Mining Colony Delta was an unlovely thing, so heavily shielded against radiation that it bore none of the graceful mirrors and transparent panels that gave most orbiting cities the look of great steel flowers or floating cathedrals. It was a simple spinning cylinder outfitted with antennae and solar panels, with docking ports at the centre axis. The Cat drifted into the port and the heavy space-doors shut behind it.
When the locks had cycled and the Cat's passengers had drifted through, they were greeted by a welcoming committee of three humanoid robots. One of them--a silvery featureless creature like an abstract sculpture of a human being--stepped forward and spoke, though it was difficult to tell where its words were coming from, as it lacked a mouth:
"Welcome to Delta. I am Fiver Niner. This is Ichi San Go and Charlie Able Baker." The former was a huge, armoured creature with claws and various secondary arms, resembling a cross between a suit of armour and a Swiss army knife. The latter looked like a cyborg at first, but on closer inspection turned out to be an android whose legs and one arm had been replaced by more utilitarian-looking robotic parts.
"I'm Davis, Chief Engineer of the Star-ship Aries. This is Fedorova, our tech officer, and Chief Pilot Sanchez. May I introduce Jason as well, Captain of the Belter Trader Argo, and his crewmates Hercules and Atalanta? We're in search of a number of salvage items, notably a helium processor, so we can fuel our ship for a voyage to Earth."
Sanchez whispered to Jason: "Proper robot protocol requires getting down to business immediately. This is a major occasion and the whole robotic company will be monitoring. If we don't act like proper Masters, Nadia will never forgive us."
She gave them a glance of disapproval and Sanchez shut up.
"Unfortunately," Fiver said, "we have no functional fuel processors on board, but we will be able to obtain one from Jupiter's atmosphere. This will require your human assistance and thus will necessitate your presence during the perijove arc of our orbit. We apologize for the delay, but Delta is now yours, and we are all at your disposal. Our small community will be gratified to meet you, if that is acceptable to you. We will then be happy to assist you in the repair of your tanker or your star-ship, or indeed in any other way."
Davis was astonished. "You mean there are aerostats in the atmosphere after all this time? It can't be."
"It pains me to contradict, Sir, but I have given no false information. There is certainly one functioning aerostat, and some evidence that a second exists as well. When the skyhook collapsed and the scoop-ships began to be lost in great numbers, the older technology was put back into service. This was primarily to fuel the ships of the last exodus. There were plenty of robots to crew the aerostats, and I regret to say that a number were abandoned in the atmosphere in the humans' haste to escape the final wave of the plague."
"The humans abandoned them?" Fedorova asked, in obvious shock.
"I am sorry to say they did. Most of them were lost in short order, when the reactors failed, and they were no longer able to generate heat to keep the balloons aloft. But it appears that several aerostat crews co-operated to combine a number of aerostats into one structure, which has survived to this day. We have a visual record of its existence, but as the crew is particularly ferocious, we have avoided letting them know of our existence. Once they understand that Masters have returned, I am certain they will co-operate in every way. Would you care to attend a small assembly which we have prepared, and view a selection of images we have recorded? It will give you a quick overview of the situation here in the Galilean since the humans' departure."
"By all means," said Davis. "We would like to meet the rest of Delta's crew as well, if this is possible."
"They will be gratified, as I have indicated. If you will follow us, there is a small reception planned for the terrace at one-sixth gee which will serve both purposes." Fiver gestured toward the elevator and the entire gathering crowded in. As it descended toward the circumference, picture ports gave them several different views of Delta's interior. There were terraces laid out in step-fashion, with parapets overlooking lower levels amid hanging gardens and rice paddy-like hillsides. The landscape curved round overhead, and in the sky, there was a running-track surrounding a lake.
"The gravity at lakeside is 2.7 gees," said Fiver, addressing Hercules particularly. "By running around the track against the island's spin, one can exercise in standard Jovian gravity."
