Squee
distasteful. At any rate, he always left the table as soon as he had
finished chewing his food. One evening, however, he remained in his
place and witnessed the Squee’s whole performance. When it was over, he
said, “Nice little robot, Jacobsen.”
* * * * *
Jacobsen did not answer. Neil continued, in his drawling, rather
high-pitched voice, “You know, people’s minds are amazing. Here’s this
robot. It’s nothing but a robot, entirely sexless; but because Jacobsen
has dressed it up in a red handkerchief, and given a rather hippy
character to its locomotion, you’re all convinced that it’s a she. But
if I were to take off its red skirt, and make a couple of changes in
the mechanism....” He picked up the Squee and began sliding the red
skirt down over the robot’s metal flanks.
Jacobsen snatched it away from him. “You let my Squee alone,” he said
angrily.
“All right, all right,” Neil answered, permitting Jacobsen to take the
Squee from him. “I was only trying to demonstrate a point.”
“Demonstrate it on your....” Jacobsen answered. He was so angry his
voice was shaking. “If you want something to play with, go play with
your damned chromosomes. Keep your hands off my Squee.”
“I won’t touch it again, I assure you,” Neil said in his mocking voice.
He pushed his chair back from the table. “As I said before, people’s
minds are amazing.” He went out.
* * * * *
Jacobsen continued to “teach” his robot new tricks. The best of them,
it was generally agreed, was that she “learned” to rattle a tambourine
(made of metal washers loosely riveted to the bottom of a metal biscuit
tin) in time to her own singing.
Since all of Jacobsen’s sizeable vocal repertory was at her disposal,
she ended by “knowing” a considerable number of songs. Her rendering of
_Blow the Man Down_ was particularly spirited. She did so many tricks
that her red bandana skirt frayed at the edges and had to be replaced
with a new one made of blue fabric.
The crew had not even begun to tire of her antics when Jacobsen had
another idea. He made a few adjustments in her mechanism; the tempo of
her performances slowed down noticeably.
“What’s the matter with her?” Clancy demanded when, for the second
evening running, the Squee had hardly seemed to notice the nut he held
out of her. “She sick or something?”
“I don’t think so,” Jacobsen responded. There was a slight smile at
the corners of his mouth. “But why don’t you ask her yourself how she
feels?”
“What’s the matter, Squee?” Clancy asked. “Aren’t you feeling well?”
“Oh, I’m all _right_,” the robot answered. “But--unh....”
* * * * *
The blue skirt switched. The Squee lowered her head and pawed lightly
at the table, in a perfect pantomime of coy, embarrassed happiness.
“But I may be having a little secret to tell you--I’m not sure--one of
these days.” She scampered off to her box.
“What’s the secret, Jacobsen?” Adams asked eagerly later that evening,
when the remains of the meal had been cleared away.
“_I_ don’t know,” Jacobsen answered. He was beaming. “She hasn’t
told me yet. I guess she’ll tell us when she’s good and ready.” He
picked up his zither and began to play _Careless Love_ on it. “_Well,
that’s how it is_,” he sang. He skipped on to the fourth verse. “_Now my
apron strings won’t pin, you pass my door and won’t come in. Love, Oh
careless Love._”
“Yeah, I guess she’ll tell us when she’s ready,” said Adams. His face
wore a delighted smile. “We all know how women are.”
* * * * *
The news--that there was to be news--must have got to Neil somehow.
Three nights later, when the dessert was being served, he said abruptly
to Captain Ambarzumian, “Captain, can’t you let me have a little more
power for my laboratory? It’s important.”
The captain frowned. The request should have been made to him in
private, instead of in the presence of the crew. “I’m sorry, Dr. Neil,”
he said stiffly. “There simply isn’t more power available. We’re
already on minimum rations for the most essential things.”
“I only need a few watts. It’s for my centrifuge. You see, there’s a
possibility--perhaps more than a possibility--that I may be able to
centrifuge out the X-chromosomes from my artificial ova. Without too
much damage to the cell wall, I mean. In that case, the artificial ova
would no longer give rise to males. Females could be produced.”
“That’s--interesting news. But I’m afraid I simply haven’t even a few
watts.”
“I think you have,” Neil answered. “What about that thing?” He pointed
to the Squee’s hutch, which was sitting on the table beside Jacobsen’s
elbow. “There must be more than a few watts in the batteries for it.”
Captain Ambarzumian sat silent. The crew watched him almost without
breathing. They all knew what he was thinking. Neil’s request might
be--very probably was--prompted by malice. He disliked Jacobsen, he
hated the Squee. His tight face wore a spiteful little smile. But he
might, after all, be on the track of something important.
The chance was too great for Ambarzumian to take. “All right,” the
captain said at last. “I’m very sorry, Jacobsen. But you’ll have to
give him the batteries.”
In silence Jacobsen fetched a screw driver. He disconnected the big
batteries. He put them on the table, still without a word.
Neil picked them up. “Thanks,” he said to nobody in particular.
