Bordman hesitated and then opened his traveling bag. There was
a microviewer and reels of films. One entire reel was labeled
"Specifications for Construction, Colonial Survey," which would contain
detailed plans and all requirements of material and workmanship for
everything from desks, office, administrative personnel, for use of, to
landing-grids, heavy-gravity planets, lift-capacity 100,000 earth-tons.
But Huyghens found another. He inserted it and spun the control swiftly
here and there, pausing only briefly at index-frames until he came to
the section he wanted. He began to study the information with growing
impatience.
"Robots, robots, robots!" he snapped. "Why don't they leave them where
they belong--in cities to do the dirty work, and on airless planets
where nothing unexpected ever happens! Robots don't belong in new
colonies. Your colonists depended on them for defense! Dammit, let a
man work with robots long enough and he thinks all nature is as limited
as they are! This is a plan to set up a controlled environment--on
Loren Two! Controlled environment--" He swore. "Complacent, idiotic,
desk-bound half-wits!"
"Robots are all right," said Bordman. "We couldn't run civilization
without them."
"But you can't tame a wilderness with 'em," snapped Huyghens. "You had
a dozen men landed, with fifty assembled robots to start with. There
were parts for fifteen hundred more, and I'll bet anything I've got the
ship-contacts landed more still!"
"They did," admitted Bordman.
"I despise 'em," growled Huyghens. "I feel about 'em the way the old
Greeks felt about slaves. They're for menial work--the sort of work a
man will perform for himself, but that he won't do for another man for
pay. Degrading work!"
"Quite aristocratic!" said Bordman with a touch of irony. "I take it
that robots clean out the bear-quarters downstairs."
"No!" snapped Huyghens. "I do. They're my friends. They fight for me.
No robot would do the job right!"
He growled, again. The noises of the night went on outside. Organ-tones
and hiccoughings and the sound of tack-hammers and slamming doors.
Somewhere there was a singularly exact replica of the discordant
squeakings of a rusty pump.
"I'm looking," said Huyghens at the microviewer, "for the record of
their mining operations. An open-pit operation would not mean a thing.
But if they had driven a tunnel, and somebody was there supervising the
robots when the colony was wiped out, there's an off-chance he survived
a while."
Bordman regarded him with suddenly intent eyes.
"And--"
"Dammit," snapped Bordman, "if so I'll go see! He'd--they'd have no
chance at all, otherwise. Not that the chance is good in any case."
Bordman raised his eyebrows.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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