The Runaway Robot -- Lester del Rey -- (1965)
(Version 2005.03.30 -- Done)
1. Message from Earth
It was an exciting day. A rocket was due from Earth, and I guess nothing more exciting than that ever happens on Ganymede. Well, maybe when a manned spaceship comes in, it is more exciting, but a rocket is pretty important too.
The unmanned rockets brought supplies and messages from Earth and took back our herbs and fungi. These were very valuable because Ganymede is the only place in the System where they will grow. Therefore it is a vital satellite -- not just another moon wheeling around Jupiter.
Actually you might say it is more important than Jupiter itself, because Jupiter does not produce anything of value to anyone. It hasn't even got a surface you can stand on.
Anyhow, the rocket was coming in, and Paul and I hiked over to the spaceport to see it.
The spaceport was about five miles from the residential domes, and Paul and I walked. We could have used Paul's skimmer, but we like to walk because you pass the caves on the way to the spaceport and the land is very rough there. It is too rough to skim low, and Paul's father, who is the governor of Sun Valley, forbids Paul to skim too high because it could be dangerous.
Paul is a boy, of course. He is sixteen years old and he has been on Ganymede with his mother and father and his younger sister, Jane, since he was three.
I am Rex, Paul's robot.
There are quite a few robots on Ganymede, over a hundred here in Sun Valley alone. Robots do all the work, so naturally there are many kinds. The ones here are farm robots. They are geared and activated to that kind of work. They plant and tend and harvest the herbs that we send to Earth. They scrape off the fungi that grow on the rocks, and process them for the juices that are valuable in Earth medicines.
I'm different, however. I'm a domestic robot, and therefore geared to a higher intelligence level than the others. I'm geared high enough to be a companion, and that was why Roger Simpson, Paul's father, bought me. I have been with Paul ever since he came here.
He was a toddler then, in a little air suit that made everybody laugh, and I could only take him on short trips out of residential domes. It was my job to watch him very closely and see to it that he did not take his helmet off or do some other foolish thing like that.
Later, when he grew up, Paul knew better of course.
Paul and I were very close, being together all the time, and we talked about a lot of things. Once he tried to explain to me what it was like to grow up -- to not know anything when you start and learn it all as you grow bigger.
It was very difficult to understand, because knowing things like the danger of a human going out without an air suit is built into a domestic robot's memory bank when it is manufactured.
Paul also taught me the big difference between a robot and a human -- at least one of the big differences. Whenever Paul learned anything, he learned why it was true. I didn't. Like the air suit. Paul knew the reason why it was fatal to go without it or take it off. He learned all about air and how he needed it in his lungs to stay alive. I only knew it was dangerous, but I didn't know why.
And I guess maybe I still do not really understand it. Not the way Paul does at least. That is because my mental capacities are limited by my manufacturing specifications; and when you're born instead of manufactured, you have no mental limits.
A robot, I can tell you, gets a lot of wrong ideas. For instance, I thought I had curiosity. I got the idea from being with Paul and listening to him ask questions to find out about things. His mother called that curiosity.
I asked questions to find out about things, so I thought I had curiosity too. But I haven't. What I've got is this: A limited capacity to inquire into unforeseeable conditions in order to avoid destruction.
That was what it said in the instruction manual that came with me.
Not curiosity at all.
When Paul read that to me he laughed and said, "Don't worry, Rex. What you've got will do until some real curiosity comes along."
I have a "humor-response" circuit in my reaction bank, so I laughed too, but then I wondered what worry was -- the thing Paul told me not to do. I asked him, and he said it was a crazy thing.
He said, "Don't worry about it." I didn't ask any more. But I did wonder how you could answer a question by saying the same thing over again that the question was asked about.
Anyhow, that was a very important day, and we started early to hike over and see the rocket come in; and when we came to the cave country, Paul said we had time to stop off and check our hide-out.
"Do you think someone might have found it?" I asked.
"Hardly. It's pretty well hidden, but there's always a chance. It's the near hide-out, remember."
By that he meant it would have been easier for someone to find than the far hide-out. We had two of them. The far hide-out was in the waste country on the Jupiter side of Sun Valley, about fifteen miles away.
Paul told me directions are always figured in relation to the mother planet, because Ganymede didn't revolve on its own axis. It went around the mother planet about once a week, but always with the same surface facing it.
This axis business was hard for me to understand, but I finally got it. Some satellites spin like tops, Paul said, and I wondered why they bothered to do that, but I didn't ask.
Stopping off at the hide-out turned out to be a good thing because I had trouble, and it was lucky that it happened there.
Our hide-out is a cave in one of the jagged valleys in that area, and would be very hard for anyone to find because there are many of them. Paul marked ours by putting a very small sign at the mouth of the valley -- a sign that read: HOLLYWOOD & VINE.
