doctorates in mechanical engineering to understand, after all. There was a release in the

handle.

Squeezing the release, Derec pulled up on the handle. Nothing happened. There wasn’t room on the handle for

Mandelbrot to help him. Gripping it tightly, Derec stood on the hull and put his back into it. It came free with a

creaky vibration he felt all the way up through the soles of his feet, an odd sort of hearing.

“Trouble?” Ariel asked, concern in her voice. Perhaps she had heard his breathing and the gasp when it broke free.

“Stuck, but I got it loose. I think a little ice had frozen around it.”

With the help of the robot, who had released the hatch and now stood upright on the hull, Derec pulled out a mass of

cunningly nested pipes all connected together, rather like unfolding a sofa-bed. Mandelbrot reached down and pulled

a heavy cord, and a mass of thick, silvery plastic unfolded. As soon as the plastic balloon was sufficiently unfolded

not to suffer damage, Derec peered down at its root.

He had to move around to the side, but there was the valve, looking uncommonly like a garden faucet on far-off

Aurora. For a moment Derec was shaken by a perfect memory of a faucet in some dewy garden on the Planet of the

Dawn. He’d had indications before this that he was from that greatest of Spacer planets, but very few specific

memories leaked through his amnesia, fewer still were as sharp as this one.

After a few moments, though, he realized he was not going to remember what or where that garden was. All he knew

about it was that it was a pleasant memory. He had liked that garden. Now all he had of it was the memory of its

faucet.

It isn’t wise to shrug in freefall, so Derec reached carefully inside the hatch and, bracing himself, twisted the faucet.

There was a hiss he heard through his fingers and the air in the arm of his suit, as steam under low pressure rushed

into the balloon. In a moment, Mandelbrot was out of sight behind it.

That wonderful flexible arm came into view, Mandelbrot twisted the return valve, and in a moment there was the

faint murmur of a small pump. Water, too, was moving through the pipes by now.

The radiator and vacuum distillation sections of the water-purification-and-cooling system was in operation. They

had settled down for a long stay in space.

Should have done this days ago, Derec thought but didn’t say aloud. An optimist, he had hoped a ship would have

come by before now. Ariel, who tended to be pessimistic, had doubted.

“I’m coming back by way of the sun side,” he said. “The light’s better.”

Ariel didn’t answer. A punch on a button made his safety line release itself and reel in from the forward airlock. He

reattached it to a ring near the hatch; the robot mimicked his movements. Feeling better about standing upright on the

hull, Derec strode slowly and carefully around the rather narrow cylinder until the tiny red lamp of their current

“sun” came into view, then on around until it was overhead.

A class M dwarf, the red star was no doubt very old. It was certainly very small and it had no real planets. Its biggest

daughter was an ancient lump of rock barely four hundred kilometers in diameter, its next biggest less than half that

in size. Most of its daughters were fragments that ranged from respectable mountains down to fists—and there

weren’t many of any size. A star that old was formed at a time when the nebulas in the galaxy had only begun to be

enriched with heavy elements. This was not a metalliferous star; no prospector had ever bothered to check out those

lumps of rock for anything of value; none ever would.

Dim and worthless though it was, the star lit the way... somewhat. Under its light, the silvery hull looked like

burnished copper—a pleasing sight. Shadows still were sharp-edged, his own shadow an odd-shaped, moving hole, it

seemed, in the hull, a hole into some strange and other-dimensional universe.

Mandelbrot followed him gracefully.

“Detection alert,” said Ariel, sounding bored. “Rock coming our way. Looks like it might be about a mouthful, if you

were hungry for rocks.”

“I’m not,” said Derec, but it made him think of baked potatoes. He was getting hungry.

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Isaac Asimov's Robot City Book 5: Refuge, by Rob Chilson

Had there been any danger, Ariel would have said so; Derec assumed that the rock would miss them by a wide

margin. They were well out from the star, sparsely populated though its space was with junk. This was only the

second thing they’d detected in two days, and the first was merely a grain of sand. Probably both objects were “dirty

ice”—the stuff of comets.

Danger or no, Mandelbrot moved closer to him, scanning the sky without pausing. Derec didn’t notice, and didn’t

bother to look for the rock. The sun drew his eye instead. At this distance, dim as it was and weak in ultraviolet light,

it could be looked at directly.

Pitiful excuse though it was for a star, poor as its family was, still it made an island of light in a vast sea of darkness

where stars hard and unwinking as diamonds cut at him with their stares. He thought of the space around the red star

as a room, a warmly lit room in an immensity of cold and darkness.

