Which was something of a blow to Dar’s ego; so maybe it was just his imagination that made the computer sound worshipful as it said, “I will do all that I can to serve you.”
Lona just smiled.
“Apropos of which,” the computer went on, “it might interest you to know that, while we have been talking, my former master was surreptitiously transmitting a message to Ceres City.”
Every eye locked onto the old miner.
“That’s garbage!” he spluttered. “You’ve been sitting here next to me the whole time! I didn’t say a word!”
“Computers can’t lie.” Lona’s gaze was a poniard.
“It’s a breakdown! Malfunction! Programming error!”
“How’d he do it, Fess?” Lona never took her glare off the old miner.
“By pressing and releasing the transmission button,” the computer answered. “That sent out carrier-wave pulses, which spelled out letters in the ancient Morse code.”
“What did he say?” Whitey’s voice was almost dreamy.
“ ‘Solar Patrol, emergency!’ ” the computer recited, “ ‘Burroboat FCC 651919 has just picked up five castaways. Have reason to believe they were crew and passengers of ship you were just chasing. Emergency!’ ”
Lona stood up with the slow, sinuous grace of a panther. Whitey stepped over beside her, his eyes chips of ice. “How do you want to be spaced—with or without your pressure suit?”
“But—but you can’t do that!” The old miner cowered back against the bulkhead. “I picked you up! I saved your lives!”
“Your computer did,” Lona corrected, “and it’s ours now.”
“The killing of humans,” Fess murmured, “is the worst of crimes.”
“What’s your definition of ‘human’?” Whitey growled, glaring at the miner.
“Treachery is right up there, too,” Lona pointed out.
“True,” Father Marco agreed, “but this man had no reason for loyalty to our little band—and every reason for loyalty to the government, and its Solar Patrol.”
“If you can call blind faith ‘reason,’ ” Whitey grunted. “But I guess you would, Father.”
“Sir!” Father Marco stiffened. “I’ll remind you that I’m an engineer as well as a priest! … But I am able to look at the situation from his viewpoint.”
A gleam came into Whitey’s eyes. “Well, then—why not let him see things from our viewpoint? The one we had an hour ago.”
“You wouldn’t!” The miner blanched.
“Oh, don’t worry.” Whitey’s lip curled. “They’ll pick you up way before your supplies run out. What’s he got on his claim, Fess?”
“A bubble-cabin ten feet down inside the asteroid,” the computer replied, “with complete life-support systems and a month’s rations.”
“With a two-way radio?”
“No; he had mine, and didn’t see the need for the expense. I do, however, have a spare emergency beacon.”
“Perfect!” Whitey grinned. “He can call for help, but he can’t rat on us. Oh, don’t give me that terrified look, you old crawler! The patrol’ll have you safe in Ceres City inside of a week!”
“Will that give us enough of a start?” Lona growled.
Whitey’s lips pressed into a thin line. “It’ll have to.”
“Come back here, consarn you!” The voice echoed tinnily from the console’s grid. “Come back here with my burro-boat, you blasted pirates! I’ll have the law on you!”
“Damn!” Whitey snapped his fingers into a fist. “I should’ve made him sign a bill of sale! Now he’ll have the Patrol hunting us down for piracy, on top of everything else.”
Dar shrugged. “What does it matter? They’ll chase us anyway, as soon as they pick him up and he tells them his story.”
“I know, I know. But this’ll give ‘em a legal pretext for holding us.”
“I think not,” Fess demurred. “Since the transaction was a verbal contract, I recorded it as standard operating procedure.”
Whitey’s scowl dissolved into a grin. “Old Iron, I think you may have your uses.”
“A lot of them; he wasn’t really designed to pilot a boat, or even just to compute,” said Lona. “He was designed as the brain of a humanoid robot.”
“True, but my motor functions are adaptable to almost any sort of mechanical body,” Fess explained. “I’m really quite generalized.”
“And, therefore, versatile,” Whitey concluded. “Well, what we need you to do most, just now, is to get us to Luna undetected.”
“Why Luna?” Dar frowned. “We want to get to Terra.”
“They don’t allow spacers to land there,” Sam explained. “Population’s too dense; too much chance of a minor accident killing thousands of people. Spacers have to land on the moon, and take a shuttle down to Earth.”
“Besides, we’re running a little high on notoriety at the moment,” Whitey added. “We need some sort of cover to let us travel—and I have a few friends on Luna.”
Dar shrugged. “Why not? You have friends everywhere.”
“Since you wish to avoid attention,” Fess suggested, “it might be best if we wait for a large vessel to pass near, and match orbits, staying as close to it as possible, so that we’re inside its sensor-range, and blend into its silhouette on any Patrol ship’s screens.”
Dar frowned. “Isn’t that a little chancy?”
“Not for the two of us.” Lona patted the console.
Dar felt a hot stab of jealousy. “What do you think that circuit-stack is—the boy next door?”
Lona gave him a look veiled by long lashes above a cat-smile. “Why not?” She turned to the console grid. “Where’d you grow up, electron-pusher?”
“I was manufactured on Maxima.”
“Not exactly my home territory.” Lona’s eyes gleamed. “But I’ve heard of it. All they do there is make computers and robots, right?”
“That is their sole industry, yes. Their sole occupation of any sort, in fact.”
“Sloggers,” the girl translated. “A bunch of technological monks. They don’t care anything about creature comforts; all they want to do is build robots.”
“Not quite true,” Fess corrected. “The few humans on Maxima have every conceivable luxury known—including a few unknown anywhere else, which they invented themselves. In fact, they live like kings.”
“Oh, really!” Lona smiled, amused. “When’re they planning to join the aristocracy?”
“Some have already begun buying patents of nobility from the Terran College of Heralds.”
Lona lost her smile. “That takes real money! Where do they get it from?”
“From the sale of computers and robots.” The computer added modestly, “Their products are already acknowledged to be the finest in any of the human-occupied worlds.”
“So they sell for a small fortune each, of course. But the biggest luxury of all is servants—which they can’t have, if there’re only a few humans.”
“True,” Fess admitted, “but there are three robots to every human, on the average. They do not lack for servitors.”
“Sounds like a great life,” Whitey sighed, “if you don’t mind settling down.”
“And don’t mind being stuck out in the middle of nowhere,” Sam added.
“The planetoid is rather bleak,” Fess admitted.
“ ‘Planetoid’?” Lona frowned. “I thought Maxima was a world.”
“It would be counted a small moon if it orbited a planet,” Fess demurred. “But since it is located in Sinus’s asteroid belt, it can only be counted as one of the larger of those asteroids.”
Whitey frowned. “No atmosphere.”
“No trees or grass,” mused Sam.
“Only rocks and dust,” murmured Dar.
“Only eight point seven light-years from Terra!” caroled Lona.
Dar stared. “You like the sound of the place?”
“It’s practically heaven!” Lona squealed. “Nothing to do but design and build computers, laze around luxury, and hop around the corner to the fleshpots of Terra for the weekend! Where do I sign up?”