He shook each fuzzy paw, bowed politely, and the three Lybblas, ears bobbing, piping excitedly among themselves, were shot back to Mars, five hundred years in the future. They were anxious to return to their friends and relate their adventures. They did — but nobody ever believed them.
There were no repercussions from Cantrell’s death, though Gallegher, Grandpa and Mickey waited rather worriedly for several days before they felt able to relax. After that, Grandpa and Gallegher went on a terrific binge and felt far better.
Mickey couldn’t join them. Regretfully, he returned to the circus lot, where, twice a day, he capitalized on his peculiar talents by diving from the top of a thirty-foot ladder into a tub filled with water…
The Proud Robot
Things often happened to Gallegher, who played at science by ear. He was, as he often remarked, a casual genius. Sometimes he’d start with a twist of wire, a few batteries, and a button hook, and before he finished, he might contrive a new type of refrigerating unit.
At the moment he was nursing a hangover. A disjointed, lanky, vaguely boneless man with a lock of dark hair falling untidily over his forehead, he lay on the couch in the lab and manipulated his mechanical liquor bar. A very dry martini drizzled slowly from the spigot into his receptive mouth.
He was trying to remember something, but not trying too hard. It had to do with the robot, of course. Well, it didn’t matter.
“Hey, Joe,” Gallegher said.
The robot stood proudly before the mirror and examined its innards. Its hull was transparent, and wheels were going around at a great rate inside.
“When you call me that,” Joe remarked, “whisper. And get that cat out of here.”
“Your ears aren’t that good.”
“They are. I can hear the cat walking about, all right.”
“What does it sound like?” Gallegher inquired, interested.
“Just like drums,” said the robot, with a put-upon air. “And when you talk it’s like thunder.” Joe’s voice was a discordant squeak, so Gallegher meditated on saying something about glass houses and casting the first stone.
He brought his attention, with some effort, to the luminous door panel, where a shadow loomed — a familiar shadow, Gallegher thought.
“It’s Brock,” the annunciator said. “Harrison Brock. Let me in!”
“The door’s unlocked.” Gallegher didn’t stir. He looked gravely at the well-dressed, middle-aged man who came in, and tried to remember. Brock was between forty and fifty; he had a smoothly massaged, clean-shaved face, and wore an expression of harassed intolerance. Probably Gallegher knew the man. He wasn’t sure. Oh, well.
Brock looked around the big, untidy laboratory, blinked at the robot, searched for a chair, and failed to find it. Arms akimbo, he rocked back and forth and glared at the prostrate scientist.
“Well?” he said.
“Never start conversations that way,” Gallegher mumbled, siphoning another martini down his gullet. “I’ve had enough trouble today. Sit down and take it easy. There’s a dynamo behind you. It isn’t very dusty, is it?”
“Did you get it?” Brock snapped. “That’s all I want to know. You’ve had a week. I’ve a check for ten thousand in my pocket. Do you want it, or don’t you?”
“Sure,” Gallegher said. He extended a large, groping hand. “Give.”
“Caveat emptor. What am I buying?”
“Don’t you know?” the scientist asked, honestly puzzled.
Brock began to bounce up and down in a harassed fashion. “My God,” he said. “They told me you could help me if anybody could. Sure. And they also said it’d be like pulling teeth to get sense out of you. Are you a technician or a driveling idiot?” Gallegher pondered. “Wait a minute. I’m beginning to remember. I talked to you last week, didn’t I?”
“You talked—” Brock’s round face turned pink. “Yes! You lay there swilling liquor and babbled poetry. You sang ‘Frankie and Johnnie.’ And you finally got around to accepting my commission.”
“The fact is,” Gallegher said, “I have been drunk. I often get drunk. Especially on my vacation. It releases my subconscious, and then I can work. I’ve made my best gadgets when I was tizzied,” he went on happily. “Everything seems so clear then. Clear as a bell. I mean a bell, don’t I? Anyway, what are you talking about?”
“Are you going to keep quiet?” the robot demanded from its post before the mirror.
Brock jumped. Gallegher waved a casual hand. “Don’t mind Joe. I just finished him last night, and I rather regret it.”
“A robot?”
“A robot. But he’s no good, you know. I made him when I was drunk, and I haven’t the slightest idea how or why. All he’ll do is stand there and admire himself. And sing. He sings like a banshee. You’ll hear him presently.”
With an effort Brock brought his attention back to the matter at hand. “Now look, Gallegher. I’m on a spot. You promised to help me. If you don’t, I’m a ruined man.”
“I’ve been ruined for years,” the scientist remarked. “It never bothers me. I just go along working for a living and making things in my spare time. Making all sorts of things. You know, if I’d really studied, I’d have been another Einstein. So they tell me. As it is, my subconscious picked up a first-class scientific training somewhere. Probably that’s why I never bothered. When I’m drunk or sufficiently absent-minded, I can work out the damnedest problems.”
“You’re drunk now,” Brock accused.
“I approach the pleasanter stages. How would you feel if you woke up and found you’d made a robot for some unknown reason, and hadn’t the slightest idea of the creature’s attributes!”
“Well—”
“I don’t feel that way at all,” Gallegher murmured. “Probably you take life too seriously, Brock. Wine is a mocker; strong drink is raging. Pardon me. I rage.” He drank another martini.
Brock began to pace around the crowded laboratory, circling various enigmatic and untidy objects. “Ifyou’re a scientist, Heaven help science.”
“I’m the Larry Adler of science,” Gallegher said. “He was a musician — lived some hundreds of years ago, I think. I’m like him. Never took a lesson in my life. Can I help it if my subconscious likes practical jokes?”
“Do you know who I am?” Brock demanded.
“Candidly, no. Should I?”
There was a bitterness in the other’s voice. “You might have the courtesy to remember, even though it was a week ago. Harrison Brock. Me. I own Vox-View Pictures.”
“No,” the robot said suddenly, “it’s no use. No use at all, Brock.”
“What the—”
Gallegher sighed wearily. “I forgot the damned thing’s alive. Mr. Brock, meet Joe. Joe, meet Mr. Brock — of Vox-View.”
Joe turned, gears meshing within his transparent skull. “I am glad to meet you, Mr. Brock. Allow me to congratulate you on your good fortune in hearing my lovely voice.”
“Uh,” said the magnate inarticulately. “Hello.”
“Vanity of vanities, all is vanity,” Gallegher put in, sotto voce. “Joe’s like that. A peacock. No use arguing with him, either.”
The robot ignored this aside. “But it’s no use, Mr. Brock,” he went on squeakily. “I’m, not interested in money. I realize it would bring happiness to many if I consented to appear in your pictures, but fame means nothing to me. Nothing. Consciousness of beauty is enough.”
Brock began to chew his lips. “Look,” he said savagely, “I didn’t come here to offer you a picture job. See? Am I offering you a contract? Such colossal nerve—Pah! You’re crazy.”
“Your schemes are perfectly transparent,” the robot remarked coldly. “I can see that you’re overwhelmed by my beauty, and the loveliness of my voice — its grand tonal qualities. You needn’t pretend you don’t want me, just so you can get me at a lower price. I said I wasn’t interested.”