I, Robot

‘Speedy!’ shouted Powell. ‘Come here!’

The distance between the men and the errant robot was being cut down momentarily – more by the efforts of Speedy than the slow plodding of the fifty-year-old antique mounts of Donovan and Powell.

They were close enough now to notice that Speedy’s gait included a peculiar rolling stagger, a noticeable side-to-side lurch – and then, as Powell waved his hand again and sent maximum juice into his compact head-set radio sender, in preparation for another shout, Speedy looked up and saw them.

Speedy hopped to a halt and remained standing for a moment – with just a tiny, unsteady weave, as though he were swaying in a light wind.

Powell yelled: ‘All right, Speedy! Come here, boy.’

Whereupon Speedy’s robot voice sounded in Powell’s earphones for the first time.

It said: ‘Hot dog, let’s play games. You catch me and I catch you; no love can cut our knife in two. For I’m Little Buttercup, sweet Little Buttercup. Whoops!’ Turning on his heel, he sped off in the direction from which he had come with a speed and fury that kicked up gouts of baked dust.

And his last words as he receded into the distance were, ‘There grew a little flower ’neath a great oak tree,’ followed by a curious metallic clicking that might have been a robotic equivalent of a hiccup.

Donovan said weakly: ‘Where did he pick up the Gilbert and Sullivan? Say, Greg, he … he’s drunk or something.’

‘If you hadn’t told me,’ was the bitter response, ‘I’d never realize it. Let’s get back to the cliff. I’m roasting.’

It was Powell who broke the desperate silence. ‘In the first place,’ he said, ‘Speedy isn’t drunk – not in the human sense – because he’s a robot, and robots don’t get drunk. However, there’s something wrong with him which is the robotic equivalent of drunkenness.’

‘To me, he’s drunk,’ stated Donovan, emphatically, ‘and all I know is that he thinks we’re playing games. And we’re not. It’s a matter of life and very gruesome death.’

‘All right. Don’t hurry me. A robot’s only a robot. Once we find out what’s wrong with him, we can fix it and go on.’

‘Once,’ said Donovan, sourly.

Powell ignored him. ‘Speedy is perfectly adapted to normal Mercurian environment. But this region’ – and his arm swept wide – ‘is definitely abnormal. There’s our clue. Now where do these crystals come from? They might have formed from a slowly cooling liquid; but where would you get liquid so hot that it would cool in Mercury’s sun?’

‘Volcanic action,’ suggested Donovan, instantly, and Powell’s body tensed.

‘Out of the mouths of sucklings,’ he said in a small, strange voice, and remained very still for five minutes.

Then, he said, ‘Listen, Mike, what did you say to Speedy when you sent him after the selenium?’

Donovan was taken aback. ‘Well damn it – I don’t know. I just told him to get it.’

‘Yes, I know. But how? Try to remember the exact words.’

‘I said … uh … I said: “Speedy, we need some selenium. You can get it such-and-such a place. Go get it.” That’s all. What more did you want me to say?’

‘You didn’t put any urgency into the order, did you?’

‘What for? It was pure routine.’

Powell sighed. ‘Well, it can’t be helped now – but we’re in a fine fix.’ He had dismounted from his robot, and was sitting, back against the cliff. Donovan joined him and they linked arms. In the distance the burning sunlight seemed to wait cat-and-mouse for them, and just next to them, the two giant robots were invisible but for the dull red of their photo-electric eyes that stared down at them, unblinking, unwavering and unconcerned.

Unconcerned! As was all this poisonous Mercury, as large in jinx as it was small in size.

Powell’s radio voice was tense in Donovan’s ear: ‘Now, look, let’s start with the three fundamental Rules of Robotics – the three rules that are built most deeply into a robot’s positronic brain.’ In the darkness, his gloved fingers ticked off each point.

‘We have: One, a robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.’

‘Right!’

‘Two,’ continued Powell, ‘a robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.’

‘Right!’

‘And three, a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.’

‘Right! Now where are we?’

‘Exactly at the explanation. The conflict between the various rules is ironed out by the different positronic potentials in the brain. We’ll say that a robot is walking into danger and knows it. The automatic potential that Rule Three sets up turns him back. But suppose you order him to walk into that danger. In that case, Rule Two sets up a counter-potential higher than the previous one and the robot follows orders at the risks of existence.’

