Isaac Asimov - The Robots of Dawn

“Thank you, sir. I must return to my post, but Daneel will be able to help you with the instrument if any problem arises.”

He left and Baley turned to Daneel with approval. “Giskard handled that very well, I thought. He may be a simple model, but he’s well-designed.”

“He, too, is a Fastolfe robot, Partner Elijah.—This astrosimulator is self-contained and self-adjusted. Since it is already focused on Aurora, it is only necessary to touch the control edge. That will put it in operation and you need do nothing, more. Would you care to set it going yourself?”

Baley shrugged. “No need. You may do it.”

“Very well.”

Daneel had placed the cubicle upon the table on which Baley had done his book-film viewing.

“This,” he said, indicating a small rectangle in his hand, “is the control, Partner Elijah. You need only hold it by the edges in this manner and then exert a small inward pressure to turn the mechanism on—and then, another to turn it off.”

Daneel pressed the control-edge and Baley shouted in a strangled way.

Baley had expected the cubicle to light up and to display within itself a holographic representation of a star field. That was not what happened. Instead, Baley found himself in space, in space—with bright, unblinking stars in all directions.

It lasted for only a moment and then everything was back as it was the room and, within it, Baley, Daneel, and the cubicle.

“My regrets, Partner Elijah,” said Daneel. “I turned it off as soon as I understood your discomfort. I did not realize you were not prepared for the event.”

“Then prepare me. What happened?”

“The astrosimulator works directly on the visual center of the human brain. There is no way of distinguishing the impression it leaves from three-dimensional reality. It is a comparatively recent device and so far it has been used only for astronomical scenes which are, after all, low in detail.”

“Did you see it, too, Daneel?”

“Yes, but very poorly and without the realism a human being experiences. I see the dim outline of a scene superimposed, upon the still-clear contents of the room, but it has been explained to me that human beings see the scene only. Undoubtedly, when the brains of those such as myself are still more finely tuned and adjusted—”

Baley had recovered his equilibrium. “The point is, Daneel, that I was aware of nothing else. I was not aware of myself. I did not see my hands or sense where they were. I felt as though I were a disembodied spirit or—as I imagine I would feel if I were dead but were consciously existing in some sort of immaterial afterlife.”

“I see now why you would find that rather disturbing.”

“Actually I found it very disturbing.”

“My regrets, Partner Elijah. I shall have Giskard take this away.”

“No. I’m prepared now. Let me have that cube. Will be able to turn it off, even though I am not conscious of the existence of my hands?”

“It will cling to your hand, so that you will not drop it, Partner Elijah. I have been told by Dr. Fastolfe, who has experienced this phenomenon, that the pressure is automatically applied when the human being holding it wills an end. It is an automatic phenomenon based on nerve manipulation, as the vision itself is. At least, that is how it works with Aurorans and I imagine—”

“That Earthmen are sufficiently similar to Aurorans, physiologically, for it to work with us as well.—Very well, give me the control and I will try.”

With a slight internal wince, Baley squeezed the control edge and was in space again. He was expecting it this time and, once he found he could breathe without difficulty and did not feel, in any way as though he were immersed in a vacuum, he labored to accept it all as a visual illusion. Breathing rather stertorously (perhaps to convince himself he was actually breathing), he stared about curiously in all directions.

Suddenly aware he was hearing his breath rasp in his nose, he said, “Can you hear me, Daneel?”

He heard his own voice—a little distant, a little artificial but he heard it.

And then he heard Daneel’s, different enough to be distinguishable.

“Yes, I can,” said Daneel. “And you should be able to hear me, Partner Elijah. The visual and kinesthetic senses are interfered—with for the sake of a greater illusion of reality, but the auditory sense remains untouched. Largely so, at any rate.”

“Well, I see only stars—ordinary stars, that is. Aurora has a sun. We are close enough to Aurora, I imagine, to make the star that is its sun considerably brighter than the others.”

“Entirely too bright, Partner Elijah. It is blanked out or you might suffer retinal damage.”

“Then where is the planet Aurora?”

“Do you see the constellation of Orion?’

“Yes, I do.—Do you mean we still see the constellations, as we see them in Earth’s sky, as in the City planetarium?”

“Just about. As stellar distances go, we are not far from Earth and the Solar System of which it is part, so that they have the starview in common. Aurora’s sun is known as Tau Ceti on Earth and is only 3.67 parsecs from there.—Now if you’ll imagine a line from Betelgeuse to the middle star of Orion’s belt and continue it for an equal length and, a bit more, the middling-bright star you see is actually the planet Aurora. It will become increasingly unmistakable over the next few days, as we approach it rapidly.”

Baley regarded it gravely. It was just a bright star-like object. There was no luminous arrow, going on—and off, pointing to it. There was no carefully lettered inscription arced over it.

He said, “Where’s the sun? Earth’s star, I mean.”

“It’s in the constellation Virgo, as seen from Aurora. It is a second magnitude star. Unfortunately, the astrosimulator we have is not property computerized and it would not be easy to point it out to you. It would, in any case, just appear to be a star, quite an ordinary one.”

“Never mind,” said Baley. “I am going to turn off this thing now. If I have trouble—help out.”

He didn’t have trouble. It flicked off just as he thought of doing so and he sat blinking in the suddenly harsh light of the room.

It was only then, when he had returned to his normal senses, that it occurred to him that for forty minutes he had seemed to himself to have been out in space, without a protecting wall of any kind, and yet his Earthly agoraphobia had not been activated. He had been perfectly comfortable, once he had, accepted his own nonexistence.

The thought puzzled him and distracted him from his bookfilm viewing for a while.

Periodically, he returned to the astrosimulator and took another look at space as seen from a vantage point just outside the spaceship, with himself nowhere present (apparently). Sometimes it was just for a moment, to reassure himself that he was still not made uneasy by the infinite void. Sometimes he found himself lost in the pattern of the stars and he began lazily counting them or forming geometrical figures, rather luxuriating in the ability to do something which, on Earth, he would never have been able to do because the mounting agoraphobic uneasiness, would quickly have overwhelmed everything else.

Eventually, it grew quite obvious that Aurora was brightening. It soon became easy to detect among the other dots of light, then unmistakable, and finally unavoidable. It began as a tiny sliver of light and, thereafter, it enlarged rapidly and began to show phases.

It was almost precisely a half-circle of light when Baley became aware of the existence of phases.

Baley inquired and Daneel said, “We are approaching from outside the orbital plane, Partner Elijah. Aurora’s South Pole is more or less in the center of its disk, somewhat into the lighted half, It is spring in the Southern Hemisphere.”