That is a place on Earth, Paul told me, a place he'd learned about from the entertainment tapes that come on the rockets. In fact, the name of the whole Ganymedian settlement that Paul's father governs -- the plant, the farms, the residential domes, and the spaceport -- is named Sun Valley, after another place on Earth.
Earth is the place all the humans on Ganymede want to go back to. Once I asked Paul what Earth was like, and he looked excited and said, "Like heaven, I guess." But I didn't know what heaven was either, so that didn't help much.
Over the cave, Paul had cut in very small letters: OPEN SESAME.
He got that out of one of his books, one that had Fairy Tales written on it. I don't know what fairy tales are.
A flat stone closed the cave tight. When we were inside, we could make it a vacuum by packing dirt around the edges, and we did this sometimes so Paul could use his portable air unit and take off his suit.
But we didn't do that on this particular day, because as soon as I got inside the cave I stopped and said, "Trouble."
This was our signal. When I said "trouble," it meant something was wrong with me. Immediately, Paul began checking. In a minute, he said, "Oh, you've gone blind!"
By word association, I knew what he meant. I'd blown out the refractor bulb in the front side of my control box, the box that stands on my torso box the way Paul's head stands on his shoulders.
It may seem funny to you, with your human brain, that I didn't know what was wrong with me, but that's how it is with a robot. I am not patterned to diagnose. I only know when I don't work right. Then it's up to the humans to find out what's wrong and fix it.
"Lucky we came to the cave," Paul said. "I've got some spare parts here." He unscrewed the faulty bulb and put in a new one.
He had tried to explain to me about seeing -- what seeing is -- but I never quite got it. He says that I have the capacity only for black and white, and that someday he'll get me a color refractor bulb. Then I'll see color.
That will be fine, except I don't know what color is. Paul tried to explain that too, but I don't understand it any better than when he told me that I see things two- dimensionally -- everything on a flat surface.
Once, when he was a little boy, he said, "Rex, when I grow up and get rich, I'm going to have you repatterned up to the capacities of the computer robots."
They are the most advanced units ever invented, and it would be nice to be one, but I think Paul forgot that he was going to have that done. It is very natural for humans to forget. Robots can't. Everything goes into my memory bank and stays there. I couldn't forget anything even if I wanted to.
We left the cave after I'd been fixed, and hiked toward the spaceport. When we got close, Paul saw a skimmer coming from the direction of the plant.
"That's Dad," Paul said.
He would know that because his father's skimmer was red -- that's a color -- and was reserved for the governor. The skimmer stopped beside the rocket runway, and Roger Simpson got out and stood there waiting.
Paul and I didn't go any closer because he liked to watch the rocket come in from a little distance away.
"There it comes!" he shouted, and pointed high up into the sky. "It's beautiful."
I'd known it was coming for quite a while because my audio mechanism is far more sensitive than Paul's eyes and I could hear the jets hissing.
Paul grabbed me by the arm. His eyes were shining. "Isn't it beautiful? So long and sleek with its red jets flaming!"
The control robot in the tower was bringing the rocket in according to a punch-tape pattern. There were three lessening spirals, the rocket circling overhead. It stood out sharply against the sky and then vanished into the daytime blaze of Jupiter.
The last time around, it settled onto the rocket landing skid and the control robot braked it and killed its jets right where Paul's father and another man were waiting. The robot unlocked the rocket's loading ramp, and it opened and a ladder came out and touched ground. Mr. Simpson and the man climbed the ladder and disappeared into the rocket.
Paul dropped down and sat cross-legged as he stared at the rocket. "They'll take out the supplies and fill it with Earth cargo," he said. "They'll launch it again, and it will travel a million miles an hour, straight and true, to its port of call on Earth. I'd like to be aboard."
"You'd die," I said.
Paul frowned. "Of course I'd die. There's no air in a rocket. I was speaking figuratively."
I said, "Oh, you mean you'd like to ride the rocket if it had air."
"Something like that," he replied impatiently, his attention on the rocket.
Paul got impatient with me once in a while, mainly when he was concentrating on something and I interrupted with stupid questions.
He did not look like his father. Roger Simpson was heavy-set and very robust and healthy-looking, very handsome by human standards. But Paul was somewhat thin in his body. They said this was because he'd grown up under the lower gravity on Ganymede. He was light-complexioned and had hair that was light brown, although I was never able to see the color. He had a thin, sensitive face that could change expression very rapidly. His face brightened up very suddenly when he got excited about something that pleased him.
And he got very excited now as his father came rapidly down the ladder from the hold of the rocket. Mr. Simpson was carrying a paper in his hand. He looked in our direction and waved it, calling, "Paul! Come over here. Come quickly! We've got to get home quickly! Your mother will want to hear the news!"
Paul sprang to his feet. "What news, Dad?"
