The robot made no reply, and remained silent while Derec went to the autogalley and assembled a lunch. When he came back with it and sat down, he soon became painfully conscious of the robot patiently watching him.
“Whose side are you on, anyway?” Derec asked between mouthfuls.
“Clarify.”
“What are you doing here? I thought you wanted me to skip out. But I couldn’t make a move without you knowing about it.”
“Your conversation with Monitor 5 forced him into recognizing a First Law conflict.”
“You mean his little self-deception fell apart?”
“Monitor 5 is now deeply concerned that you may attempt to escape and harm yourself in the process or as a consequence. To relieve that potential and allow Monitor 5 to return to his duties, I offered to watch you.”
“What about you? Did I make your logic bomb blow up, too?”
“No.”
“So you’re not here to stop me,” Derec said, pushing his plate away. “You’re here to make sure no one else stops me.”
“Your observations are irrelevant to the situation. You have stated your intention to remain in our care.”
“Right.” Derec glanced up at the screen. The ship was still a dark shape without texture, but it now filled fully a third of the frame. “But I still think you expect me to start getting worried and make a move. Well, to show you just how worried I am, I’m going to go in the other room to take a nap,” Derec said, standing. “If you decide to come along, all I ask is that you pick out your own bunk. There isn’t room in mine for two.”
Chapter 6. A Rock And A Hard Place
Analyst 17 did not follow, and Derec did not nap. He lay on his bunk and stared at the ceiling, trying to regain perspective.
The robots’ predicament was real and substantial. It was not only the matter of being frustrated in their attempt to fulfill their Second Law obligations to their master. They were tiptoeing along the edge of a First Law chasm, a paradox capable of paralyzing not only individual robots, but the entire community. He was their first obligation, and yet there was nothing they could do for him but beg him to save himself.
If it were not so serious, it would be laughable. It was as though a person suffering from hiccups had asked a friend, “Please surprise me.” How could he catch the robots off guard, even with Analyst 17’s collaboration?
On top of which, the whole idea of escaping was absurd. Without help from the robots, he couldn’t possibly reassemble the pod before the ship arrived. And even if he could, there was no way it could run from the approaching ship.
If he continued to think of both the robots and the strangers as enemies, there were no solutions to the equation. Only by assuming that the strangers were coming to help him, or would be willing to help him even if they had other purposes there, could he envision a way out. He could wait until the ship was in orbit, then go to the surface in an augment and radio to them for help.
Just then the bunk shuddered under him, and he sat bolt upright. He thought for a moment that he hadn’t felt it, or experienced the sudden start which sometimes comes just before dozing off. But then another tremor shook the room, and he could no longer think it was an illusion. He jumped to his feet and ran across to the wardroom.
Analyst 17 was still sitting there as Derec had left him. “What’s happening?” Derec demanded.
“We are under attack,” the robot said, gesturing toward the com center.
Derec stared at the screen. The ship had tacked to a position where half of its sunward side was visible, allowing Derec to see details for the first time. What he saw confused him. The ship seemed to have been not designed, but collected. It looked more like a space junkyard than a dangerous raider. But raider it was.
Just in the part Derec could see clearly, there were eleven distinct hulls, as well as a tangled matrix of connecting structures. There were ships old enough to be in a museum and others new enough to be a shipwright’s showpiece. Sleek transatmospheric profiles nestled against the cylinders and grips of deep-space haulers. All across the mass of the ship, small red and orange lights were blinking on and off.
“Who are they?” Derec whispered.
“Unknown.”
“Well, didn’t they hail us? What do they want?”
“There was no signal on any frequency commonly used for communication.”
Derec felt another vibration through the floor. “What kind of weapons are they using?”
“The ship’s armament appears to consist primarily of phased microwave lasers.”
“And what do we have to fight back?”
“The community has no weapons.”
“What?” Derec demanded.
The robot’s answer was patient and calm. “It is highly probable that the ship contains humans. We would not be permitted to use weapons against them.”
Derec stared at the robot, then at the screen. Unlike in careless fictions, there were no stabbing beams of brilliant light to betray the energies pouring down from the radar ship. There were only the winking lights, and the ground moving under Derec’s feet. “Are we in danger?”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“The ship began its attack in the area of our only permanent surface installation, the antenna farm located 170 degrees east of the primary shaft-”
“These vibrations we’re feeling are from that far away?”
“Yes. The primary assault was successful and communications are out. A number of tunnels in the region have apparently collapsed. Firing pattern now appears to be random. The ship is currently in a nearly synchronous orbit with a slippage of two degrees per minute.”
“So in less than ninety minutes they’ll be overhead.”
“That is correct.”
It was obvious to Derec that he could wait no longer to act. If the ship breached the complex’s pressure envelope while he was still in the E-cell, he would never get out. The breathers couldn’t keep him alive in a vacuum.
And there was another danger, just as acute-that the power would be interrupted or the lifts disabled, and he would be trapped on the warehouse level. Even in low gravity he did not think he could climb up a lift shaft by hand.
Not that running about on the surface in an augment was as attractive a proposition as it had been a short time ago. The chances were that he would be taken not for a prisoner trying to escape but for an enemy to be destroyed. Even so, dying buried in the icy heart of the asteroid was infinitely less appealing than dying out in the open.
“This logic path that you devised-am I correct in thinking that you and Monitor 5 are the only Supervisors who were able to follow it without hitting a First Law conflict?”
“Yes.”
“Why? Why you?”
“My experience with human beings has provided me with a more sophisticated perspective on their nature and behavior.”
“You’ve had contact with other humans? Besides me?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“I am not permitted to say,”
Dead end. “Are the other robots even aware of what you asked me to try to do?”
“No.”
“How were you going to destroy the complex?”
“The material used to line all the tunnel walls contains an explosive. Once all the other Supervisors have been destroyed, the last Monitor and Analyst will together transmit the trigger signal. The resulting explosion should cause the entire excavated portion of the asteroid to subside.”
“I see,” Derec said. Great, he thought to himself. If I stay in the complex, the raiders will bring it down on my head. If I leave, the robots will blow it up under my feet.
Unless-
Unless there was some way to get off the surface, some source of thrust adequate to give him and his augment escape velocity. Considering the weakness of the asteroid’s gravity, escape velocity did not amount to much. He could probably put a ball in orbit just by throwing it as hard as he could. The leg servos of the augmented suit were likely powerful enough to permit him to literally jump clear.
Unfortunately, the safety regs on augment design required governors on the leg servos to prevent someone from trying exactly that. But what engineers had joined together, tinkerers could tear asunder-