Alice: The Girl From Earth

Chapter Thirteen The Paralyzed Robots

“Well now,” Poloskov said when he had lifted from the planet where we had lost of entire stock of pineapples. “I’m for setting a direct course for the Medusa System. Any objections?”

No one objected. I would have liked to have objected, but Alice gave me such a look that I said:

“When we’re in flight the Captain is in charge. Whatever Poloskov says, that’s what will be done.”

“Then there is nothing further to delay us.” Poloskov said.

But two days later we found ourselves delayed again when we were forced to change course. The Pegasus’s on-board subspace radio had picked up an SOS.

“Where’s it from?” I asked Poloskov.

“I’ll let you know in a moment.” Our captain said. He was hunched over the receiver.

I sat down on an empty chair on the bridge, deciding to use the time to get some rest. I had been tired since morning. The Empathicator had an upset stomach, and he kept changing colors, like a traffic signal on a busy intersection.

I sat down on am empty seat on the bridge, deciding to take a minute to get some rest. I had been working since morning and I was exhausted. The Empathicator had an upset stomach, and it was changing colors like a traffic sign on a busy intersection..

The Sewing Spider had completely run out of raw materials for his work and had reached into the next cage where the Snook lay sleeping and saved off all his long fur so that I no longer recognized the Snook. As a result of his nakedness the Snook had caught a cold and was coughing up and down the hold. I had to place him in isolation.. The Blabberyap bird had spent thee night muttering in some incomprehensible language, scratching and screeching like an ungreased cart. He got the hot milk and soda treatment. The wander bushes had spent the night arguing over creamed stones and the littlest had suffered numerous broken branches. The diamond backed turtle had used the sharp facets on his shell to cut a hold in the door leading to the engine room, and I had been again forced to clamp him in the safe.

I was tired, but I knew that you always had such problems when transport a collection of rare animals. All these sicknesses, unpleasantries, fights and conflicts were nothing at all compared to the problem of feeding them.

In truth Alice had been helping me, but she had overslept and I had been forced to do the morning feed myself.

It was all very well that the animals were not too many and the majority of them could breathe terrestrial atmosphere. I had been forced to place a heater only under the enclosure with the Beelzabeetles, which was normal since they lived in volcanoes…

“It’s all clear.” I heard Poloskov’s voice.

What was he talking about. Ah, yes, I had been lost in thought and had completely forgotten we had received a disaster signal.

“The signal comes from the planet Eyeron. What could possibly have happened there?”

Poloskov opened the last volume of our copy of The Guide to the Planets and read aloud:

“Planet Eyeron. Discovered by a Fyxxian expedition. Occupied by a metallic culture of comparatively low level. It is hypothesized that the inhabitants of the planet are the decedents of robots left behind by some unknown space ship. They are straight forward and hospitable. However, very capricious and touchy. The planet is lacking in useful fossil fuels. There is no uncontaminated water. There is no breathable atmosphere. There is nothing at all on the planet. If there had been the robots would have wasted it all and now live in poverty.’

“SOS,” the subspace radio receiver blared. “We have an epidemic. Request aid.”

“We’ll have to divert.” Poloskov sighed. “We can’t ignore sapient beings in distress.”

So we changed course for the planet Eyeron.

Only when we could already see the grey, airless mountains and sea-bottoms of the planetary sphere from space was Poloskov finally able to make contact with the local dispatcher.

“What exactly is going on here?” He asked. “What sort of aid can we offer you?”

“We have an epidemic….” The voice hissed from the speaker. “We are all sick. We need a doctor.”

“A doctor?” Poloskov was surprised. “But certainly you are a metallic species. Wouldn’t it rather be a mechanic that you want?”

“Perhaps a mechanic as well.” The voice agreed from Eyeron. “But definitely a doctor.”

We set down on a flat, dusty, empty field that served as the space port. It had been a long time since a ship had set down here.

