Title: Cosmic Castaway
Author: Mullen, Stanley
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Cosmic Castaway" ***


                            COSMIC CASTAWAY

                           By STANLEY MULLEN

              _"You aren't human, Bell. And you're not a
             robot. What are you?" Bell pondered the query
             slowly, cautiously, with his semi-mechanical
             superbrain ... a brain that Plutonians dubbed
            the most deadly and dangerous in the universe._

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                       Planet Stories May 1953.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


Atmosphere in the ticket agent's office seemed thicker and warmer than
usual, but the disturbing factors were supercharged emotions, not
jammed pressure-gauges or thermal adjusters. Not all the emotions were
human; but they were real enough, both to Bell and to the ticket agent.

"I know all about you, Bell," the agent said, looking over the
half-man curiously, with a hint of vicious resentment. Like many minor
functionaries, the ticket agent took the troubles of his employers
personally, and Mines, Inc. on Pluto was a subsidiary of the Power and
Transport Trust. "Sure, you think you have return passage coming to
you. Hasn't the company been more than generous? Actually, it must have
cost a fortune to patch you up."

[Illustration: _Like many minor functionaries the ticket agent studied
the half-man with a hint of vicious resentment._]

"It did," Bell admitted. "But that's not the problem. I'm not claiming
free passage. I have money to pay."

Bell was half-man, half-robot, the result of one of those hideous
accidents never mentioned in the Company's much-vaunted Public Reports.
Technologically, even aesthetically, he was a work of art, but his
own mother would not have known him. Item by item, his appearance was
curiously humanoid, but no elasticity of definition could make him
human. Every vital organ was partly or wholly artificial, 64% of his
body being either reclaimed or synthetic tissue. The face was a mask of
stainless steel, washed to flesh color by aluminum bronze tinted toward
copper, and the brain behind it was not the one he was born with.

Closing his ledger with a bang the agent snorted. "So what? I don't
care if you own half of Pluto. You're still out of luck for passage
home. We're booked solid ... six months ahead."

"You're a liar," Bell stated flatly, "and even if you were a good one,
I know better. There've been four cancellations by miners who couldn't
pass physical for space. What's the gag?"

Underground Pluto is an interesting place, but it would be pleasant
only for a race of troglodytes. Heated and pressurized air is
uncomfortably dense; light is artificial and there is a sense of
constant vibration from distant atomic boring. No one ever quite gets
used to the endless maze of galleries in subsurface cities, or to the
jarring quiver of vibrations in octaves above and below audible sound.
Worst of all is the deadly isolation from civilized mankind, and even
hardy miners accustomed to the black pits of Luna and Ganymede require
weeks of readjustment before they can work. For himself, Bell had never
objected to the working and living conditions, but he no longer worked,
and Pluto was no place to spend his life.

"Are you sure you could pass the physical?" The ticket agent shrugged.
"Don't bother me about it." With a type of insolence not uncommon
in his breed, he attempted to turn away. Bell reached, got the
man's collar into a strangling tourniquet around his throat. Pawing
frantically, the agent tried to release himself but Bell applied force
and waited until the plump face purpled artistically.

"Now that we understand each other, do I get my ticket?" Bell demanded
without heat, easing pressure to permit reply.

"No!" gasped his victim, signalling wildly as the pressure of twisted
cloth tightened again. "Wait! I can't sell you a ticket. Even if I
did, no space-skipper would dare honor it. We have orders. You aren't
going back to Earth, Bell. You can't go anywhere!..."

Bell dropped his prey as a terrier discards a dead rat.

"Why not? Orders from whom?"

Glaring, warily resentful, the clerk spat an unprintable reply. "I
wouldn't know," he added. Then anticipating further violence of
discussion, he dived into a fat sheaf of papers and came up waving a
red flimsy. "Go on. Read it yourself. No ticket for you, now or ever.
Nobody tells me why. If anyone had, I wouldn't tell you. Try the Psycho
Lab. That's where the order came from. Maybe they'll give you a reason.
Maybe they'll explain. I hope they do--"

There was no good will in the expression that followed Bell from the
ticket office.