After the circumscribed life of Robot City, he felt free. Space, Derec thought, is mankind’s natural home.

There came a bark from inside the vessel, and he was reminded with a sudden chill that others than men used space.

One of those others was within this ship: Wolruf, the doglike alien with whom he’d made alliance on Aranimas’s

ship. She had escaped first from Aranimas with him, then from the hospital station, then from Robot City.

Things had been worse for them in the past, he thought. If they had to wait here for a week or two...

Then he thought: I’m worried about Ariel, though.

He moved forward, found the airlock, and crowded in to make room for the bulky robot.

Frost condensed on his armor as soon as he entered the ship, but Derec ignored that, knowing that it wasn’t too cold

to touch yet; they’d only been out for minutes. It seemed even more cramped inside after having been out..

“We should spend more time outside,” he said. “It’s not exactly fresh air, but at least there’s a feeling of freedom.”

Ariel looked momentarily interested, then shrugged. “I’m all right. “

Mandelbrot looked keenly,at her, pausing in his ridiculous motion of scraping frost off his eyes, but said nothing. He

had said nothing to Derec yet, but Derec knew that he was worried, too. Ariel had a serious disease. A fatal disease,

she had said; It had caused her occasional pain before this, stabbing muscular aches, and she frequently seemed

feverish and headachey and generally out of it; sometimes she even had hallucinations. But this prolonged gloom was

new, and worrisome.

“So there’s water for showerr, yess?” said Wolruf. She was the size of a large dog and not infrequently went on all

fours, but usually walked upright, for her front paws were clumsy-seeming hands, ill-shaped by human standards but

clever with tools.

“Give it half an hour,” Derec said. The furry alien needed showers daily in a ship where there was no escape from

each other.

“Derec, shall I prepare food?” Mandelbrot asked. “It approaches the usual hour for your meals.”

Ariel roused herself, said, “I’ll do that, Mandelbrot. What do you want, Derec, Wolruf?”

There were no potatoes ready. Of course he did not expect to find real food in a spaceship, and it took time for the

synthesizer to prepare a specialty item. “Stew would be fine. Keep varying the mix and it’ll be a long time before I

get bored with it.”

“I eat same as ‘ou,” Wolruf said.

“Borscht today,” said Ariel with a smile that seemed natural. “We’ve got lots of tomato sauce, and besides, I like it.”

“It’s wonderful to have a commercial synthesizer and a large stock of basics,” Derec said, cheering at her cheer.

“Remember our experiments in Robot City?”

She made a face. “Remember? I’m trying to forget.”

Dr. Avery’s ship was well-equipped. Indeed, they could live indefinitely out here—at least until the micropile gave

out, or their air and water leaked away. The water purifier used yeast and algae to reclaim sewage, the plants then

being stored as basic organic matter for the synthesizer.

Derec, having removed the suit with motions suitable to a contortionist, stowed it away in its clips beside the airlock.

Mandelbrot immediately went to it and checked it over. Reaching to the ceiling of the cabin, Derec touched off, tippy-

toed off the floor, and back off the ceiling. Called “brachiating,” it was the most efficient mode of movement within

a cabin in free-fall.

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Isaac Asimov's Robot City Book 5: Refuge, by Rob Chilson

He turned on the receiver. It was tuned to BEACON—local. A calm, feminine-sounding robotic voice spoke.

“Beacon Kappa Whale Arcadia. Report, please. Beacon Kappa Whale Arcadia. Report, please.” Turning off the

sound, Derec glumly checked the indicators. Kappa Whale was coming in on the electromagnetic band, both laser

and microwave. They were getting minimal detection on the hyperwave, however.

“I don’t understand it,” he muttered. Ariel glanced at him over her shoulder as she floated before the cooking

equipment.

Wolruf joined him. “Wass broken by Doctorr Avery, do ‘ou think?”

“Sabotage? I don’t know. It was picking up Kappa Whale beautifully when we took off from Robot City.”

They had left the planet of robots hurriedly in this stolen ship. Dr. Avery, who had created the robots that went on to

build Robot City, had been pursuing them for reasons none of them understood. Though Derec suspected that Ariel

knew more about the enigmatic and less-than-sane doctor than she had said.

Once off the planet and safe from Dr. Avery, they discovered that either there were no astrogation charts in the ship,

or they were well concealed in its computer. Though positronic, that was not a full-fledged positronic brain. Had it

been, they could have convinced it that without the charts they would die in space. Under the First Law of Robotics,

it would be unable to withhold the charts, regardless of the orders it had been given.

The First Law of Robotics states: A robot may not knowingly harm a human being, or knowingly allow a human

being to come to harm.

