Robot Dreams Part 20

1.

From the doorway of the short corridor between the only two, rooms in the travel-head of the s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p, Mario Esteban Rioz watched sourly as Ted Long adjusted the video dials painstakingly. Long tried a touch clockwise, then a touch counter. The picture was lousy.

Rioz knew it would stay lousy. They were too far from Earth and at a bad position facing the Sun. But then Long would not be expected to know that. Rioz remained standing in the doorway for an additional moment, head bent to clear the upper lintel, body turned half sidewise to fit the narrow opening. Then he jerked into the galley like a cork popping out of a bottle.

"What are you after?" he asked.

"I thought I'd get Hilder," said Long.

Rioz propped his rump on the corner of a table shelf. He lifted a conical can of milk from the companion shelf just above his head. Its point popped under pressure. He swirled it gently as he waited for it to warm.

"What for?" he said. He upended the cone and sucked noisily.

"Thought I'd listen."

"I think it's a waste of power."

Long looked up, frowning. "It's customary to allow free use of personal video sets."

"Within reason," retorted Rioz.

Their eyes met challengingly. Rioz had the rangy body, the gaunt, cheek-sunken face that was almost the hallmark of the Martian Scavenger, those s.p.a.cers who patiently haunted the s.p.a.ce routes between Earth and Mars Pcrte blue eyes were set keenly in the brown, lined face which, in turn, stood darkly out against the white surrounding syntho-fur that lined the upturned collar of his leathtic s.p.a.ce jacket.

Long was altogether paler and softer. He bore some of the marks of the Grounder, although no second-generation Martian could be a Grounder in the sense that Earthmen were. His own collar was thrown back and his dark brown hair freely exposed.

"What do you call within reason?" demanded Long.

Rioz's thin lips grew thinner. He said, "Considering that we're not even going to make expenses this trip, the way it looks, any power drain at all is outside reason."

Long said, "If we're losing money, hadn't you better get back to your post? It's your watch."

Rioz grunted and ran a thumb and forefinger over the stubble on his chin. He got up and trudged to the door, his soft, heavy boots muting the sound of his steps. He paused to look at the thermostat, then turned with a flare of fury.

"I thought thought it was bot. Where do you think you are?" it was bot. Where do you think you are?"

Long said, "Forty degrees isn't excessive."

"For you it isn't, maybe. But this is s.p.a.ce, not a heated office at the iron mines." Rioz swung the thermostat control down to minimum with a quick thumb movement. "Sun's warm enough."

"The galley isn't on Sunside."

"It'll percolate through, d.a.m.n it." Rioz stepped through the door and Long stared after him for a long moment, then turned back to the video. He did not turn up the thermostat.

The picture was still flickering badly, but it would have to do. Long folded a chair down out of the wall. He leaned forward waiting through the formal announcement, the momentary pause before the slow dissolution of the curtain, the spotlight picking out the well-known bearded figure which grew as it was brought forward until it filled the screen.

The voice, impressive even through the flutings and croakings induced by the electron storms of twenty millions of miles, began: "Friends! My fellow citizens of Earth..."

2.

Rioz's eye caught the flash of the radio signal as he stepped into the pilot room. For one moment, the palms of his hands grew clammy when it seemed to him that it was a radar pip; but that was only his guilt speaking. He should not have left the pilot room while on duty theoretically, though all Scavengers did it. Still, it was the standard nightmare, this business of a strike turning up during just those five minutes when one knocked off for a quick coffee because it seemed certain that s.p.a.ce was clear. And the nightmare had been known to happen, too.

Rioz threw in the multi-scanner. It was a waste of power, but while he was thinking about it, he might as well make sure.

s.p.a.ce was clear except for the far-distant echoes from the neighboring s.h.i.+ps on the scavenging line.

He hooked up the radio circuit, and the blond, long-nosed head of Richard Swenson, copilot of the next s.h.i.+p on the Mars-ward side, filled it.

"Hey, Mario," said Swenson.

"Hi. What's new?"

There was a second and a fraction of pause between that and Swenson's next comment, since the speed of electromagnetic radiation is not infinite.

"What a day I've had." had."

"Something happened?" Rioz asked.

"I had a strike."

"Well, good."

"Sure, if I'd roped it in," said Swenson morosely.

"What happened?"

"d.a.m.n it, I headed in the wrong direction."

Rioz knew better than to laugh. He said, "How did you do that?"

