They both laughed and he threw the pump into the corner with all the other cracked, dirty, broken and discarded machinery.
I Have my Vigil
I am a robot. When I say that, I say everything. And I say nothing. For they built me well on Earth, silver wired, chromed steel, machine turned. They turned out a machine, I, machine, without a soul, of course, which is why I am nothing. I am a machine and I have my duties and my duty is to take care of these three men. Who are now dead.
Just because they are dead does not mean that I can now shirk my duty, no indeed. I am a very high-class and expensive machine, so I may consider the absurdity of what I do even as I do it. But I do it. Like a switched-on lathe I keep turning whether there is metal in the chuck or no, or a turned-on printing press inking and slamming shut my jaws, knowing not nor caring neither whether there is paper there before me.
I am a robot. Cunningly crafted, turned out uniquely, one of a kind, equipped and dispatched on this, the very first starship, to tend it and care for the heroes of mankind. This is their trip and their glory, and I am, as the human expression goes, just along for the ride. A metal servitor serving and continuing to serve. Although. They. Are. Dead.
I will now tell myself once more what happened. Men are not designed to live in the no-space between the stars. Robots are.
Now I will set the table. I set the table. The first one to look out through the thick glass at the nothing that fills the no-space was Hardesty. I set his place at the table. He looked out, then went to his room and killed himself. I found him too late dead with all of the blood from his large body run out through his severed wrists and onto the cabin floor.
Now I knock on Hardesty's door and open it. He lies on his bunk and does not move. He is very pale. I close his door and go to the table and turn his plate over. He will not be eating this meal.
There are two more places to be set at the table, and as my metal fingers clatter against the plates I, through a very obvious process of association, think of the advantages of having metal fingers. Larson had human fingers of flesh, and he locked them onto Neal's throat after he had looked at no-space, and he kept them there, very securely clamped they must have been, remaining so even after Neal had slipped a dinner knife, this knife in fact, between Larson's fourth and fifth ribs on the left-hand side. Neal never did see no-space, not that that rr^ade any difference. He did not move even after I removed, one by one, the fingers of Larson from his throat. He is in his cabin now and "dinner is ready, sir.” I say, knocking, but there is no answer. I open the door and Neal is on the bunk with his eyes closed so I close the door. My electronic olfactory organs have told me that there is something very strong in the cabin.
One. Turn Neal's plate facedown in its place.
Two. Knock on Larson's cabin door.
Three. . Four. .
Five. Turn Larson's plate facedown in its place. I now clear off the table and I think about it. The ship functions and it has looked at no-space. I function and I have looked at no-space. The men do not function and they have looked at no-space.
Machines may travel to the stars; men may not. This is a very important thought, and I must return to Earth and tell the men there about it. Each ship-day after each meal I think this thought again and think how important it is. I have little capacity for original thought; a robot is a machine, and perhaps this is the only original thought I will ever have. Therefore it is an important thought.
I am a very good robot with a very good brain, and perhaps my brain is better made than they knew in the factory. I have had an original thought, and I was not designed for that. I was designed to serve the men on this ship and to speak to them in English, which is a very complex language even for a robot. I English in a German manner do not talk, nor do I, fingers metals, eyes glasses, talk it in the style of the Latin. But I have to know about these things so that I do not do them. Robots are well made.
Watch. With fast feet and long legs I rapidly run to the control column and bash buttons with flickering fingers. I can make words rhyme though I cannot write a poem. I know there is a difference although I do not know what the difference is.
I read the readings. We have been to Alpha Centauri in this ship and we now return. I do not know anything about Alpha Centauri. When we reached Alpha Centauri I turned the ship around and started back to Earth. More important than the incredible novelty of stellar exploration is the message I must take to Earth.
Those words about incredible novelty are not my words but the words I heard once spoken by the man Larson. Robots do not say things like that.
Robots do not have souls, for what would a robot soul look like? A neatly and smoothly machined metal canister? And what would be in the can?
Robots do not have thoughts like that.
I must set the table for dinner. Plates here, forks here, spoons here, knives here.
"I've cut my finger! Damn it — it's bleeding all over the cloth…" BLEEDING? BLEEDING!
I am a robot. I have my work to do. I set the table. There is something red on my metal finger. It must be ketchup from the bottle.
The Velvet Glove
Jon Venex fitted the key into the hotel room door. He had asked for a large room, the largest in the hotel, and had paid the desk clerk extra for it. All he could do now was pray that he hadn't been cheated. He wouldn't dare complain or try to get his money back. He heaved a sigh of relief as the door swung open. The room was bigger than he had expected — fully three feet wide by five feet long. There was more than enough space to work in. He would have his leg off in a jiffy and by morning his limp would be gone.
There was the usual adjustable hook on the back wall. He slipped it through the recessed ring in the back of his neck and kicked himself up until his feet hung free of the floor. His legs relaxed with a rattle as he cut off all power below his waist.
The overworked leg motor would have to cool down before he could work on it, plenty of time to skim through the newspaper. With the chronic worry of the unemployed he snapped it open at the want ads and ran his eye down the "Help Wanted — Robot" column. There was nothing for him under the "Specialist" heading; even the "Unskilled Labor" listings were bare and unpromising. New York was a bad town for robots this year.
The want ads were just as depressing as usual, but he could always get a lift from the comic section. He even had a favorite strip, a fact that he scarcely dared mention to himself — Rattly Robot, a dull-witted mechanical clod who was continually falling over himself and getting into trouble. It was a repellent caricature, but could still be very funny. Jon was just starting to read it when the ceiling light went out.
It was ten P.M., curfew hour for robots. Lights out and lock yourself in until six in the morning, eight hours of boredom and darkness for all except the few night workers. But there were ways of getting around the letter of a law that didn't concern itself with a definition of visible light. Sliding aside some of the shielding around his atomic generator, Jon turned up the gain. As it began to run a little hot the heat waves streamed out — visible to him as infrared rays. He finished reading the paper in the clear light of his abdomen.
With the thermocouple in the tip of his second finger left hand, he tested the temperature of his leg. It was cool enough to work on. The waterproof gasket stripped off easily, exposing the power leads, nerve wires and the weakened knee joint. The wires disconnected, Jon unscrewed the knee above the joint and carefully placed it on the shelf in front of him. With loving care he took the replacement part from his hip pouch. It was the product of toil, purchased with the savings from three months' employment on the Jersey pig farm.