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Title: Unwise Child

Author: Gordon Randall Garrett

Release Date: November 5, 2007 [EBook #23335]

Language: English

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Unwise Child

RANDALL GARRETT

DOUBLEDAY & COMPANY, INC.
GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK

1962

All of the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance
to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

_Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 60-13524_
_Copyright © 1962 by Randall Garrett_
_All Rights Reserved_

_Printed in the United States of America_
_First Edition_

  +--------------------------------------------------------------+
  |                     Transcriber's Note                       |
  |                                                              |
  | Extensive search has failed to find any evidence that the    |
  | U.S. copyright of this publication has been renewed.         |
  +--------------------------------------------------------------+


BOOKS BY RANDALL GARRETT


_Biography_
_Pope John XXIII: Pastoral Prince_

_Science Fiction_
_Unwise Child_


_Books by "Robert Randall"_

_The Shrouded Planet_
_The Dawning Light_

_"Robert Randall" is a pseudonym used on books written in collaboration
with Robert Silverberg._


With sincere appreciation,
this book is dedicated
to
TIM and NATALIE
who waited ...
and waited ...
and waited ...
and waited for it.




1


The kids who tried to jump Mike the Angel were bright enough in a lot of
ways, but they made a bad mistake when they tangled with Mike the Angel.

They'd done their preliminary work well enough. They had cased the job
thoroughly, and they had built the equipment to take care of it. Their
mistake was not in their planning; it was in not taking Mike the Angel
into account.

There is a section of New York's Manhattan Island, down on the lower
West Side, that has been known, for over a century, as "Radio Row." All
through this section are stores, large and small, where every kind of
electronic and sub-electronic device can be bought, ordered, or designed
to order. There is even an old antique shop, known as Ye Quainte Olde
Elecktronicks Shoppe, where you can buy such oddities as vacuum-tube FM
radios and twenty-four-inch cathode-ray television sets. And, if you
want them, transmitters to match, so you can watch the antiques work.

Mike the Angel had an uptown office in the heart of the business
district, near West 112th Street--a very posh suite of rooms on the
fiftieth floor of the half-mile-high Timmins Building, overlooking the
two-hundred-year-old Gothic edifice of the Cathedral of St. John the
Divine. The glowing sign on the door of the suite said, very simply:

  M. R. GABRIEL
  POWER DESIGN

But, once or twice a week, Mike the Angel liked to take off and prowl
around Radio Row, just shopping around. Usually, he didn't work too
late, but, on this particular afternoon, he'd been in his office until
after six o'clock, working on some papers for the Interstellar
Commission. So, by the time he got down to Radio Row, the only shop left
open was Harry MacDougal's.

That didn't matter much to Mike the Angel, since Harry's was the place
he had intended to go, anyway. Harry MacDougal's establishment was
hardly more than a hole in the wall--a narrow, long hallway between two
larger stores. Although not a specialist, like the proprietor of Ye
Quainte Olde Elecktronicks Shoppe, Harry did carry equipment of every
vintage and every make. If you wanted something that hadn't been
manufactured in decades, and perhaps never made in quantity, Harry's was
the place to go. The walls were lined with bins, all unlabeled, filled
helter-skelter with every imaginable kind of gadget, most of which would
have been hard to recognize unless you were both an expert and a
historian.

Old Harry didn't need labels or a system. He was a small, lean, bony,
sharp-nosed Scot who had fled Scotland during the Panic of '37, landed
in New York, and stopped. He solemnly declared that he had never been
west of the Hudson River nor north of 181st Street in the more than
fifty years he had been in the country. He had a mind like that of a
robot filing cabinet. Ask him for a particular piece of equipment, and
he'd squint one eye closed, stare at the end of his nose with the other,
and say:

"An M-1993 thermodyne hexode, eh? Ah. Um. Aye, I got one. Picked it up a
couple years back. Put it-- Let ma see, now...."

And he'd go to his wall ladder, push it along that narrow hallway,
moving boxes aside as he went, and stop somewhere along the wall. Then
he'd scramble up the ladder, pull out a bin, fumble around in it, and
come out with the article in question. He'd blow the dust off it, polish
it with a rag, scramble down the ladder, and say: "Here 'tis. Thought I
had one. Let's go back in the back and give her a test."

On the other hand, if he didn't have what you wanted, he'd shake his
head just a trifle, then squint up at you and say: "What d'ye want it
for?" And if you could tell him what you planned to do with the piece
you wanted, nine times out of ten he could come up with something else
that would do the job as well or better.

In either case, he always insisted that the piece be tested. He refused
either to buy or sell something that didn't work. So you'd follow him
down that long hallway to the lab in the rear, where all the testing
equipment was. The lab, too, was cluttered, but in a different way. Out
front, the stuff was dead; back here, there was power coursing through
the ionic veins and metallic nerves of the half-living machines. Things
were labeled in neat, accurate script--not for Old Harry's benefit, but
for the edification of his customers, so they wouldn't put their fingers
in the wrong places. He never had to worry about whether his customers
knew enough to fend for themselves; a few minutes spent in talking was
enough to tell Harry whether a man knew enough about the science and art
of electronics and sub-electronics to be trusted in the lab. If you
didn't measure up, you didn't get invited to the lab, even to watch a
test.

But he had very few people like that; nobody came into Harry MacDougal's
place unless he was pretty sure of what he wanted and how he wanted to
use it.

On the other hand, there were very few men whom Harry would allow into
the lab unescorted. Mike the Angel was one of them.

Meet Mike the Angel. Full name: Michael Raphael Gabriel. (His mother had
tagged that on him at the time of his baptism, which had made his father
wince in anticipated compassion, but there had been nothing for him to
say--not in the middle of the ceremony.)

Naturally, he had been tagged "Mike the Angel." Six feet seven. Two
hundred sixty pounds. Thirty-four years of age. Hair: golden yellow.
Eyes: deep blue. Cash value of holdings: well into eight figures.
Credit: almost unlimited. Marital status: highly eligible, if the right
woman could tackle him.

Mike the Angel pushed open the door to Harry MacDougal's shop and took
off his hat to brush the raindrops from it. Farther uptown, the streets
were covered with clear plastic roofing, but that kind of comfort
stopped at Fifty-third Street.

There was no one in sight in the long, narrow store, so Mike the Angel
looked up at the ceiling, where he knew the eye was hidden.

"Harry?" he said.

"I see you, lad," said a voice from the air. "You got here just in time.
I'm closin' up. Lock the door, would ye?"

"Sure, Harry." Mike turned around, pressed the locking switch, and heard
it snap satisfactorily.

"Okay, Mike," said Harry MacDougal's voice. "Come on back. I hope ye
brought that bottle of scotch I asked for."

Mike the Angel made his way back between the towering tiers of bins as
he answered. "Sure did, Harry. When did I ever forget you?"

And, as he moved toward the rear of the store, Mike the Angel casually
reached into his coat pocket and triggered the switch of a small but
fantastically powerful mechanism that he always carried when he walked
the streets of New York at night.

He was headed straight into trouble, and he knew it. And he hoped he was
ready for it.




2


Mike the Angel kept his hand in his pocket, his thumb on a little plate
that was set in the side of the small mechanism that was concealed
therein. As he neared the door, the little plate began to vibrate,
making a buzz which could only be felt, not heard. Mike sighed to
himself. Vibroblades were all the rage this season.

He pushed open the rear door rapidly and stepped inside. It was just
what he'd expected. His eyes saw and his brain recorded the whole scene
in the fraction of a second before he moved. In that fraction of a
second, he took in the situation, appraised it, planned his strategy,
and launched into his plan of action.

Harry MacDougal was sitting at his workbench, near the controls of the
eye that watched the shop when he was in the lab. He was hunched over a
little, his small, bright eyes peering steadily at Mike the Angel from
beneath shaggy, silvered brows. There was no pleading in those
eyes--only confidence.

Next to Old Harry was a kid--sixteen, maybe seventeen. He had the JD
stamp on his face: a look of cold, hard arrogance that barely concealed
the uncertainty and fear beneath. One hand was at Harry's back, and
Mike knew that the kid was holding a vibroblade at the old man's spine.

At the same time, the buzzing against his thumb told Mike the Angel
something else. There was a vibroblade much nearer his body than the one
in the kid's hand.

That meant that there was another young punk behind him.

All this took Mike the Angel about one quarter of a second to
assimilate. Then he jumped.

Had the intruders been adults, Mike would have handled the entire
situation in a completely different way. Adults, unless they are
mentally or emotionally retarded, do not usually react or behave like
children. Adolescents can, do, and _must_--for the very simple reason
that they have not yet had time to learn to react as adults.

Had the intruders been adults, and had Mike the Angel behaved the way he
did, he might conceivably have died that night. As it was, the kids
never had a chance.

Mike didn't even bother to acknowledge the existence of the punk behind
him. He leaped, instead, straight for the kid in the dead-black suède
zipsuit who was holding the vibroblade against Harry MacDougal's spine.
And the kid reacted exactly as Mike the Angel had hoped, prayed, and
predicted he would.

The kid defended himself.

An adult, in a situation where he has one known enemy at his mercy and
is being attacked by a second, will quickly put the first out of the way
in order to leave himself free to deal with the second. There is no
sense in leaving your flank wide open just to oppose a frontal attack.

If the kid had been an adult, Harry MacDougal would have died there and
then. An adult would simply have slashed his vibroblade through the old
man's spine and brought it to bear on Mike the Angel.

But not the kid. He jumped back, eyes widening, to face his oncoming
opponent in an open space. He was no coward, that kid, and he knew how
to handle a vibroblade. In his own unwise, suicidal way, he was
perfectly capable of proving himself. He held out the point of that
shimmering metal shaft, ready to parry any offensive thrust that Mike
the Angel might make.

If Mike had had a vibroblade himself, and if there hadn't been another
punk at his back, Mike might have taken care of the kid that way. As it
was, he had no choice but to use another way.

He threw himself full on the point of the scintillating vibroblade.

A vibroblade is a nasty weapon. Originally designed as a surgeon's tool,
its special steel blade moves in and out of the heavy hilt at speeds
from two hundred to two thousand vibrations per second, depending on the
size and the use to which it is to be put. Make it eight inches long,
add serrated, diamond-pointed teeth, and you have the man-killing
vibroblade. Its danger is in its power; that shivering blade can cut
through flesh, cartilage, and bone with almost no effort. It's a knife
with power steering.

But that kind of power can be a weakness as well as a strength.

The little gadget that Mike the Angel carried did more than just detect
the nearby operation of a vibroblade. It was also a defense. The gadget
focused a high-density magnetic field on any vibroblade that came
anywhere within six inches of Mike's body.

In that field, the steel blade simply couldn't move. It was as though it
had been caught in a vise. The blade no longer vibrated; it had become
nothing more than an overly fancy bread knife.

The trouble was that the power unit in the heavy hilt simply wouldn't
accept the fact that the blade was immovable. That power unit was in
there to move something, and by heaven, _something_ had to move.

The hilt jerked and bucked in the kid's hand, taking skin with it. Then
it began to smoke and burn under the overload. The plastic shell cracked
and hot copper and silver splattered out of it. The kid screamed as the
molten metal burned his hand.

Mike the Angel put a hand against the kid's chest and shoved. As the boy
toppled backward, Mike turned to face the other boy.

Only it wasn't a boy.

She was wearing gold lip paint and had sprayed her hair blue, but she
knew how to handle a vibroblade at least as well as her boy friend had.
Just as Mike the Angel turned, she lunged forward, aiming for the small
of his back.

And she, too, screamed as she lost her blade in a flash of heat.

Then she grabbed for something in her pocket. Regretfully, Mike the
Angel brought the edge of his hand down against the side of her neck in
a paralyzing, but not deadly, rabbit punch. She dropped, senseless, and
a small gun spilled out of the waist pocket of her zipsuit and skittered
across the floor. Mike paused only long enough to make sure she was out,
then he turned back to his first opponent.

As he had anticipated, Harry MacDougal had taken charge. The kid was
sprawled flat on the floor, and Old Harry was holding a shock gun in his
hand.

Mike the Angel took a deep breath.

"Yer trousers are on fire," said Harry.

Mike yelped as he felt the heat, and he began slapping at the smoldering
spots where the molten metal from the vibroblades had hit his clothing.
He wasn't afire; modern clothing doesn't flame up--but it can get pretty
hot when you splash liquid copper on it.

"Damn!" said Mike the Angel. "New suit, too."

"You're a fast thinker, laddie," said Old Harry.

"You don't need to flatter me, Harry," said Mike the Angel. "When an old
teetotaler like you asks a man if he's brought some scotch, the man's a
fool if he doesn't know there's trouble afoot." He gave his leg a final
slap and said: "What happened? Are there any more of them?"

"Don't know. Might be." The old man waved at his control panel. "My
instruments are workin' again!" He gestured at the floor. "I'm nae sure
how they did it, but somehow they managed to blank out ma instruments
just long enough to get inside. Their mistake was in not lockin' the
front door."

Mike the Angel was busy searching the two unconscious kids. He looked
up. "Neither of them is carrying any equipment in their clothing--at
least, not anything that's self-powered. If they've got pickup circuits
built into the cloth, there must be more of them outside."

"Aye. Likely. We'll see."

Suddenly, there was a soft _ping! ping! ping!_ from an instrument on the
bench.

Harry glanced quickly at the receiving screen that was connected with
the multitude of eyes that were hidden around the area of his shop. Then
a smile came over his small brown face.

"Cops," he said. "Time they got here."




3


Sergeant Cowder looked the room over and took a drag from his cigarette.
"Well, that's that. Now--what happened?" He looked from Mike the Angel
to Harry MacDougal and back again. Both of them appeared to be thinking.

"All right," he said quietly, "let me guess, then."

Old Harry waved a hand. "Oh no, Sergeant; 'twon't be necessary. I think
Mr. Gabriel was just waiting for me to start, because he wasn't here
when the two rapscallions came in, and I was just tryin' to figure out
where to begin. We're not bein' unco-operative. Let's see now--" He
gazed at the ceiling as though trying to collect his thoughts. He knew
perfectly well that the police sergeant was recording everything he
said.