When the dust settled we lowered the gangway and rolled out the ATV. Poloskov remained on the ship, while Zeleny, Alice and I headed toward the long, low, boring building of the space port terminal. Neither spirits nor shadows surrounded us. If he had not just been talking with someone, no one would have guessed this planet held any living beings. On the road lay the discarded rusty leg of a robot. Then a wheel with torn out spokes.

Making out way through such a wasteland was somehow sad. We all wanted to shout out loud: “Is anybody here?”

The doors to the space port terminal building were wide open. Inside it was as empty and quiet as without. We left the All Terrain Vehicle and stopped at the doors, not knowing where to head for now.

There was a hissing from the enormous, grey loudspeaker that hung from the ceiling and an already familiar scratchy voice said:

“Go up the stairway to the small black door. Push on it and it will open.”

We obeyed and found a narrow stairway. The stairway was narrow and just as dusty as everything else. It ended in a small black door. I pushed on the door and it did not move. Perhaps it had been locked?

“Hit it harder!” The voice came from behind the door.

“Let me do it.” The engineer Zeleny said.

He put his shoulder to the door, pushed hard enough for him to groan, and the door burst open. Zeleny vanished into the room.

“Just as I thought.” He said gloomily after he had flown into the room and collided with one of the planet’s metallic inhabitants who was sitting at a desk.

The robot was covered with dust like everything else.

“Thank you for coming.” The robot said, raising his hand to help Zeleny get to his feet. I didn’t think anyone would ever come. I’d given up hope. And we don’t have any ships of our own out…”

“It’s your transmitting station.” I said. “It’s too weak. We picked up our message only because we were flying right by. It was pure random chance.”

“Once our station was the most powerful in the sector.” The robot said.

Then something grinding sounded from his iron jaw and he froze with his mouth open. The robot waved his hands back and forth and silently called for help. I looked at Zeleny in confusion, and he said:

“It’s not doctor that’s needed here.”

He went over to the robot and struck him below the chin with his fist. The mouth opened with a clang and the robot said:

“Than….”

Zeleny had to deal with the robot with his fist again. He shook his bruised hand and said,

“Please don’t open your mouth so wide. I’d rather not have to stand with my fist over you all the time.”

The robot nodded and continued to talk, with its mouth only slightly open.

“I sent the SOS signal.” He said. “Because for the past two weeks no one has come to relieve me. I suspect the entire population of the planet is afflicted with paralysis.”

“But why do you think that?”

“Because my own legs refuse to work.”

“Has this sickness afflicted you long?” I asked.

“No, not very.” The robot said. “In general, over the last few years, we’ve had jams even with lubricant, but in general we’ve managed to avoid them. But not long after one human had become angry with us and swore a terrible curse against us, a terrifying, mysterious paralysis began to ruin us, both the weak and the great. And I fear that I am the last more or less healthy robot on the entire planet. But the paralysis is already approaching my heart. And, as you see, even the jaw is affected.”

“All right, let me take a look. Maybe despite all your precautions you’ve forgotten to replace your oil properly.” Zeleny said with suspicion.

He went over to the robot and opened the round plate on the robot’s chest, put his hand inside, and the robot started to giggle.

“Ticklish!”

“Wait a moment.” The engineer insisted. He checked the joints in the robot’s legs and arms, straightened him out and said as he wiped his hands on a handkerchief:

“He’s been lubricated all right. I don’t understand it at all.”

“Nor do we.” The robot agreed.

We went on into the city. We stopped at one of the apartment buildings enormously long structures with long rows of single plank beds. The individual robots lay on their plants, covered with dust. Indicator lights burned on their foreheads; this meant the robots were alive. The robots could move their eyes, but nothing else. Finally, understanding nothing at all of what was going on, we returned to the space port terminal and put the robot dispatcher into the ATV. He was still at least able to talk. So we brought him to the Pegasus to analyze him there and try to determine the cause of the strange epidemic that had overwhelmed the planet.

The robot himself was able to help us with his own disassembly; he gave advice, which screw to turn, which button to press. The robot was neglected and dirty, but we were unable to find any particular damage to him. Although, in general, the service robots of this type had long ago been taken out of production in the Galaxy, they were designed to work for centuries and were capable of working in deep space, in volcanoes, underwater, or underground. They just had to be oiled from time to time, but they were perfectly capable of doing that themselves.

