He felt the panic building in him and took a quick involuntary look around, seeking some method of escape. For it became quite apparent to him that he must never reach the warehouse.
He was trapped, he knew, and he couldn’t keep on floating, trusting to his luck. In the next few minutes he’d have to figure something.
He started to swing over into a side street, not knowing what he meant to do, but knowing he must do something, when he heard the mutter far above him and glanced up quickly to see the crimson glow of belching rocket tubes shimmering through the clouds.
He swung around again and sprinted desperately for the spaceport and reached it as the ship came chugging down to a steady landing. It was, he saw, an old ship. It had no burnish to it and it was blunt and squat and wore a hangdog look.
A tramp, he told himself, that knocked about from port to port, picking up whatever cargo it could, with perhaps now and then a paying passenger headed for some backwater planet where there was no scheduled service.
He waited as the cargo port came open and the ramp came down and then marched purposefully out onto the field, ahead of the straggling cargo crew, trudging toward the ship. He had to act, he knew, as if he had a perfect right to walk into the ship, as if he knew exactly what he might be doing. If there were a challenge he would pretend he didn’t hear it and simply keep on going.
He walked swiftly up the ramp, holding back from running, and plunged through the accordion curtain that served as an atmosphere control. His feet rang across the metal plating of the cargo hold until he reached the catwalk and plunged down it to another cargo level.
At the bottom of the catwalk he stopped and stood tense, listening. Above him he heard the clang of a metal door and the sound of footsteps coming down the walk to the level just above him. That would be the purser or the first mate, he told himself, or perhaps the captain, coming down to arrange for the discharge of the cargo.
Quietly he moved away and found a corner where he could crouch and hide.
Above his head he heard the cargo gang at work, talking back and forth, then the screech of crating and the thump of bales and boxes being hauled out to the ramp.
Hours passed, or they seemed like hours, as he huddled there. He heard the cargo gang bringing something down from one of the upper levels and he made a sort of prayer that they’d not come down to this lower level—and he hoped no one would remember seeing him come in ahead of them, or if they did remember, that they would assume that he’d gone out again.
Finally it was over, with the footsteps gone. Then came the pounding of the ramp as it shipped itself and the banging of the port.
He waited for long minutes, waiting for the roar that, when it came, set his head to ringing, waiting for the monstrous vibration that shook and lifted up the ship and flung it off the planet
Then quiet came and he knew the ship was out of atmosphere and once more on its way.
And knew he had it made.
For now he was no more than a simple stowaway. He was no longer Richard Daniel, runaway from Earth. He’d dodged all the traps of Man, he’d covered all his tracks, and he was on his way.
But far down underneath he had a jumpy feeling, for it all had gone too smoothly, more smoothly than it should.
He tried to analyze himself, tried to pull himself in focus, tried to assess himself for what he had become.
He had abilities that Man had never won or developed or achieved, whichever it might be. He was a certain step ahead of not only other robots, but of Man as well. He had a thing, or the beginning of a thing, that Man had sought and studied and had tried to grasp for centuries and had failed.
A solemn and a deadly thought: was it possible that it was the robots, after all, for whom this great heritage had been meant? Would it be the robots who would achieve the paranormal powers that Man had sought so long, while Man, perforce, must remain content with the materialistic and the merely scientific? Was he, Richard Daniel, perhaps, only the first of many? Or was it all explained by no more than the fact that he alone had been exposed to hyperspace? Could this ability of his belong to anyone who would subject himself to the full, uninsulated mysteries of that mad universe unconstrained by time? Could Man have this, and more, if he too should expose himself to the utter randomness of unreality?
He huddled in his corner, with the thought and speculation stirring in his mind and he sought the answers, but there was no solid answer.
His mind went reaching out, almost on its own, and there was a diagram inside his brain, a portion of a blueprint, and bit by bit was added to it until it all was there, until the entire ship on which he rode was there, laid out for him to see.
He took his time and went over the diagram resting in his brain and he found little things—a fitting that was working loose and he tightened it, a printed circuit that was breaking down and getting mushy and he strengthened it and sharpened it and made it almost new, a pump that was leaking just a bit and he stopped its leaking.
Some hundreds of hours later one of the crewmen found him and took him to the captain.
The captain glowered at him.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“A stowaway,” Richard Daniel told him.
“Your name,” said the captain, drawing a sheet of paper before him and picking up a pencil, “your planet of residence and owner.”
“I refuse to answer you,” said Richard Daniel sharply and knew that the answer wasn’t right, for it was not right and proper that a robot should refuse a human’s direct command.
But the captain did not seem to mind. He laid down the pencil and stroked his black beard slyly.
“In that case,” he said, “I can’t exactly see how I can force the information from you. Although there might be some who’d try. You are very lucky that you stowed away on a ship whose captain is a most kind-hearted man.”
He didn’t look kind-hearted. He did look foxy.
Richard Daniel stood there, saying nothing.
“Of course,” the captain said, “there’s a serial number somewhere on your body and another on your brain. But I suppose that you’d resist if we tried to look for them.”
“I am afraid I would.”
“In that case,” said the captain, “I don’t think for the moment we’ll concern ourselves with them.”
Richard Daniel still said nothing, for he realized that there was no need to.
This crafty captain had it all worked out and he’d let it go at that.
“For a long time,” said the captain, “my crew and I have been considering the acquiring of a robot, but it seems we never got around to it. For one thing, robots are expensive and our profits are not large.”
He sighed and got up from his chair and looked Richard Daniel up and down.
“A splendid specimen,” he said. “We welcome you aboard. You’ll find us congenial.”
“I am sure I will,” said Richard Daniel. “I thank you for your courtesy.”
“And now,” the captain said, “you’ll go up on the bridge and report to Mr. Duncan. I’ll let him know you’re coming. He’ll find some light and pleasant duty for you.”
Richard Daniel did not move as swiftly as he might, as sharply as the occasion might have called for, for all at once the captain had become a complex diagram. Not like the diagrams of ships or robots, but a diagram of strange symbols, some of which Richard Daniel knew were frankly chemical, but others which were not.