Sprockets (11 page)

They toiled that night until the doctor and Jim tottered to bed, too exhausted to lift a finger. The robots were far from exhausted, though their batteries were getting low. But Rivets, instead of recharging, crawled happily about the laboratory floor, playing with his marbles.

“It's such fun!” said Rivets. “Please come play with me. Won't you, huh?”

“No!” said Sprockets. “I've got to recharge, and so have you. If you had a cerebration button and an imagination button like mine, you'd realize how important it is.”

“Aw, you've got too many buttons to have any fun.” Suddenly Rivets blinked his eye lights curiously. “Who is Prof. Vladimir Katz?”

“A most unpleasant man.” Sprockets gave a little
tock
at the thought. “He steals secrets for the Russians and the Mongolians. The doctor and I had a
very
bad encounter with him in Mexico, before you were made.”

“Was that the time you found the purple flying saucer?”

“Yes. Now you'd better recharge.”

“I wish I could meet the purple flying saucer people. Do you think they'll ever come back?”

“Maybe. Now
please
put your marbles away and recharge. And promise you'll do it every night.”

Reluctantly, Rivets did as his brother asked.

The do-jigger took form the next day, and grew and grew twistily. By the end of the third day it looked not unlike a glass octopus stuffed inside a huge goldfish bowl, and strangled in miles and miles of wire. It needed only to be properly connected to the Super-Magna Space Probe, and the doctor would be able to signal to the Something on Mars.

The doctor, all eagerness, his nose twitching and his mop of hair flopping with excitement, scurried up a stepladder with his hands full of tools. Sprockets and Rivets, all their buttons glowing and most of them on full, including their balance buttons, carefully raised the big do-jigger as the doctor directed.

“Up!” said the doctor. “Up! Up! Careful!”

Up went the do-jigger, and down came Sprockets' foot just as something—a lot of somethings, round and hard—fell rolling on the floor.

They were marbles from Rivets' pocket.

On the instant both robots were slipping and sliding in spite of all their buttons, and their circuits were overheating as they fought to balance the do-jigger and not let it drop. A robot must
never, never
destroy property or do anything to hurt his master. But not to do so now was utterly impossible, and in the next instant their feet were flying out from under them and the do-jigger was flying away from them.

“
Watch it
!” screamed the doctor. “Oh! Oh! Oh!”

With a horrible sound of breaking glass, the do-jigger smashed into the Super-Magna Space Probe. Had the power been on, both Sprockets and Rivets would have been melted on the instant. Instead, they could only lie twitching in the wreckage, their eye lights blinking ninety to the second while their circuits snapped and crackled from shock.

At this moment it was exactly three days, five hours, and fifty-two minutes since Jim had been in touch with Mars. With every tick, the robots' circuits were getting hotter and hotter from the shock of having done something so dreadful. Unless someone speedily turned off their switches, their brains would sizzle and pop, and they would be robot dummies for the rest of their lives.

Dr. Bailey was too shocked himself to do anything but sputter and tear his hair.

Jim was so shocked he could only gulp and say, “Grief and Moses!” over and over.

But Mrs. Bailey, who had a private opinion about the Space Probe, and who was quite motherly as well as practical, said: “Oh, the poor little frightened dears! I hope they aren't hurt!” It took her just seven seconds to pull them from the wreckage and reach for their switch boxes.

CLICK! CLICK
!

Their twitching and ticking stopped. Both robots were turned off, and barely in time. They lay motionless and helpless, with only their thoughts to trouble them. But it was such a blessed relief to feel their circuits cooling that for the moment nothing else mattered.

2

They Put Their Heads Together

For long minutes the robots were aware only of the comforting ice packs that Mrs. Bailey had placed on their foreheads. Usually, when they were turned off, Rivets spent his time trying to count to a hundred without making a mistake, while Sprockets added—and sometimes multiplied—large imaginary numbers full of sevens and nines. But today, as their circuits cooled, all they could do was listen, for Dr. Bailey was losing his temper.