"It wasn't my fault. The trouble was the sh.e.l.l was moving way out of the ecliptic. Can you imagine the stupidity of a pilot that can't work the release maneuver decently? How was I to know? I got the distance of the sh.e.l.l and let it go at that. I just a.s.sumed its...o...b..t was in the usual trajectory family. Wouldn't you? I started along what I thought was a good line of intersection and it was five minutes before I noticed the distance was still going up. The pips were taking their sweet time returning. So then I took the angular projections of the thing, and it was too late to catch up with it."

"Any of the other boys getting it?"

"No. It's way out of the ecliptic and'll keep on going forever. That's not what bothers me so much. It was only an inner sh.e.l.l. But I hate to tell you how many tons of propulsion I wasted getting up speed and then getting back to station. You should have heard Canute."

Canute was Richard Swenson's brother and partner.

"Mad, huh?" said Rioz.

"Mad? Like to have killed me! But then we've been out five months now and it's getting kind of sticky. You know."

"I know."

"How are you doing, Mario?"

Rioz made a spitting gesture. " About that much this trip. Two sh.e.l.ls in the last two weeks and I had to chase each one for six hours."

"Big ones?"

"Are you kidding? I could have scaled them down to Phobos by hand. This is the worst trip I've ever had."

"How much longer are you staying?"

"For my part, we can quit tomorrow. We've only been out two months and it's got so I'm chewing Long out all the time."

There was a pause over and above the electromagnetic lag.

Swenson said, "What's he like, anyway? Long, I mean."

Rioz looked over his shoulder. He could hear the soft, crackly mutter of the video in the galley. "I can't make him out. He says to me about a week after the start of the trip, 'Mario, why are you a Scavenger?' I just look at him and say, 'To make a living. Why do you suppose?' I mean, what the h.e.l.l kind of a question is that? Why is anyone a Scavenger?

"Anyway, he says, 'That's not it, Mario.' He's He's telling telling me, me, you see. He says, 'You're a Scavenger because this is part of the Martian way.' " you see. He says, 'You're a Scavenger because this is part of the Martian way.' "

Swenson said, "And what did he mean by that?"

Rioz shrugged. "I never asked him. Right now he's sitting in there listening to the ultra-microwave from Earth. He's listening to some Grounder called Hilder."

"Hilder? A Grounder politician, an a.s.semblyman or something, isn't he?"

"That's right. At least, I think that's right. Long is always doing things like that. He brought about fifteen pounds of books with him, all about Earth. Just plain dead weight, you know."

"Well, he's your partner. And talking about partners, I think I'll get back on the job. If I miss another strike, there'll be murder around here."

He was gone and Rioz leaned back. He watched the even green line that was the pulse scanner. He tried the multiscanner a moment. s.p.a.ce was still clear.

He felt a little better. A bad spell is always worse if the Scavengers all about you are pulling in sh.e.l.l after sh.e.l.l; if the sh.e.l.ls go spiraling down to the Phobos sc.r.a.p forges with everyone's brand welded on except your own. Then, too, he had managed to work off some of his resentment toward Long.

It was a mistake teaming up with Long. It was always a mistake to team up with a tenderfoot. They thought what you wanted was conversation, especially Long, with his eternal theories about Mars and its great new role in human progress. That was the way he said it-Human Progress: the Martian Way; the New Creative Minority. And all the time what Rioz wanted wasn't talk, but a strike, a few sh.e.l.ls to call their own.

At that, he hadn't any choice, really. Long was pretty well known down on Mars and made good pay as a mining engineer. He was a friend of Commissioner Sankov and he'd been out on one or two short scavenging missions before. You can't turn a fellow down flat before a tryout, even though it did look funny. Why should a mining engineer with a comfortable job and good money want to muck around in s.p.a.ce?

Rioz never asked Long that question. Scavenger partners are forced too close together to make curiosity desirable, or 'sometimes even safe. But Long talked so much that he answered the question.

"I had to come out here, Mario," he said. "The future of Mars isn't in the mines; it's in s.p.a.ce."

Rioz wondered how it would it be to try a trip alone. Everyone said it was impossible. Even discounting lost opportunities when one man had to go off watch to sleep or attend to other things, it was well known that one man alone in s.p.a.ce would become intolerably depressed in a relatively short while.