The sergeant sighed. "Look, Harry, you're not on trial. I know perfectly
well that you've got this place bugged to a fare-thee-well. So does
every shop operator on Radio Row. If you didn't, the JD gangs would have
cleaned you all out long ago."

Harry kept looking at the ceiling, and Mike the Angel smiled quietly at
his fingernails.

The detective sergeant sighed again. "Sure, we'd like to have some of
the gadgets that you and the other operators on the Row have worked out,
Harry. But I'm in no position to take 'em away from you. Besides, we
have some stuff that you'd like to have, too, so that makes us pretty
much even. If we started confiscating illegal equipment from you, the
JD's would swoop in here, take your legitimate equipment, bug it up, and
they'd be driving us all nuts within a week. So long as you don't use
illegal equipment illegally, the department will leave you alone."

Old Harry grinned. "Well, now, that's very nice of you, Sergeant. But I
don't have anything illegal--no robotics stuff or anything like that.
Oh, I'll admit I've a couple of eyes here and there to watch my shop,
but eyes aren't illegal."

The detective glanced around the room with a practiced eye and then
looked blandly back at the little Scotsman. Harry MacDougal was lying,
and the sergeant knew it. And Harry knew the sergeant knew it.

Sergeant Cowder sighed for a third time and looked at the Scot. "Okay.
So what happened?"

Harry's face became serious. "They came in about six-thirty. First I
knew of it, one of the kids--the boy--stepped out of that closet over
there and put a vibroblade at my back. I'd come back here to get a small
resistor, and all of a sudden there he was."

Mike the Angel frowned, but he didn't say anything.

"None of your equipment registered anything?" asked the detective.

"Not a thing, Sergeant," said Harry. "They've got something new, all
right. The kid must ha' come in through the back door, there. And I'd
ha' been willin' to bet ma life that no human bein' could ha' walked in
here without ma knowin' it before he got within ten feet o' that door.
Look."

He got up, walked over to the back door, and opened it. It opened into
what looked at first to be a totally dark room. Then the sergeant saw
that there was a dead-black wall a few feet from the open door.

"That's a light trap," said Harry. "Same as they have in photographic
darkrooms. To get from this door to the outer door that leads into the
alley, you got to turn two corners and walk about thirty feet. Even I,
masel', couldn't walk through it without settin' off half a dozen
alarms. Any kind of light would set off the bugs; so would the heat
radiation from the human body."

"How about the front?" Sergeant Cowder asked. "Anyone could get in from
the front."

Harry's grin became grim. "Not unless I go with 'em. And not even then
if I don't want 'em to."

"It was kind of you to let us in," said the detective mildly.

"A pleasure," said Harry. "But I wish I knew how that kid got in."

"Well, he did--somehow," Cowder said. "What happened after he came out
of the closet?"

"He made me let the girl in. They were goin' to open up the rear
completely and take my stuff out that way. They'd ha' done it, too, if
Mr. Gabriel hadn't come along."

Detective Sergeant Cowder looked at Mike the Angel. "About what time was
that, Mr. Gabriel?"

"About six thirty-five," Mike told him. "The kids probably hadn't been
here more than a few minutes."

Harry MacDougal nodded in silent corroboration.

"Then what happened?" asked the detective.

Mike told him a carefully edited version of what had occurred, leaving
out the existence of the little gadget he was carrying in his pocket.
The sergeant listened patiently and unbelievingly through the whole
recital. Mike the Angel grinned to himself; he knew what part of the
story seemed queer to the cop.

He was right. Cowder said: "Now, wait a minute. What caused those
vibroblades to burn up that way?"

"Must have been faulty," Mike the Angel said innocently.

"Both of them?" Sergeant Cowder asked skeptically. "At the same time?"

"Oh no. Thirty seconds apart, I'd guess."

"Very interesting. Very." He started to say something else, but a
uniformed officer stuck his head in through the doorway that led to the
front of the shop.

"We combed the whole area, Sergeant. Not a soul around. But from the
looks of the alley, there must have been a small truck parked in there
not too long ago."

Cowder nodded. "Makes sense. Those JD's wouldn't have tried this unless
they intended to take everything they could put their hands on, and they
certainly couldn't have put all this in their pockets." He rubbed one
big finger over the tip of his nose. "Okay, Barton, that's all. Take
those two kids to the hospital and book 'em in the detention ward. I
want to talk to them when they wake up."

The cop nodded and left.

Sergeant Cowder looked back at Harry. "Your alarm to the precinct
station went off at six thirty-six. I figure that whoever was on the
outside, in that truck, knew something had gone wrong as soon as the
fight started in here. He--or they--shut off whatever they were using to
suppress the alarm system and took off before we got here. They sure
must have moved fast."

"Must have," agreed Harry. "Is there anything else, Sergeant?"

Cowder shook his head. "Not right now. I'll get in touch with you later,
if I need you."

Harry and Mike the Angel followed him through the front of the shop to
the front door. At the door, Cowder turned.

"Well, good night. Thanks for your assistance, Mr. Gabriel. I wish some
of our cops had had your luck."

"How so?" asked Mike the Angel.

"If more vibroblades would blow up at opportune moments, we'd have fewer
butchered policemen."

Mike the Angel shook his head. "Not really. If their vibros started
burning out every time they came near a cop, the JD's would just start
using something else. You can't win in this game."

Cowder nodded glumly. "It's a losing proposition any way you look at
it.... Well, good night again." He stepped out, and Old Harry closed and
locked the door behind him.

Mike the Angel said: "Come on, Harry; I want to find something." He
began walking back down the long, narrow shop toward the rear again.
Harry followed, looking mystified.

Mike the Angel stopped, sniffing. "Smell that?"

Harry sniffed. "Aye. Burnt insulation. So?"

"You know which one of these bins is nearest to your main control cable.
Start looking. See if you find anything queer."

Old Harry walked over to a nearby bin, pulled it open, and looked
inside. He closed it, pulled open another. He found the gadget on the
third try. It was a plastic case, six by six by eight, and it still
smelled of hot insulation, although the case itself was barely warm.

"What is it?" Harry asked in wonder.

"It's the gizmo that turned your equipment off. When I passed by it, my
own gadget must have blown it. I knew the police couldn't have made it
here between the time of the fight and the time they showed up. They
must have had at least an extra minute. Besides, I didn't think anyone
could build an instrument that would blank out everything at long range.
It had to be something near your main cable. I think you'll find a
metallic oscillator in there. Analyze it. Might be useful."

Harry turned the box over in his hands. "Probably has a timer in it to
start it.... Well.... That helps."

"What do you mean?"

"I've got a pretty good idea who put it here. Older kid. Nineteen--maybe
twenty. Seemed like a nice lad, too. Didn't take him for a JD. Can't
trust anyone these days. Thanks, Mike. If I find anything new in here,
I'll let you know."

"Do that," said Mike the Angel. "And, as a personal favor, I'll show you
how to build my own super-duper, extra-special, anti-vibroblade defense
unit."

Old Harry grinned, crinkling up his wizened face in a mass of fine
wrinkles. "You'd better think up a shorter name than that for it,
laddie; I could probably build one in less time than it takes you to say
it."

"Want to bet?"

"I'll bet you twenty I can do it in twenty-four hours."

"Twenty it is, Harry. I'll sell you mine this time tomorrow for twenty
bucks."

Harry shook his head. "I'll trade you mine for yours, plus twenty." Then
his eyes twinkled. "And speaking of money, didn't you come down here to
buy something?"

Mike the Angel laughed. "You're not going to like it. I came down to get
a dozen plastic-core resistors."

"What size?"

Mike told him, and Old Harry went over to the proper bin, pulled them
out, all properly boxed, and handed them to him.

"That'll be four dollars," he said.

Mike the Angel paid up with a smile. "You don't happen to have a
hundred-thousand-unit microcryotron stack, do you?"

"Ain't s'posed to," said Harry MacDougal. "If I did, I wouldn't sell it
to you. But, as a matter of cold fact, I do happen to have one. Use it
for a paperweight. I'll give it to you for nothing, because it don't
work, anyhow."

"Maybe I can fix it," said Mike the Angel, "as long as you're giving it
to me. How come it doesn't work?"

"Just a second, laddie," said Harry. He scuttled to the rear of the shop
and came back with a ready-wrapped package measuring five by five by
four. He handed it to Mike the Angel and said: "It's a present. Thanks
for helping me out of a tight spot."

Mike said something deprecative of his own efforts and took the package.
If it were in working order it would have been worth close to three
hundred dollars--more than that on the black market. If it was broken,
though, it was no good to Mike. A microcryotron unit is almost
impossible to fix if it breaks down. But Mike took it because he didn't
want to hurt Old Harry's feelings by refusing a present.

"Thanks, Harry," he said. "Happen to know why it doesn't work?"

Harry's face crinkled again in his all-over smile. "Sure, Mike. It ain't
plugged in."




4


Mike the Angel did not believe in commuting. Being a bachelor, he could
afford to indulge in that belief. In his suite of offices on 112th
Street, there was one door marked "M. R. Gabriel." Behind that door was
his private secretary's office, which acted as an effective barrier
between himself and the various employees of the firm. Behind the
secretary's office was his own office.

There was still another door in his inner office, a plain, unmarked door
that looked as though it might conceal a closet.

It didn't. It was the door to a veddy, veddy expensive apartment with
equally expensive appointments. One wall, thirty feet long and ten feet
high, was a nearly invisible, dustproof slab of polished, optically flat
glass that gave the observer the feeling that there was nothing between
him and the city street, five hundred feet below.

The lights of the city, coming through the wall, gave the room plenty of
illumination after sunset, but the simple flick of a switch could
polarize it black, allowing perfect privacy.

The furniture was massive, heavily braced, and well upholstered. It had
to be; Mike the Angel liked to flop into chairs, and his two hundred and
sixty pounds gave chairs a lot of punishment.

On one of the opaque walls was Dali's original "Eucharist," with its
muffled, robed figures looking oddly luminous in the queer combination
of city lights and interior illumination. Farther back, a Valois gleamed
metallically above the shadowed bas-reliefs of its depths.

It was the kind of apartment Mike the Angel liked. He could sleep, if
necessary, on a park bench or in a trench, but he didn't see any reason
for doing so if he could sleep on a five-hundred-dollar floater.

As he had passed through each door, he had checked them carefully. His
electrokey had a special circuit that lighted up a tiny glow lamp in the
key handle if the lock had been tampered with. None of them had.

He opened the final door, went into his apartment, and locked the door
behind him, as he had locked the others. Then he turned on the lights,
peeled off his raincoat, and plopped himself into a chair to unwrap the
microcryotron stack he had picked up at Harry's.

Theoretically, Harry wasn't supposed to sell the things. They were still
difficult to make, and they were supposed to be used only by persons who
were authorized to build robot brains, since that's what the stack
was--a part of a robot brain. Mike could have put his hands on one
legally, provided he'd wanted to wait for six or eight months to clear
up the red tape. Actually, the big robotics companies didn't want
amateurs fooling around with robots; they'd much rather build the robots
themselves and rent them out. They couldn't make do-it-yourself projects
impossible, but they could make them difficult.

In a way, there was some good done. So far, the JD's hadn't gone into
big-scale robotics. Self-controlled bombs could be rather nasty.

Adult criminals, of course, already had them. But an adult criminal who
had the money to invest in robotic components, or went to the trouble to
steal them, had something more lucrative in mind than street fights or
robbing barrooms. To crack a bank, for instance, took a cleverly
constructed, well-designed robot and plenty of ingenuity on the part of
the operator.

Mike the Angel didn't want to make bombs or automatic bankrobbers; he
just wanted to fiddle with the stack, see what it would do. He turned it
over in his hands a couple of times, then shrugged, got up, went over to
his closet, and put the thing away. There wasn't anything he could do
with it until he'd bought a cryostat--a liquid helium refrigerator. A
cryotron functions only at temperatures near absolute zero.

The phone chimed.

Mike went over to it, punched the switch, and said: "Gabriel speaking."

No image formed on the screen. A voice said: "Sorry, wrong number."
There was a slight click, and the phone went dead. Mike shrugged and
punched the cutoff. Sounded like a woman. He vaguely wished he could
have seen her face.

Mike got up and walked back to his easy chair. He had no sooner sat down
than the phone chimed again. Damn!

Up again. Back to the phone.

"Gabriel speaking."

Again, no image formed.

"Look, lady," Mike said, "why don't you look up the number you want
instead of bothering me?"

Suddenly there was an image. It was the face of an elderly man with a
mild, reddish face, white hair, and a cold look in his pale blue eyes.
It was Basil Wallingford, the Minister for Spatial Affairs.

He said: "Mike, I wasn't aware that your position was such that you
could afford to be rude to a Portfolio of the Earth Government." His
voice was flat, without either anger or humor.

"I'm not sure it is, myself," admitted Mike the Angel, "but I do the
best I can with the tools I have to work with. I didn't know it was you,
Wally. I just had some wrong-number trouble. Sorry."

"Mf.... Well.... I called to tell you that the _Branchell_ is ready for
your final inspection. Or will be, that is, in a week."

"My final inspection?" Mike the Angel arched his heavy golden-blond
eyebrows. "Hell, Wally, Serge Paulvitch is on the job down there, isn't
he? You don't need _my_ okay. If Serge says it's ready to go, it's ready
to go. Or is there some kind of trouble you haven't mentioned yet?"

"No; no trouble," said Wallingford. "But the power plant on that ship
was built according to your designs--not Mr. Paulvitch's. The Bureau of
Space feels that you should give them the final check."

Mike knew when to argue and when not to, and he knew that this was one
time when it wouldn't do him the slightest good. "All right," he said
resignedly. "I don't like Antarctica and never will, but I guess I can
stand it for a few days."

"Fine. One more thing. Do you have a copy of the thrust specifications
for Cargo Hold One? Our copy got garbled in transmission, and there
seems to be a discrepancy in the figures."

