Jerry Oltion - Alliance

“What is it?” Derec asked eagerly.

“Shorten the trip.”

“Shorten how? We still-oh! Do it all in one jump.”

“We’ve got three jumps left,” protested Avery. “You’re suggesting we triple our distance? I’d call that an extreme risk as well.”

Wolruf shook her furry head. “Not triple. Cut it to two jumps, each one and a ‘alf times normal. Seven and a ‘alf light-years instead of five. Save a day and a ‘alf coasting time between jump points. Not that dangerous; trader ships do it all the time.”

“There may not be a jump point exactly in between. “

“So we go eight and seven, or nine and six. Still not risky.”

“How risky is not risky? Let’s put some numbers on it. How many trader ships get into trouble with long jumps?”

“Almost nobody gets ‘urt from it. Maybe one in twenty goes astray, has to spend extra time getting’ ome.”

“Which would kill all of us.”

Derec said to Avery,” A minute ago you said a ten percent chance of success wasn’t good enough for you. Fine, I’ll grant that. But one in twenty odds is ninety-five percent in our favor! That’s an acceptable risk.”

“I agree,” said Ariel.

Avery pursed his lips in concentration, considering it. Now he drummed his fingers 01.1 the tabletop.

“Now’s the time to decide whether you’re cured or not,” Ariel added. “Can you make a personal sacrifice for someone else or do you still think only of yourself?”

“Your psychology is charmingly simplistic,” Avery said. He drummed a moment longer. “But unfortunately, it’s still correct. The risk seems slight. common decency seems to dictate that we take it.”

Wolruf let out a long-held breath.

“You’d better get to it,” Derec told her. “The robots are bound to realize what we’re doing behind their backs before long, and as soon as they do, they’re going to try to stop you.”

“I’m going,” Wolruf said, rising from her chair and rushing for the control room.

They were lucky the ship had been coasting all day toward a jump point, lucky they hadn’t already gone through it. If they had had to wait another day to carry out their plan, they would never have gotten away with it. As it was, Wolruf had only been gone a few minutes before the robots burst back into the room, all four cycling together through the mutable airlock that had once been a simple door.

Seeing the empty chair where Wolruf had been, Lucius became a blur of motion streaking toward the control room. “No!” he shouted. “You must not risk-”

There was a faint twisting sensation as every atom in the ship was tom asunder and rebuilt light-years away.

“Too late,” Derec said.

The robot skidded to a confused stop. “You…tricked us,” Lucius accused.

Avery let out the most sincere laugh Derec had ever heard him laugh. It went on and on in great peals of mirth, and when he finally calmed down enough to speak, he said, “Get used to it. To quote a famous dead scientist, ‘Old age and treachery will always overcome youth and innocence.”

Wolruf, realizing that the robots would not give her a second chance, had made the first jump a long one. The second one would thus be only a light-year or so longer than originally planned, well within the safety margin of a normal flight. When presented with such a fait accompli, the robots could only agree that it had, after all, worked out to everyone’s benefit to take the risk.

“But what if you had strayed off course?” Lucius asked once things had settled down somewhat. He was standing in the doorway to the control room, Derec by his side. Wolruf still sat in the pilot’s chair, watching as the autopilot made the routine post-jump scans for planets or other objects in the ship’s path.

“Then we’d have tried to correct for it on our next jump,” Wolruf replied.

“But what if you weren’t able to?”

When Wolruf didn’t respond immediately, Derec, sensing her embarrassment, answered for her. “Then we would all have died.”

Lucius had great difficulty with that statement, even presented as it was so calmly after the danger was over. His features lost their clarity, and he had to hold onto the doorjamb for support.

“You would have died. This does not distress you?”

“No more than losing a friend and knowing I could have done something to save her.”

“But…she is not human. Is she?”

“That depends on your definition. But it doesn’t matter. She’s a friend.”

Wolruf looked up, grinned, and looked back to her monitors. Lucius pondered Derec’s statement for a moment, then asked, “Is Mandelbrot your friend as well?”

That had come out of nowhere, but it was easy enough to answer. “Yes, he is,” Derec said. “Why?”

“You risked the lives of everyone on board the ship when you rescued him. You did not know that the engines were safe to use, yet you used them anyway. Did you do that because Mandelbrot was your friend?”

Derec nodded. “Wolruf did the piloting, and she was using the attitude jets, but I would have done the same thing and used the main engines if I had to. And yes, I’d have done it because Mandelbrot is my friend.”

“Even though he is not human.”

“Again, it doesn’t matter.”

Lucius’s features blurred still more, then suddenly returned to normal, or at least to clarity. Under the influence of both Derec’s and Wolruf’s presences, he took on the appearance of a werewolf caught in the act of changing from one form to the other.

He spoke with sudden animation. “Then I believe I have made a fundamental breakthrough in understanding the Laws of Humanics”‘

“What breakthrough is that?”

“If I provisionally regard Wolruf as human, at least in her motivations, then I believe I can state the First Law of Humanics as follows: A human may not harm a friend, or through inaction allow a friend to come to harm.”

Derec was tempted to be flip about it, to say, “That leaves Avery out then, doesn’t it?” but the robot’s sincerity stopped him. And in truth, Avery hadn’t been happy about spacing Wolruf, nor, come to think of it, did Avery even consider Wolruf a friend anyway. Derec doubted if he considered anyone a friend.

He shook his head. “I can’t refute it. It’s as good a guiding principle as any I’ve heard yet.”

Lucius nodded. “If, as you say, friendship can occur between human and robot, then I believe the law applies to robots as well.”

“It probably should,” Derec admitted. In fact, it already must to a certain extent, or the Robot City central computer would never have allowed him to cancel Avery’s order concerning the hunters when Lucius and the others were trying to make their escape. Now that was an interesting development in Avery, s robot society experiment: The robots had independently developed a sense of social responsibility. Lucius had not invented it with his law; he had only discovered its existence.

But that was evidently exciting enough in itself. “I must go tell the others,” Lucius said, then turned and hurried away toward the common area.

Wolruf leaned back in her chair, crossed her arms over her barrel chest, and asked, “Does this mean I ‘ave to make friends with all of them now?”

Derec, watching the retreating werewolf, said, “It probably wouldn’t hurt.”

The landing on Ceremya was smooth, so smooth that Derec didn’t even wake up until well after they were on the ground. He had been spending most of his time asleep, at first to conserve oxygen, but by the second day without a recycler, his motive was more to escape the foul odors building up in the air. And hunger. While asleep he was aware of neither. What woke him now was the sudden fresh smell of plant-scrubbed atmosphere filtering in through the open door.