‘Well, I know that. What about it?’

‘Let’s take Speedy’s case. Speedy is one of the latest models, extremely specialized, and as expensive as a battleship. It’s not a thing to be lightly destroyed.’

‘So?’

‘So Rule Three has been strengthened – that was specifically mentioned, by the way, in the advance notices on the SPD models – so that his allergy to danger is unusually high. At the same time, when you sent him out after the selenium, you gave him his order casually and without special emphasis, so that the Rule Two potential set-up was rather weak. Now, hold on; I’m just stating facts.’

‘All right, go ahead. I think I get it.’

‘You see how it works, don’t you? There’s some sort of danger centering at the selenium pool. It increases as he approaches, and a certain distance from it the Rule Three potential, unusually high to start with, exactly balances the Rule Two potential, unusually low to start with.’

Donovan rose to his feet in excitement. ‘And it strikes an equilibrium. I see. Rule Three drives him back and Rule Two drives him forward—’

‘So he follows a circle around the selenium pool, staying on the locus of all points of potential equilibrium. And unless we do something about it, he’ll stay on that circle forever, giving us the good old runaround.’ Then, more thoughtfully: ‘And that, half the way, is what makes him drunk. At potential equilibrium, half the positronic paths of his brain are out of kilter. I’m not a robot specialist, but that seems obvious. Probably he’s lost control of just those parts of his voluntary mechanism that a human drunk has. Ve-e-ery pretty.’

‘But what’s the danger? If we knew what he was running from—’

‘You suggested it. Volcanic action. Somewhere right above the selenium pool is a seepage of gas from the bowels of Mercury. Sulphur dioxide, carbon dioxide – and carbon monoxide. Lots of it – and at this temperature.’

Donovan gulped audibly. ‘Carbon monoxide plus iron gives the volatile iron carbonyl.’

‘And a robot,’ added Powell, ‘is essentially iron.’ Then, grimly: ‘There’s nothing like deduction. We’ve determined everything about our problem but the solution. We can’t get the selenium ourselves. It’s still too far. We can’t send these robot horses, because they can’t go themselves, and they can’t carry us fast enough to keep us from crisping. And we can’t catch Speedy, because the dope thinks we’re playing games, and he can run sixty miles to our four.’

‘If one of us goes,’ began Donovan, tentatively, ‘and comes back cooked, there’ll still be the other.’

‘Yes,’ came the sarcastic reply, ‘it would be a most tender sacrifice – except that a person would be in no condition to give orders before he ever reached the pool, and I don’t think the robots would ever turn back to the cliff without orders. Figure it out! We’re two or three miles from the pool – call it two – the robot travels at four miles an hour; and we can last twenty minutes in our suits. It isn’t only the heat, remember. Solar radiation out here in the ultraviolet and below is poison.’

‘Um-m-m,’ said Donovan, ‘ten minutes short.’

‘As good as an eternity. And another thing. In order for Rule Three potential to have stopped Speedy where it did, there must be an appreciable amount of carbon monoxide in the metal-vapor atmosphere – and there must be an appreciable corrosive action atmosphere. He’s been out hours now – and how do we know when a knee joint, for instance, won’t be thrown out of kilter and keel him over. It’s not only a question of thinking – we’ve got to think fast!’

Deep, dark, dank, dismal silence!

Donovan broke it, voice trembling in an effort to keep itself emotionless. He said: ‘As long as we can’t increase Rule Two potential by giving further orders, how about working the other way? If we increase the danger, we increase Rule Three potential and drive him backward.’

Powell’s visiplate had turned toward him in a silent question.

‘You see,’ came the cautious explanation, ‘all we need to do to drive him out of his rut is to increase the concentration of carbon monoxide in his vicinity. Well, back at the Station there’s a complete analytical laboratory.’

‘Naturally,’ assented Powell. ‘It’s a Mining Station.’

‘All right. There must be pounds of oxalic acid for calcium precipitations.’

‘Holy space! Mike, you’re a genius.’

‘So-so,’ admitted Donovan, modestly. ‘It’s just a case of remembering that oxalic acid on heating decomposes into carbon dioxide, water, and good old carbon monoxide. College chem, you know.’

Powell was on his feet and had attracted the attention of one of the monster robots by the simple expedient of pounding the machine’s thigh.

‘Hey,’ he shouted, ‘can you throw?’

