Lester del Rey: The Best of Lester del Rey

Then his ears picked up a new sound and he stopped all motion to listen. It came again, weakly and from far away.

“Help!”

He shouted back audibly and by radio and was on his feet, running toward the sound. His feet crashed through the brush and he leaped over the rubble, making no effort to find the easy path. As he stopped to listen again, he heard the sound, directly ahead, but even weaker. A minute later he almost stumbled over the caller.

It was a robot. Once it had been slim and neat, covered with black enamel. Now it was bent and the bare metal was exposed. But it was still a Mark Three. It lay without motion, only a whisper coming from its speaker.

Sam felt disappointment strike through all his brain complex, but he bent over the prone figure, testing quickly. The trouble was power failure, he saw at once. He ripped a spare battery from the pack he had been carrying on his search and slammed it quickly into place, replacing the corroded one that had been there.

The little robot sat up and began trying to get to its feet. Sam reached out a helping hand, staring down at the worn, battered legs that seemed beyond any hope of functioning.

“You need help,” he admitted. “You need a whole new body. Well, there are a thousand new ones below waiting for you. What’s your number?”

It had to be one of the robots from the Moon. There had never been any others permitted on Earth.

The robot teetered for a moment, then seemed to gain some mastery over its legs. “They called me Joe. Thank you, Sam. I was afraid I couldn’t reach you. I heard your radio signal from here almost a month ago, but it was such a long way. And my radio transmitter was broken soon after we landed. But hurry. We can’t waste time here.”

“We’ll hurry. But that way.” Sam pointed to the creche entrance.

Joe shook his head, making a creaking, horrible sound of it. “No, Sam. He can’t wait. I think he’s dying! He was sick when I heard your call, but he insisted I bring him here. He—”

“You mean dying? There’s a man with you?”

Joe nodded jerkily and pointed. Sam scooped the h’ght figure up in his arms. Even on Earth, it was no great load for his larger body, and they could make much better tune than by letting the other try to run. Hal, he thought. Hal had been the youngest. Hal would be only fifty-nine, or something like that. That wasn’t too old for a man, from what they had told him.

He flicked his lights on, unable to maintain full speed by the moonlight. The pointing finger of the other robot guided him down the slope and to a worn, weed-covered trail. They had already come more than five miles from the entrance to the creche.

“He ordered me to leave him and go ahead alone,” Joe explained. “Sometimes now it is hard to know whether he means anything he says, but this was a true order.”

“You’d have been wiser to stick to your car and drive all the way withyhinf,” Sam suggested. He was forcing his way throufh-aitangle of underbrush, wondering how much farther they had to go.

“There was no car,” Joe said. “I can’t drive one now—my arms sometimes stop working, and it would be dangerous. I found a little wagon and dragged him behind me on that until we got here.”

Sam took his eyes off the trail to stare at the battered legs. Joe had developed a great deal since the days on the Moon. Time, experience, and the company of men had shaped the robot far beyond what Sam remembered.

Then they were in a little hollow beside a brook, and there was a small tent pitched beside a cart. Sam released Joe and headed for the shelter. Moonlight broke through the trees and fell on the drawn suffering of a human face just inside the tent.

It took long study to find familiar features. At first nothing seemed right. Then Sam traced out the jawline under the long beard and gasped in recognition. “Dr. Smithers!”

“Hello, Sam.” The eyes opened slowly, and a pain-racked smile stretched the lips briefly. “I was just dreaming about you. Thought you and Hal got lost in a crater. Better go shine up now. We’ll want you to sing for us tonight. You’re a good man, Sam, even if you are a robot. But you stay away too long out on those field trips.”

Sam sighed softly. This was another reality he could recognize only from fiction. But he nodded. “Yes, Chief. It’s all right now.”

He began singing softly, the song about a Lady Greensleeves. A smile flickered over Smithers’ lips again, and the eyes closed.

Then abruptly they opened again, and Smithers tried to sit up. “Sam! You really are Sam! How’d you get here?”

Joe had been fussing over a little fire, drawing supplies from the cart. Now the robot hobbled up with a bowl of some broth and began trying to feed the man.

Smithers swallowed a few mouthfuls dutifully, but his eyes remained on Sam. And he nodded as he heard the summary of the long struggle back to Earth. But when Sam told of the landing, he slumped back onto his pad.

“I’m glad you made it. Glad I got a chance to see you again before I give up the last ghost on Earth. I couldn’t figure that radio signal Joe heard. Knew it couldn’t be a human, and never thought of your making it here. B’ut now seeing you makes the whole trip worthwhile.”

He closed his eyes, but the weak voice went on. “Hal and Randy and Pete—they’re gone now, Sam. We waited up in the station three years, guessing what was going on here. Then we came down and tried to find somebody—some women—to start the race over. But there aren’t any left. We covered every continent for twenty years. Pete suicided. The robots got busted, except for Joe. Then we came back here. And now I’m the last one. The last man on Earth, Sam. So I hear a knock on the door, and it’s you! It’s a better ending for the story than I hoped for.”

He slept fitfully after that, though Sam could hear him moan at times. It was cancer, according to what he had told Joe, and there was no hope. Somehow, Joe had located a place where there were drugs to ease the pain a little, and that was all the help they could give.

Joe told Sam a little more of the long search the men had made. It had been thorough. And they had found no trace of another living human being. The nerve gas had produced eventual death by nerve damage, as well as the initial insanity.

“Who?” Sam asked bitterly. “What race could do this?”

Joe made a gesture of uncertainty. “They talked about that. Mr. Norman told me about it, too. He explained that men killed each other off. One side attacked this side, and then our side had to hit back, until nobody was left. But I don’t understand it.”

“Do you believe it?”

“No,” Joe answered. “Mr. Norman was always saying a lot of things I found he didn’t really mean. And no man would do anything like that.”

Sam nodded, and began explaining his theories. At first Joe was doubtful Then the little robot seemed to be convinced.^ dredged up small confirming bits of information from the long years of the search. They weren’t important by themselves, but a few seemed to add to the total picture. A sign cursing the “sky devils” in Borneo, and a torn bit of a sermon found in Louisiana.

Twice during the long night Smithers awakened, but he was irrational. Sam soothed him and sang to him, while Joe tried to give him nourishment that was loaded with morphine. Sam knew little about human sickness, beyond the two medical books he had read. But even he could see that the man was near death. The pulse was thready, and the breathing seemed too much effort for the worn body.

In the morning, however, the sun wakened Smithers again, and this time he was rational. He managed a smile. “Man goeth to his long home, and the mourners won’t go about the streets this time. There won’t be any mourners.”