Intruder by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Fiction, General, Robots
ISBN: 9780441731299
Google: kNsXa_U82EQC
Amazon: 0441731295
Goodreads: 438756
Publisher: Ace
Published: 1990-01-01T12:28:11+00:00

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maintenance. Where were they now?

Walking around the enormous chamber, he found several small floor-level robot niches meant for the kind of function-robots that computer room janitors were. Some of them still had maintenance robots snuggled inside, but clearly they were now inoperative. If he had had time, he would have scheduled them for repair, but the repair shops were no doubt just as inoperative at present.

Functionless cleaning robots would have to wait their turn in the line of the many anomalies to be dealt with.

Returning to Mandelbrot, he held up his dirty fingertips without speaking. Behind Mandelbrot, Bogie and Timestep stood silently.

Well, not completely silent. Timestep’s toes beat out a soft slow tap rhythm on the metal flooring.

Pointing toward the computer, Derec said, “Well, guys, I’m going inside. You wait here, but if you sense me in any trouble, remember the First Law.”

“You need not remind me,” Mandelbrot said.

“I know, I know. Sorry if I hurt you.”

“How could you hurt me? That is outside the—”

“I spoke out of turn. Just give me good backup, hear?” Without waiting for any of the robots to question his colloquially expressed order, Derec walked up the steps to the platform that led to the computer chamber entrance and pushed a red button set in the door. Fortunately, the button still worked, and the door slid open.

The button was the only mechanism that did work, however. After he went through the doorway, the heat lamps did not come on, the sprayers did not send a full body spray of compressed air over his body to remove dust. He would have to enter the chamber in a contaminated state. That probably didn’t matter, since from all evidence the chamber was probably contaminated already.

In order for him to enter farther, the wall in front of him should slide open. With nothing working right, it of course did not. He recalled, however, that there was a manual override located just beside the outer door. He had to fumble around in the dark for a moment to find out. When he did, it at least worked. The wall slid open.

Now he entered what to him seemed like a shadowy world. In the dimness the computer’s shapes (he recalled circuitry, microprocessors, tubing, synapse wiring and other electronic marvels from his first visit here) seemed ghostly, unreal. He needed light. The manual override for the inner-room functions was nearby, he knew, and he groped for it. Before he found it, his hand briefly brushed against the outside of the Watchful Eye’s haven, which it had reshaped into an innocent-looking storage cabinet, a good disguise as long as the human did not decide to inspect its contents. Although detecting the touch, it felt no danger yet from Derec and remained still.

Derec’s manipulation of the override produced only partial light, but

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