‘Master?’

‘Never mind.’ Powell damned the robot’s molasses-slow brain. He scrabbled up a jagged brick-size rock. ‘Take this,’ he said, ‘and hit the patch of bluish crystals just across that crooked fissure. You see it?’

Donovan pulled at his shoulder. ‘Too far, Greg. It’s almost half a mile off.’

‘Quiet,’ replied Powell. ‘It’s a case of Mercurian gravity and a steel throwing arm. Watch, will you?’

The robot’s eyes were measuring the distance with machinely accurate stereoscopy. His arm adjusted itself to the weight of the missile and drew back. In the darkness, the robot’s motions went unseen, but there was a sudden thumping sound as he shifted his weight, and seconds later the rock flew blackly into the sunlight. There was no air resistance to slow it down, nor wind to turn it aside – and when it hit the ground it threw up crystals precisely in the center of the ‘blue patch’.

Powell yelled happily and shouted, ‘Let’s go back after the oxalic acid, Mike.’

And as they plunged into the ruined substation on the way back to the tunnels, Donovan said grimly: ‘Speedy’s been hanging about on this side of the selenium pool, ever since we chased after him. Did you see him?’

‘Yes.’

‘I guess he wants to play games. Well, we’ll play him games!’

They were back hours later, with three-liter jars of the white chemical and a pair of long faces. The photo-cell banks were deteriorating more rapidly than had seemed likely. The two steered their robots into the sunlight and toward the waiting Speedy in silence and with grim purpose.

Speedy galloped slowly toward them. ‘Here we are again. Whee! I’ve made a little list, the piano organist; all people who eat peppermint and puff it in your face.’

‘We’ll puff something in your face,’ muttered Donovan. ‘He’s limping, Greg.’

‘I noticed that,’ came the low, worried response. ‘The monoxide’ll get him yet, if we don’t hurry.’

They were approaching cautiously now, almost sidling, to refrain from setting off the thoroughly irrational robot. Powell was too far off to tell, of course, but even already he could have sworn the crack-brained Speedy was setting himself for a spring.

‘Let her go,’ he gasped. ‘Count three! One – two—’

Two steel arms drew back and snapped forward simultaneously and two glass jars whirled forward in towering parallel arcs, gleaming like diamonds in the impossible sun. And in a pair of soundless puffs, they hit the ground behind Speedy in crashes that sent the oxalic acid flying like dust.

In the full heat of Mercury’s sun, Powell knew it was fizzing like soda water.

Speedy turned to stare, then backed away from it slowly – and as slowly gathered speed. In fifteen seconds, he was leaping directly toward the two humans in an unsteady canter.

Powell did not get Speedy’s words just then, though he heard something that resembled, ‘Lover’s professions when uttered in Hessians.’

He turned away. ‘Back to the cliff, Mike. He’s out of the rut and he’ll be taking orders now. I’m getting hot.’

They jogged toward the shadow at the slow monotonous pace of their mounts, and it was not until they had entered it and felt the sudden coolness settle softly about them that Donovan looked back. ‘Greg!’

Powell looked and almost shrieked. Speedy was moving slowly now – so slowly – and in the wrong direction. He was drifting; drifting back into his rut; and he was picking up speed. He looked dreadfully close, and dreadfully unreachable, in the binoculars.

Donovan shouted wildly, ‘After him!’ and thumped his robot into its pace, but Powell called him back.

‘You won’t catch him, Mike – it’s no use.’ He fidgeted on his robot’s shoulders and clenched his fist in tight impotence. ‘Why the devil do I see these things five seconds after it’s all over? Mike, we’ve wasted hours.’

‘We need more oxalic acid,’ declared Donovan, stolidly. ‘The concentration wasn’t high enough.’

‘Seven tons of it wouldn’t have been enough – and we haven’t the hours to spare to get it, even if it were, with the monoxide chewing him away. Don’t you see what it is, Mike?’

And Donovan said flatly, ‘No.’

‘We were only establishing new equilibriums. When we create new monoxide and increase Rule Three potential, he moves backward till he’s in balance again – and when the monoxide drifted away, he moved forward, and again there was balance.’

Powell’s voice sounded thoroughly wretched. ‘It’s the same old runaround. We can push at Rule Two and pull at Rule Three and we can’t get anywhere – we can only change the position of balance. We’ve got to get outside both rules.’ And then he pushed his robot closer to Donovan’s so that they were sitting face to face, dim shadows in the darkness, and he whispered, ‘Mike!’