Carrying the batteries, he left the cabin. There was triumphant malice
in every line of his rigid little back.
* * * * *
That night, Venner had a nightmare. He dreamed that he was standing out
of doors, under a lowering sky, while the wind moaned. The sound of the
wind grew louder. It began to rain, big icy drops that came out of the
sky with an audible plop.
For all the drops were so cold, they were burningly hot when they
touched him. He tried to rub them away, but they clung and scalded in.
The noise of the wind was rising. And still the rain fell, in big hot
drops. Venner awoke with a start. He rubbed his hands over his face,
and found that it was wet and sticky. He could still hear the wind
moaning. More frightened than he had been in his dream, he leaped from
his bunk and turned on the cabin light.
It was Adams whose breathing had seemed like the wind howling. “What’s
the matter?” Venner demanded. “Are you sick?”
“...Hurt,” Adams said with difficulty. “Get Ambarzumian.” At a run,
Venner routed the captain from his cubicle. Then, urged by an impulse
he couldn’t have defined, he ran to Neil’s laboratory.
* * * * *
There was blood and broken glassware everywhere. Tables had been
overset; the laboratory looked as if everything in it had been stirred
with a big stick; there wasn’t a flask or test tube unbroken; there was
blood high up on the white walls. Neil lay on the floor in bloodsoaked
pyjamas. He had been beaten about the head until almost the only
recognizable feature of his face was his moustache. In his right hand
he was holding one of the long-bladed laboratory knives.
Venner turned and ran back to the forecastle. Ambarzumian was bending
over Adams. The emergency lights had been turned on.
“What happened?” Ambarzumian demanded. “How did you get hurt like this?”
“Neil,” the young man answered. “I had to get the batteries back from
him.”
“Batteries, Why?”
“For the Squee,” Adams replied. The breath was rattling in his throat,
but he smiled at them. “She had to have them; right now, she’s got to
have plenty of power.”
“Power? What for?” Ambarzumian questioned. He knew, better than the
others, what their position now was; he looked sick and old.
“Because....” Adams, bleeding to death, sounded surprised. “Didn’t you
hear what Jacobsen told us? We’ve got to be extra careful with her now.
Because she’s going to have a pup.”
* * * * *
Oddly enough, the two deaths improved the morale of the crew. Neil
had been deeply and bitterly hated; the loss of the Ganymedean cell
material seemed to be more than compensated for by the fact of his
death. Adams had been popular enough, but his being dead meant a
little more comfort in the way of food, air, and living space for the
others. The difficulties of a short-handed landing on earth were still
so distant in space and time that it was difficult for the crewmen to
appreciate them. Since there was no other way to dispose of the bodies,
they were fed into the ship’s atomic reducers, and added, ultimately, a
few extra BTU to the auxiliary fuel supply.
* * * * *
As the distance between the ship and earth lessened, Ambarzumian called
Jacobsen in for a series of conferences. He wanted to see what could be
done toward modifying the landing gear to make a safe landing a little
more possible.
“That’s the best I can do, sir,” Jacobsen said at last.
“Yes. You’ve tried hard. It’s ... not too bad.”
* * * * *
Jacobsen touched the zither strings lightly. “What do you think
our chances of a safe landing are, sir?” he ventured.
“Oh--about fifty-fifty. Maybe a little better than that. Depends a good
deal on what sort of upper stratospheric winds we meet.” Ambarzumian
leaned back in his chair and sighed.
“If we do get down to surface safe, it’s going to be hard on the people
at home when they learn that we failed. This ship was just about the
last hope, and we aren’t bringing anything back.”
“It’s not quite that bad,” Ambarzumian answered. He had grown
noticeably more gray-haired in the last month. “We’ve got most of
Neil’s notes; they’ll be valuable. We know that he did succeed in
making an artificial human zygote. The next ship to leave earth for
Ganymede will start off from a higher level than we did.”
“The next ship.... Sir, do you think that what Venner said was
true? Did we fail because we haven’t learned to control our own
aggressiveness?”
“It certainly looks that way. Adams loved the Squee. When he felt
Neil was endangering her, he struck back at him, even though, by his
striking back, he destroyed everything the expedition had accomplished.
What you said Venner said about men, generally speaking, is certainly
one way of looking at it.”
“Yes, but.... Suppose we get home safe. Suppose the other cytologists
are smarter than Neil was. Suppose the race goes on living. Will we
always be that way? Will we never be able to get rid of?”
“How should I know, Jacobsen? I’m only a human being.”
There was a long silence. At last Jacobsen began to play the zither
lightly. “_Didn’t my Lord deliver Daniel? Deliver Daniel?_” he sang
softly but indomitably. “_Didn’t my Lord deliver Daniel? And why not
every man?_”
Transcriber’s Note:
This etext was produced from Future Science Fiction #35, February
1958. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed.
Obvious errors have been silently corrected in this version.
Some song lyric lines have been italicized to match the other song
lyrics quoted.
Word change made:
felt _to_ left
He left the Captain’s cabin and went back to the forecastle,