“Seven years' work!” stormed Dr. Bailey, his voice rising. “Ruined because of robots!”

“It was because of marbles, dear,” Mrs. Bailey said sweetly. “I'm really to blame.”

“Marbles!” screamed the Doctor. “What were they doing with
marbles
?”

“I gave some to Rivets,” said Mrs. Bailey. “He did love them so.”

“I won't have a robot that plays with marbles!” howled Dr. Bailey. “I won't have robots at all! They've wrecked my Space Probe! They've ruined my only chance of talking to that Something on Mars! They've unequivocally nullified, negated, and nonplussed the answer to the greatest scientific secret of the century—and given it to the Mongolians! They've—”

“Daddy,” Jim interrupted, “what does unequivocally nullify, negate, and nonplus mean?”

“Silence!” thundered the doctor, his mop of white hair flying this way and that. “Don't you know better than to interrupt me when I'm furious? It means they've rocked the boat and sunk it, but good. I'm through with robots! Miranda, call the robot factory. Tell them to come and take these worthless mechanical contraptions out of my sight at once!”

“Now, Barnabas,” said Mrs. Bailey, “you know very well they aren't worthless. For a scientist so famous in so many ologies and onomies, you—”

“They are worse than worthless!” roared the doctor. “They are addled, aberrated, destructive, and dangerous. I want 'em torn apart, dismembered, and pulverized! I want—”

“Barnabas,” said Mrs. Bailey, very severely this time, “what you want is a cup of sassafras tea with honey in it to calm you down.”

She made him a cup of sassafras tea, double strength, and put a large gob of sourwood honey in it. The doctor gulped it, and it did calm him a lot, though his nose still twitched.

“Accidents happen in the very best of families,” Mrs. Bailey said. “It's only fair that Sprockets and Rivets be allowed to speak for themselves. If you'll turn them on—”

“You turn them on,” snapped the doctor. “I absolutely refuse to touch them!”

CLICK! CLICK
!

Sprockets and Rivets got up and stood stiffly at attention, their eye lights blinking worriedly. Their circuits were cool now, but their heads ached from the awful knowledge of what they had done.

“You poor little dears,” Mrs. Bailey said kindly. “You've had a terrible experience. How do you feel?”

“Horrid, ma'am,” said Sprockets, speaking for them both, as he usually did. “Perfectly ghastly. Words cannot begin to express our shame. But we are everlastingly grateful to you for saving our wits. And we earnestly hope we may be allowed to repair the damage we caused.”

“R-repair the damage!” the doctor sputtered. “Ha! What madness is this?”

“I betcha they could, Daddy,” said Jim. “How long would it take you, Sprockets?”

“Seven days,” Sprockets answered. “If we may be allowed—”

“Seven days to rebuild a machine that took me
seven years
to create?” the doctor waved a trembling hand at the tangled wreckage of the Space Probe. “Any robot who would make such a statement has lost his wits! Now I'm convinced you are mad, addled, aberrated, and entirely deranged!”

“B-b-but, thir,” little Rivets burst out, not realizing his screw was loose again. “My brudder's not abbled! He'th tho thmart he can fix
eny
fing!”

Sprockets gave a
tock
of dismay. “Oh, sir, please!” he begged quickly. “Our circuits have had a most jellifying jolt, and we've hardly had time to recover. If I may be permitted to explain—”

“You may not!” the doctor snapped. “I've had enough of you both. One of you is so abbled—I mean addled—he can't even talk. And the other is downright deranged. I never want to see you in this laboratory again. Go to your room—and stay there till the robot factory sends for you!”

With heads down, Sprockets and Rivets trudged dejectedly upstairs to their room next to Jim's.

“I'm tho thorry,” Rivets said, when they were alone.

