The Stutterer Part 5

"Fools. Stupid fools," Hall shouted at them.

The men could not seem to get the muzzle of the gun down, and when he was a dozen paces from it they took to their heels. He tore the heavy cannon off of its carriage and with one blow of his fist caved it in. He left it lying in the street broken and useless.

Almost as suddenly as it came, his anger left him. He stopped and looked back at the people cringing in the doorways.

"You poor, cruel fools," Hall said again.

He sat down in the middle of the street on the twisted howitzer barrel and buried his head in his hands. There was nothing else for him to do.

He knew that in just a matter of seconds, the s.h.i.+ps with their permallium nets and snares would be on him.

Since Jordan's s.h.i.+p was not large enough to transport Jon Hall's great weight back to Grismet, the terrestrial government put at the agent's disposal a much heavier vessel, one room of which had been hastily lined with permallium and outfitted as a prison cell. A pilot by the name of Wilkins went with the s.h.i.+p. He was a battered old veteran, given to cigar smoking, clandestine drinking and card playing.

The vessel took off, rose straight through the atmosphere for about forty miles, and then hung, idly circling Earth, awaiting clearance before launching into the pulse drive. A full course between Earth and Grismet had to be plotted and cleared by the technicians at the dispatch center because the ma.s.s of the vessel increased so greatly with its pulsating speed that if any two s.h.i.+ps pa.s.sed within a hundred thousand miles of each other, they would at least be torn from their course, and might even be totally destroyed.

Wilkins had proposed a pinochle game, and he and Jordan sat playing in the control room.

The pilot had been winning and he was elated. "Seventy-six dollars so far," he announced after some arithmetic. "The easiest day's pay I made this month."

Jordan shuffled the cards and dealt them out, three at a time. He was troubled by his own thoughts, and so preoccupied that he scarcely followed the game.

"Spades, again," the pilot commented gleefully. "Well, ain't that too bad for you." He gave his cigar a few chomps and played a card.

Jordan had been looking out of the window. The s.h.i.+p had tilted and he could see without rising the rim of Earth forming a beautiful geometric arc, hazy and blue in its s.h.i.+mmering atmosphere.

"Come on, play," the pilot said, impatiently. "I just led an ace."

Jordan put down his cards. "I guess I better quit," he said.

"What the devil!" the pilot said angrily. "You can't quit like that in the middle of a deal. I got a flush and aces."

"I'm sorry," Jordan said, "but I'm going to lie down in my cabin until we are given clearance."

He opened the door of the little room and went into the hall. He walked down past his own cabin and stopped in front of another door, a new one that was sheathed in permallium. He hesitated a few moments; then he snapped open the outside latch and walked in, letting the door swing closed behind him.

Hall lay unmoving in the middle of the floor, his legs and arms fastened in greaves of permallium.

Jordan was embarra.s.sed. He did not look directly at the robot.

"I don't know whether you want to talk to me or not," he started. "If you don't want to, that's all right. But, I've followed you since you landed on Earth, and I don't understand why you did what you did. You don't have to tell me, but I wish you would. It would make me feel better."

The robot shrugged--a very human gesture, Jordan noted.

"G-go ahead and ask me," he said. "It d-doesn't make any difference now."

Jordan sat down on the floor. "The boy was the one who gave you away. If not for him, no one would have ever known what planet you were on. Why did you let the kid get away?"

The robot looked straight at the agent. "Would you kill a child?" he asked.

"No, of course not," Jordan said a little bit annoyed, "but I'm not a robot either." He waited for a further explanation, but when he saw none was coming, he said: "I don't know what you were trying to do in that powerhouse at Ballarat, but, whatever it was, that old man couldn't have stopped you. What happened?"

"I l-lost my head," the robot said quietly. "The alarm and the lights rattled me, and I got into a p-panic."

"I see," said Jordan, frustrated, not really seeing at all. He sat back and thought for a moment. "Let me put it this way. Why do you stutter?"

Hall smiled a wry smile. "Th-that used to be a m-military secret," he said. "It's our one weakness--the one Achilles heel in a m-machine that was meant to be invulnerable."

He struggled to a sitting position. "You see, we were m-made as s-soldiers and had to have a certain loyalty to the country that m-made us. Only living things are loyal--machines are not. We had to think like human beings."

Jordan's brows contracted as he tried to understand the robot.

"You mean you have a transplanted human brain?" he asked incredulously.

"In a way," Hall said. "Our b-brains are permallium strips on which the mind of some human donor was m-magnetically imprinted. My mind was copied f-from a man who stuttered and who got panicky when the going got rough, and who couldn't kill a child no matter what was at s-stake."

Jordan felt physically ill. Hall was human and he was immortal. And according to galactic decree, he, like his fellows, was to be manacled in permallium and fixed in a great block of cement, and that block was to be dropped into the deep silent depths of the Grismet ocean, to be slowly covered by the blue sediment that gradually filters down through the miles of ocean water to stay immobile and blind for countless millions of years.

Jordan arose to his feet. He could think of nothing further to say.

He stopped, however, with the door half open, and asked: "One more question--what did you want with the electrical generator plants on Earth?"

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Slowly and without emotion Hall told him, and when he understood, he became even sicker.

He went across to his cabin and stood for a while looking out the window. Then he lit a cigarette and lay down on his bunk thinking. After a time, he put out the cigarette and walked into the hall where he paced up and down.

As he pa.s.sed the cell door for about the tenth time, he suddenly swung around and lifted the latch and entered. He went over to the robot, and with a key that he took from his pocket, he unlocked the greaves and chains.

"There's no point in keeping you bound up like this," he said. "I don't think you're very dangerous." He put the key back in his pocket.

"I suppose you know that this s.h.i.+p runs on an atomic pile," he said in a conversational tone of voice. "The cables are just under the floor in the control room and they can be reached through a little trap door."

Jordan looked directly into Hall's face. The robot was listening with great intentness.

"Well," the agent said, "we'll probably be leaving Earth's atmosphere in about fifteen minutes. I think I'll go play pinochle with the pilot."

He carefully left the door of the cell unlatched as he left. He walked to the control room and found Wilkins, a dry cigar b.u.t.t clenched between his teeth, absorbed in a magazine.

"Let's have another game," Jordan said. "I want some of that seventy-six dollars back."

Wilkins shook his head. "I'm in the middle of a good story here. Real s.e.xy. I'll play you after we take off."

"Nothing doing," Jordan said sharply. "Let's play right now."