Foundation’s Friends

He himself was catching up with the main sliding mass, which must still be affected by friction. In a few more seconds he could jump, if he wanted to. A dozen meters up by then, and as far toward his own shadow-no problem. Plenty of time. As he touched the surface about three meters from Sheila’s stick, he even considered for a moment whether he should ride the mass down and get a closer look at the newcomer.

Then he realized that this might not be a good idea. The block was starting to tilt outward as friction continued to delay its i

“Rob! What are you doing? Don’t stay with that thing-get back up here, idiot!” The man returned to reality with a start which almost separated him from the surface again. He tapped the ground gently with a boot toe to swing himself onto the proper line, and kicked off hard. Again much harder than necessary; he was still rising as he passed over the new cliff edge, and another half minute elapsed before he landed not quite flat on his back. By this time, the detached fragment he had left was nearly halfway down the cliff, and Chile presumably even lower.

“Chile! Report!” Ling didn’t wait even to get to his feet to snap out the order.

“I no longer have the cube,” was the prompt response. “What is clearly another robot passed me in fall, and snatched it away. I saw it approach, but did not foresee its intentions. It has a somewhat greater downward component than I, and will land first, about eight seconds from now. I question the likelihood of my catching it, unless it turns out to be very much less agile than I. This is poor country for maneuvering. Do you wish me to try?”

“Keep it in sight,” Ling ordered without hesitation. “We want to figure out its origin if we can, and what it wants to do with the cube. Observe, and report at your own judgment. “

“Yes, Rob.”

“Can you talk to it?” asked Sheila.

“It has not responded to any standard signal impulses. If it was made by U.S. Robots, it is of a series unknown to me.”

“Does it emit anything?” Mike Eira’s voice came across the kilometers.

“Yes, it-pardon, Mike. Rob, it has just reached the ground, and immediately leaped back toward the cliff top. It should be near you and Sheila in fifty-five seconds. Mike, it has emitted many infrared bursts similar to those of the small cubes.”

“You’re recording them for Dumbo.”

“Of course. I have now reached the ground, and also leaped.”

“Maybe you should stay below, in case-”

“Too late, Bronwen. Rob said to keep it in sight, and I am now out of touch with the ground.”

“All right. It wasn’t much of an idea anyway.”

Silence supervened, while the robots orbited back toward the cliff top. The stranger just cleared the edge with a near zero vertical component; Chile had made more allowance for error and was three or four seconds longer getting his feet on the ground. By this time the ghost had settled to its knees-it was even more humanoid than had been obvious at first-and bent almost over the edge to put the cube down. A hemisphere which might have been dust, smoke, or ice fog expanded around the point of contact, spreading and thi

“The cube appears to have been replaced in essentially its original orientation,” Chile stated. Sheila and Ling were still too far back to see clearly, and were not approaching at all rapidly; there would be no loose mass to jump back from if they went over the edge on their own.

“Then we’ll stop worrying about it for now, and concentrate on the other robot,” Rob replied. “Chile, I’m afraid to ask this, but what can you tell us about the origin-the manufacture-of this thing?”

“As I said, it is not a make familiar to me. Like me, it appears designed to operate at the local temperature. It has no obviously nonstandard engineering.”

“You mean it could have been made by an appropriately skilled designer to simulate the motions and actions of a human or similar being.”

“Yes.”

None of the listeners bothered to ask whether there was any evidence of nonhuman origin; Chile didn’t have that kind of imagination, and certainly lacked appropriate experience. Ling and probably Mike Eira would have been afraid to ask anyway, though they could certainly think of sufficiently specific questions. For some seconds, ZH50 and his companions looked the ghost over silently, while it finished its work and slowly stood up. The human beings could now see some differences between it and their own robot; it was a few centimeters shorter, about Sheila’s height, its legs were shorter and its arms much longer for its size, and there was no neck. The head seemed fixed directly and immovably on top of the trunk.

“It is slightly above ambient temperature,” Chile reported, “but no more so than I. Heat generated by its recent action could explain it. It is certainly not producing low-grade energy at anything like the human rate. “

“Then there is no real doubt it’s a robot.”

“I see no cause for any.”

“Or a life-form that operates at Uranian temperatures,” suggested another voice.

“I have no way to judge that.”

“Get conscious, Luis. A hundred-and-fifty-meter jump? Humanoid shape like Chile’s-”

“I haven’t seen it yet, Rob; you’re thirty kilos or so away. What’s unreasonable about a human shape?”

“It just doesn’t seem likely in this gravity, and with no air.”

“You mean it has a nose? Even Chile”

“No, no, I meant-”

“Clear the cha

“Very well, Bronwen.”

Once out of Chile’s sight, Rob and Sheila traveled in rather dangerous fashion, taking much longer leaps than were really justified. Both felt that they remembered their former route well enough to avoid any really perilous drops. Even without walking sticks, the time lost recovering footing after a bad landing was more than made up by that saved in the jumps themselves. The sun had moved a little to their right since the start of the walk, but still formed a good guide to the Dibrofiad’s direction. Ling was again uncharacteristically silent during the hour of the return trip, and Sheila made no effort to learn his thoughts.

The other two couples were equally in a hurry, and neither had as far to go, so they reached the ship first. The trouble was that, once there, no one could think of any really useful apparatus which could be carried, even on Miranda, and which promised to be more effective in communication with a robot than the lights and radios which they already had and the broader-spectrum equipment possessed by Chile. Dumbo was not portable. They had all gone inside, unsuited, and taken care of physical necessities; conversation had been almost continuous through all this, but no really promising suggestions had been made by anyone.

“Who’d have thought we’d need a language specialist?” Luis growled at last.

“How do you know we do?” asked Bronwen. “It may have been made on Earth, by some group we don’t know about.”

“Did you or Rob try ordering it to come back with you?” Chispa asked Sheila.

“Neither of us thought of it. Chile said he’d tried normal robot-to-robot signals with no response, and I guess we were both so convinced it was alien that ordinary speech seemed pointless.”

“You still should have tried.”

“Admitted. We still can, you know. Call Chile and have him order the thing to accompany him back here, in every symbol system he considers appropriate. “

“Will it obey orders from another robot?”

“Will it know Chile’s a robot?”

“Probably. It radiated infrared, and presumably senses it. It should know that he operates at local temperature, and we don’t. The inference would certainly be within Chile’s powers; we don’t know about this one’s, of course.”

“If it’s really alien, it might infer from that that we’re the robots, with inherently wasteful power equipment, and Chile is a native life-form. The trouble is, we don’t know its background,” Mike interjected.

“You’ve got your feet on the wrong pedestal, dear. If we’re trying to give it orders at all, the assumption is that it can understand us, and must be human made.” His wife didn’t dwell on the point, but went on. “We have to try, anyway.” She didn’t bother to check for open cha

“Yes, Bronwen.”

“Any change?”

“None. It is standing facing me, presumably waiting for me to do something. It has now cooled down to ambient temperature; I would say that any doubt about its being a robot is gone.”

“You can’t sense an atomic power source?”

“I am not equipped to pick up such radiation directly.”

Bronwen had known that, but was feeling desperate.

“Try talking to it directly-”

“I have done so, every way I can.”

“This time, send your message as an order to approach you. If it responds, order it to follow you back to Dibrofiad. “ There was a brief pause.