The Golden Age Of Science Fiction Vol Ii Part 31

"Robots and androids frequently look on their makers as their parents," said Jakdane. "Quest may not even know he's artificial. Do you know how Mansard died?"

"The oxygen equipment failed, Quest said."

"Yes. Do you know when?"

"No. Quest never did tell me, that I remember."

"He told me: a year before Quest made his rocket flight to Ganymede! If the oxygen equipment failed, how do you think Quest lived in the poisonous atmosphere of Jupiter, if he's human?"

Trella was silent.

"For the protection of humans, there are two psychological traits built into every robot and android," said Jakdane gently. "The first is that they can never, under any circ.u.mstances, attack a human being, even in self defense. The second is that, while they may understand s.e.xual desire objectively, they can never experience it themselves.

"Those characteristics fit your man Quest to a T, Trella. There is no other explanation for him: he must be an android."

Trella did not want to believe Jakdane was right, but his reasoning was una.s.sailable. Looking upon Quest as an android, many things were explained: his great strength, his short, broad build, his immunity to injury, his refusal to defend himself against a human, his inability to return Trella's love for him.

It was not inconceivable that she should have unknowingly fallen in love with an android. Humans could love androids, with real affection, even knowing that they were artificial. There were instances of android nursemaids who were virtually members of the families owning them.

She was glad now that she had not told Quest of her mission to Ganymede. He thought he was Dr. Mansard's son, but an android had no legal right of inheritance from his owner. She would leave it to Dom Blessing to decide what to do about Quest.

Thus she did not, as she had intended originally, speak to Quest about seeing him again after she had completed her a.s.signment. Even if Jakdane was wrong and Quest was human--as now seemed unlikely--Quest had told her he could not love her. Her best course was to try to forget him.

Nor did Quest try to arrange with her for a later meeting.

"It has been pleasant knowing you, Trella," he said when they left the G-boat at White Sands. A faraway look came into his blue eyes, and he added: "I'm sorry things couldn't have been different, somehow."

"Let's don't be sorry for what we can't help," she said gently, taking his hand in farewell.

Trella took a fast plane from White Sands, and twenty-four hours later walked up the front steps of the familiar brownstone house on the outskirts of Was.h.i.+ngton.

Dom Blessing himself met her at the door, a stooped, graying man who peered at her over his spectacles.

"You have the papers, eh?" he said, spying the brief case. "Good, good. Come in and we'll see what we have, eh?"

She accompanied him through the bare, windowless anteroom which had always seemed to her such a strange feature of this luxurious house, and they entered the big living room. They sat before a fire in the old-fas.h.i.+oned fireplace and Blessing opened the brief case with trembling hands.

"There are things here," he said, his eyes sparkling as he glanced through the notebooks. "Yes, there are things here. We shall make something of these, Miss Trella, eh?"

"I'm glad they're something you can use, Mr. Blessing," she said. "There's something else I found on my trip, that I think I should tell you about."

She told him about Quest.

"He thinks he's the son of Dr. Mansard," she finished, "but apparently he is, without knowing it, an android Dr. Mansard built on Jupiter."

"He came back to Earth with you, eh?" asked Blessing intently.

"Yes. I'm afraid it's your decision whether to let him go on living as a man or to tell him he's an android and claim owners.h.i.+p as Dr. Mansard's heir."

Trella planned to spend a few days resting in her employer's s.p.a.cious home, and then to take a short vacation before resuming her duties as his confidential secretary. The next morning when she came down from her room, a change had been made.

Two armed men were with Dom Blessing at breakfast and accompanied him wherever he went. She discovered that two more men with guns were stationed in the bare anteroom and a guard was stationed at every entrance to the house.

"Why all the protection?" she asked Blessing.

"A wealthy man must be careful," said Blessing cheerfully. "When we don't understand all the implications of new circ.u.mstances, we must be prepared for anything, eh?"

There was only one new circ.u.mstance Trella could think of. Without actually intending to, she exclaimed: "You aren't afraid of Quest? Why, an android can't hurt a human!"

Blessing peered at her over his spectacles.

"And what if he isn't an android, eh? And if he is--what if old Mansard didn't build in the prohibition against harming humans that's required by law? What about that, eh?"

Trella was silent, shocked. There was something here she hadn't known about, hadn't even suspected. For some reason, Dom Blessing feared Dr. Eriklund Mansard ... or his heir ... or his mechanical servant.