       *       *       *       *       *

Hastings, in Psycho, dreaded the interview with Bell. He was warned
by the visi-screen that Bell was on his way, so he braced himself and
wondered how best to word an explanation that would not explain. A
buzzer sounded and Hastings pressed the button-release to admit Bell to
the office.

It was impossible not to stare. Hastings wanted to be kind. As a
scientist he was naturally interested; as a man he recognized tragedy.
Hastings did Bell the courtesy of not attempting to hide his curiosity.

From a distance, or to casual observation, illusion was both startling
and complete. No functional flaws had shown up under the most
exhaustive tests. Eyes looked like eyes, facial planes bore remarkable
resemblance to human features, new limbs and extremities looked and
worked at least as well as the originals. Design and workmanship was
skillful enough to fool a layman, though a specialist might catch
minute, observable differences, especially in the smooth flow of motor
impulses. Synthetic muscles responded swiftly and in completed curves,
rather than in the stiff, jointed, jerky effects of human locomotion.
Walking became a sinuous, liquid glide; there was superhuman precision,
and a sense of restrained power and agility beyond the human norm.

Bell stopped before the doctor's desk. Even the gesture of
instantaneous repose jarred slightly, with its hint of high-order
efficiency awaiting stimuli. Hastings catalogued Bell's visible
features, and memory supplied a working picture of the rest. For an icy
moment Hastings was gripped by the craftsman's awareness of his own
work as a masterpiece, but in the tragic motif.

Bell laughed, the sound flat and metallic, but not unpleasant. "Take
a good look, doc. I know how you feel. When I get up in the morning
I always wonder if I need a shave. It's still a shock to look in a
mirror. It's not shaving I miss, but not having to gripe about it jars
me."

"Is it as bad as that?" Hastings asked sympathetically.

"Bad enough."

In a basically imperfect world, there are various kinds and degrees
of greatness. Interviewing Bell was not Hastings' job or even moral
obligation. Explanation would be difficult, probably impossible.
Hastings officiated at his own request.

"You know why I'm here," Bell went on. The robot voice held curious
overtones, not harshly metallic, but murmurous like an echo of
low-tuned bells. "I want to go home. Back to Earth. I have a wife
there. While I had a real job here it was all right, but I've been
relieved since the accident. My contract is voided, they tell me. I
could sign another contract but I didn't like the fine print. It said
PERMANENT. No contract, no job, nor reason to stay. Now I'd like some
straight answers."

Hastings sighed. His alert ears caught belligerence in the tone as well
as the words.

"They refused your ticket?"

Bell nodded quickly. Light glanced from the rounded angles of his
face-plate. "Right on the nose. No mistake, either. Orders. From here.
Do I get my answers from you or wait until somebody slips? There could
be a good reason. If so, I have a right to know about it."

"You do, Bell," Hastings admitted. He hesitated. "I had hoped this
wouldn't come up just yet. What's deadly important about going back to
Earth? Anything immediate? Your contract still had three years to
run ... before the accident."

Bell glanced swiftly around the office, eyeplates questing for
concealed microphones, alarm scanners. Attention settled back upon
Hastings, the plates fixed with mechanical intentness. The man-robot
was shrewd, intelligent, possessed of odd quirks of humor and wayward
caprices of thought beyond that of either electronic or human brains. A
new and oddly terrifying factor had entered the equation of man versus
machine.

"Before the accident," Bell chimed in. The incomplete thought seemed to
satisfy him. "I have two good reasons. First, my wife. Second, I want
to get back among normal people and learn what kind of adjustments I
will have to make. I still have my life to live somewhere. This is not
the place."

"Straight answers, both of them," Hastings said. "Now I'll try to
answer your questions. I'd rather give you arguments first, then the
answers. Simple answers are rarely as simple as they seem. You had a
wife, Bell. She hasn't seen you. She doesn't know what has happened. In
words, perhaps. She knows you were hurt and that drastic repairs were
made. Can you expect her to visualize you, as you are now? Be honest
with her, Bell. Get a divorce, or ask her to get one. You aren't the
man she married. Legally, you may have a touchy point to argue, but
legally or not, you aren't married to the woman. It's the kindest way,
believe me. That's professional advice from a doctor. A lawyer would
tell you the same."