Mike nodded. "Sure. They're in my office. Want me to get them now?"

"Please. I'll hold on."

Mike the Angel barely made it in time. He went to the door that led to
his office, opened it, stepped through, and closed it behind him just as
the blast went off.

The door shuddered behind Mike, but it didn't give. Mike's apartment was
reasonably soundproof, but it wasn't built to take the kind of explosion
that would shake the door that Mike the Angel had just closed. It was a
two-inch-thick slab of armor steel on heavy, precision-bearing hinges.
So was every other door in the suite. It wasn't quite a bank-vault door,
but it would do. Any explosion that could shake it was a real doozy.

Mike the Angel spun around and looked at the door. It was just a trifle
warped, and faint tendrils of vapor were curling around the edge where
the seal had been broken. Mike sniffed, then turned and ran. He opened a
drawer in his desk and took out a big roll of electrostatic tape. Then
he took a deep breath, went back to the door, and slapped on a strip of
the one-inch tape, running it all around the edge of the door. Then he
went into the outer office while the air conditioners cleaned out his
private office.

He went over to one of the phones near the autofile and punched for the
operator. "I had a long-distance call coming in here from the Right
Excellent Basil Wallingford, Minister for Spatial Affairs, Capitol City.
We were cut off."

"One moment please." A slight pause. "His Excellency is here, Mr.
Gabriel."

Wallingford's face came back on the screen. It had lost some of its
ruddiness. "What happened?" he asked.

"You tell me, Wally," Mike snapped. "Did you see anything at all?"

"All I saw was that big pane of glass break. It fell into a thousand
pieces, and then something exploded and the phone went dead."

"The glass broke first?"

"That's right."

Mike sighed. "Good. I was afraid that maybe someone had planted that
bomb, rather than fired it in. I'd hate to think anyone could get into
my place without my knowing it."

"Who's gunning for you?"

"I wish I knew. Look, Wally, can you wait until tomorrow for those
specs? I want to get hold of the police."

"Certainly. Nothing urgent. It can wait. I'll call you again tomorrow
evening." The screen blanked.

Mike glanced at the wall clock and then punched a number on the phone. A
pretty girl in a blue uniform came on the screen.

"Police Central," she said. "May I help you?"

"I'd like to speak to Detective Sergeant William Cowder, please," Mike
said. "Just tell him that Mr. Gabriel has more problems."

She looked puzzled, but she nodded, and pretty soon her image blanked
out. The screen stayed blank, but Sergeant Cowder's voice came over the
speaker. "What is it, Mr. Gabriel?"

He was evidently speaking from a pocket phone.

"Attempted murder," said Mike the Angel. "A few minutes ago a bomb was
set off in my apartment. I think it was a rocket, and I know it was
heavily laced with hydrogen cyanide. That's Suite 5000, Timmins
Building, up on 112th Street. I called you because I have a hunch it's
connected with the incident at Harry's earlier this evening."

"Timmins Building, eh? I'll be right up."

Cowder cut off with a sharp click, and Mike the Angel looked quizzically
at the dead screen. Was he imagining things, or was there a peculiar
note in Cowder's voice?

Two minutes later he got his answer.




5


Mike the Angel was sitting behind his desk in his private office when
the announcer chimed. Mike narrowed his eyes and turned on his door
screen, which connected with an eye in the outer door of the suite. Who
could it be this time?

It was Sergeant Cowder.

"You got here fast," said Mike, thumbing the unlocker. "Come on back to
my office."

The sergeant came through the outer office while Mike watched him on the
screen. Not until the officer finally pushed open the door to Mike's own
office did Mike the Angel look up from the screen.

"I repeat," said Mike, "you got here fast."

"I wasn't far away," said Cowder. "Where's the damage?"

Mike jerked a thumb toward the door to his apartment, still sealed with
tape. "In there."

"Have you been back in there yet?"

"Nope," said Mike. "I didn't want to disturb anything. I figured maybe
your lab boys could tell where the rocket came from."

"What happened?" the cop asked.

Mike told him, omitting nothing except the details of his conversation
with Wallingford.

"The way I see it," he finished, "whoever it was phoned me to make sure
I was in the room and then went out and fired a rocket at my window."

"What makes you think it was a JD?" Cowder asked.

"Well, Sergeant, if I were going to do the job, I'd put my launcher in
some place where I could see that my victim was inside, without having
to call him. But if I couldn't do that, I'd aim the launcher and set it
to fire by remote control. Then I'd go to the phone, call him, and fire
the rocket while he was on the phone. I'd be sure of getting him that
way. The way it was done smacks of a kid's trick."

Cowder looked at the door. "Think we can go in there now? The HCN ought
to have cleared out by now."

Mike stood up from behind his desk. "I imagine it's pretty clear. I
checked the air conditioners; they're still working, and the filters are
efficient enough to take care of an awful lot of hydrogen cyanide.
Besides, the window is open. But--shouldn't we wait for the lab men?"

Cowder shook his head. "Not necessary. They'll be up in a few minutes,
but they'll probably just confirm what we already know. Peel that tape
off, will you?"

Mike took his ionizer from the top of the desk, walked over to the door,
and began running it over the tape. It fell off and slithered to the
floor. As he worked, he said:

"You think you know where the rocket was fired from?"

"Almost positive," said Cowder. "We got a call a few minutes back from
the Cathedral of St. John the Divine."

The last of the tape fell off, and Mike opened the door. It didn't work
easily, but it did open. The odor of bitter almonds was so faint that it
might actually have been imagination.

Cowder pointed out the shattered window at the gray spire of the
cathedral. "There's your launching site. We don't know how they got up
there, but they managed."

"They?"

"Two of them. When they tried to leave, a couple of priests and two
officers of the Cathedral Police spotted them. The kids dropped their
launcher and two unfired rockets, and then tried to run for it. Result:
one dead kid, one getaway. One of the cops got a bad gash on his arm
from a vibroblade, and one of the priests got it in the abdomen. He'll
live, but he's in bad shape."

Mike said something under his breath that might have been an oath,
except that it avoided all mention of the Deity. Then he added that
Name, in a different tone of voice.

"I agree," said Cowder. "You think you know why they did it?"

Mike looked around at his apartment. At first glance it appeared to be a
total loss, but closer inspection showed that most of the damage had
been restricted to glass and ceramics. The furniture had been tumbled
around but not badly damaged. The war head of the rocket had evidently
been of the concussion-and-gas type, without much fragmentation.

"I think I know why, yes," Mike said, turning back to the sergeant. "I
had a funny feeling all the way home from Harry's. Nothing I could lay
my finger on, really. I tried to see if I was being followed, but I
didn't spot anyone. There were plenty of kids on the subway.

"It's my guess that the kids knew who I was. If they cased Harry's as
thoroughly as it seems they did, they must have seen me go in and out
several times. They knew that it was my fault that two of their members
got picked up, so they decided to teach me a lesson. One of them must
have come up here, even before I left Harry's. The other followed me,
just to make sure I was really coming home. Since he knew where I was
going, he didn't have to stick too close, so I didn't spot him in the
crowd. He might even have gone on up to 116th Street so that I wouldn't
see him get off at 110th."

"Sounds reasonable," Cowder agreed. "We know who the kids are. The
uniformed squads are rounding up the whole bunch for questioning. They
call themselves--you'll get a laugh out of this!--they call themselves
the Rocketeers."

"I'm fracturing my funny bone," said Mike the Angel. "The thing that
gets me is this revenge business, though. Kids don't usually go that far
out for fellow gang members."

"Not usually," the sergeant said, "but this is a little different. The
girl you caught and the boy who got killed over at the cathedral are
brother and sister."

"That explains it," Mike said. "Rough family, eh?"

Sergeant Cowder shook his head. "Not really. The parents are respectable
and fairly well off. Larchmont's the name. The kids are Susan and
Herbert--Sue and Bert to you. Bert's sixteen, Sue's seventeen. They were
pretty thick, I gather: real brother and sister team."

"Good family, bad kids," Mike muttered. He had wandered over to the wall
to look at his Dali. It had fallen to the floor, but it wasn't hurt. The
Valois was bent, but it could be fixed up easily enough.

"I wonder," Mike said, picking up the head of a smashed figurine and
looking at it. "I wonder if the so-called sociologists have any
explanation for it?"

"Sure," Cowder said. "Same one they've been giving for more decades than
I'd care to think of. The mother was married before. Divorced her
husband, married Larchmont. But she had a boy by her first husband."

"Broken home and sibling rivalry? _Pfui!_ And if it wasn't that, the
sociologists would find another excuse," Mike said angrily.

"Funny thing is that the older half brother was a perfectly respectable
kid. Made good grades in school, joined the Space Service, has a
perfectly clean record. And yet _he_ was the product of the broken home,
not the two younger kids."

Mike laughed dryly. "_That_ ought to be food for high sociological
thought."

The door announcer chimed again, and Cowder said: "That's probably the
lab boys. I told them to come over here as soon as they could finish up
at the cathedral."

Mike checked his screen and when Cowder identified the men at the door,
Mike let them in.

The short, chubby man in the lead, who was introduced as Perkins, spoke
to Sergeant Cowder first. "We checked one of those rockets. Almost a
professional job. TNT war head, surrounded by a jacket filled with
liquid HCN and a phosphate inhibitor to prevent polymerization. Nasty
things." He swung round to Mike. "You're lucky you weren't in the room,
or you'd just be part of the wreckage, Mr. Gabriel."

"I know," said Mike the Angel. "Well, the room's all yours. It probably
won't tell you much."

"Probably not," said Perkins, "but we'll see. Come on, boys."

Mike the Angel tapped Cowder on the shoulder. "I'd like to talk to you
for a minute."

Cowder nodded, and Mike led the way back into his private office. He
opened his desk drawer and took out the little pack that housed the
workings of the vibroblade shield.

"That accident you were talking about, Sergeant--the one that made those
vibroblades blow, remember? I got to thinking that maybe this could have
caused it. I think that with a little more power, it might even vaporize
a high-speed bullet. But I'd advise you to wear asbestos clothing."

Cowder took the thing and looked at it. "Thanks, Mr. Gabriel," he said
honestly. "Maybe the kids will go on to using something else if
vibroblades don't work, but I think I'd prefer a rocket in the head to
being carved by a vibro."

"To be honest," Mike said, "I think the vibro is just a fad among the
JD's now, anyway. You know--if you're one of the real biggies, you carry
a vibro. A year from now, it might be shock guns, but right now you're
chicken if you carry anything but a vibroblade."

Cowder dropped the shield generator into his coat pocket. "Thanks again,
Mr. Gabriel. We'll do you a favor sometime."




6


The firm of M. R. GABRIEL, POWER DESIGN was not a giant corporation, but
it did pretty well for a one-man show. The outer office was a gantlet
that Mike the Angel had to run when he came in the next morning after
having spent the night at a hotel. There was a mixed and ragged chorus
of "Good morning, Mr. Gabriel" as he passed through. Mike gave the nod
to each of them and was stopped four times for small details before he
finally made his way to his own office.

His secretary was waiting for him. She was short, bony, and plain of
face. She had a figure like an ironing board and the soul of a Ramsden
calculator. Mike the Angel liked her that way; it avoided complications.

"Good morning, Mr. Gabriel," she said. "What the hell happened here?"
She waved at the warped door and the ribbons of electrostatic tape that
still lay in curls on the floor.

Mike told her, and she listened to his recitation without any change of
expression. "I'm very glad you weren't hurt," she said when he had
finished. "What are you going to do about the apartment?"

Mike opened the heavy door and looked at the wreckage inside. Through
the gaping hole of the shattered window, he could see the towering
spires of the two-hundred-year-old Cathedral of St. John the Divine.
"Get Larry Beasley on the phone, Helen. I've forgotten his number, but
you'll find him listed under 'Interior Decorators.' He has the original
plans and designs on file. Tell him to get them out; I want this place
fixed up just like it was."

"But what if someone else...." She gestured toward the broken window and
the cathedral spires beyond.

"When you're through talking to Beasley," Mike went on, "see if you can
get Bishop Brennan on the phone and switch him to my desk."

"Yes, sir," she said.

Within two hours workmen were busily cleaning up the wreckage in Mike
the Angel's apartment, and the round, plump figure of Larry Beasley was
walking around pompously while his artistic but businesslike brain made
estimates. Mike had also reached an agreement with the bishop whereby
special vaultlike doors would be fitted into the stairwells leading up
to the towers at Mike's expense. They were to have facings of bronze so
that they could be decorated to blend with the Gothic decor of the
church, but the bronze would be backed by heavy steel. Nobody would blow
_those_ down in a hurry.

Since the wrecked living room was a flurry of activity and his office
had become a thoroughfare, Mike the Angel retired to his bedroom to
think. He took with him the microcryotron stack he had picked up at Old
Harry's the night before.

"For something that doesn't look like much," he said aloud to the
stack, "you have caused me a hell of a lot of trouble."

Old Harry, he knew, wouldn't be caught dead selling the things. In the
first place, it was strictly illegal to deal in the components of
robotic brains. In the second place, they were so difficult to get, even
on the black market, that the few that came into Old Harry's hands went
into the defenses of his own shop. Mike the Angel had only wanted to
borrow one to take a good look at it. He had read up on all the
literature about microcryotrons, but he'd never actually seen one
before.

He had reason to be curious about microcryotrons. There was something
definitely screwy going on in Antarctica.

Nearly two years before, the UN Government, in the person of Minister
Wallingford himself, had asked Mike's firm--which meant Mike the Angel
himself--to design the power drive and the thrust converters for a
spaceship. On the face of it, there was nothing at all unusual in that.
Such jobs were routine for M. R. Gabriel.

But when the specifications arrived, Mike the Angel had begun to wonder
what the devil was going on. The spaceship _William Branchell_ was to be
built on the surface of Earth--and yet it was to be a much larger ship
than any that had ever before been built on the ground. Usually, an
interstellar vessel that large was built in orbit around the Earth,
where the designers didn't have to worry about gravitational pull. Such
a ship never landed, any more than an ocean liner was ever beached--not
on purpose, anyway. The passengers and cargo were taken up by smaller
vessels and brought down the same way when the liner arrived at her
destination.

