Afterwards he rested on the seat-bed. He could not work out in the sun during the middle of the day. He had to remember that there was too little oxygen in the air to support strenuous effort over any length of time. He had to remember that he was sick, really sick. He wondered if the robot had been programmed to feel its hurts. He hoped not. “It is such a waste,” he whispered once. Pain was such a waste.
Later he went back and stared down at the burial mound. “I’m sorry for you,” he said. “None of it is really your fault.” He shoved over the rocks he had accumulated there at the edge. Tomorrow he would have to go farther afield to get the rocks to add to the pile. It was time then to get back to the safety of the chimney. In the days that followed he was building a new world, laboriously adding to the foundations, or raising new walls of incredible beauty. Sometime he was building a simple house for Lar. Again it was a monument to mankind that he was erecting. It was an edifice that required exquisite care. His selection of his material was meticulous, his handling of the building blocks almost gentle, his concern for the thing under his corner-stone was urgent. He talked to it incessantly, describing the stones he was using, explaining the purpose of the building. Sometimes he merely worked doggedly, refusing to think about the condition of his body, the condition of his mind, hinted at by the great, growing gaps when he could remember nothing at all of what he did, or what he thought. The voices were in the dinghy constantly now, remaining there when he left, continuing when he returned. Sometimes it was the voices that directed him in the preparation of food, or reminded him to take medicine, or to set the timer, or to move to the chimney before the winds came. He would have died without the voices leading him through the bad hours. He selected the rocks he would use with infinite patience, rejecting those that were too jagged, feeling happiness when he came across one of particularly pleasing shape or colour. These he examined many times before pushing them over the side. He would tell it about the rocks he was sending to it. His voice was low and kind when he spoke to it.
He talked to it of the Outsiders. “They will push us back to the three worlds of the Solar System,” he said. “Then we’ll have to learn many new things, how to live on only three worlds, how to use the land we’ll have then. It won’t be easy. But we can’t fight them, you know.” He spoke to it about Lar, about Duncan, about death and life. It never answered him. The sweep of its laser was the only sign that it still lived. He began waiting for the beam to reach the wall of the cliff before he went on after telling it something new. When it touched the side of the cliff and started back towards the other side, it was his signal that he was to continue. Back and forth, from one side of the passage to the other, sixteen feet here at the entrance.
He felt particularly pleased with it when it made some unexpected gain, clearing more of the rubble from itself than he had anticipated, freeing one of its sensors, or widening the range of its beam. Almost regretfully he would push the rocks over the edge then, as if ashamed to continue in the face of such courage.
He asked the voices if it actually possessed courage, and they debated the answer for days without coming to a decision. Then his radio hummed and the panel light went on and he knew the relief ship was within radio range. When his report was given and the radio went silent he found that tears were on his cheeks, the sound of a voice that was not inside his head had released the hysteria that had been accumulating for a month. He went outside to the edge of the cliff and shouted at the robot.
“It’s over now, brother! They’ll be here in a few hours and then you’ll be finished for good! Do you know what I’m saying to you?”
He waited until the beam bit into the side of the crevice wall and started to swing back towards the other side, and he nodded. It knew. It wouldn’t matter now if it did get loose. They could find it and drop bombs on it wherever it went. Again it was the hunted, no longer the hunter. He laughed his relief. He didn’t push any more rocks over the edge. Let it struggle.
He went back inside and bathed. He ate and then polished up the dinghy. He even washed the all weather suit. He had the relief ship on the radar screen and he sat watching its approach with satisfaction. Twice he went back to the cliff and looked down at the robot, measuring its progress. As he watched, the pile of loose rocks and sand shifted, rocks tumbling and rolling away from the hill. It was frantic, he knew, just as he had been frantic waiting for its arrival. He said softly, “I am sorry, brother. You fought a good fight all the way…”
For the first time, there was no overtone of fear and hatred in his voice when he addressed it. It had always done exactly what it had been designed to do, no more, certainly no less than that. The radio beep recalled him to the dinghy.
“Captain Tracy, this is General MacClure speaking. Congratulations, Trace. You’ve done a magnificent job down there. You’ll be rewarded handsomely… you can be sure of that. You name it, boy, whatever you want… We have aboard an army scientist, Trace. Colonel Langtree. Answer his questions, Captain Tracy.”
“Yes, sir,” Trace said, bewildered. He had heard once that Langtree had been one of the scientists who let the robot get away from Venus. He waited. Presently the thinner, more petulant voice of the scientist was in his ears.
“Captain, you say the robot is not destroyed? Is that right?”
“Yes, sir, that is correct.”
“To what extent is it damaged?”
For the next half-hour Trace answered the scientist’s questions, describing in detail the pursuit over the mountains, the activities of the robot since its entrapment, the abilities he had been able to observe while it was still free. There was silence for five minutes after the“ questioning and then MacClure was back.
“Trace, you are going to be picked up and brought aboard. We will give rendezvous co-ordinates immediately after this communication. Now, tell me this: is the robot within radio range?”
“Yes, sir. The dinghy is within a hundred and fifty feet of it.”
“Good. Turn your receiver on loud, so that it can hear. We want it, Trace. The Outsiders won’t negotiate worth a damn. The one ultimatum was it, with no area for negotiations. They insist that we withdraw back to the Solar System to be kept there in quarantine until we meet their requirements to qualify us as legitimate space travellers. It will be death to the World Group. We can’t fight them now, but if we have that robot, learn how it has developed that screen and adapt it to our ships… build more robots with that shield… We’ll take the entire galaxy, Trace, Outsiders and all. They don’t have anything that can compare to that invisibility shield. We need the robot. You’re going to be the biggest hero since Prometheus, Trace.”
What MacClure had said was true. Trace would be the biggest hero in the galaxy; it was in MacClure’s voice when he spoke to him, a note of deference already. The note would echo, would boom. This then was what the forty days had been for. Trace laughed in exultation and turned up the radio so that the robot could hear. He went outside to watch it, to hear with it the words coming from the ship. A three-foot segment of the cliff edge had been vaporised in a precise semicircular pattern. Trace stayed away from that area. Langtree’s voice sounded loud and close.
“You, Dr. Vianti’s robot, this is Colonel Langtree speaking to you. I know you can hear me and understand my words. I have a message for you. You understand about destruction and death. You understand about preserving your own life. You are trapped and doomed to destruction now. You know that we can drop bombs on you from miles above you, out of reach of your laser. You have seen these bombs; you learned about them back on Venus. Scan your memory banks and you will know that I did not want your destruction under the seas of Venus. That was a mistake. We want you alive and functioning. We want to learn from you, and we want to provide you with more abilities. We can do this. You know we can give you more abilities, better abilities. You must cooperate with us or we will destroy you.”