Part 2

Sofi spun around. Hen leaped past her to press his nose against the clear plastic walls of their igloo. The robots, he saw, had one of their number clamped on the work bench and were dismantling him.

"Damnation!" he said. "They must be trying to duplicate themselves. You and your silly jokes about fathers."

"Me?"

"What do you think gave them the idea of reproduction? Their thinking never rises above the level of deductive reasoning. They had to derive the idea from an outside source."

"But--but can they do it?"

"Of course they can! It's an intricate job, but they only have to copy themselves. The laboratory and machine shop is complete. They've amassed a staggering knowledge of science."

"But why?" protested Sofi.

Hen shook his head. "It's beyond me. They should adjust readily to whatever line of work they're applied to. They shouldn't evince ambition. Ambition, by its nature, should be impossible to a machine. But that's not the only organic trait they've been developing. It's what Robots Incorporated was afraid might happen."

He snapped his fingers suddenly.

"The freighter! If we can sneak aboard the freighter, we can get to Ceres and bring back an atom gun. If they're developing emotions we may be able to overawe them. If not...." He hesitated, his mind drawing back from framing the thought. The truth was that the robots were like children, precocious children. He set his mouth grimly.

"If they don't respond to fear, we can destroy them."

Sofi looked across the darkened interval into the lighted lab where the robots were busy dissecting their fellow and shivered.

"Industrious little monsters!"

Hen said, "Get your oxygen suit."

"Now? You mean we're going to make a dash for the space ship now?"

"Of course now! We've got to clear out of here before they carry out their threat to terminate us!"

* * * * *

There was no light outside the igloo. House and lab and mine stood out like three jeweled domes, reflecting their rays onto the ragged surface, glinting unexpectedly from upthrust peaks in the distance. Hen and Sofi crouched against the outside of the housing unit, staring across the patchwork of black shadow and light at the lab.

"Don't talk," he cautioned Sofi over the radiophones built into their helmets. "The robots' auditory apparatus is sensitive to radio waves. They may tune in on us."

"What the hell did you try to do? Make them invincible?"

He said, "We tried to build them with controls, but--don't you see?--those were weaknesses, flaws! The machine remained dead. The first law of life is self preservation. We had to make the machine self-regulating, independent, to produce awareness. Now shut up! Don't ask me any more questions."

He led off into the darkness away from the lab, away from the mine and space ship It was too risky to attempt passing the lab. The light was apt to reflect from their suits, discover their presence to the robots inside. But by describing a circle he could avoid the lighted areas and come up behind the dilapidated tramp freighter.

He glanced upward at the stars, impressing their position on his mind. The constellations were little altered. He found Polaris in the tail of the little dipper. It was not the axis star as it was on Earth, but it served to fix his sense of direction in the impenetrable blackness.

They tripped and stubbed their toes, stumbled into shallow fissures, climbed sharp-edged crests. Sofi, forgetting the radiophone, muttered several well-chosen expletives to herself. They would have done credit to a spaceman. Hen was so shocked, he forgot to reprimand her.

In a few minutes the lights of the igloos reappeared to guide them, the vast black bulk of the tramp freighter screening part of the mining unit. They crept up to the ship, and hugging its shadow, moved noiselessly towards the port. Light from the reduction plant picked them out brightly as they came around the stern.

Hen's stomach contracted. There was a sudden bitter taste in his mouth. He halted so abruptly that Sofi bumped against his shoulder.

The port was open. The gleaming functional mechanism that was R-3 stood complacently in the entrance.

The space ship was being guarded.

* * * * *

The robot caught sight of the humans at the same moment. His reaction, although mechanical, was almost as instantaneous as their instinctive one.

He moved to block the entrance, sent out a call for help.

Hen, guessing his intention, tuned his helmet receiver to the robot's wave length. R-3's mechanical voice rang suddenly inside his helmet.

"... _attacking the space ship! Aid! Aid! Father attacking the space ship! Aid!_"

Hen switched back to the girl's wave length. "Run," he commanded tersely. "He's calling for help. He'll have the lot of them down on our heads."

Suiting action to words, he took to his heels, plunging for the housing unit.

"Lock ourselves in!" he grunted.

"_But the ship!_" Sofi wailed over her radiophone.

"Might as well try to get past a tank as R-3," he panted. He saw four of the robots break from the laboratory, turn to intercept them. "Faster," he cried. "If we don't get back to the igloo we're done for! These suits haven't but a seven hours oxygen supply!"

He swung sharply to the right, traveling in sixty-foot leaps like an ungainly grasshopper, to jump completely over the head of the closest robot.

