Farewell, Jay. Farewell!
And please tell the keeper that poor old Giles Habibula was loyal to the end.” He thrust out a trembling hand, and the Commander grasped it.
“For it is mortal likely, Jay, that Giles Habibula will never be seen alive again.”
And he waddled slowly out into the corridors of the New Moon.
11 The Unearthly Robot
Back in the rich, soft-toned simplicity of his hidden, ray-armored apartments aft the chart rooms of the mighty Inflexible, once more in the trim gold-and-green of his uniform, Jay Kalam sat waiting impatiently.
The deep muffled song of the geodynes reached him briefly, as a door was opened.
And Hal Samdu came stalking in, looking worried.
“Well, Hal?”
The Commander’s quiet reserve did not conceal his eagerness.
“What is your report on the robot?”
The big gnarled hands of the Admiral-General laid a thick green envelope on the desk.
They clenched, as he raised them, with a savage force.
“If I could only get my fingers on this Derron—” His great voice was thick with an agony of frustration.
“To think, Jay, that all the Legion can give the keeper no promise of safety!”
“I know it’s appalling.” The Commander nodded, white-lipped.
“But your report?”
“In the envelope,” said Hal Samdu.
“I got together twenty men, half of them veterans of the cometary expedition, all of them specialists in some field of science.
They took the robot-thing apart, and studied every piece of it, by every possible means.
The lab work was finished, twelve hours ago, at base.
Since, they’ve been discussing and checking the meaning of their discoveries, and writing up the report.”
Jay Kalam leaned forward, anxiously.
“What did they find?”
Hal Samdu shook his rugged white head.
“I’m no scientist, Jay.
You know that.
It’s all in the envelope.”
“But,” the Commander asked, “in brief—”
“As you surmised, Jay, it’s an illegal robot.
It makes use of biophysical principles forbidden in the same Green Hall statutes that outlawed the androids.
The most similar illicit model in the museum was taken shortly after the war with the Medusae.
It was built by a young Dr. Enos Clagg, who was run down by the Legion and sentenced to three years on Ebron.”
“The details?”
Scowling with a painful effort to be clear, Hal Samdu touched one big knobby finger with another.
“First, Jay,” he rumbled, “they concluded that the thing was designed by a human engineer—a man trained on Earth or Mars.”
Jay Kalam nodded.
“Why?”
“Because so many familiar engineering principles were used in its construction.
There were none of those strange freaks of design— strange to us—that we found hi the machines of the Cometeers.
“The thing was driven by an atomic power tube.
There were pinions, shafts, cams, cables, levers—all used precisely as a supremely good human engineer would use them, if you set him to build a mechanical imitation of—of whatever monster the thing was copied from.”
Jay Kalam was rubbing reflectively at his jaw.
“That fits Derron well enough,” he said.
“He took high honors in the engineering section at the academy.
But, for that matter, it also fits the female android, or Hannas, or Brelekko, or Comaine.
What else, Hal?”
The gigantic Captain-General bent down another gnarled finger.
“Second,” he said, “they agreed that the thing was built outside the System.”
Jay Kalam nodded again, without surprise.