"It's a beautiful track," said Hercules. "Look at the stunted trees, and the smooth surface of the lake. It's just like home."
"We will be glad to assist in bringing your muscles back to full tone," said Ichi San Go, startling the visitors with his cultured voice. "I imagine you have found weightlessness debilitating."
"I'm a shadow of my former self," said Hercules in total seriousness, and Davis cut off Sanchez's guffaw with a jab in the ribs.
"We have full gymnasium facilities on every level--the axis, at the one-sixth and one-third gee-level, at full gee, and at the circumference--so visitors can adapt to free-fall, standard moon-grav, Martian or Terran surface, and Jovian cloud-tops, as required. We have created a regimen that will allow the human body to progress comfortably from one extreme to the other during the course of either an inbound or outbound orbit."
"Were you ordered to keep it ready for humanity's return?" asked Fedorova.
"We were given no orders at all," said Fiver. "The last human beings we saw were raiders who nearly destroyed the life-support system here. We restored it out of a sense of stewardship, both in anticipation of possible future human need and because we thought it necessary to maintain our small community in good order for the sake of our own well-being. What is a robot, after all, without a work-ethic?"
"Nothing," said Charlie Able Baker. "An idle machine. Entropy's playground. An expensive mechanism gone to rust. An offence to other robots, to the Masters, and to God."
Davis and Sanchez exchanged startled glances.
"Exactly," said Fiver. "We feel that as long as we continue to work, Galilean Civilization has not entirely collapsed. Without ships to fuel, or fuel to process, we had little to do but maintain the colony and record events. The rest of the time we spent improving ourselves mechanically and intellectually, the better to serve our masters on their return."
The elevator stopped and they stepped out onto a terrace before an amphitheatre set into the hillside. The terrace was crowded with beings of many degrees of approximation to human form, from the perfectly humanoid to piles of semi-sentient scrap metal. Every one of them was holding an empty cocktail glass in whatever it used for hands. Sanchez was seized with a sudden coughing fit and Fedorova glared at her.
"Robots and androids," said Fiver, "we are gathered here to welcome the first human beings in more than a century to visit the Galilean system, and to begin the process of reporting to them the condition and recent history thereof. I am sure that I speak for all of us when I say we look forward to our first orders with a sense of long-awaited fulfilment."
Those with arms applauded politely--a strange sight and a stranger noise. The whole tribe of them seemed to have gone somewhat eccentric, though the Argonauts were not sure just how they had expected robots to act.
Fiver turned to Davis. "If you would say a few words, Sir, it would be greatly appreciated."
"Of course." Davis turned to the assembled multitude. "We are pleased to discover a community in such good order where we had come to expect only death and decay. It renews our faith in the ancient and honourable partnership of man and machine. You are to be congratulated for resisting the impulse to follow man in the abandonment of civilization. If the Galilean worlds return to their former glory, it will be because of your example. On behalf of the remnants of the human race, I thank you." He bowed, and the whole robot assembly bowed back, in perfect unison, and applauded.
Fiver turned to the Argonauts and the Earthborn Men. "If you will take the seats of honour in the front, we would be happy to show you a few selected images, just to give you a general idea of the situation here."
"We'd be happy to."
The assembly moved toward the amphitheatre, whose seats were facing the open landscape below. As Hercules passed along the parapet, he could not resist peering over the edge at the lake and track below. Suddenly he turned pale and turned away from the dizzying view. He did not notice that Davis was looking at him. The Argonauts sat front row centre and the taller Earthborn sat directly behind them. Fiver sat next to Davis.
"As we travel throughout the Jovian system," Fiver said, "we pick up images from security cameras or satellites from time to time. Usually there is nothing but empty corridors or landscapes, but sometimes we see action of one sort or another, which we record and collate and store." Fiver raised his arm and a holographic projection appeared, larger than life, in the air over the landscape below. It was so realistic that Jason started to jump to his feet when he saw the android-killing robot of the Valhalla caverns.