Finally, we laid out the parts of the robot on a large work table in the laboratory; we set his head up in one corner and tied it to the ship’s power net.

“Anything at all?” The head of the robot asked when Zeleny finished the mechanical dissection of his body.

Zeleny could only shrug his shoulders.

“Is there nothing that can be done?” The head asked quietly. “Our entire civilization will die.”

“We’ll have to send a message to Earth or to some other major planet.” I said. “They can send an expedition with specialists on robot sicknesses.”

“But how can we be sick?” The robot asked so firmly its jaw remained open. I had to go over and hit it under the chin.

“Thank you.” The robot said. “But should we remain like this our condition will be perilous. Think of yourself in our position. Not a single moving being on the entire planet. The very first rainstorm of flood will damage us irretrievably; we wouldn’t even be able to dry ourselves off.

“But listen,” I said, “There is no way we could stay with out until other help arrives!”

“Then your work must be extremely important, I take it?” The robot head asked.

Before I had a chance to answer Zeleny said:

“One last possibility. The first one. I’m going to try to change the oil. May I?”

“If it’s good quality oil, of course.” The robot head answered.

Zeleny began to clean all the moving parts of the robot and replace its lubricant with our own.

At the same time the robot asked again:

“And just what is it that you are doing?”

“We’re gathering animals for the Moscow Zoo.” I said. “Rare animals. We should even now be finishing the expedition and returning home. It is extremely difficult to carry a whole zoo with you.”

“If you can help us,” The robot said, “We would be delighted to give you our animals. There are none like them anywhere else in the universe.”

“What sort of animals?”

And then the robot told us:

Once, many years ago, an automated space ship crashed onto this planet; on board were a number of universal robots. They survived and built themselves huts from pieces of the ship. Then they found deposits of iron and other metals, they found uranium and many other useful resources, And then the robots began to build themselves children, and gradually, over the years, the robots, became very numerous.

But as intelligent as the robots were they were unable to look into the future. At that time there was water and air on the planet, grass and trees. The robots, however, had no interest whatsoever in the planet’s environment and ecosystems. They made use of their complete freedom and soon built many factories, and all the factories constructed robots, and the new robots built new factories and the new factories prepared new robots. And this continued until the day came when all the oxygen on the planet was consumed in the furnaces, all the trees were turned into warehouses for spare parts, all the native animals had died out, all the mountains were leveled to their foundations and all the seas were expended in coolant for engines. Finally the useful fossil fuels were used up. All that remained on the planet were robots, many billions of ordinary robots who suddenly had nothing at all to do.

The robots were the forced into a lottery; those who lost were taken apart for spare parts or sold to passing space ships or stellar wanderers for machine oil. That was how the robots lived. Gradually, they became all the fewer, but all the same there remained many millions of robots unemployed. The robots decided to build a space ship and fly it to some as yet unsettled planet in order to start all over again, but they were unable to build a ship because they had no plans, and they were unable to design one themselves. And so it continued, right up to the present time. And then this strange epidemic struck the robots and all of them were paralyzed.

“But about what animals are you talking?” I asked the robot’s head.

“About robot animals. We wanted to have everything that people have. And when we realized that the local animals had all died out because they could not live on a dead planet, we made artificial animals But then the shortages became to great and we decided to turn the animals into spare parts of ourselves. We don’t do it any longer, but the animals could feel the danger and they fled over the planet Eyeron’s flat valleys. If you can help us we can catch some totally unusual metal animals for you.

“Thank you,” I told the robot head, but at the same time thinking that such animals would hardly fit into our Zoo when every school child on Earth can now build a mechanical turtle or electric hedgehog from a kit bought from a store.