He over-estimated the last jump, smashed into the tough plastic wall of the igloo. He slithered to the ground, half dazed, as Sofi whipped inside, started to close the lock. Hen got his foot in the crack just in time.

"What the hell are you trying to do?" he roared wrathfully. "Lock me out?"

He yanked the door open, flung himself into the compartment. He got it barred just as the robots reached the igloo.

They milled around outside a moment, then trooped back to the laboratory, leaving one of their number, R-6, on guard.

"_We're prisoners!_" Sofi breathed through the radiophone.

Hen decided it was childish not to speak. He growled, "Yes," in a voice which he hoped conveyed the depth of contempt, but Sofi didn't seem to notice it. Hell, she was probably too frightened to even realize that she had tried to lock him out.

As soon as the pressure reached normal, they left the lock, trooped dejectedly up the incline to the sun deck, and pulled off their oxygen suits.

"Keep them handy," said Hen ominously when Sofi started to put them away. "We'd better get extra oxygen containers, too."

The girl bit her lip. Her cheeks were flushed, her large blue eyes starry with fright. "Then--then you think they'll try to break in here?"

"Of course they will! We're a menace to their continued existence. If we could just get hold of an atom gun, though. R-3 sounded frightened!"

"Frightened?" asked Sofi. She was still breathing heavily, but she had begun to quiet down. "Now who's reading emotion into the robots?"

He said with a puzzled expression, "It wasn't so much the nuance as his choice of words. 'Father is attacking the space ship! Aid! Aid!' He gave every appearance of being as frightened as we were. It's impossible, but they seem to be developing emotions!"

Sofi dropped weakly in a chair, clasped her arms around her knees. "Why should it be impossible?"

"You sound like R-7." He began pacing the sun deck. "Emotion results from glandular activity. The robots don't have glands."

"They've got their counterparts."

"Maybe," he admitted doubtfully. "You're referring to the metabolism that breaks down the rawstuffs and converts it into fuel, lubrication--that sort of chemical change?"

She nodded.

"I don't know. Anyway, it's worth a try. If they really experience fear, we might be able to bluff them."

"What are you going to do?" she asked breathlessly.

He said, "Remind them that every three Terran months a supply ship puts in here. And if we're harmed they'll be destroyed."

"But what about the space ship? Couldn't they escape to another asteroid? They'd never be located in the belt."

"It shouldn't occur to them," returned Hen thoughtfully. "Not unless the idea reached them from us."

He went to the radio contact, switched it on. "R-7," he called. "R-7."

"_Here, father_," the voice of the robot issued from the audio.

He said, "R-7, I'm giving you one last chance. Return to work at once or all of you will be terminated."

"_How?_"

He explained tersely about the supply ship, and what would occur if so much as a hair of their heads was injured. Silence greeted the ultimatum. For a moment Hen wondered if R-7 had switched himself off. Then the robot said, "_We are going to load the ship and hide out in the belt. They'll never be able to locate us._"

* * * * *

Hen was too stunned to argue. He nipped off the set, sank into a chair. "It's inconceivable," he said, "and monstrous! It just isn't possible!"

"I don't see why," protested Sofi. "It didn't take conception to figure that out. We tried to run away. We set the precedent."

"No, no," he protested. "Not that at all. But the coincidence. We were afraid that might occur to them. And it did! Even the phrasing was ours--yours, to be exact."

"You mean telepathy."

"In a sense. The brain gives off minute electrical discharges that vary with the brain's activity. The robots are sensitive, much more so than man. It takes a machine to detect the brain discharges in the first place."

"But then they're aware of every move we could make just as soon as we are."

"That's just it! They've forestalled us every time." He drove his right fist against his left palm. "You were afraid R-7 would dismantle the mining worm. You planted the suggestion in his mind. Then it occurred to you that he might try to take you apart; so he did. I explained the danger inherent in a conscious machine. The robots incorporated it into their thought processes. We were afraid they would block our escape in the space ship. If we hadn't been afraid we wouldn't have circled. So they blocked us!"

Sofi's color had heightened. Her eyes looked too large in her delicately modelled face. "Then we're trapped!"

He nodded, said, "If they escape from the asteroid, they'll be a menace to the entire human race."

"The larger problem doesn't interest me," she said bitterly. "How long do we have?"

He shook his head.

"Oh, well," she shrugged, eyes feverishly bright. "Eat, drink and be merry, because tomorrow we die." She giggled half-hysterically.

Hen's nerves were keyed up to the breaking point. The girl screamed, and he almost jumped out of his skin.

"Here they come!"

He wheeled around.

Seven of the robots were advancing on their igloo. Only the eighth was missing, and he lay scattered in parts about the laboratory. They were hauling the heavy cutting torch with them.