Aside from the tremendous energy required to lift such a vessel free of
a planet's surface, there was also the magnetic field of the planet to
consider. The drive tubes tended to wander and become erratic if they
were forced to cut through the magnetic field of a planet.

Therefore, Question One: Why wasn't the _Branchell_ being built in
space?

Part of the answer, Mike knew, lay in the specifications for the
construction of Cargo Hold One. For one thing, it was huge. For another,
it was heavily insulated. For a third, it was built like a tank for
holding liquids. All very well and good; possibly someone wanted to
carry a cargo of cold lemonade or iced tea. That would be pretty stupid,
maybe, but it wouldn't be mysterious.

The mystery lay in the fact that Cargo Hold One had _already been
built_. The _Branchell_ was to be built _around_ it! And that didn't
exactly jibe with Mike the Angel's ideas of the proper way to build a
spaceship. It was not quite the same as building a seagoing vessel
around an oil tank in the middle of Texas, but it was close enough to
bother Mike the Angel.

Therefore, Question Two: Why was the _Branchell_ being built around
Cargo Hold One?

Which led to Question Three: What was _in_ Cargo Hold One?

For the answer to that question, he had one very good hint. The density
of the contents of Cargo Hold One was listed in the specs as being
one-point-seven-two-six grams per cubic centimeter. And that, Mike
happened to know, was the density of a cryotronic brain, which is 90 per
cent liquid helium and 10 per cent tantalum and niobium, by volume.

He looked at the microcryotron stack in his hand. It was a
one-hundred-kilounit stack. The possible connections within it were
factorial one hundred thousand. All it needed was to be immersed in its
bath of liquid helium to make the metals superconducting, and it would
be ready to go to work.

A friend of his who worked for Computer Corporation of Earth had built a
robot once, using just such a stack. The robot was designed to play
poker. He had fed in all the rules of play and added all the data from
Oesterveldt's _On Poker_. It took Mike the Angel exactly one hour to
figure out how to beat it.

As long as Mike played rationally, the machine had a slight edge, since
it had a perfect memory and could compute faster than Mike could. But it
would not, could not learn how to bluff. As soon as Mike started
bluffing, the robot went into a tizzy.

It wouldn't have been so bad if the robot had known nothing whatever
about bluffing. That would have made it easy for Mike. All he'd have had
to do was keep on feeding in chips until the robot folded.

But the robot _did_ know about bluffing. The trouble is that bluffing is
essentially illogical, and the robot had no rules whatsoever to go by to
judge whether Mike was bluffing or not. It finally decided to make its
decisions by chance, judging by Mike's past performance at bluffing.
When it did, Mike quit bluffing and cleaned it out fast.

That caused such utter confusion in the random circuits that Mike's
friend had had to spend a week cleaning up the robot's little mind.

But what would be the purpose of building a brain as gigantic as the one
in Cargo Hold One? And why build a spaceship around it?

Like a pig roasting on an automatic spit, the problem kept turning over
and over in Mike's mind. And, like the roasting pig, the time eventually
came when it was done.

Once it is set in operation, a properly operating robot brain can
neither be shut off nor dismantled. Not, that is, unless you want to
lose all of the data and processes you've fed into it.

Now, suppose the Computer Corporation of Earth had built a giant-sized
brain. (Never mind _why_--just suppose.) And suppose they wanted to take
it off Earth, but didn't want to lose all the data that had been pumped
into it. (Again, never mind _why_--just suppose.)

Very well, then. _If_ such a brain had been built, and _if_ it was
necessary to take it off Earth, and _if_ the data in it was so precious
that the brain could not be shut off or dismantled, _then_ the thing to
do would be to build a ship around it.

Oh _yeah_?

Mike the Angel stared at the microcryotron stack and asked:

"Now, tell me, pal, just why would anyone want a brain that big? And
what is so blasted important about it?"

The stack said not a word.

The phone chimed. Mike the Angel thumbed the switch, and his secretary's
face appeared on the screen. "Minister Wallingford is on the line, Mr.
Gabriel."

"Put him on," said Mike the Angel.

Basil Wallingford's ruddy face came on. "I see you're still alive," he
said. "What in the bloody blazes happened last night?"

Mike sighed and told him. "In other words," he ended up, "just the usual
sort of JD stuff we have to put up with these days. Nothing new, and
nothing to worry about."

"You almost got killed," Wallingford pointed out.

"A miss is as good as a mile," Mike said with cheerful inanity. "Thanks
to your phone call, I was as safe as if I'd been in my own home," he
added with utter illogic.

"You can afford to laugh," Wallingford said grimly. "I can't. I've
already lost one man."

Mike's grin vanished. "What do you mean? Who?"

"Oh, nobody's killed," Wallingford said quickly. "I didn't mean that.
But Jack Wong turned his car over yesterday at a hundred and seventy
miles an hour, and he's laid up with a fractured leg and a badly
dislocated arm."

"Too bad," said Mike. "One of these days that fool will kill himself
racing." He knew Wong and liked him. They had served together in the
Space Service when Mike was on active duty.

"I hope not," Wallingford said. "Anyway--the matter I called you on last
night. Can you get those specs for me?"

"Sure, Wally. Hold on." He punched the hold button and rang for his
secretary as Wallingford's face vanished. When the girl's face came on,
he said: "Helen, get me the cargo specs on the _William
Branchell_--Section Twelve, pages 66 to 74."

The discussion, after Helen had brought the papers, lasted less than
five minutes. It was merely a matter of straightening out some cost
estimates--but since it had to do with the _Branchell_, and specifically
with Hold Number One, Mike decided he'd ask a question.

"Wally, tell me--what in the hell is going on down there at Chilblains
Base?"

"They're building a spaceship," said Wallingford in a flat voice.

It was Wallingford's way of saying he wasn't going to answer any
questions, but Mike the Angel ignored the hint. "I'd sort of gathered
that," he said dryly. "But what I want to know is: Why is it being built
around a cryotronic brain, the like of which I have never heard before?"

Basil Wallingford's eyes widened, and he just stared for a full two
seconds. "And just how did you come across that information, Golden
Wings?" he finally asked.

"It's right here in the specs," said Mike the Angel, tapping the sheaf
of papers.

"Ridiculous." Wallingford's voice seemed toneless.

Mike decided he was in too deep now to back out. "It certainly is,
Wally. It couldn't be hidden. To compute the thrust stresses, I had to
know the density of the contents of Cargo Hold One. And here it is:
1.726 gm/cm³. Nothing else that I know of has that exact density."

Wallingford pursed his lips. "Dear me," he said after a moment. "I keep
forgetting you're too bright for your own good." Then a slow smile
spread over his face. "Would you _really_ like to know?"

"I wouldn't have asked otherwise," Mike said.

"Fine. Because you're just the man we need."

Mike the Angel could almost feel the knife blade sliding between his
ribs, and he had the uncomfortable feeling that the person who had
stabbed him in the back was himself. "What's that supposed to mean,
Wally?"

"You are, I believe, an officer in the Space Service Reserve," said
Basil Wallingford in a smooth, too oily voice. "Since the Engineering
Officer of the _Branchell_, Jack Wong, is laid up in a hospital, I'm
going to call you to active duty to replace him."

Mike the Angel felt that ghostly knife twist--hard.

"That's silly," he said. "I haven't been a ship's officer for five
years."

"You're the man who designed the power plant," Wallingford said sweetly.
"If you don't know how to run her, nobody does."

"My time per hour is worth a great deal," Mike pointed out.

"The rate of pay for a Space Service officer," Basil Wallingford said
pleasantly, "is fixed by law."

"I can fight being called back to duty--and I'll win," said Mike. He
didn't know how long he could play this game, but it was fun.

"True," said Wallingford. "You can. I admit it. But you've been
wondering what the hell that ship is being built for. You'd give your
left arm to find out. I know you, Golden Wings, and I know how that mind
of yours works. And I tell you this: Unless you take this job, you'll
_never_ find out why the _Branchell_ was built." He leaned forward, and
his face loomed large in the screen. "And I mean absolutely _never_."

For several seconds Mike the Angel said nothing. His classically
handsome face was like that of some Grecian god contemplating the
Universe, or an archangel contemplating Eternity. Then he gave Basil
Wallingford the benefit of his full, radiant smile.

"I capitulate," he said.

Wallingford refused to look impressed. "Damn right you do," he said--and
cut the circuit.




7


Two days later Mike the Angel was sitting at his desk making certain
that M. R. GABRIEL, POWER DESIGN would function smoothly while he was
gone. Serge Paulvitch, his chief designer, could handle almost
everything.

Paulvitch had once said, "Mike, the hell of working for a first-class
genius is that a second-class genius doesn't have a chance."

"You could start your own firm," Mike had said levelly. "I'll back you,
Serge; you know that."

Serge Paulvitch had looked astonished. "Me? You think I'm crazy? Right
now, I'm a second-class genius working for a first-class outfit. You
think I want to be a second-class genius working for a second-class
outfit? Not on your life!"

Paulvitch could easily handle the firm for a few weeks.

Helen's face came on the phone. "There's a Captain Sir Henry Quill on
the phone, Mr. Gabriel. Do you wish to speak to him?"

"Black Bart?" said Mike. "I wonder what he wants."

"Bart?" She looked puzzled. "He said his name was Henry."

Mike grinned. "He always signs his name: _Captain Sir Henry Quill,
Bart._ And since he's the toughest old martinet this side of the
Pleiades, the 'Black' part just comes naturally. I served under him
seven years ago. Put him on."

In half a second the grim face of Captain Quill was on the screen.

He was as bald as an egg. What little hair he did have left was
meticulously shaved off every morning. He more than made up for his lack
of cranial growth, however, by his great, shaggy, bristly brows, black
as jet and firmly anchored to jutting supraorbital ridges. Any other man
would have been proud to wear them as mustaches.

"What can I do for you, Captain?" Mike asked, using the proper tone of
voice prescribed for the genial businessman.

"You can go out and buy yourself a new uniform," Quill growled. "Your
old one isn't regulation any more."

Well, not exactly growled. If he'd had the voice for it, it would have
been a growl, but the closest he could come to a growl was an Irish
tenor rumble with undertones of gravel. He stood five-eight, and his red
and gold Space Service uniform gleamed with spit-and-polish luster. With
his cap off, his bald head looked as though it, too, had been polished.

Mike looked at him thoughtfully. "I see. So you're commanding the
mystery tub, eh?" he said at last.

"That's right," said the captain. "And don't go asking me a bunch of
blasted questions. I've got no more idea of what the bloody thing's
about than you--maybe not as much. I understand you designed her power
plant...?"

He let it hang. If not exactly a leading question, it was certainly a
hinting statement.

Mike shook his head. "I don't know anything, Captain. Honestly I don't."

If Space Service regulations had allowed it, Captain Sir Henry Quill,
Bart., would have worn a walrus mustache. And if he'd had such a
mustache, he would have whuffled it then. As it was, he just blew out
air, and nothing whuffled.

"You and I are the only ones in the dark, then," he said. "The rest of
the crew is being picked from Chilblains Base. Pete Jeffers is First
Officer, in case you're wondering."

"Oh, great," Mike the Angel said with a moan. "That means we'll be going
in cold on an untried ship."

Like Birnam Wood advancing on Dunsinane, Quill's eyebrows moved upward.
"Don't you trust your own designing?"

"As much as you do," said Mike the Angel. "Probably more."

Quill nodded. "We'll have to make the best of it. We'll muddle through
somehow. Are you all ready to go?"

"No," Mike admitted, "but I don't see that I can do a damn thing about
that."

"Nor do I," said Captain Quill. "Be at Chilblains Base in twenty-four
hours. Arrangements will be made at the Long Island Base for your
transportation to Antarctica. And"--he paused and his scowl became
deeper--"you'd best get used to calling me 'sir' again."

"Yessir, Sir Henry, sir."

"_Thank_ you, Mister Gabriel," snapped Quill, cutting the circuit.

"Selah," said Mike the Angel.

       *       *       *       *       *

Chilblains Base, Antarctica, was directly over the South Magnetic
Pole--at least, as closely as that often elusive spot could be
pinpointed for any length of time. It is cheaper in the long run if an
interstellar vessel moves parallel with, not perpendicular to, the
magnetic "lines of force" of a planet's gravitational field. Taking off
"across the grain" _can_ be done, but the power consumption is much
greater. Taking off "with the grain" is expensive enough.

An ion rocket doesn't much care where it lifts or sets down, since its
method of propulsion isn't trying to work against the fabric of space
itself. For that reason, an interstellar vessel is normally built in
space and stays there, using ion rockets for loading and unloading its
passengers. It's cheaper by far.

The Computer Corporation of Earth had also been thinking of expenses
when it built its Number One Research Station near Chilblains Base,
although the corporation was not aware at the time just how much money
it was eventually going to save them.

The original reason had simply been lower power costs. A cryotron unit
has to be immersed at all times in a bath of liquid helium at a
temperature of four-point-two degrees absolute. It is obviously much
easier--and much cheaper--to keep several thousand gallons of helium at
that temperature if the surrounding temperature is at two hundred
thirty-three absolute than if it is up around two hundred ninety or
three hundred. That may not seem like much percentagewise, but it comes
out to a substantial saving in the long run.

But, power consumption or no, when C.C. of E. found that Snookums either
had to be moved or destroyed, it was mightily pleased that it had built
Prime Station near Chilblains Base. Since a great deal of expense also,
of necessity, devolved upon Earth Government, the government was, to say
it modestly, equally pleased. There was enough expense as it was.

The scenery at Chilblains Base--so named by a wiseacre American navy
man back in the twentieth century--was nothing to brag about. Thousands
of square miles of powdered ice that has had nothing to do but blow
around for twenty million years is not at all inspiring after the first
few minutes unless one is obsessed by the morbid beauty of cold death.

