“Can’t help it,” said D.G. “If we had the antigravity that the technos keep promising us just this side of eternity, it would be different.” He stared at the chart again and said, “She says it would be along this river about sixty kilometers upstream from where it runs into this larger one. If she is correct.”
“You keep doubting it,” said Chandrus Nadirhaba, whose insigne showed him to be Navigator and responsible for bringing the ship down in the correct spot—or, in any case, the indicated spot. His dark skin and neat mustache accentuated the handsome strength of his face.
“She’s recalling a situation over a time gap of twenty decades,” said D.G. “What details would you remember of a site you haven’t seen for just three decades? She’s not a robot. She may have forgotten.”
“Then what was the point of bringing her?” muttered Oser. “And the other one and the robot? It unsettles the crew and I don’t exactly like it, either.”
D.G. looked up, eyebrows bunching together. He said in a low voice, “It doesn’t matter on this ship what you don’t like or what the crew doesn’t like, mister. I have the responsibility and I make the decisions. We’re all liable to be dead within six hours of landing unless that woman can save us.”
Nadirhaba said coolly, “If we die, we die. We wouldn’t be Traders if we didn’t know that sudden death was the other side of big profits. And for this mission, we’re all volunteers. Just the same, it doesn’t hurt to know where the death’s coming from, Captain. If you’ve figured it out, does it have to be a secret?”
“No, it doesn’t. The Solarians are supposed to have left, but suppose a couple of hundred stayed quietly behind just to watch the store, so to speak.”
“Not so secret,” said D.G. “Solaria is littered with robots. That’s the whole reason Settler ships landed on the world in the first place. Each remaining Solarian might have a trillion robots at his disposal. An enormous army.”
Eban Kalaya was in charge of communications. So far he had said nothing, aware as he was of his Junior status, which seemed further marked by the fact that he was the only one of the four officers present without facial hair of any kind. Now he ventured a remark. “Robots,” he said, “cannot injure human beings.”
“So we are told,” said D.G. dryly, “but what do we know about robots? What we do know is that two ships have been destroyed and about a hundred human beings—good Settlers all—have been killed on widely separated parts of a world littered with robots. How could it have been done except by robots? We don’t, know what kind of orders a Solarian might give robots or by what tricks the so-called First Law of Robotics might be circumvented.
“So we,” he went on, “have to do a little circumventing of our own. As best as we can tell from the reports reaching us from the other ships before they were destroyed, all the men on board ship debarked on landing. It was an empty world after all and they wanted to stretch their legs, breathe fresh air, and look over the robots they had come to get. Their ships were unprotected and they themselves unready when the attack came.
“That won’t happen this time. I’m getting off, but the rest of you are going to stay on board the ship or, in its near vicinity.”
Nadirhaba’s dark eyes glared disapproval. “Why you, Captain? If you need someone to act as bait, anyone, else can be spared more easily than you can be.”
“I appreciate the thought, Navigator,” said D.G., “but I will not be alone. Coming with me well be the Spacer woman and her companions. She is the one who is essential. She may know some of the robots; at any rate, some may know her. I am hoping that though the robots may have been ordered to attack us, they won’t attack her.”
“You mean they’ll remember Ol’ Missy and fall to their knees,” said Nadirhaba dryly.
“If you want to put it that way. That’s why I brought her and that’s why we’ve landed on her estate. And I’ve got to be with her because I’m the one who knows her—somewhat—and I’ve got to see that she behaves. Once we have survived by using her as a shield and in that way have learned exactly what we’re facing, we can proceed on our own. We won’t need her any more.”
Oser said, “And then what do we do with her? Jettison her into space?”
D.G. roared, “We take her back to Aurora!”
Oser said, “I’m bound to tell you, Captain, that the crew would consider that a wasteful and unnecessary trip. They will feel that we can simply leave her on this blasted world. It’s where she comes from, after all.”
“Yes,” said D.G. “That will be the day, won’t it, when I take orders from the crew.”
“I’m sure you won’t,” said Oser, “but the crew has its opinions and an unhappy crew makes for a dangerous voyage.”
6. THE CREW
24
Gladia stood on the soil of Solaria. She smelled the vegetation—not quite the odors of Aurora—and at once she crossed the gap of twenty decades.
Nothing, she knew, could bring back associations in the way that odors could. Not sights, not sounds.
Just that faint, unique smell brought back childhood, the freedom of running about, with a dozen robots watching her carefully—the excitement of seeing other children sometimes, coming to a halt, staring shyly, approaching one another a half-step at a time, reaching out to touch, and then a robot saying, “Enough, Miss Gladia,” and being led away—looking over the shoulder at the other child, with whom there was another set of attendant robots in charge.
She remembered the day that she was told that only by holovision would she see other human beings thereafter.
“Seeing.” Viewing, she was told—not seeing. The robots said as though it were a word they must not say, so that they had to whisper it. She could see them, but they were not human.
It was not so bad at first. The images she could talk to were three-dimensional, free-moving. They could talk, run, turn cartwheels if they wished—but they could not be felt. And then she was told that she could actually see someone whom she had often viewed and whom she had liked. He was a grown man, quite a bit older than she was, though he looked quite young, as one did on Solaria. She would have permission to continue to see him—if she wished whenever necessary.
She wished. She remembered how it was—exactly how it was on that first day. She was tongue-tied and so was he. They circled each other, afraid to touch.—But it was marriage.
Of course it was. And then they met again—seeing, viewing, because it was marriage. They would finally touch each other. They were supposed to.
It was the most exciting day of her life—until it took place.
Fiercely, Gladia stopped her thoughts. Of what use to go on? She so warm and eager; he so cold and withdrawn. He continued to be cold. When he came to see her, at fixed intervals, for the rites that might (or might not) succeed in impregnating her, it was with such clear revulsion that she was soon longing for him to forget. But he was a man duty and he never forgot.
Then came the time, years of dragging unhappiness later, when she found him dead, his skull crushed, and herself as the only possible suspect. Elijah Baley had saved her then and she had been taken away from Solaria and sent to Aurora.
Now she was back, smelling Solaria.
Nothing else was familiar. The house in the distance bore no resemblance to anything she remembered even faintly. In twenty decades it had been modified, torn down, rebuilt. She could not even gain any sense of familiarity with the ground itself.