Interstellar travel -- Fiction; Science fiction; Short stories
The revivification was a complete success. I decided to keep the man in
mind. He was an important source of reserve strength.
My hopes leapt high when I saw the planet. It was something less than
the size of Saturn, but much larger than Earth. It was large enough to
support a tremendous population. I hadn't bargained for anything so
good.
I had only a vague plan to go by. I had made the journey in complete
safety, and that was most important. My next move would depend on
circumstances. I could dematerialize myself off the ship, and onto the
planet. With an extreme expenditure of energy I could even take the
remainder of my food supply with me.
But it didn't seem worth the effort. I had done all right so far by
remaining quiet, and letting events occur as they would. I decided to
see it through on the same basis. I stayed in the ship, and let it land.
That was not my first mistake, landing with the ship. If anything,
the error began a thousand years earlier, in my infancy, the first
night I saw the light of the moon. No one asked me to come. I did it
voluntarily, for reasons my total personality found acceptable. In my
own mind I added up the advantages in leaving Earth, and then schemed
until I found a way to do it.
I had been dissatisfied with the way things were going among men. I
objected to blood spilled uselessly. And so I had contrived an escape.
Greener pastures? Not exactly. I don't like salads. Still the saying
conveys something of the way I felt. Long before the ship landed it was
too late, though I didn't know it.
* * * * *
The robot scurried about the saucer, chirruping mechanically and
creaking. When it finished the duties it picked up the farmer, and
carried him out. The man was still unconscious, but he began to scream.
Soon after it left, other robots came into the ship. Slightly different
from the kind I had seen, they must have been repair robots. They went
about tasks that were unfamiliar to me, and they talked.
This was new. I couldn't understand what they said until I found the
speech center of one, and let my mind reach out, lightly.
"A master says there is a stow-away on one of the ships."
It was unforeseen. Nothing I had encountered could detect my existence
without registering on my consciousness. These _masters_ were going to
be tougher than humans. I waited while the other replied:
"Do they know what ship he's on?"
My robot waved a tentacle. "There are ten thousand ships here, each
waiting for a checkover before reassignment. Would they bother to
search each ship?"
"Physically, you mean?" asked the other. "No. They will take him off as
the ship leaves."
Getting me off was going to take some doing, though the _masters_
didn't know it. They may have gauged humans correctly, but they hadn't
met me. Nevertheless I was uneasy.
"Why does he stay on the ship?" asked my robot.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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