Taking a partner along made a six-month trip possible. A regular crew would be better, but no Scavenger could make money on a s.h.i.+p large enough to carry one. The capital it would take in propulsion alone!

Even two didn't find it exactly fun in s.p.a.ce. Usually you had to change partners each trip and you could stay out longer with some than with others. Look at Richard and Canute Swenson. They teamed up every five or six trips because they were brothers. And yet whenever they did, it was a case of constantly mounting tension and antagonism after the first week.

Oh well. s.p.a.ce was clear. Rioz would feel a little better if he went back in the galley and smoothed down some of the bickering with Long. He might as well show he was an old s.p.a.ce hand who took the irritations of s.p.a.ce as they came.

He stood up, walked the three steps necessary to reach the short, narrow corridor that tied together the two rooms of the s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p.

3.

Once again Rioz stood in the doorway for a moment, watching. Long was intent on the flickering screen.

Rioz said gruffly, "I'm shoving up the thermostat. It's all right-we can spare the power."

Long nodded. "If you like."

Rioz took a hesitant step forward. s.p.a.ce was clear, so to h.e.l.l with sitting and looking at a blank, green, pipless line. He said, "What's the Grounder been talking about?"

"History of s.p.a.ce travel mostly. Old stuff, but he's doing it well. He's giving the whole works-color cartoons, trick photography, stills from old films, everything."

As if to ill.u.s.trate Long's remarks, the bearded figure faded out of view, and a cross-sectional view of a s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p flitted onto the screen. Hilder's voice continued, pointing out features of interest that appeared in schematic color. The communications system of the s.h.i.+p outlined itself in red as he talked about it, the storerooms, the proton micropile drive, the cybernetic circuits...

Then Hilder was back on the screen. "But this is only the travel-head of the s.h.i.+p. What moves it? What gets it off the Earth?"

Everyone knew what moved a s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p, but Hilder's voice was like a drug. He made s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p propulsion sound like the secret of the ages, like an ultimate revelation. Even Rioz felt a slight tingling of suspense, though he had spent the greater part of his life aboard s.h.i.+p.

Hilder went on. "Scientists call it different names. They call it the Law of Action and Reaction. Sometimes they call it Newton's Third Law. Sometimes they call it Conservation of Momentum. But we don't have to call it any name. We can just use our common sense. When we swim, we push water backward and move forward ourselves. When we walk, we push back against the ground and move forward. When we fly a gyro-flivver, we push air backward and move forward.

"Nothing can move forward unless something else moves backward. It's the old principle of 'You can'~ get something for nothing., "Now imagine a s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p that weighs a hundred thousand tons lifting off Earth. To do that, something else must be moved downward. Since a s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p is extremely heavy, a great deal of material must be moved downward. So much material, in fact, that there is no place to keep it all aboard s.h.i.+p. A special compartment must be built behind the s.h.i.+p to hold it."

Again Hilder faded out and the s.h.i.+p returned. It shrank and a truncated cone appeared behind it. In bright yellow, words appeared within it: MATERIAL TO BE THROWN AWAY.

"But now," said Hilder, "the total weight of the s.h.i.+p is much greater. You need still more propulsion and still more."

The s.h.i.+p shrank enormously to add on another larger sh.e.l.l and still another immense one. The s.h.i.+p proper, the travel-head, was a little dot on the screen, a glowing red dot.

Rioz said, "h.e.l.l, this is kindergarten stuff."

"Not to the people he's speaking to, Mario," replied Long. "Earth isn't Mars. There must be billions of Earth people who've never even seen a s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p; don't know the first thing about it."

Hilder was saying, "When the material inside the biggest sh.e.l.l is used up, the sh.e.l.l is detached. It's thrown away, too."

The outermost sh.e.l.l came loose, wobbled about the screen.

"Then the second one goes," said Hilder, "and then, if the trip is a long one, the last is ejected."

The s.h.i.+p was just a red dot now, with three sh.e.l.ls s.h.i.+fting and moving, lost in s.p.a.ce.

Hilder said, "These sh.e.l.ls represent a hundred thousand tons of tungsten, magnesium, aluminum, and steel. They are gone forever from Earth. Mars is ringed by Scavengers, waiting along the routes of s.p.a.ce travel, waiting for the cast-off sh.e.l.ls, netting and branding them, saving them for Mars. Not one cent of payment reaches Earth for them. They are salvage. They belong to the s.h.i.+p that finds them."