The captain did so, then said, “It hasn’t moved and I think its hands are gripping the net even more tightly. Obviously it doesn’t want us to pass. What’s the next thing?”
“Move around behind me,” said Prilicla. “It may consider you to be a threat even though you’ve taken no hostile action. Your body mass is over twice that of the robot, your limbs are long and thick and strange to it. My body is also strange but I don’t believe anyone or anything would consider me a threat or, hopefully, wish to harm me physically.
“Then I want you to return to Rhabwar,” he went on before the other could respond. “Move the ship away, a distance of half a mile should be enough, and come back for me when I signal. You will not have a long wait because fairly soon I will be close to the limit of my physical endurance.”
The other was radiating such a combination of surprise, bewilderment, and intense concern for his safely, that it was mak-mg his limbs tremble.
“Friend Fletcher,” he said firmly, “I need the area of this ship to be totally clear of all extraneous emotional interference, especially yours.”
The captain exhaled so deeply that the sound in his headset like a rushing wind, then it said, “You mean you want to be left alone and unprotected in an alien ship while you try to pick up emotional radiation from a machine? With respect, Doctor, I think you’re mad. If I allowed you to do that, Pathologist Mur-chison would have my guts for garters.”
It was a colorful and physiologically-inaccurate Earth-human expression Prilicla had encountered before, and knew its meaning. He said firmly, “But you will allow it and do exactly as I say, friend Fletcher, because this is a disaster site and I have the rank.”
Gradually the principal source of emotional interference that was Fletcher diminished with distance as the captain retraced its path to their entry point and jetted towards Rhabwar, and a few minutes later the faint background of emotional noise from the ambulance ship’s crew was gone as well. Very slowly and cautiously Prilicla extended one long, fragile arm and moved dose to the robot.
“I think I’m mad, too,” he said softly to himself.
Lightly he touched the robot in the center of what he assumed was the cranial swelling on its forebody. His gloves were nsulated but very thin and he was expecting anything from a faint, tingling sensation to a lethal bolt of lightning, but nothing happened at all.
He concentrated his entire mind on his empathic faculty to force it into maximum sensitivity. As well as receiving the emo-ional radiation of patients, injured casualties, and accident sur-ivors, he possessed a projective empathic ability which, if the receiving entity was not too distressed by fear or pain, could be used to pacify and reassure. It was the reason why most people felt good around him and why he had so many friends. As an id to focusing the effect rather than in an effort to communicate, he began to speak.
“I mean you no harm,” he said. “If you are in trouble, sick, injured, or malfunctioning, I want to help you. Disregard my liter shape and that of the other person who was with me, and the others you may meet. We must look strange and frightening to you, but we all mean you well…”
He repeated the message while continuing to project reassurance, sympathy, and friendship at maximum intensity and, while doing so, he moved his hand to the middle of the robot’s body and changed his touch into a soft, gentle push.
Abruptly it released its grip on the netting with four of its hands and used the other two to pull itself rapidly away from him. It was about to disappear forward beyond the range of his light when it paused and began to move back towards him again. When it was about five meters distant it stopped, then began to move away more slowly.
Plainly it wanted him to follow it, which, after a moment of fearful hesitation, he did.
The passageway was leading directly towards a complex structure that seemed to fill the interior of the vessel’s bow section. The bracing members radiating from it and the framework of the passageway he was following were festooned with cable looms, many showing the distinctive color-coding of the outer hull’s sensor network.
He was beginning to feel something.
“Are you doing this,” he called ahead to the to the robot he was following, “or is it your superintelligent captain robot?”
It continued moving forward without replying. There was nothing on its silvery body surface that resembled a mouth, so probably it couldn’t.
The feeling that came to him was so tenuous that it verged on the insubstantial, but it was increasing slowly in strength. At first he was unsure whether it was originating from one mind or a group of them; then he decided that it was coming from two separate thinking and feeling beings. Both of them felt distressed and frightened, and, as well, one was puzzled and intensely curious while the other was radiating the claustrophobic panic characteristic of close confinement and sensory deprivation.
So far as he could feel, neither of them were in any pain nor were they exhibiting the fear characteristic of imminent termination, but then, he thought, thinking robots might not have such feelings. For a more accurate emotional reading he needed to get much closer to them, but that was triply impossible.
He was at the end of the passage and facing the solid wall of the structure that probably housed them. Although there was a convenient panel filled with colored buttons and switches, he had no idea of the operating principles of the actuator mechanism that would allow entry or the damage he might do — not least to himself — if he tried and failed. And most important of all, he was fast running out of conscious time.
Prilicla was still frightened but for some odd reason he no longer felt threatened by his situation. Still, it would be considered an act of utter stupidity and carelessness if he were to fall asleep in the middle of an alien starship.
CHAPTER 12
When Prilicla wakened he felt rested and clearheaded but he was also feeling, in spite of the source being half the ship’s length away, the angry impatience of the captain. He had been semicomatose from fatigue when he had returned from the alien vessel, and had not been able to make a coherent report, and now friend Fletcher was waiting to talk to him. The trouble was that he was still feeling so confused by his discoveries inside the ship that the report would sound incoherent. He needed more time to think.
Cowardice — both physical and moral — and procrastination were second nature to him. He flew down the central well to the casualty deck and used its communicator to contact Pathologist Murchison for a detailed report on the condition of Terragar’s casualties.
It told him that Captain Davidson and the two surviving officers were stable, responding to the limited treatment available in a temporary medical facility, and being maintained on a regimen of IV feeding and heavy sedation. Personally, it felt that the quarantine arrangements between the patients and the ambulance ship were totally unnecessary, and a rapid casualty transfer to Rhabwar and a fast return to Sector General for more aggressive treatment were indicated. It ended by saying that the investigation and first-contact situation with a bunch of intelligent robots was a technical matter and none of their medical business Prilicla was unable to detect the pathologist’s emotional radiation from orbit, naturally, but he could imagine the intense irritation and concern it and the rest of the team were feeling for their patients. He also knew that friend Fletcher would be routinely monitoring all radio traffic between the ship and the surface so that what he was about to say would mean that he could not delay speaking to the captain any longer.
“Friend Murchison,” he said gently, “I don’t foresee an immediate return to Sector General because the situation here is becoming more complicated. There are two other-species casualties on the alien vessel who may also require attention…”