"I'd rather she told me," Bell protested.

"All right. About the other item. Getting to know people and learning
what adjustments you must make to live among them. Forget it. You
aren't going back, Bell. Not now and maybe never."

       *       *       *       *       *

Bell took the blow without a quiver. Hastings would have given much
for any hint of reaction but dealing with a metal mask and translucent
eyeplates put him at a disadvantage.

"We'll go into that later," Bell said. "I'm not convinced, but we'll
waive discussion of that point. Your statements lead back to the
jackpot question: What's wrong with me?"

"Does something have to be wrong with you?" The answer came too
quickly, as if Hastings had readied the parry in advance.

"I don't know of anything. Do you, doc? Don't fence with me. There has
to be something wrong with me. Otherwise I'd be on the Earth-Express
ship briefing for space right now. I'll ask you once more, doc. Do you
know something about me that I don't? What is wrong with me?"

Hastings dived reluctantly into the icy waters. "All right, Bell. But
remember you asked for this. I know of nothing wrong with you. Any
tests we could devise showed you without mechanical flaws. Except
for a few minor irregularities that will straighten out under normal
conditions, you are perfect. Your body is the best Lavery ever turned
out, and the only parts he won't vouch for are those you were born
with. Your brain is good, I think. I should know since I designed it.
The trouble is: I don't know. What I think and hope is not evidence.
Neither are our tests, for we have no yardstick to judge you by. You
aren't human, Bell. And you aren't a robot. What are you?"

Bell reacted suddenly, in a manner that caused Hastings a bad moment.
The chuckle was like bearings rattling in a loose casing.

"Since you designed my brain, I have a complaint for you, doc. You did
too good a job, if that's an objection."

"I don't follow you."

"Let's face it. I'm not exotic enough. Neither man nor robot, as you
point out. I look different to myself and feel different up to a point.

"But I don't feel different enough. Like shaving. Why do I worry about
it? It's past, no longer a function. And it's only one item. I have all
the same old habits and confusions, same old fears and maladjustments.
Even the same loves and hatreds. There are some too silly to mention,
and others vital. A few are fading, but others are part of my daily
ritual. Why should the gadgets you and Lavery fudged up to replace my
burned parts still fly off on the same old tangents?"

Hastings groaned. "I don't know, Bell. That's the terrible part of this
whole business. The brain, human or robot, cannot be wholly charted or
pigeonholed. The robots have built-in stops to short-circuit dangerous
electronic relays. But the synthetic or reclaimed tissue is a different
story. There are no stops. None of us can predict what will go on in
your brain. It is partly original tissue, partly something utterly
unknown and challenging. It may be the most deadly and dangerous
combination in our universe. You don't know yourself, Bell. And we
don't know you. We can't take the risk of sending you back to Earth.
Not till we know. If we ever do."

"Go on," urged Bell flatly.

"That is only half the problem. Here society is restricted. We are all
used to an unreal and largely artificial environment. We are carefully
selected and screened by hypnotic machines and the Psychographs. Even
here life will be difficult enough for you. On Earth it is probably
impossible. We are not half as worried by your possible reactions to
humanity as we are by their reactions to you. They will fear and resent
you. Doubtless you have been aware that something of the sort goes on
even here. People fear you.

"Either man or robot can be described in familiar terms. We are
accustomed to both and understand the functions of either. But you are
something new. Totally different. Unpredictable, terribly unfamiliar,
possibly a serious menace. You are disturbed by memory and habit
patterns. These will alter gradually as you overlay the old patterns
with new ones, new memories, instincts and habit impulses. We can't
replace intangibles. The old groove helps you for a time but you'll
outgrow it. And the new grooves may take curious directions before
you're through. You may even be immortal."

Synthetic flesh puckered Bell's mouth into a curious effect as if his
emotions caricatured a human grin.

