Rob Chilson - Refuge

“You’ll be patching after every Jump,” Derec said grimly.

Mandelbrot was right. They returned to the search, though the hulls were getting far apart now.

The next hull had been one occupied by the starfish folk, and they immediately gave up hope of finding air here; the strange aliens breathed a mix containing a sulfur compound that Wolruf called “yellow-gas.” On the way out, though, they found a robot.

At Ariel’s cry, Derec shook his head and took a deep breath. The robot, when he came into the open chamber where she was, seemed a breath of sanity in unreality: the shot-up spaceship, in free-fall and airless, was like an Escher print of an upside down world. The body of one of the starfish folk was stuck to one wall, a vicious-looking energy piston in one tentacled grip. Ariel and the robot were spinning slowly in the vacuum, drifting toward a bulkhead. She had leaped to seize it.

“It’s dysfunctional,” she said.

Timing his moves with hers, he intercepted them at the bulkhead and they turned their lights on it. It made no move, but whether it was speaking or not, they could not tell.

Mandelbrot entered while they were examining the robot’s body. “Energy scoring on the head, and fuse marks here and there, mostly on the body. It looks like the starfish over there shot it up during the battle.

“How did it come to be in the ship?” Ariel asked.

“Hmm. I suppose Aranimas must have come upon it somewhere and captured it,” said Derec.

“Where could he have found it?”

Derec considered. “Possibly it’s one he found at the ice asteroid. But I doubt it. He was desperate for me to make him a robot. He’d have given me all the parts he had.”

Mandelbrot fixed his cold eyes on the damaged robot. “This is a robot from Robot City.”

“Yes.” The design style was unmistakable to the trained eye.

“Let’s get it into air; maybe it’s trying to speak,” said Ariel.

But back in the Star Seeker it lay as inert as before. Removing his spacesuit, Derec got out the toolkit and looked at Mandelbrot. The prospect of work on the robot made him feel better than he had in days. A matter of interest. They quickly learned that power to the brain was off. Reenergizing it, though, did no good.

“A near-miss from an energy beam might well cause brain burn-out without visibly damaging the brain,” said Mandelbrot.

The positronic brain was a platinum-iridium sponge, with a high refractivity; it wouldn’t melt easily. But the positronic paths through it were not so resistant.

“So we can learn nothing from questioning it,” Derec said, dejected. “Wait a minute. What’s this?”

Clutched tightly in its fist was a shiny object. A shiny rectangular object.

“A Key to Perihelion,” said Mandelbrot expressionlessly. “

Aranimas would have taken it away from the robot if he’d known it had one,” said Ariel. “I wonder what the robot was doing with it?”

“We’ll never know. Maybe it took the first moment it wasn’t under observation to try use the Key. And the starfish caught it in the act.” Derec gripped the Key and pulled it out of the fist. Instantly he knew it was different.

“It feels like two Keys built together!”

“It is,” said Mandelbrot, peering at it. “One, I suppose, to take the robot from Robot City. One to return him to Robot City.”

“Which is which?” Ariel asked.

Derec and Mandelbrot spent a few minutes determining that. They found that one Key had a cable plug in one end.

“I see,” Ariel said, when they showed her. “A tiny cable, with five tiny prongs. It must be for reprogramming. I don’t know what would plug into it-”

“Something like a calculator,” said Derec, “to enable one to input the coordinates of the destination. “

The other Key had no provision for changing its programming, and was therefore set permanently on Robot City.

“Not that it does us any good,” said Ariel wistfully. “It’s initialized for a robot. Too bad; we desperately need to get to Robot City, especially Derec. And only Mandelbrot can get there.”

“That is true; Derec must go to Robot City soon, and the Key is better than three weeks in a ship, even if the ship did not leak,” said Mandelbrot. “I will take you there, Derec.” He wrapped his normal arm around Derec, half carrying him.

“What about us?” Ariel cried. “This ship is no safer for Wolruf and me.”

Mandelbrot’s mutable Avery-designed arm was already stretching into a long tentacle. “That is correct-it is very likely that you and Wolruf will die if you do not accompany us,” he said. “Therefore, I shall have to take you all.”

The tentacle coiled about Ariel and Wolruf and splayed out into a small hand at the end. “The Key, if you please, Derec.”

Derec placed the doubled Key in the small hand. “At least Dr. Avery won’t be expecting us,” he said.

“He find out soon ‘nough,” said Wolruf.

Mandelbrot extruded another finger from the hand that held the Key to Perihelion. It rose up and pressed, in sequence, the corners of the Key, and waited for the activating button to appear. Knowing it was irrational, Derec felt the air get staler in the tiny pace of time it took. Then, Perihelion.

And then a planetary sky burst blue and brilliant above them. They were breathing deeply, standing atop the Compass Tower-the mighty pyramid that reared over Dr. Avery’s Robot City.

R. David: This robot is a typical example of an Earthly robot. Like all robots, it possesses a positronic intelligence infused with the Three Laws of Robotics. R. David wears a blandly smiling face, a standard feature on all Earth robots, which are designed to reassure Terrans. The Terran economy is based on full employment, not full automation like the Spacer worlds. Thus robots are used only for those jobs that humans cannot or will not take. Terrans rarely come into contact with robots, increasing their fear and dislike of them.

R. David is cruder in appearance than the positronic denizens of Robot City because he has been designed to look less powerful, less invulnerable, and hence les threatening to suspicious humans. He lacks the streamlined and efficient appearance of the robots Dr. Avery created for Robot City.

STAR SEEKER SHIP: Dr. Avery’s small craft is the interstellar equivalent of an economy car, a small personal starcraft capable of transporting a maximum of six people. The Star Seeker model comes equipped with only the essentials needed to sustain life during an interstellar voyage. There are no luxuries. There is a food synthesis system, a water purification and recycling system, which includes a shower, and sanitary facilities.

The ship’s communications system consists of hyperwave, microwave, and laser transmitters and receivers. The hyperwave antenna is mounted in a nacelle in the ship’s nose, as far as possible from the hyperatomic engines to avoid disruption of the communications signal.

The ship’s computer is a less-than-positronic intelligence, actually not much more than a glorified calculator and information storage system.

Like all interstellar ships, Star Seekers jump through hyperspace, with massive thrusts of the hyperatomic motors that propel the ship at right angles to time and all three spatial dimensions simultaneously. Ships cannot jump without precise coordinates, so their guidance systems lock onto beacons in orbit around stars along the lanes of interstellar travel.

[THE UNDERGROUND CITY OF ST. LOUIS: Terran cities are enclosed, largely underground, and entirely dependent on the Terran power grid. Light, ventilation, and climate control are all artificially maintained, and if power were to be disrupted for even an hour, it would mean the extinction of the city’s population.