Orders would have come merely under the Second Law, which is: A robot must obey the orders of a human being,

except where this would conflict with the First Law.

But the computer was merely a more complicated calculator, incapable of the simplest robotic thought. Robotic ships

with positronic brains had been tried, and had all failed, because all full-sized positronic brains were designed with

the Three Laws built into them. Necessarily, they were too intent on preventing possible harm to their occupants.

Since space travel is inherently unsafe, they had a tendency to go mad or to refuse to take off.

“I feel like hitting the damn computer, or kicking it,” he said.

Wolruf grinned her rather frightening grin. “Ho! ‘Ou think, like Jeff Leong, all machines should have place to kick?”

“Or some way to jar information loose. I’m convinced there must be charts in there somewhere—”

It was a reasonable guess. Nobody could remember all the miles of numbers that was a star chart. Charts were rarely

printed out in whole, though for convenience in calculation, some sections might be. This little ship didn’t have a

printer. All it had—they presumed—was a recording in its memory.

But they couldn’t find it.

Even that wouldn’t have been too serious if the hyperwave hadn’t gone out on them. Lacking charts, in orbit about

Robot City, they had swept space with the hyperwave and picked up Kappa Whale Arcadia quite well. The fix was

good enough to Jump toward, and they had done that. Logically, they should then have been able to pick up other

beacons and hop, skip, and jump their way to anywhere in inhabited space: the fifty Spacer worlds, or the Settler

worlds that Earth had recently begun to occupy.

“We’re somewhere within telescopic distance of Arcadia,” murmured Derec. That was a minor and distant Spacer

world. But they had no idea on which side of it lay the constellation of the Whale. They knew only that this—Kappa

—was the ninth-brightest star in that constellation, and that there was only one fainter, Lambda Whale.

Constellations, by interstellar agreement, had, for astrogational purposes, no more than ten stars.

“Sooner or laterr a ship will come,” Wolruf said reassuringly.

Sooner or later. Derec grunted.

He didn’t need to have the argument repeated; it had been mostly his. When they found that, after the Jump, the

hyperwave would only pick up the nearest beacon, Derec had suggested that they lie low until a ship came by, and

request a copy of the astrogational charts from it. To beam a copy over would take the ship only a few minutes, and

be no trouble at all.

Sooner or later.

“Soup’s on, or stew in this case,” Ariel said. The oven opened with an exhalation of savory steam. “We still have

some of your crusty bread, Derec. I reheated it. But we’ll want more later.”

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Isaac Asimov's Robot City Book 5: Refuge, by Rob Chilson

“It smells good,” Derec said honestly. Wolruf, with even greater honesty, licked her chops and grinned. Derec had

overcome his irritation at Ariel’s invasion of the male preserve of the chief of cuisine, and had admitted to her that

she was a better chef than he. (Common cooking was robot work, which no human admitted to doing.)

They ate in silence for a short while. The stew was served in covered bowls, but it clung to the inner surfaces.

Manipulating their spoons carefully, they were able to eat without flinging food allover the ship. At first even Ariel’s

appetite was good, but she quickly lost interest.

“Do you think a ship will ever come by here?” she asked finally, her gaze, and apparently her thought, a long way

away.

“Of course,” said Derec quickly. “I admit I was too optimistic. I suspect we’re well out on the edge of inhabited

space; this lane is not too well traveled. But eventually....”

“Eventually...” she said, almost dreamily. She seemed, often now, in a drifting, abstracted state.

“Eventually,” Derec repeated weakly.

He was too honest to try to argue her into belief. Ships didn’t fly from star to star like an aircraft. They Jumped, with

massive thrusts of their hyperatomic motors, going in a direction that was at right angles to time and all three spatial

dimensions simultaneously. Since they went no-distance, it naturally took no-time to Jump. Therefore there were no

lanes of star travel.

For safety reasons, ships Jumped from star to star; if one was stranded for any reason, rescuers had only to chart the

route and check every star along it. And since not every star had inhabited planets, all along these well-traveled lanes

(as they were called) were the beacon stars. A ship Jumping into this beacon system was supposed to verify that it

had indeed arrived at Kappa Whale, beam its ship’s log to the beacon’s recorders, and depart. Periodically, patrol

ships copied those records to assure that nothing untoward had happened.

But days had passed and no ships had appeared. Of course a ship appearing on the other side of Kappa Whale would

not be detected by them on the electromagnetic band until it had Jumped out. The hyperwave radio, though, was

functioning well enough to detect a ship reporting to the beacon anywhere in this stellar system. Derec and Wolruf

agreed on that.

