Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 18, 2025
The natives in the village were equally distrustful. They didn't herd the cattle up from the meadows where they had been pastured, but they lighted watch-fires along the edge of the mound as soon as it became dark. It was three hours after nightfall when something on the indicator-board for the robot sentries went off like a startled rattlesnake.
This time it was a lady. "I'm sorry," she repeated. She was all wrapped up in an electroparka, but there was no mistaking the fact that she was both human and feminine. She came on through the door and looked at the robot. "Snookums! What are you doing here?" "I was trying an experiment, Leda," said Snookums. "This man was just asking me about it.
He was a small, lean, bony, sharp-nosed Scot who had fled Scotland during the Panic of '37, landed in New York, and stopped. He solemnly declared that he had never been west of the Hudson River nor north of 181st Street in the more than fifty years he had been in the country. He had a mind like that of a robot filing cabinet.
Mowed down by hundreds, still they came on; willing, it seemed to expend any number of lives in order that one living creature might once touch a robot with one out-thrust metallic stud. Whenever that happened there was a flash as of lightning, the heavy smoke of burning insulation, grease and metal, and the robot went down out of control.
They were turning into the main hallway, between the rows of portraits of past emperors, Paul and Rodrik, Paul and Rodrik, alternating over and over on both walls. He felt a smile growing on his face, and banished it. "The robot for the meat sauces, wasn't it?" he asked. "Why ! Yes, Your Majesty." "I'm sorry, general. I should have warned you.
I'll have to hold the beam exactly on the switch, though, so you'll have to do the dirty work. Tear out that red wire and kill those two guards. You know how to kill a robot, don't you?" "Yes break his eye-lenses and his eardrums and he'll stop whatever he's doing and send out distress calls.... Got 'em both. Now what?" "Open my door the shield switch is to the right."
As they sat down, he aimed his ultraviolet light-pencil at a serving robot. Unlike Mardukan robots, which looked like surrealist conceptions of Pre-Atomic armored knights, it was a smooth ovoid floating a few inches from the floor on its own contragravity; as it approached, its top opened like a bursting beetle shell and hinged trays of food swung out. The boy looked at it in fascination.
And, thinking it over, he couldn't see that either of them had said anything of any importance at all. But he was very glad they'd talked together. The first robot ship came up some eight hours later two revolutions after the television call. Mike was ready hours in advance, fidgeting. The robot ship started up while the Platform was over the middle of the Pacific.
It contained, in robot hulls anchored to its sides, enough fissionable material to conduct a deadly war which was only stored for transfer to the Moon base when that should be established. And it had communication with Earth of high quality. So far the actual mail was only a one-way service, but even entertainment came up, and news. Once there was a television shot of the interior of the Shed.
That was that. From now until Emergence unless something happened he might as well be a passenger. Everything was automatic, unless and until some robot or computer yelled for help. Deston leaned back in his bucket seat and lighted a cigarette. He didn't need to scan the board constantly now; any trouble signal would jump right out at him.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking