People with disabilities -- Fiction; Science fiction
"Monster yourself," said Docchi. "I crawled through the rocket tube."
"I saw you start in," said Jordan. "I wasn't sure you'd make it.
Even when the ship rose I wasn't certain until you came out." Jordan
scratched his cheek. "What I meant was: how did you get rid of Cameron?"
"Doctors usually aren't mechanically inclined," said Docchi. "Cameron
was no exception. He forgot an emergency rocket landing cancels any
verbal orders. So I took the ship up a few inches. Geepees aren't very
bright and it wouldn't matter if they were. As long as the ship was in
the air and I said I was coming in for a landing they had to obey."
Jordan nodded delightedly. "Poor doc," he said. "It wasn't that he was
dumb. There was nothing he could do when you outsmarted him."
"He should have anticipated it," said Docchi. "He could have splashed
heat against a gravity generator. This would have created an emergency
condition in the main dome, artificial of course, but it would have
outweighed the one I set up. He'd have had priority, not me, and he
could have directed the robots from gravity center."
"_I_ wouldn't have thought of it," said Jordan. "Anyway, how did you
get the robots to rush off, carrying Cameron with them?"
"I didn't have to do anything. As long as the pilot of the incoming
ship declares he may crash, the geepees must remove all humans from the
danger zone, willing or not. They'd have taken you too if they could
have reached you but they had to abandon that idea when I ordered crash
equipment."
"Glad they did," said Jordan. "Wouldn't want to hear what Cameron's
saying. Besides it's safer inside the ship." He swung himself in,
touching the hull fondly, peering down the corridor with grave wonder.
"It's ours now," he said. "But what about the others? How do we get
them?"
"Anti's taken care of. Geepees aren't built to question anything and in
their mind she's listed as emergency landing material. They'll bring
her. And Nona is supposed to be waiting with Anti." Docchi's face
showed misgiving. "I think we made it clear she was supposed to stay
there."
"What if she didn't understand?"
"I'm sure she did," said Docchi. "It wasn't complicated. Meanwhile
you'd better get ready to lift ship."
Jordan disappeared, heading toward the control compartment. Docchi
stationed himself at the passenger lock. He had said the instructions
weren't hard to understand, and they weren't--for anyone else. But to
Nona the world was upside down; the simplest things often she didn't
comprehend--and the reverse was true. He hoped she hadn't got mixed up.
He had little time to dwell on it. The geepees were coming back. He
heard them first and saw them seconds later. They came into sight
half carrying, half pushing a huge rectangular tank. With ingenuity
that was unexpected in robots they had mounted it on four of their
smaller brethren, the squat repair robots. This served to support the
tremendous weight.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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