So: eventually they would be found and rescued.

Wolruf finished her meal by opening her bowl and licking it clean efficiently. “I wass thinking,” she said. “Maybe

Jump-wave shock shifted things in ‘ou’rr hyperwave antenna.”

“Shifted the elements?” Derec nodded uncertainly. He had no idea where he had been educated, but he had a good

general technical background with a strong specialty in robotics—not unusual for a Spacer youth, as he assumed

himself to be. But hyperwave technology was a whole other and, if anything, even more difficult school of

knowledge.

“Do ‘ou have—’ou know—things to measure them with?”

Derec had seen a toolbox on the ship’s schematic that he had accessed before going out to set up the recycling

system..There might be.”

There was. A few minutes later, with Ariel listless at the detectors and Wolruf at the communicator, Derec carefully

strode forward outside, followed by Mandelbrot.

The hyperwave antenna could have been put in any part of the ship, since the hyperatomo didn’t kowtow to the laws

of space-time, but it would have had to have been well shielded lest its backlash in the small ship damage the

instruments. or even the crew. So in these Star Seeker models it was in a blister on the bow, as far from everything as

possible.

The antenna looked like a series of odd-shaped chunks of metal and coils of wire, and the testing gear simply shot

current through each element in turn. The readouts were within normal range, as nearly as he could tell from the

manual he had accessed before coming out.

“I don’t get it,” Derec complained, thinking of the classical definition of Hell: the place where all the instruments test

out to be perfect, but none of them work. “How can I fix it if it isn’t broken?”

“I think,” said Wolruf slowly, “that Dr. Avery hass retuned the antenna. “

“Retuned?” Derec had never heard of such a thing, but knew little about the subject. “I thought all Spacer talk was in

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the same range. Is he trying to pick up—Settlers? Or what?”

“Maybe Aranimass.”

Maybe, Derec thought, chilled. Maybe, indeed. That long-armed pirate was definitely interested in Dr. Avery’s

doings, though he might not know who or what Dr. Avery was.

Derec stood, looking around the warm room generated by Kappa Whale, and shivered. For the first time the thought

came to him: What if the first ship that showed up was Aranimas’s? He must be systematically searching the beacon

stars—

A touch on his arm nearly made Derec jump off the hull.

CHAPTER 2

PERIHELION

The burnished, enigmatic face of Mandelbrot approached his. The robot gripped him with his normal left arm. His

Avery-construct right arm bent impossibly, reached around Derec and switched off his communicator.

Derec had had nightmares about that arm. It was a piece of scrap from an Avery robot, which Aranimas had had

picked up from the ice asteroid where Derec had first awakened. “Build me a robot,” the alien had said. Derec had

put pieces together to build the robot he called Alpha. It wasn’t a good job, but it worked.

Then, weeks later, the crudely attached right arm seated itself firmly and made a few modifications in Alpha’s brain:

Alpha informed them that he was now known as Mandelbrot. Derec had observed the fine structure of the arm: a

series of tiny chips, or scales, that gripped each other and could therefore mold the arm to any shape that might be

desired.

Each unit was a sort of robotic cell; together, they were a brain. And having integrated themselves, they had—to a

degree—taken over Alpha. Derec’s nightmare was that the cells were eating the robot out from the inside, that his

interior was one solid mass of them, and he was about to become something —horrifying.

Impossible; the cells couldn’t eat. Also, all the brains were robotic, Mandelbrot’s normal positronic brain and the

units in the cells. The Three Laws compelled them all. But dreams are not logical.

At the moment, the worst nightmare had come true, until Mandelbrot put his head against Derec’s helmet. It would

have looked to an observer as if the robot were kissing his cheek: his microphone touched Derec’s helmet and

Mandelbrot spoke.

“Derec, I am worried about Ariel.”

They had been careful to conceal from Mandelbrot the worst of Ariel’s condition. The robot knew only that she was

sick, not that the disease was usually fatal. The effect on his positronic brain was more than they cared to risk; the

First Law left no loophole for incurable diseases.

“Ariel is bored, as well as ill,” Derec said.

He looked away uneasily from the robot’s expressionless but intense face. The stars beckoned, promising and

threatening; somewhere out there, perhaps, he might recover his memory. He remembered Jeff Leong, who had

crashed on Robot City after an accident while on his way to college. In a few years, Derec would have been thinking

about college, if this fantastic thing hadn’t happened to him.