"So I am the jackpot question?" he queried. "I expected such outlandish
ideas from my second-hand thinkbox but you've really pulled up a dilly.
What happens if I don't accept your fantastic diagnosis? Suppose I go
back to Earth anyhow?"

Hastings shrugged. "I hoped you were too intelligent to insist,
Bell. The people on Earth aren't prepared for you. There were other
experiments, you know. Previous attempts to reconstruct a functioning
being from damaged and spare parts. Their history makes it tougher
for you. They were failures but pretty hard on mankind. Some went
insane. Most of them destroyed themselves. Potentially your brain is
a superbrain. You're the first successful experiment. But you're new
in the saddle and it's a mighty strange horse. You could trample a lot
of innocent people, get thrown and perhaps badly hurt yourself. People
will make it difficult enough for you here. Don't push your luck."

"I've listened," said Bell oddly. "I believe you're reasonably honest.
But there's something you haven't told me. What is it?"

Hastings shook his head. "I wanted to make this easy for you, Bell.
I asked for your interview. I was curious, true. Not only in the
scientific sense but snoopy-curious, human-curious. That's the decent
motive, curiosity combined with a desire to help. But there was another
reason. You'll run into it from here on so I'll tell you straight: I'm
afraid of you. Not just your interesting possibilities. I'm afraid of
what you are now. You're different, you and I are civilized enough to
know and accept it. But even we don't dare face how different. My chief
emotion toward you is panic terror. Just how do you think other people
will feel?"

"I don't have to guess," Bell admitted. "I'm wondering how my wife will
feel. You're afraid of what you don't see in me. And I'm afraid of what
I will see in her. But I have to see it myself. I still want to go
home."

Hastings' gesture was hopeless. "And you won't be satisfied till you
have a try at stowing away on the spaceship? Is that it?"

Bell refused audible comment. Hastings made a last try. "You can't do
it, Bell. Ticket or no ticket. No captain or crew would dare trust you
on a spaceship. Try it if you must. But don't hurt anyone. You know
what that would mean."

Bell's reply was a mechanical grating. "I want people to like me. I
don't want to hurt them. I'm not convinced but I'll think it over...."

"Be sure, Bell."

"I will be. But I haven't decided yet...." In silent glide, the
man-robot was gone. Half an hour later, alarms blared....

       *       *       *       *       *

Frowning, Hastings dialed security police headquarters. Yes, an alarm
had come in. Yes, from Spaceport No. 4. But it was only a headfire
temporarily out of hand; the jetmen were clearing a fused jet in the
booster rockets, a reserve fuel bin ignited.

A blunt, reassuringly human face grinned from the visi-screen.

"Stop worrying, Hastings. Two men are watching Bell every minute.
There's no chance of his getting aboardship. Only one spacer in the
cradles at the moment: 11-9334. That's the ship he expected to take
but there's not a chance for him. Passengers are all checked aboard,
briefed for space and put to bed. However, if you'll feel any better
about it, go over and recheck. If you've any doubts I'll put through
emergency priority and you can go along with the ship to Earth. The
staff here can take care of Bell and destroy him if necessary. Yes, I
know the Company wants us to take no chance with him. Seems a waste
after all the trouble you took putting him back together, but nobody
argues with the Company."

Hastings shrugged unhappily. No, nobody ever argued with the Company.
Regretfully he punched keys and Bell's card snapped from the
electronically coded files. He stamped it with the properly impregnated
ink and fed the pasteboard into a pneumatic chute.

"Better pick him up for protective custody," he said. "I've put the
order through. Don't take chances with him but try to avoid rough stuff
unless he forces it. You'd better get clearance from the population
board if you do destroy him. I'm not sure the Company has authority for
that. After all, he's not a beast."

"What is he, then?" The blunt face laughed unpleasantly.

"I don't know. My nerves are like fiddle strings and my leave's
overdue. Clear my passage and I'll go along ... just in case."

Hastings reached Space Terminal No. 4 just after the police alarms
went into convulsions. He checked with headquarters and the news was
not reassuring. Bell had been picked up, asked to come along for
questioning and agreed whimsically. Somewhere en route he had simply
vanished, which is not as simple as it sounds in security arrest.
Baffled police and company guards were still searching and a cordon had
been thrown around the terminal area. It took a special order to pass
Hastings through.

