It was just as I had left it. The heating element under the network of
coils and pressure chambers still glowed with white heat, and the Moon
Glow was dripping with musical sound into the retort.
I felt good. No one ever bothered me here. This was my fortress, with
all that I cared for inside. My tools, my work, my micro-library. And
yet I had deliberately--
Something--a heavy foot--clanked upon the first step of the manport
through which I had entered.
I turned quickly. The form shimmered in the pale Deimoslight that
silhouetted it.
MS-33.
He had followed me here.
"What do you want?" I said. "What are you doing here?"
"A simple question," said MS-33. "Tonight you looked very suspicious
when you left Argon City. I saw you and followed you here. You may as
well know that I have never trusted you. All the old ones were
unreliable. That is why you were replaced."
He came in, boldly, without being invited, and looked around. I
detected a sneer in his voice as he said, "So this is where you hide."
"I do not hide. I live here, it is true."
"A robot does not live. A robot exists. We newer models do not require
shelter like an animal. We are rust-proof and invulnerable." He strode
over to my micro-library, several racks of carefully arranged spools,
and fingered them irreverently. "What is this?"
"My library."
"So! _Our_ memories are built into us. We have no need to refresh
them."
"So is mine," I said. "But I would learn more than I know." I was
stalling for time, waiting until he made the right opening.
"Nonsense," he said. "I know why you stay out here in the Dumps,
masterless. I have heard of the forbidden drug that is sold in the
mining camps such as Argon City. Is this the mechanism?" He pointed at
the still.
Now was the time. I mustered all my cunning, but I could not speak.
Not yet.
"Never mind," he said. "I can see that it is. I shall report you, of
course. It will give me great pleasure to see you dismantled. Not that
it really matters, of course--now."
_There it was again. The same frightening allusion that Langley had
made today._ I must succeed!
* * * * *
I knew that MS-33, for all his brilliance, and newness, and vaunted
superiority, was only a Secretarial. For the age of specialism was
upon Earth, and General Purpose models were no longer made. That was
why we were different here on Phobos. It was why we had survived. The
old ones had given us something special which the new metal people did
not have. Moreover, MS-33 had his weakness. He was larger, stronger,
faster than me, but I doubted that he could be devious.
"You are right," I said, pretending resignation. "This is my
distillery. It is where I make the fluid which is called Moon Glow by
the metal people of Phobos. Doubtless you are interested in learning
how it works."
"Not even remotely interested," he said. "I am interested only in
taking you back and turning you over to the authorities."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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