Mike the Angel was not so obsessed. To him, the area surrounding
Chilblains Base was just so much white hell, and his analysis was
perfectly correct. Mike wished that it had been January, midsummer in
the Antarctic, so there would have been at least a little dim sunshine.
Mike the Angel did not particularly relish having to visit the South
Pole in midwinter.

The rocket that had lifted Mike the Angel from Long Island Base settled
itself into the snow-covered landing stage of Chilblains Base,
dissipating the crystalline whiteness into steam as it did so. The
steam, blown away by the chill winds, moved all of thirty yards before
it became ice again.

Mike the Angel was not in the best of moods. Having to dump all of his
business into Serge Paulvitch's hands on twenty-four hours' notice was
irritating. He knew Paulvitch could handle the job, but it wasn't fair
to him to make him take over so suddenly.

In addition, Mike did not like the way the whole _Branchell_ business
was being handled. It seemed slipshod and hurried, and, worse, it was
entirely too mysterious and melodramatic.

"Of all the times to have to come to Antarctica," he grumped as the door
of the rocket opened, "why did I have to get July?"

The pilot, a young man in his early twenties, said smugly: "July is bad,
but January isn't good--just not so worse."

Mike the Angel glowered. "Sonny, I was a cadet here when you were
learning arithmetic. It hasn't changed since, summer or winter."

"Sorry, sir," said the pilot stiffly.

"So am I," said Mike the Angel cryptically. "Thanks for the ride."

He pushed open the outer door, pulled his electroparka closer around
him, and stalked off across the walk, through the lashing of the sleety
wind.

He didn't have far to walk--a hundred yards or so--but it was a good
thing that the walk was protected and well within the boundary of
Chilblains Base instead of being out on the Wastelands. Here there were
lights, and the Hotbed equipment of the walk warmed the swirling ice
particles into a sleety rain. On the Wastelands, the utter blackness and
the wind-driven snow would have swallowed him permanently within ten
paces.

He stepped across a curtain of hot air that blew up from a narrow slit
in the deck and found himself in the main foyer of Chilblains Base.

The entrance looked like the entrance to a theater--a big metal and
plastic opening, like a huge room open on one side, with only that sheet
of hot air to protect it from the storm raging outside. The lights and
the small doors leading into the building added to the impression that
this was a theater, not a military base.

But the man who was standing near one of the doors was not by a long
shot dressed as an usher. He wore a sergeant's stripes on his regulation
Space Service parka, which muffled him to the nose, and he came over to
Mike the Angel and said: "Commander Gabriel?"

Mike the Angel nodded as he shook icy drops from his gloved hands, then
fished in his belt pocket for his newly printed ID card.

He handed it to the sergeant, who looked it over, peered at Mike's face,
and saluted. As Mike returned the salute the sergeant said: "Okay, sir;
you can go on in. The security office is past the double door, first
corridor on your right."

Mike the Angel tried his best not to look surprised. "_Security_ office?
Is there a war on or something? What does Chilblains need with a
security office?"

The sergeant shrugged. "Don't ask me, Commander; I just slave away here.
Maybe Lieutenant Nariaki knows something, but I sure don't."

"Thanks, Sergeant."

Mike the Angel went inside, through two insulated and tightly
weather-stripped doors, one right after another, like the air lock on a
spaceship. Once inside the warmth of the corridor, he unzipped his
electroparka, shut off the power, and pushed back the hood with its
fogproof faceplate.

Down the hall, Mike could see an office marked _security officer_ in
small letters without capitals. He walked toward it. There was another
guard at the door who had to see Mike's ID card before Mike was allowed
in.

Lieutenant Tokugawa Nariaki was an average-sized, sleepy-looking
individual with a balding crew cut and a morose expression.

He looked up from his desk as Mike came in, and a hopeful smile tried to
spread itself across his face. "If you are Commander Gabriel," he said
softly, "watch yourself. I may suddenly kiss you out of sheer relief."

"Restrain yourself, then," said Mike the Angel, "because I'm Gabriel."

Nariaki's smile became genuine. "So! Good! The phone has been screaming
at me every half hour for the past five hours. Captain Sir Henry Quill
wants you."

"He would," Mike said. "How do I get to him?"

"You don't just yet," said Nariaki, raising a long, bony, tapering hand.
"There are a few formalities which our guests have to go through."

"Such as?"

"Such as fingerprint and retinal patterns," said Lieutenant Nariaki.

Mike cast his eyes to Heaven in silent appeal, then looked back at the
lieutenant. "Lieutenant, _what_ is going on here? There hasn't been a
security officer in the Space Service for thirty years or more. What am
I suspected of? Spying for the corrupt and evil alien beings of Diomega
Orionis IX?"

Nariaki's oriental face became morose again. "For all I know, you are.
Who knows what's going on around here?" He got up from behind his desk
and led Mike the Angel over to the fingerprinting machine. "Put your
hands in here, Commander ... that's it."

He pushed a button, and, while the machine hummed, he said: "Mine is an
antiquated position, I'll admit. I don't like it any more than you do.
Next thing, they'll put me to work polishing chain-mail armor or make me
commander of a company of musketeers. Or maybe they'll send me to the
18th Outer Mongolian Yak Artillery."

Mike looked at him with narrowed eyes. "Lieutenant, do you actually mean
that you really don't know what's going on here, or are you just
dummying up?"

Nariaki looked at Mike, and for the first time, his face took on the
traditional blank, emotionless look of the "placid Orient." He paused
for long seconds, then said:

"Some of both, Commander. But don't let it worry you. I assure you that
within the next hour you'll know more about Project Brainchild than I've
been able to find out in two years.... Now put your face in here and
keep your eyes open. When you can see the target spot, focus on it and
tell me."

Mike the Angel put his face in the rest for the retinal photos. The soft
foam rubber adjusted around his face, and he was looking into blackness.
He focused his eyes on the dim target circle and waited for his eyes to
grow accustomed to the darkness.

The Security Officer's voice continued. "All I do is make sure that no
unauthorized person comes into Chilblains Base. Other than that, I have
nothing but personal guesses and little trickles of confusing
information, neither of which am I at liberty to discuss."

Mike's irises had dilated to the point that he could see the dim dot in
the center of the target circle, glowing like a dimly visible star.
"Shoot," he said.

There was a dazzling glare of light. Mike pulled his face out of the
padded opening and blinked away the colored after-images.

Lieutenant Nariaki was comparing the fresh fingerprints with the set he
had had on file. "Well," he said, "you have Commander Gabriel's hands,
anyway. If you have his eyes, I'll have to concede that the rest of the
body belongs to him, too."

"How about my soul?" Mike asked dryly.

"Not my province, Commander," Nariaki said as he pulled the retinal
photos out of the machine. "Maybe one of the chaplains would know."

"If this sort of thing is going on all over Chilblains," said Mike the
Angel, "I imagine the Office of Chaplains is doing a booming business in
TS cards."

The lieutenant put the retinal photos in the comparator, took a good
look, and nodded. "You're you," he said. "Give me your ID card."

Mike handed it over, and Nariaki fed it through a printer which stamped
a complex seal in the upper left-hand corner of the card. The lieutenant
signed his name across the seal and handed the card back to Mike.

"That's it," he said. "You can--"

He was interrupted by the chiming of the phone.

"Just a second, Commander," he said as he thumbed the phone switch.

Mike was out of range of the TV pickup, and he couldn't see the face on
the screen, but the voice was so easy to recognize that he didn't need
to see the man.

"Hasn't that triply bedamned rocket landed yet, Lieutenant? Where is
Commander Gabriel?"

Mike knew that Black Bart had already checked on the landing of the
latest rocket; the question was rhetorical.

Mike grinned. "Tell the old tyrant," he said firmly, "that I'll be along
as soon as the Security Officer is through with me."

Nariaki's expression didn't change. "You're through now, Commander,
and--"

"Tell that imitation Apollo to hop it over here fast!" said Quill
sharply. "I'll give him a lesson in tyranny."

There was a click as the intercom shut off.

Nariaki looked at Mike the Angel and shook his head slowly. "Either
you're working your way toward a court-martial or else you know where
Black Bart has the body buried."

"I should," said Mike cryptically. "I helped him bury it. How do I get
to His Despotic Majesty's realm?"

Nariaki considered. "It'll take you five or six minutes. Take the
tubeway to Stage Twelve. Go up the stairway to the surface and take the
first corridor to the left. That'll take you to the loading dock for
that stage. It's an open foyer like the one at the landing field, so
you'll have to put your parka back on. Go down the stairs on the other
side, and you'll be in Area K. One of the guards will tell you where to
go from there. Of course, you could go by tube, but it would take longer
because of the by-pass."

"Good enough. I'll take the short cut. See you. And thanks."




8


The underground tubeway shot Mike the Angel across five miles of track
at high speed. Mike left the car at Stage Twelve and headed up the
stairway and down the corridor to a heavy double door marked _freight
loading_.

He put on his parka and went through the door. The foyer was empty, and,
like the one at the rocket landing, protected from the Antarctic blast
only by a curtain of hot air. Outside that curtain, the light seemed to
lose itself in the darkness of the bleak, snow-filled Wastelands. Mike
ignored the snowscape and headed across the empty foyer to the door
marked _entrance_.

"With a small _e_," Mike muttered to himself. "I wonder if the sign
painter ran out of full caps."

He was five feet from the door when he heard the yell.

"_Help!_"

That was all. Just the one word.

Mike the Angel came to a dead halt and spun around.

The foyer was a large room, about fifty by fifty feet in area and nearly
twenty feet high. And it was quite obviously empty. On the open side,
the sheet of hissing hot air was doing its best to shield the room from
the sixty-below-zero blizzard outside. Opposite the air curtain was a
huge sliding door, closed at the moment, which probably led to a freight
elevator. There were only two other doors leading from the foyer, and
both of them were closed. And Mike knew that no voice could come through
those insulated doors.

"_Help!_"

Mike the Angel swung toward the air curtain. This time there was no
doubt. Someone was out in that howling ice-cloud, screaming for help!

Mike saw the figure--dimly, fleetingly, obscured most of the time by the
driving whiteness. Whoever it was looked as if he were buried to the
waist in snow.

Mike made a quick estimate. It was dark out there, but he could see the
figure; therefore he would be able to see the foyer lights. He wouldn't
get lost. Snapping down the faceplate of his parka hood, he ran through
the protective updraft of the air curtain and charged into the deadly
chill of the Antarctic blizzard.

In spite of the electroparka he was wearing, the going was difficult.
The snow tended to plaster itself against his faceplate, and the wind
kept trying to take him off his feet. He wiped a gloved hand across the
faceplate. Ahead, he could still see the figure waving its arms. Mike
slogged on.

At sixty below, frozen H_{2}O isn't slushy, by any means; it isn't even
slippery. It's more like fine sand than anything else. Mike the Angel
figured he had about thirty feet to go, but after he'd taken eight
steps, the arm-waving figure looked as far off as when he'd started.

Mike stopped and flipped up his faceplate. It felt as though someone had
thrown a handful of razor blades into his face. He winced and yelled,
"What's the trouble?" Then he snapped the plate back into position.

"I'm cold!" came the clear, contralto voice through the howling wind.

A _woman_! thought Mike. "I'm coming!" he bellowed, pushing on. Ten more
steps.

He stopped again. He couldn't see anyone or anything.

He flipped up his faceplate. "Hey!"

No answer.

"Hey!" he called again.

And still there was no answer.

Around Mike the Angel, there was nothing but the swirling, blinding
snow, the screaming, tearing wind, and the blackness of the Antarctic
night.

There was something damned odd going on here. Carefully putting the toe
of his right foot to the rear of the heel of his left, he executed a
one-hundred-eighty-degree military about-face.

And breathed a sigh of relief.

He could still see the lights of the foyer. He had half suspected that
someone was trying to trap him out here, and they might have turned off
the lights.

He swiveled his head around for one last look. He still couldn't see a
sign of anyone. There was nothing he could do but head back and report
the incident. He started slogging back through the gritty snow.

He stepped through the hot-air curtain and flipped up his faceplate.

"Why did you go out in the blizzard?" said a clear, contralto voice
directly behind him.

Mike swung around angrily. "Look, lady, I--"

He stopped.

The lady was no lady.

A few feet away stood a machine. Vaguely humanoid in shape from the
waist up, it was built more like a miniature military tank from the
waist down. It had a pair of black sockets in its head, which Mike took
to be TV cameras of some kind. It had grillwork on either side of its
head, which probably covered microphones, and another grillwork where
the mouth should be. There was no nose.

"What the hell?" asked Mike the Angel of no one in particular.

"I'm Snookums," said the robot.

"Sure you are," said Mike the Angel, backing uneasily toward the door.
"You're Snookums. I couldn't fail not to disagree with you less."

Mike the Angel didn't particularly like being frightened, but he had
never found it a disabling emotion, so he could put up with it if he had
to. But, given his choice, he would have much preferred to be afraid of
something a little less unpredictable, something he knew a little more
about. Something comfortable, like, say, a Bengal tiger or a Kodiak
bear.

"But I really _am_ Snookums," reiterated the clear voice.

Mike's brain was functioning in high gear with overdrive added and the
accelerator floor-boarded. He'd been lured out onto the Wastelands by
this machine--it most definitely could be dangerous.

The robot was obviously a remote-control device. The arms and hands were
of the waldo type used to handle radioactive materials in a hot
lab--four jointed fingers and an opposed thumb, metal duplicates of the
human hand.

But who was on the other end? Who was driving the machine? Who was
saying those inane things over the speaker that served the robot as a
mouth? It was certainly a woman's voice.

Mike was still moving backward, toward the door. The machine that called
itself Snookums wasn't moving toward him, which was some consolation,
but not much. The thing could obviously move faster on those treads than
Mike could on his feet. Especially since Mike was moving backward.

"Would you mind explaining what this is all about, miss?" asked Mike the
Angel. He didn't expect an explanation; he was stalling for time.

"I am not a 'miss,'" said the robot. "I am Snookums."