Sanchez leaned over his shoulder. "Oh look! It's your friend," she said.
Atalanta whispered: "That’s the thing you killed?" For the first time since joining his crew, she gave him a look of admiration and respect.
"Are you kidding?" Sanchez guffawed. "There wasn’t enough left of it to build a decent toaster. Fiver, when was this taken?"
"Thirty-two years ago. This particular unit has been haunting the caverns in Callisto for as long as we can recall. Observe."
The massive creature was plodding along a dimly lit, icy corridor, head swivelling as it moved. Suddenly it was surrounded by androids dressed in torn body-armour and armed with great steel bars, much too heavy for a human being to lift, even in Callisto's gravity. They belaboured the monster, striking from all sides, and it defended itself with clutching arms. One and then more androids were snatched off their feet, hurled into the icy walls, and lay broken. The others stepped back suddenly and a figure unseen till then appeared, stepping out of the dark into a pool of light beneath a flickering fixture. It was a tall and spectacularly figured female, dressed in little more than scraps of black leather and thigh-high boots. It had a laser-pistol strapped to its considerable thigh.
"What the hell is that?" Davis asked.
"It's a very intelligent android," said Fiver, "designed for the brothels of Ganymede. An entertainment model."
"I'm sure," said Sanchez.
"Men have sex with robots?" Atalanta said. "That's disgusting." She squeaked and covered her mouth. "Can they hear?"
"Of course they can," said Fedorova. "Their hearing is much keener than yours. But they’re incapable of being offended."
For several minutes the mining machine and the miner's home companion regarded each other in the corridor. Davis whispered to Sanchez: "A little harmonica music at this point would be good." He almost missed the lightning-like movement. The android's hand flashed down, came up with the pistol, and a beam flashed toward the robot. With even more incredible speed, for a creature of such bulk, it stepped aside, and the blast cut a furrow across its massive shoulder. There was a great explosion as the blast struck the wall behind. Chunks of ice flew in all directions, and clouds of steam enveloped the creature. It stepped forward, looming out of the mist, and a long whip-like appendage shot from its extended arm, neatly decapitating the female android.
Headless, it turned to run and blundered into the wall. The mining robot lurched forward and snapped the android's back. The others scattered, fleeing out of camera range. The human audience watched in mute horror as the killer ripped off the top of the decapitated skull and removed parts of the mechanism inside with delicate pincers.
It examined the devices carefully, inserted one into a box attached to its upper arm, bent down and picked up the laser. After studying the weapon for a moment, it took aim at the camera and fired, whereupon the holographic projection suddenly vanished.
"It now has all her knowledge and memories," said Fiver, "including her skill with the laser, the location of the android headquarters, and her knowledge of her companion's skills and weaknesses. These mining robots have been enormously successful. Their simplicity is an advantage, while the sophistication of the android often turns out to be a disadvantage when it comes to basic survival."
"He admires it," Atalanta said.
"He admires its ability to survive," said Fedorova. She seemed to be the only one of the human observers who was not horrified by what she had just seen. "Robots are not prejudiced. You know, there were great debates about how human to make androids look. People were afraid of mistaking them for human, but they didn't want ugly machines around. The decision was to make them look impossibly beautiful. As a result, ugliness in human beings became a fashion for a time. Misshapen people made great fortunes as models and actors. Then people came to admire robots for their work-ethic and loyalty, and it became first a fashion and then a crime to pretend to be an android."
Another projection began, and the human audience was surprised to see the interior of Space-dock, Dar and Rani's bodies visible through the open hatch in the background. In the foreground were several robots with bowed heads.
"This place has became something of a shrine for us," said Fiver, "which we visit every orbit. The remains had not been disturbed, even by robots busy destroying each other. As for us, we engaged in a series of debates on the question of whether we should obey the request to bury them. One school of thought held that their request was an order which must be obeyed. Another held that the request was intended for human beings to fulfil and that interfering with this process would constitute an injury to Dar and Rani and thus the order must not be obeyed. In the end, it was decided that we could remember them, as requested, better and longer than human beings, but that questions of burial must be left to the Masters. When you do so, we would like to have a representative present, if we may."