Escape from Pluto is a practical impossibility; a man would be mad
to attempt the gamble. But Bell was not a man. The cargo holds were
airless and scarcely insulated against the temperatures of space.
Leakage from atomic fuel batteries was possible. Crew and passenger
accommodations were so limited that scarcely a mouse could find hiding
place. Rigorous inspection at the airlocks and hatches offered a
problem beyond the powers of a magician, even a real one, not a mere
trick artist.

Time passed and Bell did not appear near the spaceport. No attempt
was made to crash through the cordon of guards. Nerves grew strained
and the approaching deadline forced decision on Hastings. He dialed
headquarters.

"I'm going with the ship," he told embarrassed officialdom. "If Bell is
aboard, I'd better be along. Someone who understands the situation."

Officialdom nodded, no longer amused by the threat of Bell.

"Tell the captain to take no chances with him...."

Hastings shrugged unhappily.

Take-off was unspectacular. Pluto is a freak planet of nearly
Earth-size, but denser, and with the standard peculiarities of the
outer planets. Gravity provides additional problems of reaching escape
velocity, but these are not complicated by atmospheric friction. All
gases, even the lightest, are liquid or solid, and concentrated in thin
layers on the surface.

A booster sequence of ring magnets operated automatically to raise the
ship from the subsurface spaceport and catapult it past the planetary
skin. Leaving the tube like a projectile, the spacer was carried beyond
the immediate field of Plutonian gravity by triple-stage rockets which
cut loose and dropped back to the surface for pickup. Afterward, orbit
was trimmed just as for a free-flight to Earth, but the ship itself put
in readiness for the hyperdimensional drive. Such immense distances are
involved that no free-flight nor even steady-power atomic propulsion
could solve the problem satisfactorily. Time and money are important
outside Buddhist monasteries.

During most of the month-long journey from Pluto all occupants of the
spaceship are either blacked-out from acceleration or existing in the
dream-world of hyperdimensions. Building to the extremes of velocity
required for the hyperdimensional translation is painful, dreary and
dangerous. Once terminal velocity is reached and translation occurs,
normal space is warped into a tight elliptical cocoon around the ship,
all inertial forces partially damped out, and drugs or mechanical
trickery must be resorted to while human minds skirt the dark, ravelled
edges of the Unknown.

In that eerie, hour-long interval between primary acceleration and the
prolonged nightmare of the pocket universe, Hastings and two crewmen
turned out the living quarters and all accessible holds of the ship.
Even the outer cargo holds were examined by scanner and it was obvious
that Bell was not hiding out aboard. Rows of neatly racked crates,
parcels, bins of ore, mail cans, and semi-activated fuel left neither
space nor safety for a stowaway. All passengers and crewmen were double
checked by the officers and by Hastings.

Afterwards, while alarm howlers vibrated hideously through the
cabin-decks, service passageways and control rooms, Hastings lowered
himself into the shock-block of molded plastic and tried to relax.

The process was one familiar to him from previous voyages to and from
Pluto. Subconsciously he was aware of sound and movement about him but
it was fading rapidly. From here on every internal function of the
ship, even to the care and feeding of its human element, would perforce
be relegated to robots and the automatic machinery. Grimly, Hastings
recalled one part-machine....

Machines....

       *       *       *       *       *

Quivering grayness surrounded him, claimed him as its own. A hard,
bright core of identity remained alive, but the immaterial suspension
of grayness seemed of infinite extension in all dimensions of time and
space. Time perception and space perception meant little in themselves,
became mere illusions which would pass away for a time and then return
painfully. There had been few accidents, Hastings remembered, and he
clung desperately to this last fading memory of consciousness.

Coming out was not necessarily as painful as rebirth but it could
have awkward moments. Needle-bite was not the worst, and the tingling
frost-fires spread through veins and nerves communicating Inquisitional
tortures to the awakening body.

"Bad time, doc," said Bell's voice. "Hurry it up. I need you."