‘Is it the finish?’ – dully. ‘I suppose we go back to the Station, wait for the banks to fold, shake hands, take cyanide, and go out like gentlemen.’ He laughed shortly.

‘Mike,’ repeated Powell earnestly, ‘we’ve got to get Speedy.’

‘I know.’

‘Mike,’ once more, and Powell hesitated before continuing. ‘There’s always Rule One. I thought of it – earlier – but it’s desperate.’

Donovan looked up and his voice livened. ‘We’re desperate.’

‘All right. According to Rule One a robot can’t see a human come to harm because of his own inaction. Two and Three can’t stand against it. They can’t, Mike.’

‘Even when the robot is half cra— Well, he’s drunk. You know he is.’

‘It’s the chances you take.’

‘Cut it. What are you going to do?’

‘I’m going out there now and see what Rule One will do. If it won’t break the balance, then what the devil – it’s either now or three-four days from now.’

‘Hold on, Greg. There are human rules of behavior, too. You don’t go out there just like that. Figure out a lottery, and give me my chance.’

‘All right. First to get the cube of fourteen goes.’ And almost immediately, ‘Twenty-seven forty-four!’

Donovan felt his robot stagger at a sudden push by Powell’s mount and then Powell was off into the sunlight. Donovan opened his mouth to shout, and then clicked it shut. Of course, the damn fool had worked out the cube of fourteen in advance, and on purpose. Just like him.

The sun was hotter than ever and Powell felt a maddening itch in the small of his back. Imagination, probably, or perhaps hard radiation beginning to tell even through the insosuit.

Speedy was watching him, without a word of Gilbert and Sullivan gibberish as greeting. Thank God for that! But he daren’t get too close.

He was 300 yards away when Speedy began backing, a step at a time, cautiously – and Powell stopped. He jumped from his robot’s shoulders and landed on the crystallined ground with a light thump and a flying of jagged fragments.

He proceeded on foot, the ground gritty and slippery to his steps, the low gravity causing him difficulty. The soles of his feet tickled with warmth. He cast one glance over his shoulder at the blackness of the cliff’s shadow and realized that he had come too far to return – either by himself or by the help of his antique robot. It was Speedy or nothing now, and the knowledge of that constricted his chest.

Far enough! He stopped.

‘Speedy,’ he called. ‘Speedy!’

The sleek, modern robot ahead of him hesitated and halted his backward steps, then resumed them.

Powell tried to put a note of pleading into his voice, and found it didn’t take much acting. ‘Speedy, I’ve got to get back to the shadow or the sun’ll get me. It’s life or death, Speedy. I need you.’

Speedy took one step forward and stopped. He spoke, but at the sound Powell groaned, for it was, ‘When you’re lying awake with a dismal headache and repose is tabooed—’ It trailed off there, and Powell took time out for some reason to murmur, ‘Iolanthe.’

It was roasting hot! He caught a movement out of the corner of his eye, and whirled dizzily; then stared in utter astonishment, for the monstrous robot on which he had ridden was moving – moving toward him, and without a rider.

He was talking: ‘Pardon, Master. I must not move without a Master upon me, but you are in danger.’

Of course, Rule One potential above everything. But he didn’t want that clumsy antique; he wanted Speedy. He walked away and motioned frantically: ‘I order you to stay away. I order you to stop!’

It was quite useless. You could not beat Rule One potential. The robot said stupidly, ‘You are in danger, Master.’

Powell looked about him desperately. He couldn’t see clearly. His brain was in a heated whirl; his breath scorched when he breathed, and the ground all about him was a shimmering haze.

He called a last time, desperately: ‘Speedy! I’m dying, damn you! Where are you? Speedy, I need you.’

He was still stumbling backward in a blind effort to get away from the giant robot he didn’t want, when he felt steel fingers on his arms, and a worried, apologetic voice of metallic timbre in his ears.

‘Holy smokes, boss, what are you doing here? And what am I doing – I’m so confused—’

‘Never mind,’ murmured Powell, weakly. ‘Get me to the shadow of the cliff – and hurry!’ There was one last feeling of being lifted into the air and a sensation of rapid motion and burning heat, and he passed out.