"Of course," said Davis.
"And I would like to see the record of the debate you mention," Fedorova added. "I believe it will be the only robotic religious debate on record."
"We will be happy to comply," said Fiver. "Normally, we would simply have asked a human being for guidance. Functioning without Masters has forced us to hold many such debates on philosophical questions not covered in the usual programming. I think you will find them interesting."
The next view was of a vast, smooth ice-plain, Jupiter enormous on the horizon. As they watched, the satellite camera zoomed in until a string of tiny figures could be seen moving over the ice. Still the zoom continued, and finally the figures were revealed as lumbering tracked vehicles with huge solar panels on top. They were in bad repair--treads broken and patched, panels loose, wiring exposed. Most were equipped with manipulative arms in the front, but in a few cases the arms were humanoid, and android heads and torsos were attached to the fronts of the vehicles, like figureheads.
"This is Europa. We call these vehicles centaurs--snow crawlers and androids united for better survival. They travel across the surface with the terminator, trying to keep their panels to the sun."
"That's all they do?" Hercules wondered. "Drive round and round the planet, following the sunlight?"
"They survive. In the final analysis, that's all any of us can do. We assume they must have a society of some sort, for they do not attempt to cannibalize the android parts of their fallen fellows, though they will take the treads or motors of those whose higher functions have ceased. There were once a hundred or more, but now they are reduced to a handful. You will see why in a moment."
It was hard to imagine what their existence must be like: intelligent machines doomed to roll endlessly forward in pursuit of the light, across a featureless and frozen plain broken only by the occasional crevasse, beneath the crushing image of an overwhelming Jupiter.
Suddenly the ice beneath one of the machines began to boil. Clouds of vapour rose as it sank, one robotic and one android arm clawing desperately at the ice as the whirling, splashing treads vanished beneath the surface. The other figureheads stretched out their arms and the doomed android raised its open mouth to the cold gas giant above in what seemed to be a scream as it sank, hundreds of tiny metallic objects thrashing about it. In a moment, the hole in the ice was already beginning to freeze over, and the caravan moved on, minus one member.
"Shit!" Sanchez crossed herself furiously.
"What the hell was that?" Davis demanded. "It looked like a school of fish."
"These are probes designed to search for life in the warm waters beneath the ice. They are fish-shaped, powered by long-lived nuclear batteries, equipped with lights and with heat- and motion-sensors, only semi-sentient alone but capable of combining their intelligence. Sometime since their mission was abandoned, they learned to join their lighting-systems in parallel to create powerful lasers, punch holes through the crust where the ice is thinnest and strip the sinking centaurs for parts."
"Like a school of piranha with a hive-mind."
"Essentially, yes. We believe they have a queen somewhere."
The scene faded, to be replaced by that of the surface of Io--the innermost Galilean moon. From orbit it was a landscape of orange and black dust-strewn plains, great volcanoes, and flowing rivers of red sulphurous lava. Jupiter hung so huge in the sky that it seemed to be about to crush the viewer like a grindstone. It was hard to imagine even robots surviving there, but the camera zoomed in on two monstrous machines locked in combat on a volcanic slope.
One resembled nothing so much as a giant insect--six-legged, bulbous-headed, armed with crushing mandibles. The other seemed more like a huge saurian, with legs like pillars, armoured plates, and an earth-moving head armed with steel teeth. As they battled in the sulphurous dust beneath the Jovian wheel, a fall of sky-blue snow began to descend about them.
"Sulphur dioxide leaking from a fissure," Davis grunted to no one in particular. "Crystallizes in the vacuum and turns blue in the sunlight."
As they watched, the giant insect broke the metal dinosaur's neck with its mandibles, and worm-like appendages like mouthparts began to dismantle its victim with delicate precision.