"Whatever you are, then," said Mike, "would you mind explaining?"

"No," said Snookums, "I wouldn't mind."

Mike's fingers, groping behind him, touched the door handle. But before
he could grasp it, it turned, and the door opened behind him. It hit him
full in the back, and he stumbled forward a couple of steps before
regaining his balance.

A clear contralto voice said: "Oh! I'm _so_ sorry!"

It was the same voice as the robot's!

Mike the Angel swung around to face the second robot.

This time it was a lady.

"I'm sorry," she repeated. She was all wrapped up in an electroparka,
but there was no mistaking the fact that she was both human and
feminine. She came on through the door and looked at the robot.
"Snookums! What are you doing here?"

"I was trying an experiment, Leda," said Snookums. "This man was just
asking me about it. I just wanted to see if he would come if I called
'help.' He did, and I want to know _why_ he did."

The girl flashed a look at Mike. "Would you please tell Snookums why
you went out there? Please--don't be angry or anything--just tell him."

Mike was beginning to get the picture. "I went because I thought I heard
a human being calling for help--and it sounded suspiciously like a
woman."

"Oh," said Snookums, sounding a little downhearted--if a robot can be
said to have a heart. "The reaction was based, then, upon a
misconception. That makes the data invalid. I'll have to try again."

"That won't be necessary, Snookums," the girl said firmly. "This man
went out there because he thought a human life was in danger. He would
not have done it if he had known it was you, because he would have known
that you were not in any danger. You can stand much lower temperatures
than a human being can, you know." She turned to Mike. "Am I correct in
saying that you wouldn't have gone out there if you'd known Snookums was
a robot?"

"Absolutely correct," said Mike the Angel fervently.

She looked back at Snookums. "Don't try that experiment again. It is
dangerous for a human to go out there, even with an electroparka. You
might run the risk of endangering human life."

"Oh dear!" said Snookums. "I'm sorry, Leda!" There was real anxiety in
the voice.

"That's all right, honey," the girl said hurriedly. "This man isn't
hurt, so don't get upset. Come along now, and we'll go back to the lab.
You shouldn't come out like this without permission."

Mike had noticed that the girl had kept one hand on her belt all the
time she was talking--and that her thumb was holding down a small button
on a case attached to the belt.

He had been wondering why, but he didn't have to wonder long.

The door behind him opened again, and four men came out, obviously in a
devil of a hurry. Each one of them was wearing a brassard labeled
SECURITY POLICE.

_At least_, thought Mike the Angel as he turned to look them over, _the
brassards aren't in all lower-case italics_.

One of them jerked a thumb at Mike. "This the guy, Miss Crannon?"

The girl nodded. "That's him. He saw Snookums. Take care of him." She
looked again at Mike. "I'm terribly sorry, really I am. But there's no
help for it." Then, without another word, she opened the door and went
back inside, and the robot rolled in after her.

As the door closed behind her, the SP man nearest Mike, a tough-looking
bozo wearing an ensign's insignia, said: "Let's see your
identification."

Mike realized that his own parka had no insignia of rank on it, but he
didn't like the SP man's tone.

"Come on!" snapped the ensign. "Who are you?"

Mike the Angel pulled out his ID card and handed it to the security cop.
"It tells right there who I am," he said. "That is, if you can read."

The man glared and jerked the card out of Mike's hand, but when he saw
the emblem that Lieutenant Nariaki had stamped on it, his eyes widened.
He looked up at Mike. "I'm sorry, sir; I didn't mean--"

"That tears it," interrupted Mike. "That absolutely tears it. In the
past three minutes I have been apologized to by a woman, a robot, and a
cop. The next thing, a penguin will walk in here, tip his top hat, and
abase himself while he mutters obsequiously in penguinese. Just what
the devil is going _on_ around this place?"

The four SP men were trying hard not to fidget.

"Just security precautions, sir," said the ensign uncomfortably. "Nobody
but those connected with Project Brainchild are supposed to know about
Snookums. If anyone else finds out, we're supposed to take them into
protective custody."

"I'll bet you're widely loved for that," said Mike. "I suppose the
gadget at Miss What's-her-name's belt was an alarm to warn you of
impending disaster?"

"Miss Crannon.... Yes, sir. Everybody on the project carries those
around. Also, Miss Crannon carries a detector for following Snookums
around. She's sort of his keeper, you know."

"No," said Mike the Angel, "I do not know. But I intend to find out. I'm
looking for Captain Quill; where is he?"

The four men looked at each other, then looked back at Mike.

"I don't know, Commander," said the ensign. "I understand that several
new men have come in today, but I don't know all of them. You'd better
talk to Dr. Fitzhugh."

"Such are the beauties of security," said Mike the Angel. "Where can I
find this Dr. Fitzhugh?"

The security man looked at his wrist watch. "He's down in the cafeteria
now, sir. It's coffee time, and Doc Fitzhugh is as regular as a
satellite orbit."

"I'm glad you didn't say 'clockwork,'" Mike told him. "I've had enough
dealings with machines today. Where is this coffee haven?"

The ensign gave directions for reaching the cafeteria, and Mike pushed
open the door marked _entrance_. He had to pass through another inner
door guarded by another pair of SP men who checked his ID card again,
then he had to ramble through hallways that went off at queer angles to
each other, but he finally found the cafeteria.

He nabbed the first passer-by and asked him to point out Dr. Fitzhugh.
The passer-by was obliging; he indicated a smallish, elderly man who was
sitting by himself at one of the tables.

Mike made his way through the tray-carrying hordes that were milling
about, and finally ended up at the table where the smallish man was
sitting.

"Dr. Fitzhugh?" Mike offered his hand. "I'm Commander Gabriel. Minister
Wallingford appointed me Engineering Officer of the _Branchell_."

Dr. Fitzhugh shook Mike's hand with apparent pleasure. "Oh yes. Sit
down, Commander. What can I do for you?"

Mike had already peeled off his electroparka. He hung it over the back
of a chair and said: "Mind if I grab a cup of coffee, Doctor? I've just
come from topside, and I think the cold has made its way clean to my
bones." He paused. "Would you like another cup?"

Dr. Fitzhugh looked at his watch. "I have time for one more, thanks."

By the time Mike had returned with the cups, he had recalled where he
had heard the name Fitzhugh before.

"It just occurred to me," he said as he sat down. "You must be Dr.
_Morris_ Fitzhugh."

Fitzhugh nodded. "That's right." He wore a perpetually worried look,
which made his face look more wrinkled than his fifty years of age would
normally have accounted for. Mike was privately of the opinion that if
Fitzhugh ever really _tried_ to look worried, his ears would meet over
the bridge of his long nose.

"I've read a couple of your articles in the _Journal_," Mike explained,
"but I didn't connect the name until I saw you. I recognized you from
your picture."

Fitzhugh smiled, which merely served to wrinkle his face even more.

Mike the Angel spent the next several minutes feeling the man out, then
he went on to explain what had happened with Snookums out in the foyer,
which launched Dr. Fitzhugh into an explanation.

"He didn't want help, of course; he was merely conducting an experiment.
There are many areas of knowledge in which he is as naïve as a child."

Mike nodded. "It figures. At first I thought he was just a
remote-control tool, but I finally saw that he was a real,
honest-to-goodness robot. Who gave him the idea to make such an
experiment as that?"

"No one at all," said Dr. Fitzhugh. "He's built to make up his own
experiments."

Mike the Angel's classic face regarded the wrinkled one of Dr. Fitzhugh.
"His own experiments? But a robot--"

Fitzhugh held up a bony hand, gesturing for attention and silence. He
got it from Mike.

"Snookums," he said, "is no ordinary robot, Commander."

Mike waited for more. When none came, he said: "So I gather." He sipped
at his black coffee. "That machine I saw is actually a remote-control
tool, isn't it? Snookums' actual brain is in Cargo Hold One of the
_William Branchell_."

"That's right." Dr. Fitzhugh began reaching into various pockets about
his person. He extracted a tobacco pouch, a briar pipe, and a jet-flame
lighter. Then he began speaking as he went through the pipe smoker's
ritual of filling, tamping, and lighting.

"Snookums," he began, "is a self-activating, problem-seeking computer
with input and output sensory and action mechanisms analogous to those
of a human being." He pushed more tobacco into the bowl of his pipe with
a bony forefinger. "He's as close to being a living creature as anything
Man has yet devised."

"What about the synthecells they're making at Boston Med?" Mike asked,
looking innocent.

Fitzhugh's contour-map face wrinkled up even more. "I should have said
'living _intelligence_,'" he corrected himself. "He's a true robot, in
the old original sense of the word; an artificial entity that displays
almost every function of a living, intelligent creature. And, at the
same time, he has the accuracy and speed that is normal to a cryotron
computer."

Mike the Angel said nothing while Fitzhugh fired up his lighter and
directed the jet of flame into the bowl and puffed up great clouds of
smoke which obscured his face.

While the roboticist puffed, Mike let his gaze wander idly over the
other people in the cafeteria. He was wondering how much longer he could
talk to Fitzhugh before Captain Quill began--

And then he saw the redhead.

There is never much point in describing a really beautiful girl. Each
man has his own ideas of what it takes for a girl to be "pretty" or
"fascinating" or "lovely" or almost any other adjective that can be
applied to the noun "girl." But "beautiful" is a cultural concept, at
least as far as females are concerned, and there is no point in
describing a cultural concept. It's one of those things that everybody
knows, and descriptions merely become repetitious and monotonous.

This particular example filled, in every respect, the definition of
"beautiful" according to the culture of the white Americo-European
subclass of the human race as of anno Domini 2087. The elements and
proportions and symmetry fit almost perfectly into the ideal mold. It is
only necessary to fill in some of the minor details which are allowed to
vary without distorting the ideal.

She had red hair and blue eyes and was wearing a green zipsuit.

And she was coming toward the table where Mike and Dr. Fitzhugh were
sitting.

"... such a tremendous number of elements," Dr. Fitzhugh was saying,
"that it was possible--and necessary--to introduce a certain randomity
within the circuit choices themselves-- Ah! Hello, Leda, my dear!"

Mike and Fitzhugh rose from their seats.

"Leda, this is Commander Gabriel, the Engineering Officer of the
_Brainchild_," said Fitzhugh. "Commander, Miss Leda Crannon, our
psychologist."

Mike had been allowing his eyes to wander over the girl, inspecting her
ankles, her hair, and all vital points of interest between. But when he
heard the name "Crannon," his eyes snapped up to meet hers.

He hadn't recognized the girl without her parka and wouldn't have known
her name if the SP ensign hadn't mentioned it. Obviously, she didn't
recognize Mike at all, but there was a troubled look in her blue eyes.

She gave him a puzzled smile. "Haven't we met, Commander?"

Mike grinned. "Hey! That's supposed to be _my_ line, isn't it?"

She flashed him a warm smile, then her eyes widened ever so slightly.
"Your voice! You're the man on the foyer! The one...."

"... the one whom you called copper on," finished Mike agreeably. "But
please don't apologize; you've more than made up for it."

Her smile remained. She evidently liked what she saw. "How was I to know
who you were?"

"It might have been written on my pocket handkerchief," said Mike the
Angel, "but Space Service officers don't carry pocket handkerchiefs."

"What?" The puzzled look had returned.

"Ne' mind," said Mike. "Sit down, won't you?"

"Oh, I can't, thanks. I came to get Fitz; a meeting of the Research
Board has been called, and afterward we have to give a lecture or
something to the officers of the _Brainchild_."

"You mean the _Branchell_?"

Her smile became an impish grin. "You call it what you want. To us, it's
the _Brainchild_."

Dr. Fitzhugh said: "Will you excuse us, Commander? We'll be seeing you
at the briefing later."

Mike nodded. "I'd better get on my way, too. I'll see you."

But he stood there as Leda Crannon and Dr. Fitzhugh walked away. The
girl looked just as divine retreating as she had advancing.




9


Captain Sir Henry (Black Bart) Quill was seated in an old-fashioned,
formyl-covered, overstuffed chair, chewing angrily at the end of an
unlighted cigar. His bald head gleamed like a pink billiard ball, almost
matching the shining glory of his golden insignia against his scarlet
tunic.

Mike the Angel had finally found his way through the maze of underground
passageways to the door marked _wardroom 9_ and had pushed it open
gingerly, halfway hoping that he wouldn't be seen coming in late but not
really believing it would happen.

He was right. Black Bart was staring directly at the door when it slid
open. Mike shrugged inwardly and stepped boldly into the room, flicking
a glance over the faces of the other officers present.

"Well, well, well, Mister Gabriel," said Black Bart. The voice was oily,
but the oil was oil of vitriol. "You not only come late, but you come
incognito. Where is your uniform?"

There was a muffled snicker from one of the junior officers, but it
wasn't muffled enough. Before Mike the Angel could answer, Captain
Quill's head jerked around.

"That will do, Mister Vaneski!" he barked. "Boot ensigns don't snicker
when their superiors--_and_ their betters--are being reprimanded! I only
use sarcasm on officers I respect. Until an officer earns my sarcasm, he
gets nothing but blasting when he goofs off. Understand?"

The last word was addressed to the whole group.

Ensign Vaneski colored, and his youthful face became masklike. "Yes,
sir. Sorry, sir."

Quill didn't even bother to answer; he looked back at Mike the Angel,
who was still standing at attention. Quill's voice resumed its caustic
saccharinity. "But don't let that go to your head, Mister Gabriel. I
repeat: Where is your pretty red spaceman's suit?"

"If the Captain will recall," said Mike, "I had only twenty-four hours'
notice. I couldn't get a new wardrobe in that time. It'll be in on the
next rocket."

Captain Quill was silent for a moment, then he simply said, "Very well,"
thus dismissing the whole subject. He waved Mike the Angel to a seat.
Mike sat.

"We'll dispense with the formal introductions," said Quill. "Commander
Gabriel is our Engineering Officer. The rest of these boys all know each
other, Commander; you and I are the only ones who don't come from
Chilblains Base. You know Commander Jeffers, of course."