Mr. Simpson didn't answer. He stood there reading the paper while Paul ran toward the rocket, and I ran along behind him trying to keep up.
I can run fast, but not as fast as Paul. If I try to run too fast, I fall down, which annoys Paul, for he has to stop and help me back on my feet.
I didn't get to the rocket as quickly as Paul, and when I got there, Paul was repeating his question.
"What news, Dad?"
But his father only smiled and made a playful pass at Paul's chin with his fist.
"Suppose we wait. We'll go home, and I'll break it to your mother and your sister and you all together. You wouldn't want to take unfair advantage of them, would you?"
I got the idea Paul wouldn't have minded at all. But he couldn't admit it.
"Come on," Mr. Simpson said. "Get into the skimmer and we'll head straight for the dome."
A robot crew, geared for unloading, was already marching double file toward the rocket ramp. They moved on a wide, caterpillar-type roller under their torso boxes. There was an endless chain studded by rubber cleats that took them anywhere they were sent.
"You too, Rex," Mr. Simpson said. "Into the skimmer."
That showed Mr. Simpson was in a happy mood, and I was glad because I liked riding in a skimmer. It was an open car with a flat bottom and three jets in the back end that lifted it off the ground and sent it skimming along a foot above the surface. A skimmer could be angled sharply upward and had the mechanical ability to function as a sky car, but such use could be dangerous. It was built primarily to skim the surface of the ground at high speeds.
We got home in no time. Mr. Simpson jumped out and Paul followed him, and I came along behind as usual.
The residential domes are not very big, only large enough to cover the entrances to the apartments and house. Living quarters for humans on Ganymede are always built underground. The air suits are left on the surface.
Paul and his father skinned off their air suits and rushed downstairs into the apartment. Mrs. Simpson and Jane were in the living room.
Mrs. Simpson was busy putting plastic strips on the weakened seams of an air suit. She looked up. "You look excited, Roger. What's happened?"
"We've been recalled. We're going back to Earth!" he told her.
There was dead silence. Paul, his eyes wide and unbelieving, whispered, "Dad, will you say that again?"
"Certainly, Paul. We've been recalled. We're returning to Earth."
2. Down the River
Mrs. Simpson stared at her husband, with a blank look on her face, and he got the satisfaction of really surprising his family. Then the hubbub started.
"Oh, Roger! When?" Mrs. Simpson jumped out of her chair, and Mr. Simpson took her in his arms and swung her around the way he often swung little nine-year-old Jane.
It took quite a while for the excitement to die down.
I stood in the doorway without saying anything, and after a while they quieted down. "How soon do we leave, Daddy?" Jane asked.
"In about ten days," he said. "And that reminds me. I've got some more news."
"Goodness," Mrs. Simpson laughed, "how could there be any more than what you've told us?"
"There is," Paul's father answered, "and this is it. We aren't returning to Earth on any old passenger freighter."
This was amazing, and Paul stared at his father. "But, Dad, second-class ships are the only ones that make the Jupiter run!"
This was true. Anyone visiting the moons of Jupiter had to ride in the big, lumbering freighters that carried both pasengers and heavy supplies for the Moon colonies. This was because there was not enough luxury passenger trade that far out to make passenger runs possible.
Jane danced up and down, clapping her hands. "How are we going, Daddy? Tell us!"
"Well," Mr. Simpson replied, smiling, "this is going to be a big transfer of company personnel. They're sending an Orion-class space liner to pick us up. The Star Queen."
"Why, Dad!" Paul exclaimed, "they use Orion-type liners on the Venus runs. They have everything. Swimming pools, three-dimensional plays beamed in -- "
"They even teleport fresh fruit -- bananas, oranges," Jane added.
Mrs. Simpson patted her daughter's head. "You poor dear! You've never eaten a fresh orange, have you?"
Mr. Simpson laughed. "She hasn't exactly been starved. The frozen ones are pretty good."
"A luxury liner," Paul repeated as though he couldn't believe it.
He had told me all about how things are done in the inner planets -- the big ships that take people to the resorts and vacation spots on Venus and Mars, the wonders of the Space Age that mean so much to humans.
"We've been pioneers for a long time," Mr. Simpson said. "Now we're going back and learn to live like people again."
When Paul grabbed me by my arms and began dancing me in a circle, Mr. Simpson, who had quieted down, watched us very thoughtfully, with a slight frown on his face.
"Come on, Rex," Paul said. "We've got a lot to do and only ten days to do it in!"
He started to pull me out of the room, but Mr. Simpson said, "I've got an errand for Rex, Paul. I want him to take some papers over to the plant. While he's gone, I'll brief you on a few plans I have."
He spoke briskly, and though he wasn't sharp with Paul or anything like that, I could tell that something bothered him. Paul was too excited to notice.
"All right," he said. "I want to take as much of the load off your shoulders as I can, Dad."
