Flat sheets of inert metal and plastic went into the great building at one end, and at the other there emerged animate beings who looked left and right before crossing the road. Laura observed the process from dead-center.
Totally amazing, she thought, shaking her head.
The belt itself was at least twenty feet wide and looked to be a complete mess. Its basic black was discolored in countless places by spots and stains and burn marks. And the components it carried were scattered about in nearly random fashion like scrap on the way to a pit.
Laura paused directly above the belt to take in the sights and sounds of the assembly building. In the far distance, Laura saw the blunt noses of not one but two of Gray's strange, flat-sided rockets.
They rose like steep pyramids nearly all the way to the ceiling. Up and down the long line in between, the forest of robotic arms was an incessant blur of activity. They turned parts over, picked them up, held them to the light, moved them from the main belt to adjoining ones. They riveted and welded, sanded and ground, painted and measured, and assembled and discarded. All the while, Model Sixes plied the lanes parallel to the belt, stopping to receive a part from or deliver a part to their immobile brethren.
This was not a plant conceived in the mind of man, Laura realized. It wasn't a factory built by humans that had been turned over to more worthy mechanical replacements. This was a factory designed by a computer exclusively for robots. This was the world as it should be according to the mind of a machine. As Laura stood there, that conclusion was reinforced by one quite telling fact.
Nowhere in that sea of motion were any humans to be seen. Laura headed across the catwalk for the exit, her companions following in her wake down to the main floor. They passed through another "airlock," then stepped out into the warm night air.
An expansive concrete pad the width and breadth of a stadium parking lot dominated the far side of the assembly building. In the distance, the three rocket gantries marked the fringes of the island's north shore like brightly beaming lighthouses.
Laura's skin tingled. She was missing something about what she had just witnessed — some important conclusion. It was right there on the periphery of her understanding, but the feeling slowly faded. The silent visitor stepped back into the shadows. Back into the "gray" area, she thought with amusement. And then it was gone.
Laura shook her head.
The side yard was covered with small sheds underneath which sat mounds of materials — some exposed, others covered in tarpaulins. "Side yard" was a misnomer, Laura thought. "Junkyard" described it better.
"This isn't the pretty side of the building, obviously," Griffith said. "We've actually run out of room in the assembly building, if you can believe that. There's another facility under construction right over there." Griffith pointed toward a thick wall of gnarled tropical trees. Light glowed from the jungle over the treetops, but no structure as yet could be seen. Laura imagined the mechanical night crew working uninterrupted as their human coworkers rested.
The foreman led the group out among the slowly moving Model Sixes.
Laura frowned as she surveyed the disorder. A twentieth-century dump, Laura thought, hidden behind the façade of Gray's twenty-first-century wonder.
"It should be this way," the foreman said, his pen board glowing brightly in the dimmer outdoor lighting. As they turned a corner, Laura noticed that the map on the foreman's pen board turned also — maintaining a correct orientation no matter which way the small computer was pointed. The portable pen board must be plugged into the main computer's "world model," she realized. That main computer led them out through the ever-darker maze of sheds and piles of scraps.
They passed robots that sifted through twisted strips of metal, their twin searchlights shining brightly on the tangled mess. Others opened cardboard boxes or dumped containers of garbage into trailers already piled high with similar refuse. All were Model Sixes, differing only, it appeared, in what they had attached to the ends of their long arms.
"What is this stuff?" Laura asked as they wound their way deeper into the labyrinth.
"Oh, low-priority things like reusable scrap, plastic sheeting for the morphing units, other raw materials that weather well."
"Morphing units?" Laura asked.
Griffith reached out to restrain Laura as a Model Six backed out of a shed carrying a pallet. The robot stopped, and the electronic chirping of its reverse gear fell silent. Its searchlights turned in tandem to find the small group.
The three human sightseers proceeded on, and Laura wondered whether Griffith was always that careful or whether the computer's errors were the cause of new concern.
"Morphing," Griffith answered, long after Laura had forgotten her question, "is the way we fabricate plastic, and now some metal components. You used to have to design and build a prototype part, construct a mold around it, and pour molten plastic or metal into the mold. Now, we go straight from computer design to the morphing unit, which presses a superheated form straight into a big flat sheet. The key is in the rapid shaping of the form. If you watch the unit work, this flat surface pops up in the blink of an eye into the exact shape that the computer designed. The sheet on top gets melted around it and hardens instantly. The great benefit is that using morphing units, you can implement a manufacturing design change literally in milliseconds. Once the computer designs the component, it just" — Griffith snapped his fingers—"boom — punches it out. And it can switch from part A to part B to part C with absolutely no retooling — no delay whatsoever in production. We just keep feeding it the sheeting, or at least the robots do."
They turned down a different row, following the foreman with his pen board and paying no attention to the ever-lengthening shadows thrown by the lights on the assembly building's walls.
"It should be around here somewhere," the foreman said, and Laura saw that the two blinking dots on the map — one green, the other red were very close. They walked farther into the growing darkness in search of yet another of Gray's new species.
The width of the aisle through the mounds of supplies had grown irregular, and the passage itself began to twist and turn. Up ahead, an island of tenting covered ubiquitous dark shapes and split the aisle down which they searched in two. Stocks of black tires lined the walls. They wandered ever more slowly through the inky maze, and the foreman stopped to get his bearings by reference to the assembly building.
"It should be right here," he said, holding the board up for Griffith and Laura to see. The green and red dots glowed steadily now and completely overlapped. "I mean, like, right…"
A dark shape descended into the narrow canyon of tires, and Laura's heart leapt straight into her throat. It was a long, black leg not ten feet in front of them. She threw her arm out, striking the surprised foreman in the chest. Another leg soundlessly joined the first, and the large body of the giant metal spider crested the top of the wall and crept down into the hollows ahead, blocking their path.
Laura turned and fled, crashing hard into the wall of tires just behind her.
Her companions instinctively took flight, but stopped beside Laura after just a couple of steps. "It's all right!" Griffith said testily.
"Jesus, Laura." Griffith held his chest and seemed suddenly out of breath.
Laura turned with dread to watch the enormous mechanical creature lowering the last of its slender legs to the pavement.