He sat before the horseshoe-shaped control console, like a hungry spider sitting in the middle of its web. Taut, alert, watching and waiting with an almost feral intensity; nearly immobile, except for his eyes.
The eyes: Two black, glittering beads set in bulging turrets of wrinkled skin on opposite sides of his large, hairless head. The eyes moved independently in quick, lizard-like jerks, darting across the massed video displays and instrument readouts, taking it all in.
Watching.
One eye locked in on the image of a small, starfish-like creature. His other eye tracked across and joined it as the video display split-screened to show the starfish on one side and the inky black of space on the other. A small ice asteroid drifted into view, and a pair of ominous-looking rails smoothly rose to track it.
He moved. An arm so gaunt and elongated, with carpal bones so long it gave the appearance of having two elbows, more unfolded than reached out to touch a small stud beneath the image of the starfish.
The grim, lipless mouth opened; the voice was high and reedy. “Denofah. Praxil mastica. ” The rails flared brightly. An instant later the asteroid was gone, replaced by a swiftly dissipating cloud of incandescent gas.
The mouth twitched slightly at the corners, in an expression that may have been a grim smile. He pressed the stud again. “Rijat. ” The screen showing the starfish and the weapon went blank.
An indicator light at the far right end of the console began blinking. Swiveling one eye to the screen just above the indicator, he reached across and pressed another stud. The image that appeared was that of a younger member of his own species.
“Forrgive the intrrusion, Masterr,” the young one said in heavily accented Galactic, with a piping trill on the “r” sounds. “But your orrders were to reporrt any K-band interferrence instantly. ”
Both eyes locked on the image, and he swiveled his chair around so that he was facing the viewscreen. “Did it match the patterrn? Were you able to get a dirrectional fix?”
“Master Aranimas, it still matches the patterrn. Rrobots using hyperspace keys to teleport; there must be thousands of them. We have both a directional fix and an estimated distance. ”
“Excellent! Give me the coordinates; I’ll relay them to the navigator. ” While the young one was reading off the numbers, Aranimas swiveled his left eye onto another screen and pressed another stud. “Helm! Prepare for hyperspace jump in five hazodes. ” Another screen, another stud. “Navigator! Lay in the fastest course possible to take us to these coordinates. ” He repeated the numbers the young one had given him.
When the orders were all given and the screens all blank, he sat back in his chair, entwined his long, bony fingers, and allowed himself a thin smile. “Wolruf, you traitor, I have you now. And Derec, you meddlesome boy, I’ll have your robots, your teleport keys, and your head in my trophy case. ” He reached forward and thumbed a button, and the starfish reappeared on a screen. “Deh feh opt spa, nexori. Derec. ”
The starfish seemed quite excited at the prospect.
Chapter 1. Janet
Attitude thrusters fired in short, tightly controlled bursts. With a delicate grace that belied its thirty-ton mass, the small, streamlined spacecraft executed a slow pirouette across the starspeckled void, flipping end-for-end and rolling ninety degrees to starboard. When the maneuver was complete, the attitude thrusters fired again, to leave the ship traveling stem-first along its orbital trajectory and upside-down relative to the surface of the small, blue-white planet.
Slowly, ponderously, the main planetary drives built up to full thrust. One minute later they shut down, and the hot white glare of the final deceleration burn faded to the deep bloody red of cooling durylium ion grids.
A final touch on the attitude jets, and the ship slipped quietly into geostationary orbit. Yet so skilled was the robot helmsman, so flawless the gravity compensation fields, that the ship’s sole human occupant had not yet noticed any change in flight status.
The robot named Basalom, however, patched into the ship’s communications system by hyperwave commlink, could not help but receive the news. He turned to the human known as Janet Anastasi, blinked his mylar plastic eyelids nervously, and allocated a hundred nanoseconds to resolving a small dilemma.
Like the really tough ones, the problem involved his conflicting duties under the Laws of Robotics. The Second Law aspect of the situation was clear: A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings. except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. Dr. Anastasi had specifically ordered him to alert her the moment they entered orbit about Tau Puppis IV. He’d already cross-checked the navigator’s star sightings against the reference library in the ship’s computer; the small, Earthlike world currently situated some 35,000 kilometers overhead was definitely Tau Puppis IV. Unmistakably, his Second Law duty was to tell Dr. Anastasi that she had arrived at her destination.
As soon as Basalom started to load that statement into his speech buffer, though, a nagging First Law priority asserted itself. The First Law said: A robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction allow a human being to come to harm. Ever since they’d left the planet of the Ceremyons, any mention of the Learning Machine project seemed to cause Dr. Anastasi tremendous emotional distress. Even an implied reference to her son, her ex-husband, or the way the two of them had thoroughly bollixed the experiment by abducting Learning Machine #2 was enough to send the woman’s blood pressure rocketing and turn her voiceprint into a harsh and jangled mass of severe stress indicators.
Now they’d returned to Tau Puppis IV, the world on which Dr. Anastasi had dropped Learning Machine #1. Basalom integrated that information with the data base he’d built up over two years of working with Dr. Anastasi, and concluded with 95% confidence that breaking the news to her would precipitate a negative emotional reaction. He could not predict exactly what her reaction would be-no robot was that sophisticated-but he could predict beyond a reasonable doubt that the information would cause Dr. Anastasi significant emotional discomfort.
And that was Basalom’ s dilemma. How did this emotional pain fit within the First Law definition of harm? His systems programming was not precise on that point. If emotional pain was not harm, there was little point to his being programmed to perceive it. But if evoking strong emotion was harm, then obeying Second Law orders could become a terribly ticklish business. How could he obey an order to tell Dr. Anastasi something that would upset her?
Basalom weighed positronic potentials. The order to provide the information had been emphatic and direct. The harm that would ensue-that might ensue-was only a possibility, and would, Basalom knew from experience, pass fairly quickly.In addition, he recalled from experience that Dr. Anastasi’s reaction to his not providing the information would be just as extreme an emotion as if he did provide it.
The possibility of harming a human balanced; it was the same, no matter whether he acted or refrained from acting. He began downloading the statement to his speech buffer; as soon as he’d slowed his perception levels down to human realtime, he’d tell her.
Of course, if blood spurted out of her ears when he voiced the words, then he’d know that he’d caused some harm.
“Dr. Anastasi?” The slender blond woman looked up from her smartbook and speared Basalom with a glare. “We have entered geostationary orbit over the fourth planet in the Tau Puppis star system, mistress. ”
“Well, it’s frosted well about time. ” She reacted as if surprised by the tone of her own voice, rubbed the bags under her bloodshot eyes, and smiled apologetically. “I’m sorry, Basalom. I’ve shot the messenger again, haven’t I?”
Basalom blinked nervously and did a quick scan of the room, but found no evidence of an injured messenger or a recently fired weapon. “Mistress?”