"They're going to cut through the walls with the torch," he ejaculated. "I was afraid of that! Get on your oxygen suit!"

"What's the use?" Sofi asked despondently. "They'll kill us anyway."

He turned on her angrily, thought, "Damn these unstable hyper-thyroid types!" An expression of dawning comprehension broke across his long, narrow face. The thyroid was the great energizer, raising the energy level of the brain. And Sofi was hyper-thyroid.

Outside, the robots began setting up the apparatus. A knife of blue flame licked from the muzzle, spattered against the tough plastic.

But Hen was staring at the girl, a queer expression in his black eyes.

"Do something!" she cried, springing to her feet. "Do something!"

The lank physicist swallowed. He took a deep breath. "You asked for it," he breathed, "but, boy, I'm going to feel silly if I'm wrong!"

Then he hit the girl square on the point of her chin with all the bone and gristle of his six-foot frame behind the blow.

Sofi's head snapped back. She collapsed limply in his arms.

Hen laid her out on the floor, leaped for the communicator, and flipped it on.

The robots were still training the torch on the wall of the igloo, but there was an aimlessness about their movements as if their purpose was gone.

"R-7!" he called. "R-7!"

"_Here, father._"

"Shut off the torch!"

There was a faint hesitation during which Hen could feel the sweat prickle his forehead. Then, "_Yes, father_," came the robots unstressed syllables. The blue flame disappeared.

"Go back to work!" He hastily detailed each robot to its operation.

"_Yes, father._"

The robots turned, disappeared in the direction of the mine.

He had done it! He blew out his breath, dropped limply in a chair. He really ought to look after Sofi, but he'd have to wait until the strength flowed back in his legs.

Soft was really was out cold. "Wake up," said Hen, "you're not dead." He sprinkled more water over the girl's face.

Her eyelids fluttered. She gazed up at him blankly, then stark terror gleamed from her eyes. "The robots!"

"No more of that!" He shook her roughly. "They're machines. They don't have consciousness; only the semblance of consciousness!"

Sofi sat up, asking, "What--?" in a bewildered voice.

"They don't think! They aren't conscious! They're like a mirror; they reflect what we expect them to do."

"Don't try to tell me that!" cried the girl springing to her feet. "Hell, haven't I seen them thinking? Where are they?"

"They've gone back to work."

"What?" said Sofi. She looked puzzled, passed her hand over her face.

"Don't you see?" Hen broke out jubilantly. "They're sensitive, inordinately sensitive, so sensitive that they even respond to our thoughts. From beginning to end they've done exactly what we--you expected them to do."

"Me?"

He came to a halt, said, "The fact is, you're a rebel, Sofi. If you weren't, do you think you'd be trying to develop independently a mine on an uninhabitable asteroid? Don't you see? You expected the robots to revolt because you couldn't imagine a rational creature willing to submit to a twenty-four hour work day from which he stood to gain nothing!"

"And I'm responsible for--everything?"

He nodded vigorously. "The robots respond to both of our thought patterns, of course, but primarily to yours. You're hyper-thyroid. The thyroid raises the energy level of the brain. They have done principally what you've expected them to do."

Sofi was recovering amazingly from her fright. She said, "If that isn't just like a man. Blame it on the woman. Even Adam--"

"Nonsense," Hen interrupted. "The robots haven't acted independently once. Not even to finish dismantling that robot in the lab. They went prospecting when you thought how silly it was for them to work for you when they could find a mine of their own.

"They wandered back aimlessly after they lost contact. But by that time I had inadvertently planted the thought in your mind that they were in revolt and would attempt to duplicate themselves.

"They drew on us both, but the dominating influence was yours."

* * * * *

Sofi massaged her sore jaw, raised her eyebrows. "It's too bad only machines respond so cooperatively," she said with a twinkle in her blue eyes.

A grim expression descended over Hen's features. He regarded Sofi pensively. "I'm going to recommend that you be returned to Earth during any further experiments. You're too upsetting an influence--"

"On the robots, of course," Sofi interrupted with a chuckle. "You're much too well-integrated to be swayed by a mere woman--even a hyper-thyroid woman."

"There's a limit to _my_ endurance," said Hen in a grim voice.

Sofi looked startled, but she couldn't resist adding, "Why Henry, I didn't guess you'd been exercising such magnificent self-control!"

She took a sudden backward step as he advanced ominously. "Henry! Now, Henry!"

With a shriek, she turned and fled, Henry Ohm, distinguished physicist, hard on her heels.

End of Project Gutenberg's Love Among the Robots, by Emmett McDowell