In anticipation, he began humming a chanty about the sea he had never seen. The cattrack hummed downward between the walls of the road that had been crudely bulldozed from the rubble of the crater. Then they broke out into the open, and he could see the dome and the territory around it.
Hal grunted in surprise. “That’s odd. I hoped the supply rocket would be in. But what are those three ships doing there?”
Sam switched back to wide-angle lenses and stared toward the side. The three ships didn’t look like supply rockets. They resembled the old wreck that still stood at the far end of the crater, surrounded by the supply capsules that had been sent on automatic control to keep the stranded crew alive until rescue could be sent. The only other such ships were those used by the third expedition. But they had been parked in orbit around Earth after the end of the third expedition fifty years ago. Once the Base was established, their capacity had no longer been needed and they were inefficient for routine supply and rotation of the men here.
Before he could comment on the ships, the buzzer sounded, indicating that Base had spotted the cattrack. Sam flipped the switch and acknowledged the call.
“Hi, Sam.” It was the voice of Dr. Robert Smithers, the leader of Lunar Base. “Butt out, will you? I want to talk to Hal.”
Sam could have tuned hi on the communication frequency with his own receptors, since the signal was strong enough at this distance. But he obeyed the order to avoid listening as Hal reached for the handset. There was no way to detune his audio receptors, however. He heard Hal’s greeting. Then there was silence for at least a minute.
The man’s face was shocked and serious when he finally spoke again. “But that’s damned nonsense, Chief. Earth got over such insanity half a century ago. There hasn’t been a sign of… Yes, sir… All right, sir. Thanks for not taking off without me.”
He hung up the set, shaking his head. When he faced Sam, his expression was unreadable. “Full speed, Sam.”
“There’s trouble,” Sam guessed. He threw the cattrack into its top speed of thirty miles an hour, fighting and straining with the controls. Only a robot could manage the tricky Machine at such a rate over the crude road, and it require^his full attention.
Hal’s voice waV strange and harsh. “We’re being sent back to Earth. Big trouble, Sam. But what can you know of war and rumors of war?”
“War was a dangerous form of political insanity, outlawed at the conference of 1998,” Sam quoted from a speech that had come over the radio. “Human warfare has now become unthinkable.”
“Yeah. Human war.” Hal made a rough sound in his throat. “But not inhuman war, it seems. And that’s what it will be, if it comes. Oh hell, stop looking so gloomy. It’s not your problem.”
Sam decided against chuckling this time, though references to his set, unsmiling expression were usually meant to be a form of humor. He filed the puzzling words away in his permanent memory for later consideration.
The terminator was rushing across the lunar surface, and it would soon be night. The crater wall was already casting a shadow over most of the area. But sunlight still reached the Base, and the surrounding territory was in glaring light. The undiffused light splashed out sharply from the rocks. Seeing was hard as they neared the dome, and all Sam’s attention had to be directed to his driving. Behind him, he heard Hal getting into the moonsuit to leave the cab.
Sam brought the cattrack to a halt and let Hal out at the entrance to the sealed underground hemisphere of lunar rock that was the true dome. The light upper structure was simply a shield for supplies against the heat of the sun. He drove the machine under that and cut off the motor.
As Sam emerged from the airlock, air gushed out of small cavities of his body. But he felt no discomfort There was only the fault click of a switch inside him to tell him of the change. That switch was simply an emergency measure, designed to turn his power on if there should be a puncture of the dome while he was turned off. It might have been one of the reasons the men liked having him inside, though he hoped there were other explanations. There had been no room in the new robots for such devices.
He saw the Mark Three robots waiting just beyond the entrance as he approached it. There were tracks in the lunar dust leading to the space ships half a mile away. But whatever ferrying they had done was obviously finished, and they were now merely standing in readiness. They were totally unlike him. He was bulky and mechanical, designed only for function hi the early days when men needed help on the Moon. They were almost manlike, under their black enamel, and their size and weight had been pared down to match that of the humans. There had been thirty of them originally, but accidents had left only a few more than twenty. And of the original Mark Ones, only Sam was left.
“When do we leave?” he called to one over the radio circuit.
The black head turned slowly toward him. “We do not know. The men did not tell us.”
“Didn’t you ask them?” he called. But he had no need of their denial. They had not been told to ask.
They were still unformed, less than five years old, and their thoughts were tied to the education given by the computers in the creche. They lacked twenty years of his intimate association with men. But sometimes he wondered whether they would ever learn enough, or whether they had been too strongly repressed in training. Men seemed to be afraid of robots back on Earth, as Hal Norman had once told him, which was why they were still being used only on the Moon.
He turned away from them and went down the entrance to the inner dome. The entrance led to the great Community room, and the men were gathered there, all wearing moonsuits. They were arguing with Hal as Sam began emerging from the lock, but at sight of him the words were cut off. He stared about hi the silence, feeling suddenly awkward.
“Hello, Sam,” Dr. Smithers said finally. He was a tall, spare man of barely thirty, but seven years of responsibility here had etched deep lines into his face and fwt gray in his mustache, though his other hair was still jet black. “All right, Hal. Your things are on the ship. I cut the time prettyjfine waiting for you, so we’re leaving at once. No more ffl-guments. Get out there!”
“Go to hell!” Hal told him. “I don’t desert my friends.”
Other men began moving out. Sam stepped aside to let them pass, but they seemed to avoid looking at him.
Smithers sighed wearily. “Hal, I can’t argue this with you. You’ll go, if I have to chain you. Do you think I like this? But we’re under military orders now. They’re going crazy back on Earth. They didn’t find out about the expected attack until a week ago, as near as I can learn, but they’ve already canceled space. Damn it, I can’t take Sam! We’re at the ragged limit of available lift now, and he represents six hundred pounds of mass—more than four of the others.”
Hal gestured sharply toward the outside. “Then leave four of those behind. He’s worth more than the whole lot of them.”
“Yeah. He is. But my orders specify that all men and the maximum possible number of robots must be returned.” Smithers twisted his lips savagely and suddenly turned to face the robot. “Sam, I’ll give it to you straight. I can’t take you with us. We have to leave you here alone. I’m sorry, but that’s how it has to be.”
“You won’t be alone, Sam,” Hal Norman said. “I’m staying.”
Sam stood silently for a moment, letting it register. His circuits found it hard to integrate. He had never thought of being separated from these men who had been his life. Going back to Earth had been easy to accept; he’d gone back there once before. Little hopes and future-pictures that he hadn’t known were in his mind began to appear.