Mike nodded and grinned at Peter Jeffers, a lean, bony character who had
a tendency to collapse into chairs as though he had come unhinged.
Jeffers grinned and winked back.

"This is Lieutenant Commander von Liegnitz, Navigation Officer;
Lieutenant Keku, Supply; Lieutenant Mellon, Medical Officer; and Ensign
Vaneski, Maintenance. You can all shake hands with each other later;
right now, let's get on with business." He frowned, overshadowing his
eyes with those great, bushy brows. "What was I saying just before
Commander Gabriel came in?"

Pete Jeffers shifted slightly in his seat. "You were sayin', suh, that
this's the stupidest dam' assignment anybody evah got. Or words to that
effect." Jeffers had been born in Georgia and had moved to the south of
England at the age of ten. Consequently, his accent was far from
standard.

"I think, Mister Jeffers," said Quill, "that I phrased it a bit more
delicately, but that was the essence of it.

"The _Brainchild_, as she has been nicknamed, has been built at great
expense for the purpose of making a single trip. We are to take her, and
her cargo, to a destination known only to myself and von Liegnitz. We
will be followed there by another Service ship, which will bring us back
as passengers." He allowed himself a half-smile. "At least we'll get to
loaf around on the way back."

The others grinned.

"The _Brainchild_ will be left there and, presumably, dismantled."

He took the unlighted cigar out of his mouth, looked at it, and absently
reached in his pocket for a lighter. The deeply tanned young man who had
been introduced as Lieutenant Keku had just lighted a cigarette, so he
proffered his own flame to the captain. Quill puffed his cigar alight
absently and went on.

"It isn't going to be easy. We won't have a chance to give the ship a
shakedown cruise because once we take off we might as well keep
going--which we will.

"You all know what the cargo is--Cargo Hold One contains the greatest
single robotic brain ever built. Our job is to make sure it gets to our
destination in perfect condition."

"Question, sir," said Mike the Angel.

Without moving his head, Captain Quill lifted one huge eyebrow and
glanced in Mike's direction. "Yes?"

"Why didn't C.C. of E. build the brain on whatever planet we're going to
in the first place?"

"We're supposed to be told that in the briefing over at the C.C. of E.
labs in"--he glanced at his watch--"half an hour. But I think we can all
get a little advance information. Most of you men have been around here
long enough to have some idea of what's going on, but I understand that
Mister Vaneski knows somewhat more about robotics than most of us. Do
you have any light to shed on this, Mister Vaneski?"

Mike grinned to himself without letting it show on his face. The skipper
was letting the boot ensign redeem himself after the _faux pas_ he'd
made.

Vaneski started to stand up, but Quill made a slight motion with his
hand and the boy relaxed.

"It's only a guess, sir," he said, "but I think it's because the robot
knows too much."

Quill and the others looked blank, but Mike narrowed his eyes
imperceptibly. Vaneski was practically echoing Mike's own deductions.

"I mean--well, look, sir," Vaneski went on, a little flustered, "they
started to build that thing ten years ago. Eight years ago they started
teaching it. Evidently they didn't see any reason for building it off
Earth then. What I mean is, something must've happened since then to
make them decide to take it off Earth. If they've spent all this much
money to get it away, that must mean that it's dangerous somehow."

"If that's the case," said Captain Quill, "why don't they just shut the
thing off?"

"Well--" Vaneski spread his hands. "I think it's for the same reason. It
knows too much, and they don't want to destroy that knowledge."

"Do you have any idea what that knowledge might be?" Mike the Angel
asked.

"No, sir, I don't. But whatever it is, it's dangerous as hell."

       *       *       *       *       *

The briefing for the officers and men of the _William Branchell_--the
_Brainchild_--was held in a lecture room at the laboratories of the
Computer Corporation of Earth's big Antarctic base.

Captain Quill spoke first, warning everyone that the project was secret
and asking them to pay the strictest attention to what Dr. Morris
Fitzhugh had to say.

Then Fitzhugh got up, his face ridged with nervousness. He assumed the
air of a university professor, launching himself into his speech as
though he were anxious to get through it in a given time without
finishing too early.

"I'm sure you're all familiar with the situation," he said, as though
apologizing to everyone for telling them something they already
knew--the apology of the learned man who doesn't want anyone to think
he's being overly proud of his learning.

"I think, however, we can all get a better picture if we begin at the
beginning and work our way up to the present time.

"The original problem was to build a computer that could learn by
itself. An ordinary computer can be forcibly taught--that is, a
technician can make changes in the circuits which will make the robot do
something differently from the way it was done before, or even make it
do something new.

"But what we wanted was a computer that could learn by itself, a
computer that could make the appropriate changes in its own circuits
without outside physical manipulation.

"It's really not as difficult as it sounds. You've all seen
autoscribers, which can translate spoken words into printed symbols. An
autoscriber is simply a machine which does what you tell it
to--literally. Now, suppose a second computer is connected intimately
with the first in such a manner that the second can, on order, change
the circuits of the first. Then, all that is needed is...."

Mike looked around him while the roboticist went on. The men were
looking pretty bored. They'd come to get a briefing on the reason for
the trip, and all they were getting was a lecture on robotics.

Mike himself wasn't so much interested in the whys and wherefores of the
trip; he was wondering why it was necessary to tell anyone--even the
crew. Why not just pack Snookums up, take him to wherever he was going,
and say nothing about it?

Why explain it to the crew?

"Thus," continued Fitzhugh, "it became necessary to incorporate into the
brain a physical analogue of Lagerglocke's Principle: 'Learning is a
result of an inelastic collision.'

"I won't give it to you symbolically, but the idea is simply that an
organism learns _only_ if it does _not_ completely recover from the
effects of an outside force imposed upon it. If it recovers completely,
it's just as it was before. Consequently, it hasn't learned anything.
The organism _must change_."

He rubbed the bridge of his nose and looked out over the faces of the
men before him. A faint smile came over his wrinkled features.

"Some of you, I know, are wondering why I am boring you with this long
recital. Believe me, it's necessary. I want all of you to understand
that the machine you will have to take care of is not just an ordinary
computer. Every man here has had experience with machinery, from the
very simplest to the relatively complex. You know that you have to be
careful of the kind of information--the kind of external force--you give
a machine.

"If you aim a spaceship at Mars, for instance, and tell it to go
_through_ the planet, it might try to obey, but you'd lose the machine
in the process."

A ripple of laughter went through the men. They were a little more
relaxed now, and Fitzhugh had regained their attention.

"And you must admit," Fitzhugh added, "a spaceship which was given that
sort of information might be dangerous."

This time the laughter was even louder.

"Well, then," the roboticist continued, "if a mechanism is capable of
learning, how do you keep it from becoming dangerous or destroying
itself?

"That was the problem that faced us when we built Snookums.

"So we decided to apply the famous Three Laws of Robotics propounded
over a century ago by a brilliant American biochemist and philosopher.

"Here they are:

"'_One: A robot may not injure a human being, nor, through inaction,
allow a human being to come to harm._'

"'_Two: A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except
where such orders would conflict with the First Law._'

"'_Three: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such
protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law._'"

Fitzhugh paused to let his words sink in, then: "Those are the ideal
laws, of course. Even their propounder pointed out that they would be
extremely difficult to put into practice. A robot is a logical machine,
but it becomes somewhat of a problem even to define a human being. Is a
five-year-old competent to give orders to a robot?

"If you define him as a human being, then he can give orders that might
wreck an expensive machine. On the other hand, if you don't define the
five-year-old as human, then the robot is under no compulsion to refrain
from harming the child."

He began delving into his pockets for smoking materials as he went on.

"We took the easy way out. We solved that problem by keeping Snookums
isolated. He has never met any animal except adult human beings. It
would take an awful lot of explaining to make him understand the
difference between, say, a chimpanzee and a man. Why should a hairy pelt
and a relatively low intelligence make a chimp non-human? After all,
some men are pretty hairy, and some are moronic.

"Present company excepted."

More laughter. Mike's opinion of Fitzhugh was beginning to go up. The
man knew when to break pedantry with humor.

"Finally," Fitzhugh said, when the laughter had subsided, "we must ask
what is meant by 'protecting his own existence.' Frankly, we've been
driven frantic by that one. The little humanoid, caterpillar-track
mechanism that we all tend to think of as Snookums isn't really
Snookums, any more than a human being is a hand or an eye. Snookums
wouldn't actually be threatening his own existence unless his brain--now
in the hold of the _William Branchell_--is destroyed."

As Dr. Fitzhugh continued, Mike the Angel listened with about half an
ear. His attention--and the attention of every man in the place--had
been distracted by the entrance of Leda Crannon. She stepped in through
a side door, walked over to Dr. Fitzhugh, and whispered something in his
ear. He nodded, and she left again.

Fitzhugh, when he resumed his speech, was rather more hurried in his
delivery.

"The whole thing can be summed up rather quickly.

"Point One: Snookums' brain contains the information that eight years of
hard work have laboriously put into it. That information is more
valuable than the whole cost of the _William Branchell_; it's worth
billions. So the robot can't be disassembled, or the information would
be lost.

"Point Two: Snookums' mind is a strictly logical one, but it is
operating in a more than logical universe. Consequently, it is unstable.

"Point Three: Snookums was built to conduct his own experiments. To
forbid him to do that would be similar to beating a child for acting
like a child; it would do serious harm to the mind. In Snookums' case,
the randomity of the brain would exceed optimum, and the robot would
become insane.

"Point Four: Emotion is not logical. Snookums can't handle it, except in
a very limited way."

Fitzhugh had been making his points by tapping them off on his fingers
with the stem of his unlighted pipe. Now he shoved the pipe back in his
pocket and clasped his hands behind his back.

"It all adds up to this: Snookums _must_ be allowed the freedom of the
ship. At the same time, every one of us must be careful not to ... to
push the wrong buttons, as it were.

"So here are a few _don'ts_. Don't get angry with Snookums. That would
be as silly as getting sore at a phonograph because it was playing music
you didn't happen to like.

"Don't lie to Snookums. If your lies don't fit in with what he knows to
be true--and they won't, believe me--he will reject the data. But it
would confuse him, because he knows that humans don't lie.

"If Snookums asks you for data, qualify it--even if you know it to be
true. Say: 'There may be an error in my knowledge of this data, but to
the best of my knowledge....'

"Then go ahead and tell him.

"But if you absolutely don't know the answer, tell him so. Say: 'I don't
have that data, Snookums.'

"Don't, unless you are...."

He went on, but it was obvious that the officers and crew of the
_William Branchell_ weren't paying the attention they should. Every one
of them was thinking dark gray thoughts. It was bad enough that they had
to take out a ship like the _Brainchild_, untested and jerry-built as
she was. Was it necessary to have an eight-hundred-pound, moron-genius
child-machine running loose, too?

Evidently, it was.

"To wind it up," Fitzhugh said, "I imagine you are wondering why it's
necessary to take Snookums off Earth. I can only tell you this: Snookums
knows too much about nuclear energy."

Mike the Angel smiled grimly to himself. Ensign Vaneski had been right;
Snookums was dangerous--not only to individuals, but to the whole
planet.

Snookums, too, was a juvenile delinquent.




10


The _Brainchild_ lifted from Antarctica at exactly 2100 hours, Greenwich
time. For three days the officers and men of the ship had worked as
though they were the robots instead of their passenger--or cargo,
depending on your point of view.

Supplies were loaded, and the great engine-generators checked and
rechecked. The ship was ready to go less than two hours before take-off
time.

The last passenger aboard was Snookums, although, in a more proper
sense, he had always been aboard. The little robot rolled up to the
elevator on his treads and was lifted into the body of the ship. Miss
Crannon was waiting for him at the air lock, and Mike the Angel was
standing by. Not that he had any particular interest in watching
Snookums come aboard, but he did have a definite interest in Leda
Crannon.

"Hello, honey," said Miss Crannon as Snookums rolled into the air lock.
"Ready for your ride?"

"Yes, Leda," said Snookums in his contralto voice. He rolled up to her
and took her hand. "Where is my room?"

"Come along; I'll show you in a minute. Do you remember Commander
Gabriel?"

Snookums swiveled his head and regarded Mike.

"Oh yes. He tried to help me."

"Did you need help?" Mike growled in spite of himself.

"Yes. For my experiment. And you offered help. That was very nice. Leda
says it is nice to help people."

Mike the Angel carefully refrained from asking Snookums if he thought he
was people. For all Mike knew, he did.

Mike followed Snookums and Leda Crannon down the companionway.

"What did you do today, honey?" asked Leda.

"Mostly I answered questions for Dr. Fitzhugh," said Snookums. "He asked
me thirty-eight questions. He said I was a great help. I'm nice, too."

"Sure you are, darling," said Miss Crannon.

"Ye gods," muttered Mike the Angel.

"What's the trouble, Commander?" the girl asked, widening her blue eyes.

"Nothing," said Mike the Angel, looking at her innocently with eyes that
were equally blue. "Not a single solitary thing. Snookums is a sweet
little tyke, isn't he?"

Leda Crannon gave him a glorious smile. "I think so. And a lot of fun,
too."

Very seriously, Mike patted Snookums on his shiny steel skull. "How old
are you, little boy?"

Leda Crannon's eyes narrowed, but Mike pretended not to notice while
Snookums said: "Eight years, two months, one day, seven hours,
thirty-three minutes and--ten seconds. But I am not a little boy. I am a
robot."

Mike suppressed an impulse to ask him if he had informed Leda Crannon of
that fact. Mike had been watching the girl for the past three days (at
least, when he'd had the time to watch) and he'd been bothered by the
girl's maternal attitude toward Snookums. She seemed to have wrapped
herself up entirely in the little robot. Of course, that might simply be
her method of avoiding Mike the Angel, but Mike didn't quite believe
that.

"Come along to your room, dear," said Leda. Then she looked again at
Mike. "If you'll wait just a moment, Commander," she said rather
stiffly, "I'd like to talk to you."