While we spoke with the robot’s head Zeleny cleaned all the parts of the robot’s body throughly and applied new lubricating oil. Then he tightened the robots screws from top to bottom and pressed his thumb down on a red button. All of us waited with concern for what might happen next. The robot uncertainly raised an arm and then made a step forward. The leg obeyed him He made another step, raised both arms above his head, bent forward, then back, and began to dance. I had never before in my life seen a dancing robot. He almost knocked over the table and nearly kicked me; the robot seemed to be laughing from joy.

Having danced himself to contentment the robot shouted:

“Tha…ag!” And froze.

We hadn’t changed the lubricating oil on his head.

This time engineer Zeleny didn’t hit the robot with his fist on his chin’ he just dipped the head into an open oil can.

The robot started to gurgle, something clicked inside him, the mouth started to open and closed again, and the robot sang in a fine, resonant voice:

“Too, too, the lilly-white boys, clothe them all in green, Ho! Ho! one for one and all for all and ever more shall be, so!” which had evidently been programmed into his ancestor long, long ago.

“So then, the problem is located in the lubricating oil.” The robot said more than a little disturbed. “But it was almost fresh. We had just changed it.”

Zeleny, without saying a word, placed some of the old machine oil taken from the robot onto a glass slide and went over to the microscope.

“It’s all clear now.” Zeleny said after a minute. “I should have guessed it right from the beginning. There’s bacteria in the oil which turns it into useless gunk. Interesting any idea how this bacteria could have gotten into your oil supply?”

The robot started to think. We all went into the Crew’s Lounge to continue the conversation.. The robot continued to think. We poured ourselves tea, and poured our robot guest a tube of sunflower oil, an enormous delicacy for robots. The robot automatically drank down the tube’s contents and continued to think.

Suddenly over our heads the Blabberyap bird awoke. It caught one sight of our guest and, spreading its beak wide, began to sing:

“‘Who’s afraid of the big, bad, wolf..’.”

The bird was singing in the robot’s voice.

We were very surprised. Only the robot was not surprised; he raised his head and said to the Blabberyap bird:

“Hello, bird. How are you?”

But the Blabberyap bird continued to sing; it fluttered its wings. No one had expected an answer; a Blabberyap is not a very wise bird.

“You know the Blabberyap bird?” Alice asked.

“Yes, of course.” The robot answered absently. “I was the one who repaired him.”

“And how could you repair a living bird?” Alice was curious.

“A few years ago,” the robot answered, “this bird came to our planet out of space. At the time we didn’t have any air worth breathing and there were no local animals left, but Blabberyaps, as you must know, do not need air. They are able to fly between planets and not breath for several weeks and even for months. But this bird hardly made it to our planet. Someone had attacked it en route and severely wounded the bird.

“We rescued the bird, fattened him up again on lubricating oil, but one wing had to be cut off and replaced with a prosthetic.”

“That’s not possible.” I exclaimed. “We would have noticed it already.”

“Take a look.” The robot answered with pride. “We do superb repair work.”

I got to my feet and walked over to the Blabberyap bird. The bird, as though guessing what was needed, spread its right wing. I felt it. Beneath the feathers was metal. The robot had told the truth.

“As you see, not even you noticed it.” The robot said triumphantly.

“But what happened to the bird then?” Alice asked.

“It had flown here from the Medusa system.” The robot said. “Someone was chasing after it and wanted to kill it. While we were fixing the bird it told us a great deal, and we leaned that someone had suffered some sort of accident and fallen into danger on one of the Medusa system’s planets and the bird was hurrying to inform someone else, a friend. We would have gone to his aid ourselves, but we don’t have any space ships.”

“And you let the bird go?”

“We let it go.” The robot said. “But we tried to explain to it that it would never be able to reach the sector of the Galaxy where it was headed. Although the artificial wing looks just like the real one, it’s not possible to fly very far on it. Alas, the bird did not understand us. It is not a very wise bird. But we also knew that the planet Blooke isn’t very far from us; it’s the Blabberyap bird’s home planet, and we concluded the blabberyap bird would be able to make it home. We haven’t seen it since then.”

“There, see!” Alice said. “How can you doubt that the Second Captain survived and sent the bird for help now?”

“But four years have passed since then.” I answered. “Most likely, he’s dead.”