Mr. Simpson smiled again -- a kind of tight little smile I thought -- and put his arm around Paul's shoulders. "Thanks, Paul. You're growing up now, you know, and you have to start facing some of the obligations of an adult -- even the unpleasant ones."
I knew that meant something bad and I wondered what it was. Paul still didn't seem to notice. He said, "What's unpleasant about getting ready to go to Earth, Dad?"
Mr. Simpson didn't answer. He took an envelope from his pocket and handed it to me. "Give that to Mr. Kagen in the Number 2 refinery, Rex. You don't have to wait for an answer."
I left immediately, and on the way to the plant I did a lot of wondering. Why had Mr. Simpson wanted to get rid of me? He had a reason. I was sure of that.
As I ran toward the plant, I thought about the ten days that would pass before the big luxury liner would take us back to Earth. And I was glad they were Earth days, not the longer ones based on Ganymede's revolutions around Jupiter. On Ganymede, a day and night is about a hundred and seventy hours long, compared to Earth's twenty-four-hour night and day.
Paul told me that on Earth the nights are very dark and the days are passed under the bright, blazing Sun. It's a little different on Ganymede. There it never gets very dark, because Jupiter fills most of the sky overhead and always reflects a lot of the Sun's light.
Ganymede goes by Earth time, with signals beamed out regularly from Earth to keep the chronometers right.
I reached the Number 2 plant without thinking of anything Mr. Simpson might have been upset about. Mr. Kagen, the foreman, was busy in his office, so I had to wait a while.
I passed the time watching a plant robot run a fungus-refining unit. You couldn't look inside, but I knew how it worked. The fungus was put in a tank at the top -- big masses of it -- and water was poured in. The water was heated, and that helped the fungus juices to run out when the pressure was applied.
The water and the juices were squeezed into a lower tank, and because the juices were heavier, the water always stayed on top. All they had to do was open a valve at the bottom and let the juice run into the shipment tanks. It was a very simple operation.
I stood there wondering what the juice did to heal people on Earth. I didn't really care -- not right then. I was wondering a lot more about something else. When Mr. Kagen came out, I gave him the letter and headed right back to the residential domes.
I ran as fast as I could, but the trip took about an hour. When I let myself into the apartment, I heard Paul and his father talking.
They hadn't heard me come in, and I stopped where I was and listened, thinking that I'd be able to find out what the trouble was.
They were in the den with the door closed, and I couldn't get many of the words very clearly, but the voice tones showed that Paul was upset and angry.
This was unusual. Mr. Simpson wasn't the kind of parent that children argued with. I don't mean that he was harsh or cruel in any way. He and Mrs. Simpson believed in discipline -- in their children doing the right thing -- but they made it easy, because they were always more than fair and had their children's best interests at heart. Most of the time the Simpson home was full of laughter and gaiety. That was what made belonging to Paul so nice.
But now Paul was raising his voice to his father, and Mr. Simpson was being stern as a result. They moved closer to the door, and I heard some words.
Paul said, "It's not fair! Selling him down the river!"
Mr. Simpson laughed. "Where did you hear that expression?"
"I don't know. I heard it somewhere."
"You don't even know what it means."
I didn't know what it meant either. I knew what a river was. Paul had told me they have them on Earth. Earth is almost all water and rivers where the water runs from one place to another. Down the river would mean with the current, because rivers respond to gravity and always follow the path of least resistance.
But I couldn't see what that had to do with whatever was bothering Paul. It was very mysterious, but I didn't want to get caught listening. I went to Paul's room and waited for him to come. I knew he would tell me all about it when he got there.
But he didn't.
He came into the room and saw me standing there and said, "Oh, it's you."
His tone was sullen, and he was frowning as he walked right past me and threw himself on the bed without paying any more attention to me. I didn't know what to say, not understanding his mood, so I waited.
This annoyed him. "Well," he demanded, "can't you say something? Do you have to just stand there?"
I knew it was very serious because he almost never talked to me that way.
"What do you want me to say?"
"Anything you feel like saying."
"It will be very exciting, going back to Earth."
"Yes, won't it!" He spoke the words sarcastically, and what I'd said seemed to make him even angrier. "What's so hot about Earth anyhow? Things haven't been bad on Ganymede."
"No, but on Earth you won't have to wear an air suit every time you go outside."
"I'll feel like a fool without my air suit!"
"No you won't, because other people won't be wearing them either."
"You're awfully logical for a robot," he snorted.
"I have a pre-estahlished logic quotient that allows me to reason elementally."
"Oh, cut it out. I'm tired. I -- I'm going to take a nap."
I stood there and waited while Paul turned over on the bed and scowled at me. A robot is supposed to be turned off when not in use. That's what happens to all the labor robots, because they run on batteries and it makes sense to save their charge.
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