Mike the Angel touched his forehead in a gentlemanly salute. "Later,
perhaps, Miss Crannon. Right now, I have to go to the Power Section to
prepare for take-off. We're really going to have fun lifting this brute
against a full Earth gee without rockets."

"Later, then," she said evenly, and hurried off down the corridor with
Snookums.

Mike headed the other way with a sigh of relief. As of right then, he
didn't feel like being given an ear-reaming lecture by a beautiful
redhead. He beetled it toward the Power Section.

       *       *       *       *       *

Chief Powerman's Mate Multhaus was probably the only man in the crew who
came close to being as big as Mike the Angel. Multhaus was two inches
shorter than Mike's six-seven, but he weighed in at two-ninety. As a
powerman, he was tops, and he gave the impression that, as far as power
was concerned, he could have supplied the ship himself by turning the
crank on a hand generator.

But neither Mike nor Multhaus approached the size of the Supply Officer,
Lieutenant Keku. Keku was an absolute giant. Six-eight, three hundred
fifty pounds, and very little of it fat.

When Mike the Angel opened the door of the Power Section's instrument
room, he came upon a strange sight. Lieutenant Keku and Chief Multhaus
were seated across a table from each other, each with his right elbow on
the table, their right hands clasped. The muscles in both massive arms
stood out beneath the scarlet tunics. Neither man was moving.

"Games, children?" asked Mike gently.

_Whap!_ The chief's arm slammed to the table with a bang that sounded as
if the table had shattered. Multhaus had allowed Mike's entrance to
distract him, while Lieutenant Keku had held out just an instant longer.

Both men leaped to their feet, Multhaus valiantly trying not to nurse
his bruised hand.

"Sorry, sir," said Multhaus. "We were just--"

"Ne' mind. I saw. Who usually wins?" Mike asked.

Lieutenant Keku grinned. "Usually he does, Commander. All this beef
doesn't help much against a guy who really has pull. And Chief Multhaus
has it."

Mike looked into the big man's brown eyes. "Try doing push-ups. With all
your weight, it'd really put brawn into you. Sit down and light up.
We've got time before take-off. That is, we do if Multhaus has
everything ready for the check-off."

"I'm ready any time you are, sir," Multhaus said, easing himself into a
chair.

"We'll have a cigarette and then run 'em through."

Keku settled his bulk into a chair and fired up a cigarette. Mike sat on
the edge of the table.

"Philip Keku," Mike said musingly. "Just out of curiosity, what kind of
a name is Keku?"

"Damfino," said the lieutenant. "Sounds Oriental, doesn't it?"

Mike looked the man over carefully, but rapidly. "But you're not
Oriental--or at least, not much. You look Polynesian to me."

"Hit it right on the head, Commander. Hawaiian. My real name's
Kekuanaoa, but nobody could pronounce it, so I shortened it to Keku when
I came in the Service."

Mike gave a short laugh. "That accounts for your size. Kekuanaoa. A
branch of the old Hawaiian royal family, as I recall."

"That's right." The big Hawaiian grinned. "I've got a kid sister that
weighs as much as you. And my granddad kicked off at ninety-four
weighing a comfortable four-ten."

"What'd he die of, sir?" Multhaus asked curiously.

"Concussion and multiple fractures. He slammed a Ford-Studebaker into a
palm tree at ninety miles an hour. Crazy old ox; he was bigger than the
dam' automobile."

The laughter of three big men filled the instrument room.

After a few more minutes of bull throwing, Keku ground out his cigarette
and stood up. "I'd better get to my post; Black Bart will be calling
down any minute."

At that instant the PA system came alive.

"_Now hear this! Now hear this! Take-off in fifteen minutes! Take-off in
fifteen minutes!_"

Keku grinned, saluted Mike the Angel, and walked out the door.

Multhaus gazed after him, looking at the closed door.

"A blinking prophet, Commander," he said. "A blinking prophet."

       *       *       *       *       *

The take-off of the _Brainchild_ was not so easy as it might have
appeared to anyone who watched it from the outside. As far as the
exterior observers were concerned, it seemed to lift into the air with
a loud, thrumming noise, like a huge elevator rising in an invisible
shaft.

It had been built in a deep pit in the polar ice, built around the huge
cryotronic stack that was Snookums' brain. As it rose, electric motors
slid back the roof that covered the pit, and the howling Antarctic winds
roared around it.

Unperturbed, it went on rising.

Inside, Mike the Angel and Chief Multhaus watched worriedly as the
meters wiggled their needles dangerously close to the overload mark. The
thrumming of the ship as it fought its way up against the pull of
Earth's gravity and through the Earth's magnetic field, using the fabric
of space itself as the fulcrum against which it applied its power, was
like the vibration of a note struck somewhere near the bottom of a piano
keyboard, or the rumble of a contra bassoon.

As the intensity of the gravitational field decreased, the velocity of
the ship increased--not linearly, but logarithmically. She shrieked
through the upper atmosphere, quivering like a live thing, and emerged
at last into relatively empty space. When she reached a velocity of a
little over thirty miles per second--relative to the sun, and
perpendicular to the solar ecliptic--Mike the Angel ordered her engines
cut back to the lowest power possible which would still retain the
one-gee interior gravity of the ship and keep the anti-acceleration
fields intact.

"How does she look, Multhaus?" he asked.

Both of the men were checking the readings of the instruments. A
computerman second class was punching the readings into the small table
calculator as Multhaus read off the numbers.

"I think she weathered it, sir," the chief said cautiously, "but she
sure took a devil of a beating. And look at the power factor readings!
We were tossing away energy as though we were S-Doradus or something."

They worked for nearly an hour to check through all the circuits to find
what damage--if any--had been done by the strain of Earth's
gravitational and magnetic fields. All in all, the _Brainchild_ was in
pretty good shape. A few circuits needed retuning, but no replacements
were necessary.

Multhaus, who had been understandably pessimistic about the ship's
ability to lift herself from the surface of even a moderate-sized planet
like Earth, looked with new respect upon the man who had designed the
power plant that had done the job.

Mike the Angel called the bridge and informed Captain Quill that the
ship was ready for full acceleration.

Under control from the bridge, the huge ship yawed until her nose--and
thus the line of thrust along her longitudinal axis--was pointed toward
her destination.

"Full acceleration, Mister Gabriel," said Captain Quill over the
intercom.

Mike the Angel watched the meters climb again as the ship speared away
from the sun at an ever-increasing velocity. Although the apparent
internal acceleration remained at a cozy one gee, the acceleration in
relation to the sun was something fantastic. When the ship reached the
velocity of light, she simply disappeared, as far as external observers
were concerned. But she still kept adding velocity with her tremendous
acceleration.

Finally her engines reached their performance peak. They could drive the
_Brainchild_ no faster. They simply settled down to a steady growl and
pushed the ship at a steady velocity through what the mathematicians
termed "null-space."

The _Brainchild_ was on her way.




11


"What I want to know," said Lieutenant Keku, "is, what kind of ship is
this?"

Mike the Angel chuckled, and Lieutenant Mellon, the Medical Officer,
grinned rather shyly. But young Ensign Vaneski looked puzzled.

"What do you mean, sir?" he asked the huge Hawaiian.

They were sitting over coffee in the officers' wardroom. Captain Quill,
First Officer Jeffers, and Lieutenant Commander von Liegnitz were on the
bridge, and Dr. Fitzhugh and Leda Crannon were down below, giving
Snookums lessons.

Mike looked at Lieutenant Keku, waiting for him to answer Vaneski's
question.

"What do I mean? Just what I said, Mister Vaneski. I want to know what
kind of ship this is. It is obviously not a warship, so we can forget
that classification. It is not an expeditionary ship; we're not
outfitted for exploratory work. Is it a passenger vessel, then? No,
because Dr. Fitzhugh and Miss Crannon are listed as 'civilian technical
advisers' and are therefore legally part of the crew. I'm wondering if
it might be a cargo vessel, though."

"Sure it is," said Ensign Vaneski. "That brain in Cargo Hold One is
cargo, isn't it?"

"I'm not certain," Keku said thoughtfully, looking up at the overhead,
as if the answer might be etched there in the metal. "Since it is built
in as an intrinsic part of the ship, I don't know if it can be counted
as cargo or not." He brought his gaze down to focus on Mike. "What do
you think, Commander?"

Before Mike the Angel could answer, Ensign Vaneski broke in with: "But
the brain is going to be removed when we get to our destination, isn't
it? That makes this a cargo ship!" There was a note of triumph in his
voice.

Lieutenant Keku's gaze didn't waver from Mike's face, nor did he say a
word. For a boot ensign to interrupt like that was an impoliteness that
Keku chose to ignore. He was waiting for Mike's answer as though Vaneski
had said nothing.

But Mike the Angel decided he might as well play along with Keku's gag
and still answer Vaneski. As a full commander, he could overlook
Vaneski's impoliteness to his superiors without ignoring it as Keku was
doing.

"Ah, but the brain _won't_ be unloaded, Mister Vaneski," he said mildly.
"The ship will be _dismantled_--which is an entirely different thing.
I'm afraid you can't call it a cargo ship on those grounds."

Vaneski didn't say anything. His face had gone red and then white, as
though he'd suddenly realized he'd committed a _faux pas_. He nodded his
head a little, to show he understood, but he couldn't seem to find his
voice.

To cover up Vaneski's emotional dilemma, Mike addressed the Medical
Officer. "What do you think, Mister Mellon?"

Mellon cleared his throat. "Well--it seems to me," he said in a dry,
serious tone, "that this is really a medical ship."

Mike blinked. Keku raised his eyebrows. Vaneski swallowed and jerked his
eyes away from Mike's face to look at Mellon--but still he didn't say
anything.

"Elucidate, my dear Doctor," said Mike with interest.

"I diagnose it as a physician," Mellon said in the same dry, earnest
tone. "Snookums, we have been told, is too dangerous to be permitted to
remain on Earth. I take this to mean that he is potentially capable of
doing something that would either harm the planet itself or a
majority--if not all--of the people on it." He picked up his cup of
coffee and took a sip. Nobody interrupted him.

"Snookums has, therefore," he continued, "been removed from Earth in
order to protect the health of that planet, just as one would remove a
potentially malignant tumor from a human body.

"This is a medical ship. Q.E.D." And only then did he smile.

"Aw, now...." Vaneski began. Then he shut his mouth again.

With an inward smile, Mike realized that Ensign Vaneski had been taking
seriously an argument that was strictly a joke.

"Mister Mellon," Mike said, "you win." He hadn't realized that Mellon's
mind could work on that level.

"Hold," said Lieutenant Keku, raising a hand. "I yield to no one in my
admiration for the analysis given by our good doctor; indeed, my
admiration knows no bounds. But I insist we hear from Commander Gabriel
before we adjourn."

"Not me," Mike said, shaking his head. "I know when I'm beaten." He'd
been going to suggest that the _Brainchild_ was a training ship, from
Snookums' "learning" periods, but that seemed rather obvious and puerile
now.

He glanced at his watch, saw the time, and stood up. "Excuse me,
gentlemen; I have things to do." He had an appointment to talk to Leda
Crannon, but he had no intention of broadcasting it.

As he closed the wardroom door, he heard Ensign Vaneski's voice saying:
"I _still_ say this should be classified as a cargo ship."

Mike sighed as he strode on down the companionway. The ensign was, of
course, absolutely correct--which was the sad part about it, really. Oh
well, what the hell.

Leda Crannon had agreed to have coffee with Mike in the office suite she
shared with Dr. Fitzhugh. Mike had had one cup in the officers'
wardroom, but even if he'd had a dozen he'd have been willing to slosh
down a dozen more to talk to Leda Crannon. It was not, he insisted to
himself, that he was in love with the girl, but she had intelligence and
personality in addition to her striking beauty.

Furthermore, she had given Mike the Angel a dressing-down that had been
quite impressive. She had not at all cared for the remarks he had made
when Snookums was being loaded aboard--patting him on the head and
asking him his age, for instance--and had told him so in no uncertain
terms. Mike, feeling sheepish and knowing he was guilty, had accepted
the tongue-lashing and tendered an apology.

And she had smiled and said: "All right. Forget it. I'm sorry I got
mad."

He knew he wasn't the only man aboard who was interested in Leda. Jakob
von Liegnitz, all Teutonic masterfulness and Old World suavity, had
obviously made a favorable impression on her. Lew Mellon was often seen
in deep philosophical discussions with her, his eyes never leaving her
face and his earnest voice low and confidential. Both of them had known
her longer than he had, since they'd both been stationed at Chilblains
Base.

Mike the Angel didn't let either of them worry him. He had enough
confidence in his own personality and abilities to be able to take his
own tack no matter which way the wind blew.

Blithely opening the door of the office, Mike the Angel stepped inside
with a smile on his lips.

"Ah, good afternoon, Commander Gabriel," said Dr. Morris Fitzhugh.

Mike kept the smile on his face. "Leda here?"

Fitzhugh chuckled. "No. Some problems came up with Snookums. She'll be
in session for an hour yet. She asked me to convey her apologies." He
gestured toward the coffee urn. "But the coffee's all made, so you may
as well have a cup."

Mike was thankful he had not had a dozen cups in the wardroom. "I don't
mind if I do, Doctor." He sat down while Fitzhugh poured a cup.

"Cream? Sugar?"

"Black, thanks," Mike said.

There was an awkward silence for a few seconds while Mike sipped at the
hot, black liquid. Then Mike said, "Dr. Fitzhugh, you said, at the
briefing back on Earth, that Snookums knows too much about nuclear
energy. Can you be more specific than that, or is it too hush-hush?"

Fitzhugh took out his briar and began filling it as he spoke. "We don't
want this to get out to the general public, of course," he said
thoughtfully, "but, as a ship's officer, you can be told. I believe
some of your fellow officers know already, although we'd rather it
wasn't discussed in general conversation, even among the officers."

Mike nodded wordlessly.

"Very well, then." Fitzhugh gave the tobacco a final shove with his
thumb. "As a power engineer, you should be acquainted with the 'pinch
effect,' eh?