“Ariel is very sick,” said Mandelbrot. “Her eating pattern has altered markedly. She suffers from fever most of the

time. Her attention span is abnormally low, she is sensitive to light, she moves about only with effort—”

“All right,” said Derec, feeling that he would ossify before the robot finished its catalog if he didn’t interrupt. “It’s

true that Ariel is ill. But I am not worried about her.”

That wasn’t true, especially now that it had been brought out into the open.

“You should worry. I fear for her safety if something is not done for her.”

“What do you suggest we do?”

“You may have to use the Key to Perihelion.”

After scouring Robot City for weeks for a Key to Perihelion, the mysterious device that would transport them

instantly off the planet, they had managed to steal Dr. Avery’s ship when he had come to investigate their

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“interference.” On the ship they had found the Key, but Derec’s investigation of Dr. Avery’s office had shown him

where the Key would probably take him.

Derec said, “That would take us back to Robot City—with no way of escape and Dr. Avery after us. Surely that’s

less safe than this mild illness.”

Mandelbrot was silent for a moment. Then he said, “That is true. I hope you are right and that this is a mild illness.

But she has suffered many of these symptoms for many days now. Mild illnesses usually subside within this time.”

The robot fell silent but did not move away.

“‘Ou might as well come back in,” said Wolruf, startling Derec. “I do not think we can find the problem out therre. I

wish I knew more about dense energy fieldss....”

Derec turned, and at his first motion the robot released him, first turning his communicator back on. The motion was

as much an indicator of Derec’s will as a command, and the Second Law of Robotics forced the robot to comply with

his desire.

“Right, I’m coming back,” Derec said, as if there had been no hiatus in their communications.

He returned reluctantly. There was free-fall within the cabin—and three times as much space as there had been under

acceleration—but there were decks and bulkheads and overheads. Out here he was in his element. It was like floating

in warm salt water. Even the cumbersome suit didn’t detract from the feeling of freedom he got from letting his gaze

rove out and on out, from star to ever-more-distant star. All of them waiting, just beyond this red-lit room.

Stars beyond stars, with their waiting worlds, which now only the Earth Settlers were opening up. And beyond, other

intelligent races, other adventures....A member of one of those races waited now in the ship. Derec had again a

moment of intense wonder that he of all people should be among the first to meet aliens. Most of those who had met

the pirate Aranimas hadn’t survived....

Who knew what other beings awaited them among all those bright stars? He wondered why the Spacers had sat for so

many centuries on their fifty worlds, too satisfied to go looking for adventure. The way he felt now, it was impossible

to believe.

Derec had an impulse to jump and go tumbling head under heels across the sky, but he knew Ariel would think it

silly with his safety line and dangerous without. Right on both counts, he thought ruefully. Frost, why can’t I be a

little kid for once? J can’t remember ever having been one; it’s like I’ve been cheated out of all that kiddish fun....

There was a warm, pleasant smell in the air of the ship when they reentered. “I made toast,” said Ariel emptily.

She had toasted the last of the crusty bread, but hadn’t buttered it. It was now nearly cold. Derec pretended not to

notice, merely nodded and thanked her, trying to sound pleased. Popping the slices into the oven, he reheated them,

and punched up his sequence for bread on the synthesizer—three loaves. When the toast was warmed, he buttered it

and shared it with Wolruf. The caninoid, like a true dog, was always ready to eat, if only a bite or two.

Ariel wasn’t hungry.

“I think Doctorr Avery hass retuned the hyperwave antenna by changing the densities of the force-fieldss in the core

elementss,” Wolruf said, exhaling crumbs. “Dense force-fieldss arre the only things that can stop hyperatomos. But

why change it, if not to detect something?”

Derec nodded uncertainly. A dense force-field was one that permeated some object; a magnet with a keeper across its

poles was the classic example. Altering the density of the atomic-level fields in the core elements of the antenna

would change the “acceptance” of the core.

“If not to detect something, like, say, Aranimas’s ship or transmissions?” he asked. “It’s a consideration. It’s not

unlikely that they have crossed paths, as Dr. Avery has Keys to Perihelion and Aranimas wants them.”

It might well be reassuring, then, that the hyperwave wasn’t detecting anything. It might mean that Aranimas wasn’t

operating anywhere around here.

“Ariel, you seem sleepy,” said Mandelbrot. “It approaches your usual bedtime. Perhaps you should go to bed.”

“Yes, good idea,” said Ariel vaguely. She continued to sit and stare vacantly for another fifteen minutes before

sighing deeply and getting slowly “up”.

When she had gone to the one private cabin the little ship boasted, Wolruf turned fiercely on Derec.

“She iss sick! ‘Ou must do something, Derec! The robot iss worried. I am worried.”

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