Nothing happened.
“You have to turn out the Vednier control!” Arnold shouted at the machine. “If you don’t, you’re violating your own principles!” He punched the button again and, enunciating with painful clarity, read the description again.
Nothing happened.
Gregor had a sudden terrible suspicion. He walked to the back of the Configurator, found what he had feared, and pointed it out to Arnold.
There was a manufacturer’s plate bolted there. It read: Class 3 Configurator. Made by VednierLaboratories, Vednierll.
“So they’ve already used it for that,” Arnold said.
Gregor said nothing. There just didn’t seem to be anything to say.
Mildew was beginning to form inside the spaceship, and rust had appeared on the steel plate in the stern. The machine still listened to the partners’ hymn to repetition, but did nothing about it.
The problem of another meal came up. Fruit was out because of the apple pie, as were all meats, fish, milk products, and cereals. At last they dined sparsely on frog’s legs, baked grasshoppers (from an Old Chinese recipe), and fillet of iguana. But now with lizards, insects, and amphibians used up, they knew that their machine-made meals were at an end.
Both men were showing signs of strain. Gregor’s long face was bonier than ever. Arnold found traces of mildew in his hair. Outside, the rain poured ceaselessly, dripped past the portholes and into the moist earth. The spaceship began to settle, burying itself under its own weight.
For the next meal they could think of nothing.
Then Gregor conceived a final idea.
He thought it over carefully. Another failure would shatter their badly bent morale. But, slim though the chance of success might be, he had to try it.
Slowly he approached the Configurator. Arnold looked up, frightened by the wild light gleaming in his eyes.
“Gregor! What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to give this thing one last command,” Gregor said hoarsely. With a trembling hand he punched the button and whispered his request.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then Arnold shouted, “Get back!”
The machine was quivering and shaking, dials twitching, lights flickering. Heat and energy indicators flashed through red into purple.
“What did you tell it to produce?” Arnold asked.
“I didn’t tell it to produce anything,” Gregor said. “I told it to reproduce!”
The Configurator gave a convulsive shudder and emitted a cloud of black smoke. The partners coughed and gasped for air.
When the smoke cleared away the Configurator was still there, its paint chipped, and several indicators bent out of shape. And beside it, glistening with black machine oil, was a duplicate Configurator.
“You’ve done it!” Arnold cried. “You’ve saved us!”
“I’ve done more than that,” Gregor said, with weary satisfaction. “I’ve made our fortunes.” He turned to the duplicate Configurator, pressed its button and cried, “Reproduce yourself!”
Within a week, Arnold, Gregor and three Configurators were back in Kennedy Spaceport, their work on Dennett completed. As soon as they landed, Arnold left the ship and caught a taxi. He went first to Canal Street, then to midtown New York. His business didn’t take long, and within a few hours he was back at the ship.
“Yes, it’s all right,” he called to Gregor. “I contacted several different jewelers. We can dispose of about twenty big stones without depressing the market. After that, I think we should have the Configurators concentrate on platinum for a while, and then—what’s wrong?”
Gregor looked at him sourly. “Notice anything different?”
“Huh?” Arnold stared around the cabin, at Gregor, and at the Configurators. Then he noticed it.
There were four Configurators in the cabin, where there had been only three.
“You had them reproduce another?” Arnold said. “Nothing wrong with that. Just tell them to turn out a diamond apiece—”
“You still don’t get it,” Gregor said sadly. “Watch.”
He pressed the button on the nearest Configurator and said, “A diamond.”
The Configurator began to quiver.
“You and your damned pleasure principle,” Gregor said. “Repetition! These damned machines are sex mad.”
The machine shook all over, and produced—
Another Configurator.
Robotvendor Rex
At thirteen hundred hours, Mordecai Gaston’s front door scanner announced the arrival of Federal Mail Carrier 193CU (robot), temporarily replacing Fred Billings, out on sick leave. “Just put it through the slot,” Gaston called from the bathroom. “Requires a signature,” his scanner told him.
Gaston wrapped himself in a towel and went out. The robot postman was a large cylinder painted red, white, and blue and equipped with wheels and treads. It also had a lift control slaved to the Dade-Broward power grid so it could soar over traffic jams and open drawbridges. The robot extruded a piece of paper and a ballpoint pen. Gaston signed. The FMC robot said, “Thank you, sir.” A panel opened in its side, and a large package slid out.
Gaston knew it was the miniflier that he had ordered last week from Personal Transports, Inc., of Coral Gables. He carried the package out to his terrace, removed the interlock, and activated the assembly-memory. The package unfolded, and the machine assembled itself. When it was done, Gaston had an openwork aluminum basket with a simple set of controls, a bright yellow battery box that also served as the pilot’s seat, and a sealed power unit that slaved the flier to the Dade County power grid.
He got in and switched on. The power indicator light glowed a healthy red. Gaston touched the joystick lightly, and the little machine lifted into the air. Soon he was high above Fort Lauderdale, flying west over the Everglades. He could see the curve of Florida’s long Atlantic beach on one side, the dark green of the Everglades on the other. Miami was a shimmering heat haze to die south. He was almost halfway across the great swamp when the power indicator blinked three times and went out. The flier began to fall. Only then Gaston remembered the TV advisory he had heard last night: a brief power shutdown to allow Collier County to come into the grid.
He waited for the flier’s microprocessor to switch automatically to battery. But the power indicator stayed off. Suddenly Gaston had a terrible suspicion why. He looked inside the battery box. No battery. Only a sticker pasted in the lid telling him where he could buy one.
He was falling toward a flat, monotonous green-gray world of mangrove, palmetto, and sawgrass. He had time to remember that he had also neglected to fasten his seat belt or wear a crash helmet. Then his flier hit the water, rose again, and slammed hard into a mangrove thicket. Gaston passed out.
It must have been only minutes later when he recovered consciousness. The water around the mangrove island was still frothed. The flier was wedged into the close-woven network of mangrove boughs. Their resiliency had saved his life.
That was the good news. The bad news was, he was lying inside the flier in a really uncomfortable position, and when he tried to get up, a flash of pain went through his left leg, and he almost passed out. The leg was twisted under him at a strange angle.
It was a really stupid accident. The Rescue Squad was going to ask some embarrassing questions when they came to get him…
But when would that be?
Nobody knew he was out here, unless the robot postman had seen him fly off. But robots were not permitted to talk about what they saw people do.
In an hour he was supposed to be playing tennis with his best friend, Marty Fenn. When he didn’t show up, Marty would telephone his apartment.
Gaston’s scanner would announce that he was out. That’s all it would say.
Marty would keep on phoning. After a day or so he’d get really worried. He had an extra key, he’d probably check Gaston’s apartment. He’d find the carton the flier came in. He’d figure Gaston had gone for a ride. But how could he tell in what direction? Gaston could be halfway across the United States by now, riding the grids all the way to California. There’d be no reason to start looking for him in the Everglades, no reason to assume he’d crashed.