She was sure that Blessing was wrong, that Quest, whether man or android, intended no harm to him. Surely, Quest would have said something of such bitterness during their long time together on Ganymede and as.p.a.ce, since he did not know of Trella's connection with Blessing. But, since this was to be the atmosphere of Blessing's house, she was glad that he decided to a.s.sign her to take the Mansard papers to the New York laboratory.

Quest came the day before she was scheduled to leave.

Trella was in the living room with Blessing, discussing the instructions she was to give to the laboratory officials in New York. The two bodyguards were with them. The other guards were at their posts.

Trella heard the doorbell ring. The heavy oaken front door was kept locked now, and the guards in the anteroom examined callers through a tiny window.

Suddenly alarm bells rang all over the house. There was a terrific crash outside the room as the front door splintered. There were shouts and the sound of a shot.

"The steel doors!" cried Blessing, turning white. "Let's get out of here."

He and his bodyguards ran through the back of the house out of the garage.

Blessing, ahead of the rest, leaped into one of the cars and started the engine.

The door from the house shattered and Quest burst through. The two guards turned and fired together.

He could be hurt by bullets. He was staggered momentarily.

Then, in a blur of motion, he sprang forward and swept the guards aside with one hand with such force that they skidded across the floor and lay in an unconscious heap against the rear of the garage. Trella had opened the door of the car, but it was wrenched from her hand as Blessing stepped on the accelerator and it leaped into the driveway with spinning wheels.

Quest was after it, like a chunky deer, running faster than Trella had ever seen a man run before.

Blessing slowed for the turn at the end of the driveway and glanced back over his shoulder. Seeing Quest almost upon him, he slammed down the accelerator and twisted the wheel hard.

The car whipped into the street, careened, and rolled over and over, bringing up against a tree on the other side in a twisted tangle of wreckage.

With a horrified gasp, Trella ran down the driveway toward the smoking heap of metal. Quest was already beside it, probing it. As she reached his side, he lifted the torn body of Dom Blessing. Blessing was dead.

"I'm lucky," said Quest soberly. "I would have murdered him."

"But why, Quest? I knew he was afraid of you, but he didn't tell me why."

"It was conditioned into me," answered Quest "I didn't know it until just now, when it ended, but my father conditioned me psychologically from my birth to the task of hunting down Dom Blessing and killing him. It was an unconscious drive in me that wouldn't release me until the task was finished.

"You see, Blessing was my father's a.s.sistant on Ganymede. Right after my father completed development of the surgiscope, he and my mother blasted off for Io. Blessing wanted the valuable rights to the surgiscope, and he sabotaged the s.h.i.+p's drive so it would fall into Jupiter.

"But my father was able to control it in the heavy atmosphere of Jupiter, and landed it successfully. I was born there, and he conditioned me to come to Earth and track down Blessing. I know now that it was part of the conditioning that I was unable to fight any other man until my task was finished: it might have gotten me in trouble and diverted me from that purpose."

More gently than Trella would have believed possible for his Jupiter-strong muscles, Quest took her in his arms.

"Now I can say I love you," he said. "That was part of the conditioning too: I couldn't love any woman until my job was done."

Trella disengaged herself.

"I'm sorry," she said. "Don't you know this, too, now: that you're not a man, but an android?"

He looked at her in astonishment, stunned by her words.

"What in s.p.a.ce makes you think that?" he demanded.

"Why, Quest, it's obvious," she cried, tears in her eyes. "Everything about you ... your build, suited for Jupiter's gravity ... your strength ... the fact that you were able to live in Jupiter's atmosphere after the oxygen equipment failed. I know you think Dr. Mansard was your father, but androids often believe that."

He grinned at her.

"I'm no android," he said confidently. "Do you forget my father was inventor of the surgiscope? He knew I'd have to grow up on Jupiter, and he operated on the genes before I was born. He altered my inherited characteristics to adapt me to the climate of Jupiter ... even to being able to breathe a chlorine atmosphere as well as an oxygen atmosphere."

Trella looked at him. He was not badly hurt, any more than an elephant would have been, but his tunic was stained with red blood where the bullets had struck him. Normal android blood was green.

"How can you be sure?" she asked doubtfully.

"Androids are made," he answered with a laugh. "They don't grow up. And I remember my boyhood on Jupiter very well."

He took her in his arms again, and this time she did not resist. His lips were very human.

THE END.

Contents

THIS WORLD MUST DIE!.

By H. B. Fyfe

Lou Phillips sat on the cold metal deck of the control room, seething with a growing dislike for the old man.