He woke with Donovan bending over him and smiling anxiously. ‘How are you, Greg?’

‘Fine!’ came the response. ‘Where’s Speedy?’

‘Right here. I sent him out to one of the other selenium pools – with orders to get that selenium at all cost this time. He got it back in forty-two minutes and three seconds. I timed him. He still hasn’t finished apologizing for the runaround he gave us. He’s scared to come near you for fear of what you’ll say.’

‘Drag him over,’ ordered Powell. ‘It wasn’t his fault.’ He held out a hand and gripped Speedy’s metal paw. ‘It’s OK, Speedy.’ Then, to Donovan, ‘You know, Mike, I was just thinking—’

‘Yes!’

‘Well’ – he rubbed his face – the air was so delightfully cool, ‘you know that when we get things set up here and Speedy put through his Field Tests, they’re going to send us to the Space Stations next—’

‘No!’

‘Yes! At least that’s what old lady Calvin told me just before we left, and I didn’t say anything about it, because I was going to fight the whole idea.’

‘Fight it?’ cried Donovan. ‘But—’

‘I know. It’s all right with me now. 273 degrees Centigrade below zero. Won’t it be a pleasure?’

‘Space Station,’ said Donovan, ‘here I come.’

3

Reason

Half a year later, the boys had changed their minds. The flame of a giant sun had given way to the soft blackness of space but external variations mean little in the business of checking the workings of experimental robots. Whatever the background, one is face to face with an inscrutable positronic brain, which the slide-rule geniuses say should work thus-and-so.

Except that they don’t. Powell and Donovan found that out after they had been on the Station less than two weeks.

Gregory Powell spaced his words for emphasis, ‘One week ago, Donovan and I put you together.’ His brows furrowed doubtfully and he pulled the end of his brown mustache.

It was quiet in the officer’s room of Solar Station No. 5 – except for the soft purring of the mighty Beam Director somewhere far below.

Robot QT-I sat immovable. The burnished plates of his body gleamed in the Luxites and the glowing red of the photoelectric cells that were his eyes, were fixed steadily upon the Earthman at the other side of the table.

Powell repressed a sudden attack of nerves. These robots possessed peculiar brains. Oh, the three Laws of Robotics held. They had to. All of US Robots, from Robertson himself to the new floor-sweeper would insist on that. So QT-I was safe! And yet – the QT models were the first of their kind, and this was the first of the QTs. Mathematical squiggles on paper were not always the most comforting protection against robotic fact.

Finally, the robot spoke. His voice carried the cold timbre inseparable from a metallic diaphragm, ‘Do you realize the seriousness of such a statement, Powell?’

‘Something made you, Cutie,’ pointed out Powell. ‘You admit yourself that your memory seems to spring full-grown from an absolute blankness of a week ago. I’m giving you the explanation. Donovan and I put you together from the parts shipped us.’

Cutie gazed upon his long, supple fingers in an oddly human attitude of mystification, ‘It strikes me that there should be a more satisfactory explanation than that. For you to make me seems improbable.’

The Earthman laughed quite suddenly, ‘In Earth’s name, why?’

‘Call it intuition. That’s all it is so far. But I intend to reason it out, though. A chain of valid reasoning can end only with the determination of truth, and I’ll stick till I get there.’

Powell stood up and seated himself at the table’s edge next to the robot. He felt a sudden strong sympathy for this strange machine. It was not at all like the ordinary robot, attending to his specialized task at the station with the intensity of a deeply ingrooved positronic path.

He placed a hand upon Cutie’s steel shoulder and the metal was cold and hard to the touch.

‘Cutie,’ he said, ‘I’m going to try to explain something to you. You’re the first robot who’s ever exhibited curiosity as to his own existence – and I think the first that’s really intelligent enough to understand the world outside. Here, come with me.’

The robot rose erect smoothly and his thickly sponge-rubber-soled feet made no noise as he followed Powell. The Earthman touched a button and a square section of the wall flickered aside. The thick, clear glass revealed space – star-speckled.

‘I’ve seen that in the observation ports in the engine room,’ said Cutie.

‘I know,’ said Powell. ‘What do you think it is?’

‘Exactly what it seems – a black material just beyond this glass that is spotted with little gleaming dots. I know that our director sends out beams to some of these dots, always to the same ones – and also that these dots shift and that the beams shift with them. That’s all.’