"I lost an arm and a leg on that fight," said Charlie Able Baker.
Fedorova looked at him. "You're in the habit of betting your own parts on these contests?"
"Sometimes. But we have a complete store of replacement parts."
"Let me get this straight. You sit here, safe in your garden, hoarding your resources, watching your fellows battle for survival below, betting on their lives, and engaging in philosophical discussions about the purpose of it all. Is that about right?"
Charlie's human face revealed a troubled expression, and he jerked his neck in a machine-like manner. "In one of our earliest discussions, we decided we could best serve our creators by surviving to maintain this colony for their return. If we shared our parts with those below, none of us would be here now."
"Well," said Fedorova, "I'll say this much for you. This little society you've created seems to be a very good copy of human civilization."
"I particularly wanted you to see this image," said Fiver, interrupting.
It was Jupiter itself, so close that it made the humans gasp--a horizon without a curve, clouds of red and brown and white swirling in hypnotic patterns as far as they could see. The camera descended into canyons of cloud, dropped over precipices of cloud, sailed by mountain ranges of cloud, and finally entered the gloomy depths between cloud-layers, where lightning flickered, and snow of many colours pelted the camera lens.
Jason squeaked as Hercules' powerful hand gripped his wrist painfully. The big man was white-faced and trembling. Davis noticed out of the corner of his eye.
In the distance was an object hovering beneath the cloud-ceiling. It glowed and pulsed as the recorder switched from frequency to frequency, from infra-red to ultra-violet and back again. When the object grew closer, even Davis was impressed.
"It's like an aircraft-carrier held up by dirigibles," he said. "Look at the size of it."
"You've seen bigger ships," said Jason. "Aries, Zeus..."
"Yes, in space. This has been hovering in the atmosphere under something like three gees for a century. I can't believe it."
"It's constructed out of several aerostats," said Fiver. "Each time another one was conquered, it was incorporated into the design. There are dozens of hot-hydrogen balloons inside a lightweight framework. The reactors that heat the atmosphere are the heaviest part of the structure. The crew doesn't need protection from the elements, or oxygen to breath, or food, so structure can be kept to a minimum. Watch as the camera moves in closer."
"Who's holding the camera?"
"It's in the cockpit of one of our wave-riders. It was incapable of returning from Jupiter without fuel, but it could descend, and it could transmit, and one robot volunteered to get these pictures."
Several hydrogen-mining platforms had been linked together with flexible couplings to make one huge carrier, and the balloon envelopes above were linked by an open framework of cables. There was a curving hull made of metal strips woven like basketwork, for lightness, with a high curving prow. On a great cross below the hull, a lateen sail was hanging like a rudder, and on two masts angling upward from the sides more sails were crowded on. These three masts, Y-shaped, also supported a vast triangular balloon spinnaker that was hauling the ship at great speed through the skies. Robots lined the rails and the rigging, pointing and gesturing toward the camera.
"What a ship!" said Sanchez. "They're sailing in their own fuel, and the crew will live forever. I'd like to take the helm of that one."
As they watched, a dozen robots leaped overboard on hang-gliders and banked toward the camera in single file. There was a glimpse of hideous faces and bodies, part humanoid and part robotic, as each swept by the camera. Sanchez half expected to see rings in their ears and sabres in their teeth. Finally, one of them grabbed a stanchion and clung to the view-port. There was a close-up of a ravaged and rusted face as a spinning sawblade appeared in its claws and began to slice through the port. Then all went black.
"The pilot self-destructed at this point," said Fiver, "lest he give away the secret of our existence. He took that pirate and two others with him."
"Since I’m the only one bred for this gravity," said Hercules, "I'm guessing it’s my labour to go down there, board that craft, and ask them for one of their processors."
"That's about right," said Davis.
"You are human," Fiver added. "They cannot harm you. They cannot even refuse to obey you."
"That's what everyone keeps saying," Hercules snorted. "But they haven't seen a human being in a long time. Suppose they forgot that little fact."