“But I should relate to you one very strange event.” The robot said. “It took place not all that long ago. About a month or so. Just three days before the epidemic began. I would not have even remembered about it had I not seen the Blabberyap bird. A small black ship landed here on our world. One individual emerged. He wore a hat. We thought at first that he wanted to deal in our spare robots, but it turned out his ship was damaged and he needed our aid… We were delighted to have a chance to render assistance to this person…”

“That was Doctor Verkhovtseff.” Alice whispered.

“But when his ship was ready for flight we asked him if he might give us some machine oil or recent newspapers in exchange for the labor. However, the person in the hat cursed us and said that we would get nothing. And that we should be thankful to him for even leaving us alive. I then said to him: ‘Alien, you should be ashamed of yourself. I remember when we aided a non sapient bird, a Blabberyap, and repaired her wing, although she had nothing to give us in return, and we thought nothing about it. But you are a sapient being, an Earthman by your exterior appearance. You should be ashamed of yourself!’ At that he asked: ‘What Blabberyap’s wing did you fix?’ I said that had happened all of four years before and was irrelevant to the present matter. But he insisted that I tell him all about the injured bird. You should have seen how angry he became. He cursed us for helping the bird, and when he learned she had flown on to the planet Blooke, he set off for there. ‘I have wasted far too much time on that darned bird!” And he muttered a few more things. And later that night he was seen near the main cistern…”

“What cistern?”

“Now all is clear!” The robot said. “He went to the main cistern that contained the machine oil! He is an evil individual, and he may very well have contaminated it with harmful bacteria…”

We told the robot the bacteria may very well have gotten to the planet by some other means, but the robot just shook its head and would not listen to a word I said.

As a parting gift we gave the robot a can with machine oil, enough so he could fix several dozen robots, and promised to immediately send hyperspatial telegrams to the nearest planet as soon as we were in space again so they could send a ship with machine oil.

When the robot departed my friends grew furious.

“The faster we go the better.” They rushed to me. “We may still be able to save the Captain! Now there isn’t the slightest doubt that he’s fallen into some misfortune and that Doctor Verkhovtseff fears that someone will learn the truth.”

“I feel ashamed of being an Earthman.” Zeleny said gloomily. “And until we solve this mystery I won’t be able to look any aliens in the eyes. If Earth has produced such a despicable monster it is our duty to find him and pull his fangs. Maybe the Second Captain will be able to help us in this, once we find him. The animals can wait.”

I sighed and agreed, and anyway Alice and Poloskov were in complete agreement with Zeleny.

“All right.” I said, joining the majority. “Although I suspect that your hopes are founded only on rumors and we won’t find the Second Captain in the Medusa system. As soon as we’re convinced that it is all an error we can head back to the center of the Galaxy do some quick animal collecting.”

“Prepare the ship for departure!” Poloskov gave the order. “Zeleny, to the engine room. Get ready with the antigravs.”

I sent over to the port to take a last look at a planet rendered lifeless and empty by a race of industrious robots who never thought about what they were doing; then I noticed the robot dispatcher was running toward the Pegasus across the dusty field. He was carrying something in his hands.

I went down the gang plank to meet him.

“Take these animals.” He said. “All you need do is change their machine oil; at the moment they’re all paralyzed.”

He pushed a pile of metallic objects into my arms.

“Farewell.” He said as I pulled up the gangplank. “If you should ever find that fiend in a hat and not know what to do with him, bring him to us. We have tons of ruined lubricants to smear him with!” The robot started to laugh and headed off into the dust.

While the ship accelerated for our hyperspace jump I changed the lubricating oil on the metallic animals. I really did want to get a look at the type of animals robots might come up with for their world. And when Zeleny looked into the lab two hours later he almost collapsed from shock. On the floor of the lab he saw little robot animals on wheels chasing after each other. As animals they were terrible, but they more or less resembled mice and cats. Evidently, when the robots built them, they still had memories of real cats and mice.

I placed the robot animals in a steel cage, but sometimes they slip out and go chasing after the diamond backed turtle.