The brain of an old maid, it would have to be, so often disillusioned, so lonely and so by-passed in life that she would welcome a chance to go adventuring even if it meant sacrificing a body which, probably, had meant less and less to her as the years went by.
I built up quite a picture of my hypothetical old maid, complete with cat and canary, and even the boarding house in which she lived.
I sensed her lonely twilight walks and her aimless chattering and her small imaginary triumphs and the hungers that kept building up inside her.
And I felt sorry for her.
Fantastic? Of course. But it helped to pass the time.
But there was another notion that really took solid hold of me—that Lulu, beaten, had finally given up and was taking us back to Earth, but that, womanlike, she refused to give us the satisfaction and comfort of knowing that we had won and were going home at last.
I told myself over and over that it was impossible, that after the kind of shenanigans she’d pulled, Lulu wouldn’t dare go back. They’d break her up for scrap.
But the idea persisted and I couldn’t shake it off. I knew I must be wrong, but I couldn’t convince myself I was and I began to watch the chronometer.
I’d say to myself, «One hour nearer home, another hour and yet another and we are that much closer.»
And no matter what I told myself, no matter how I argued, I became positive that we were heading Earthward.
So I was not surprised when Lulu finally landed. I was just grateful and relieved.
We looked at one another and I saw the hope and question in the others’ eyes. Naturally, none of us could ask. One word might have ruined our victory. All we could do was stand there silently and wait for the answer.
The port began to open and I got the whiff of Earth and I didn’t fool around waiting any more. There wasn’t room enough as yet to get out standing up, so I took a run at it and dived and went through slick and clean. I hit the ground and got a lot of breath knocked out of me, but I scrambled to my feet and lit out of there as fast as I could go. I wasn’t taking any chances. I didn’t want to be within reach if Lulu changed her mind.
Once I stumbled and almost fell, and Ben and Jimmy went past me with a whoosh, and I told myself that I’d not been mistaken. They’d caught the Earth smell, too.
It was night, but there was a big, bright moon and it was almost as light as day. There was an ocean to the left of us, with a wide strip of sandy beach, and, to the right, the land swept up into barren rolling hills, and right ahead of us was a strip of woods that looked as if it might border some river flowing down into the sea.
We legged it for the woods, for we knew that if we got in among the trees, Lulu would have a tough time ferreting us out. But when I sneaked a quick look back over my shoulder, she was just squatting where she’d landed, with the moonlight shining on her.
We reached the woods and threw ourselves on the ground and lay panting.
It had been quite a stretch of ground to cover and we had covered it fast; after weeks of just sitting, a man is in no condition to do a lot of running.
I had fallen face down and just sprawled there, sucking in great gulps of air and smelling the good Earth smell—old leaf mold and growing things and the tang of salt from the soft and gentle ocean breeze.
After a while, I rolled over on my back and looked up. The trees were wrong—there were no trees like those on Earth—and when I crawled out to the edge of the woods and looked at the sky, the stars were all wrong, too.
My mind was slow in accepting what I saw. I had been so sure that we were on Earth that my brain rebelled against thinking otherwise.
But finally it hit me, the chilling terrible knowledge.
I went back to the other two.
«Gents,» I said, «I have news for you. This planet isn’t Earth at all.»
«It smells like Earth,» said Ben. «It has the look of Earth.»
«It feels like Earth,» Jimmy argued. «The gravity and the air and—»
«Look at the stars. Take a gander at those trees.»
They took a long time looking. Like me, they must have gotten the idea that Lulu had zeroed in for home. Or maybe it was only what they wanted to believe. It took a while to knock the wishful thinking out of them, as well as myself.
Ben let his breath out slowly. «You’re right.»
«What do we do now?» asked Jimmy.
We stood there, thinking about what we should do now.
Actually it was no decision, but pure and simple reflex, conditioned by a million years of living on Earth as opposed to only a few hundred in which to get used to the idea that there were different worlds.
We started running, as if an order had been given, as fast as we could go.
«Lulu!» we yelled. «Lulu, wait for us!»
But Lulu didn’t wait. She shot straight up for a thousand feet or so and hung there. We skidded to a halt and gaped up at her, not quite believing what we saw. Lulu started to fall back, shot up again, came to a halt and hovered. She seemed to shiver, then sank slowly back until she rested on the ground.
We continued running and she shot up and fell back, then shot up once more, then fell back again and hit the ground and hopped. She looked for all the world like a demented yo-yo. She was acting strangely, as if she wanted to get out of there, only there was something that wouldn’t let her go, as if she were tethered to the ground by some invisible elastic cable.
Finally she came to rest about a hundred yards from where she’d first set down. No sound came from her, but I got the impression she was panting like a winded hound dog.
There was a pile of stuff stacked where Lulu had first landed, but we raced right past it and ran up to her. We pounded on her metal sides.
«Open up!» we shouted. «We want to get back in!»
Lulu hopped. She hopped about a hundred feet into the air, then plopped back with a thud, not more than thirty feet away.
We backed away from her. She could have just as easily come straight down on top of us.
We stood watching her, but she didn’t move.
«Lulu!» I yelled at her.
She didn’t answer.
«She’s gone crazy,» Jimmy said.
«Someday,» said Ben, «this was bound to happen. It was a cinch they’d sooner or later build a robot too big for its britches.»
We backed away from her slowly, watching all the time. We weren’t afraid of her exactly, but we didn’t trust her either.
We backed all the way to the mound of stuff that Lulu had unloaded and stacked up and we saw that it was a pyramid of supplies, all neatly boxed and labeled. And beside the pyramid was planted a stenciled sign that read: NOW, DAMN YOU, WORK!!
Ben said, «She certainly took our worthlessness to heart.»
Jimmy was close to gibbering. «She was actually going to maroon us!»
Ben reached out and grabbed his shoulder and shook him a little—a kindly sort of shake.
«Unless we can get back inside,» I said, «and get her operating, we are as marooned as if she had up and left us.»
«But what made her do it?» Jimmy wailed. «Robots aren’t supposed to—»
«I know,» said Ben. «They’re not supposed to harm a human. But Lulu wasn’t harming us. She didn’t throw us out. We ran away from her.»
«That’s splitting legal hairs,» I objected.
«Lulu’s just the kind of gadget for hair-splitting,» Ben said. «Trouble is they made her damn near human. They probably poured her full of a lot of law as well as literature and physics and all the rest of it.»
«Then why didn’t she just leave? If she could whitewash her conscience, why is she still here?»
Ben shook his head. «I don’t know.»
«She looked like she tried to leave and couldn’t, as though there was something holding her back.»