Idly, oddly, Hastings was not surprised to see the curiously humanoid
figure bending over him. Hypo in hand, balanced in those tentacular
fingers, Bell jabbed again, deftly. Awakening senses screamed with
agony from the harmless, revivifying drug. Hastings did not question
the urgency of command. Jangled universes came together in his tingling
brain, became shimmering chaos, resolved as reality in three familiar
dimensions came into sharp focus, as his disciplined body made habitual
response.

"What is it?" he asked.

"Trouble, doc. Your department, not mine. Black Virus, I'd say...!"

"Oh, Lord! No...."

Hyperdimensional travel has its penalties. Among them, black virus
infection, which is not black, not virus, not infection. One of the
penalties. An alien protein native to those dark dimensions beyond
dimension. A protein to which all mankind, most animals and plants, and
even a few types of robots, were fatally allergic.

Strong fingers closed on Hastings' arm and hustled him along. Exertion
cleared his mind and fear roused his senses to action. Now thoroughly
awake, resistance to Bell did not occur to him. He permitted Bell
to drag-lead him through the passenger compartments into the crew's
quarters. One glance was sufficient. Half the crewmen were already
dead. Hideously dead. Others writhed in convulsions, wrenched out of
their shockblocks, their faces blotched with dark weals, chest and
abdomens bloated and bursting with agony.

"Chiefly the crew, so far," Bell explained. "Only one of the passengers
had contact with it. Or with them. They must have got it on the out
voyage, before reaching Pluto."

Hastings nodded, numb with horror.

"Can we help them?" Bell asked calmly.

"Not much. Drugs by injection to kill the pain. A few may survive, the
stronger ones, and they may wish they hadn't. We'll try to keep it from
spreading to the other passengers. There are treatments, but not here.
If we could reach the hospital at Luna City--"

Hastings' voice sounded hopeless.

"It's not too far," Bell commented. "We're well inside the orbit of
Mars. A week of deceleration and orbit trimming. Plenty of fuel."

"But who'll handle the ship?"

"They can't?"

"None of them--ever. Even if they live to reach Luna City."

"Then I'll have to," Bell said confidently.

Hastings stared as if the robot-man had suddenly gone mad. "No one man
could handle the ship," he gasped. "Even if you knew all about space
ships and how to land them. Trimming orbit is a full-crew job. And
landing is ticklish enough for old hands. You don't know a thing--"

"No," agreed Bell. "But I'll manage. No _man_ could, but I'm not a man,
as you pointed out. More or less. We'll find out now which it is. I can
do it. I'll have the robots and the automatic machinery. We understand
each other."

Hastings wasted no time in futilities. "That's your department. Do
whatever you can. Send a warning to Luna City for relay to Earth and
Pluto. Then get me a couple of the more intelligent passengers. I'll
need help."

"They won't come," Bell said, with the nearest a grunt of disgust he
could manage. "They're human enough to be scared. Not that I blame
them. I can remember being that human myself. You'll have to settle for
whatever help I can give ... between errands."

Hastings swore and accepted the inevitable.

       *       *       *       *       *

Nine days of nightmare. Four of the remaining crewmen died and were
promptly incinerated. Bell attended to this gruesome task, and others
too ugly for print. He ate rarely and slept not at all. He took over
completely when Hastings collapsed from sheer exhaustion, rousing
him again only when the vital necessities of ship management demanded
attention. Apparently immune to contact with the alien protein, he
handled living and dead without precautions. During the intervals when
Hastings could manage the clinical requirements of his patients, Bell's
brain went to work.

Feeding mountains of figures into himself, he became a living
calculator, resolving the mathematical mountains into the twinned
equations of orbit and objective. By tricky gearing and fantastic
jumbles of wiring he increased the efficiency of both automatic
machinery and the non-humanoid robots. Simple devices accomplished
prodigies of result.

Passengers were herded into a confined space near the nose of the
ship, and kept strictly quarantined. Two of the passengers showed
unmistakable signs of exposure and were segregated. All the routine
tasks of the ship went into the hands of the machines, functioning
under the direction of Bell, half-man, half-machine.