"What you are here for," the other had told him when the guards had brought Phillips in, "is a simple crime of violence. You'll do, I'm sure."

The old man paced the deck impatiently, while a pair of armed guards maintained a watchful silence by the door. Two more men in plain gray s.h.i.+rts and trousers sat beside Phillips, leaning back sullenly against the bulkhead. He guessed that they were waiting for a fourth, remembering that three other figures had been hustled aboard with him at the Lunar s.p.a.ceport.

The door slid open, allowing another youth in gray uniform to stumble inside. One of the guards in the corridor beyond shoved the newcomer forward, and Phillips' eyebrows twitched as he had a closer look. This last prisoner was a girl.

He thought she might have been pretty, with a touch of lipstick and a kinder arrangement of her short, ash-blonde hair; but he lowered his eyes as her hard, wary stare flickered past him. She walked over to the bulkhead and took a seat at the other end of the little group.

The old man turned, scanning their faces critically. "I am in charge of a peculiar project," he announced abruptly. "The director of the Lunar Detention Colony claims that you four are the best he has--for our purposes!"

Long habit kept the seated ones guardedly silent. Seeing, apparently, that they would not relax, he continued.

"You were chosen because each of you has received a sentence of detention for life because of tendencies toward violence in one form or another. In our twenty-second century civilization such homicidal inclinations are quite rare, due to the law-abiding habits of generations under the Interplanetary Council."

He had been pacing the cramped s.p.a.ce left free by the equipment, the guards, and the four seated prisoners. Now he paused, as if mildly astonished at what he was about to say.

"In fact, now that we are faced by a situation demanding illegal violence, it appears that no normal citizen is capable of committing such an act. Using you may eliminate costly screening processes ... and save time. Incidentally, I am Anthony Varret, Undersecretary for Security in the Council."

None of the four showed any overt sign of being impressed. Phillips knew that the others, like himself, were scrutinizing the old man with cold, secretive stares. They had learned through harsh experience to keep their own counsels. Varret shrugged. "Well, then," he said dryly, "I might as well call the roll. I have been supplied with accurate records."

He drew a notebook from his pocket, consulted it briefly, then nodded at the man next to the girl. "Robert Brecken," he recited, "age thirty-one, six feet, one hundred eighty-five pounds, hair reddish brown, eyes green, complexion ruddy. Convicted of unjustified homicide by personal a.s.sault while resisting arrest for embezzlement. Detention record unsatisfactory. Implicated in two minor mutinies."

He glanced next at the youth beside Phillips. "Raymond Truesdale, age twenty-two, five-feet-five, one-thirty. Hair black, eyes dark brown, complexion pale. Convicted of two suicide attempts following failures in various artistic fields. Detention record fair, psychological report poor."

His frosty eyes met Phillips'. "Louis Phillips, age twenty-six, five-ten, one-eighty. Hair brown, eyes brown, complexion darkly tanned--that was before Luna, wasn't it, Phillips? Convicted of unjustified homicide, having a.s.saulted a jet mechanic so as to cause death. Detention record satisfactory."

The blonde girl was last in Varret's review. "Donna Bailey, age twenty-three, five-five, one-fifteen. Hair blonde, eyes blue, complexion fair. Convicted of manslaughter by negligence, while piloting an atmosphere sport rocket in an intoxicated condition. Detention record satisfactory."

Varret fell silent, regarding them with cynical disgust. His lips twisted slightly with distaste. "There we have it," he said. "A violent-tempered thief from the business world; an over-expensive purchase by a rich playboy who became his widow by her own negligence; a mentally-unstable fool who thought he was artistically gifted, and a rocket engineer who was too brutally careless with his own strength when irritated by a s.p.a.ce-fatigued helper. I wonder if you'll do...?"

Phillips felt impelled at last to speak. "Just what plans do you have for us?" he demanded harshly.

"Nothing complicated," replied Varret, matching the tone. "We need you to perform a ma.s.s murder!"

Phillips blinked, despite his prison-learned reserve. He heard the girl suck in her breath sharply, and felt the youth beside him begin to tremble.

"I have shocked you, I see," sneered Varret. "Well, I a.s.sure you, it shocks me also, probably a good deal more since I have lived a normal life. However--this is the background: "About three months ago, we had reports of the outbreak of a deadly plague in one of the asteroid groups. As near as can be determined, it was spread by the crew of an exploratory rocket after the discovery of a new asteroid. It began to sweep through the mining colonies out there with the velocity of an expanding nova!"

"Where was your Health Department?" asked the man named Brecken in a sneering tone.