“It's too late to be thorry—I mean sorry,” Sprockets told him. “You shouldn't have spoken when your screw was looth—I mean loose—and I
warned
you about the marbles.”

“I gueth I'm not quite wight bwight.”

“Neither of us is quite right bright right now. Oh, my poor aching circuits! I've got to think as I've never thought before—and I can't think when my circuits ache. Let me fix your looth—loose—screw.”

He had just tightened the screw, and oiled Rivets' tongue and his own, when Mrs. Bailey and Jim came into the room. Jim had some fresh ice packs in his hand, and Mrs. Bailey carried a large box of learning tapes.

She wiped a tear from her eye, and said, “The robot factory can't send for you until tomorrow, and that may give us time if we work fast.”

“Time for what, ma'am?” Sprockets blinked at the learning tapes. The very sight of them made his circuits squirm.

“Time to be superly-superly educated,” said Mrs. Bailey. “When the doctor sees you again—and I'll make sure that he does—I want you both to be wide-eyed and bushy-tailed, and simply popping with knowledge. Then he'll have to change his mind and decide to keep you—that is, if you can think of some way to beat the Mongolians.”

“B-but, ma'am—”

“No buts. You've only been half educated in a few onomies and ologies. I'm going to give you stacks more, and include some otomies and istics.”

“Oh–no–no–no–no–no—”

There was absolutely nothing, aside from being returned to the robot factory, that Sprockets and Rivets hated more than to have learning tapes run through their heads. The thought of it now, with their poor heads splitting, was enough to give them spasms.

But it was either that or the robot factory; and in three ticks and a double
tock
they were sitting on their stools, and Mrs. Bailey had turned on their learning buttons and inserted a learning tape in the slot in the back of each robot's head.

“Let's see,” said Mrs. Bailey, “linguistics would help a lot, as would statistics and ballistics. As for the otomies, there's lobotomy, pneumotomy, monotomy—oh, dear, this is making me abbled! I don't know why they don't make a single tape for all the otomies, then I wouldn't have to worry about them.”

Neither of the robots could hear her, for new knowledge was screaming through their aching circuits, making them sizzle like frying fish. It was bad enough for Rivets, whose circuits were limited; but for poor Sprockets, who had twenty trillion to sizzle, all at the same time, it was absolutely horrendous. Their heads were blistering, but Jim put fresh ice packs on them whenever Mrs. Bailey put new tapes in their slots. When they finally stiffened from so much education, and passed out completely, they had to be turned off and put to bed.

It seemed ages and ages before they were turned on and began to tick again.

“Do you feel wide-eyed and bushy-tailed now?” Mrs. Bailey asked hopefully.

“I feel wonnerful, ma'am!” said Rivets, bouncing to his feet, his loose screw only slightly loose. “I bet I can count to a hundert!”

But poor Sprockets could hardly sit up. “I feel practically fused, ma'am. It must be remembered that my mechanism is far more sensitive and complicated than my brother's, and that it has taken an awful walloping. It will be fourteen hours and eighteen seconds before I can click properly again.”

“But, Sprockets!” Jim burst out. “The truck from the robot factory will be here before that! What are we going to do?”

“Would it help if you turned on your cerebration button?” Mrs. Bailey asked.

“I wouldn't
dare,
” said Sprockets. “Then I'd
really
be fused.”

Mrs. Bailey wiped a tear from her eye. “We can't have you any more abbled than you are. Can't anyone think of anything?”

Rivets said: “Ma'am, my bwain's only themi-pothitwonic, but I bet if it could be hooked up to Spwockets, we'd have a whole bwain between us. Then mebbe we could fink what to do.”

Jim said, “Would it work, Sprockets?”

“According to my new learning tapes, which include lobotomy,” Sprockets answered, “it would be like lobotomy in reverse. All we have to do is connect Rivets' pay-attention button to my special perceptors. Then possibly I will have brains enough to cope with the Mongolian question.”