"I still don't understand how you managed to get aboard," said
Hastings, half-angrily. "But I'm damned glad you did. Even if you don't
make the landing and set us down like a panful of scrambled eggs, it's
still been interesting to know you. We searched every place in the ship
that a stowaway could possibly have hidden."

It was the last day out from Luna.

"You tried too hard, doc." Bell laughed, his sharp, metallic clattering
laughter. "I didn't stow away. I was one of the crewmen who helped you
search the holds. Nobody ever notices a man in uniform, and I helped
them overlook me. These eyeplates are the secret, for people look too
hard at them, and it's easy to hypnotize them. Then I will them to see
whatever they expected to see. You made everything too easy for me."

"That's what I wanted," said Hastings, flushing, "to make things easy
for you. But not exactly as you mean it. Never trust a robot any
further than you can throw him."

Bell replied thoughtfully. "No one really trusts a machine. Man
instinctively fears and distrusts his own creations. We try to
reassure ourselves by repeating the time-dishonored formula. The
automobile will never replace the horse, nor the airplane the car,
the rocket the airplane. And on down the line. For myself, I'm still
faint-hearted about the hyperdimensional drive in spaceships. A new
invention scares hell out of the stay-put mentality of the human race.
We try desperately to convince ourselves that it isn't so, that these
inventions won't really work."

"People will eventually outgrow childish fears," protested Hastings.

"To some extent. But never completely. People accept the new
inventions, but only after they have proved themselves. When they
become commonplace, comfortable, they are taken for granted. Often
too much so. But machines do every job better than their masters and
creators. And civilization goes wherever the machines wish to take
mankind; machines feed man, wake him up, put him to sleep, wipe his
nose, change his didy when necessary. So mankind returns to the nursery
stage--with machines as the new version of benevolent nursery despots.
Machines do the thinking; they are kind masters and eager, tireless
servants.

"But inside, there is always the hate, the fear, the natural distrust
that flesh always feels for the new, the alien. People learn to
accept, under duress, just as children accept the despotism of the
nursery. But machines are the real rulers. Mankind is at the mercy of
machinery. Machines check progress, pass on the sanity and utility of
every development. They are gruesome guardian angels but until mankind
grows up, they are needed. Theirs is the problem of all guardian
angels ... to make themselves trusted and accepted. That's my problem.
I'm half-machine, even though I am still more flesh than anything else."

Mars would have been a glowing, pink-orange coal behind the ship had
it not chanced to be elsewhere in its orbit. Earth and Luna were a
pair of faint crescents, one vivid blue, the other pale and ghostly
gray-yellow, so far to the side that one unversed in astrogation would
have feared a clean miss. However, by the time calculated, the ship
would reach Earth's orbit and the planet and satellite would be there,
in proper position and moving at nearly the exact speed to make landing
possible.

There was hope now for those still living. If Bell could only cap his
miracle with another.

"What are your plans now?" Hastings asked. "Going on to Earth after
we're cleared from Luna?"

Bell studied the psychiatrist wistfully. "Is it safe to tell you?"

"Why not? I'm on your side now," admitted Hastings. "You've proved
yourself. If the population board gives you any trouble about landing,
or going to Earth, refer them to me. I'm your man, your doctor and your
friend. You don't have to worry about me, and I've stopped worrying
about you. I can even believe you'll set down this crate in one piece.
I'm awed. What do you want? Earth?"

Bell's voice was uneasy. "Not right away. I've sent word on to Jane.
She'll take the E-L shuttle and meet me here. After I've talked to her,
there are things to do. I'm afraid of people, doc. Honestly afraid. And
I don't want to go back empty-handed."

       *       *       *       *       *

It was not a good-landing, technically. But there have been worse with
a full-crew ship. Considering the emergency, and all of his handicaps,
Bell worked the equivalent of a miracle. Bell saw to the transfer of
the still-living crewmen to the Lunar Base hospital, then submitted
himself along with the doctor and the well passengers to the thorough
examinations of space quarantine. He enjoyed the discomfiture caused
the staff by his unorthodox anatomy.

Fortunately the signs of deadly reactions to the misnamed protein are
easily distinguished. Bell and Hastings were cleared in record time.
And the shuttle from Earth was not due for a full hour when they
reached the landing stages.

"You haven't answered my question, Bell!" Hastings probed. "I asked
what you wanted. What are your plans?"

Bell hesitated. "I don't know exactly. It depends on what Jane wants.
I have an idea about proving myself. But it will take money, a lot of
money."

"You'll have a lot, Bell. Claim salvage for the ship and cargo. Stick
the Company. They owe you something for that accident that should never
have happened. Even according to law they're at fault for not providing
safeties. Nobody ever argues with the Company but you have that fat,
greedy octopus over a barrel. You'll be rich and they'll have to let
you go and come as you please. On Earth or anywhere."

Bell grinned. "I know they'd like to box me up and keep me buried
alive on Pluto, just to keep my mouth shut. But you don't sound like a
Company man, doc. Aren't you?"

Hastings snorted savagely. "They strangle business, suppress
initiative, gobble all valuable inventions, and generally dictate
subsistence terms to owners and workers alike. D'you think I went
to Pluto to work under P. & T. terms because I liked it? I had to
go or starve, and I thought I could do something for the men in the
mines. They'll put meters on our breathing next. The P. & T. empire
controls all sources of power, from water wheels to fuel and atomic
generators...."

"But not sunlight or the cosmic rays, do they?"

"Wait a minute!" Hastings was pale but interested. "You're not thinking
of wrecking the trust."

"I might. It would be fun to short-circuit that power. I could do it in
a week. A guardian angel has to prove himself. Free power to everyone
could be my gift. About that salvage money. Would P. & T. settle for
half the legal amount?"

"They'll settle and be glad for such a comfortable deal."

"Will you handle that part for me? Save embarrassment. How's your
nerve, doc?"

"Never better. Sure, I'll arrange the salvage deal. Why not? I'll even
nick them for a fat cut of commission. But you can't get rid of me so
easily. This is one fight I want a share of. And I'm sticking like a
burr."

They watched the shuttle ship through the giant airlocks. Like a
falling leaf it maneuvered, settling through the dense, hothouse
atmosphere of subsurface Luna. Airlock doors in the hull slid open.

"About this free power. It's a simple matter of gratings to step down
the frequency--"

"Skip it," said Hastings absently. "I wouldn't understand the
technology anyhow. That doesn't matter. After all, I built your
superbrain. Anyone who can do what you've done, bringing in the
spaceship and setting it down in one piece, not to mention saving all
our lives and preventing the spread of Black Virus, is my man. If you
say you can do it, you can."

Bell's metallic eyeplates selected one tiny figure among the many
disembarking. He groaned.

"I guess this is it." The doctor gripped his arm, then left him alone
to meet his fate.

She was a trim figure in a simple gray suit. Not beautiful, not
extraordinary nor spectacular except in that individual way every human
being is extraordinary and different from all others. She was in her
middle thirties, even plain by some standards. But she was Jane, which
was somehow important to Bell.

"It's all right," she said calmly, standing straight and firm, unafraid
of the things time and change can do to love, or to other human
relations.

"Don't hurry it," Bell advised. "Just remember that whatever you want
is all that really matters."

"You're changed," she said rapidly. "Different in ways that I can't
understand. Maybe I'll never understand. It may be pretty difficult but
we'll worry about details later. You're still you, I think. Welcome
home."

Much later Hastings joined the pair and was introduced. He made no
comment worthy of record but while Jane attended to some formalities of
disembarking on Luna the men were left alone.

Bell fixed his robot stare on Hastings. "Tomorrow we start Project
Power," he promised. "Still with me?"

"All the way," Hastings agreed. "I guess that settles everything but
the Jackpot Question."

For once, Bell's face-plate achieved the miracle of a completely human
expression. Puzzlement.

"Is there another?"

"I think so. What _are_ you going to do with Humanity?"

Bell laughed, the sound full of murmurous, metallic overtones.

"I haven't quite decided...."



*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Cosmic Castaway" ***

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