The Rest of The Robots by Isaac Asimov

Author:Isaac Asimov
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-09-09T16:00:00+00:00

'Risk' appeared in the May 1955 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. Of my later robot stories, it was the most closely bound to I, Robot, for it was a sequel to 'Little Lost Robot,' one of the stories in that book. It involves a different robot and a different problem, but the same set­ting, the same human characters and the same research project.

RISK

Hyper Base had lived for this day. Spaced about the gallery of the viewing room, in order and precedence strictly dictated by protocol, was a group of officials, scien­tists, technicians, and others who could only be lumped under the general classification of 'personnel.' In accord­ance with their separate temperaments they waited hope­fully, uneasily, breathlessly, eagerly, or fearfully for this culmination of their efforts.

The hollowed interior of the asteroid known as Hyper Base had become for this day the center of a sphere of iron security that extended out for ten thousand miles. No ship might enter that sphere and live. No message might leave without scrutiny.

A hundred miles away, more or less, a small asteroid moved neatly in the orbit into which it had been urged a year before, an orbit that ringed Hyper Base in as perfect a circle as could be managed. The asteroidlet's identity num­ber was H937, but no one on Hyper Base called it anything but It. ('Have you been out on it today?' 'The general's on it, blowing his top,' and eventually the impersonal pronoun achieved the dignity of capitalization.)

On It, unoccupied now as zero second approached, was the Parsec, the only ship of its kind ever built in the history of man. It lay, unmanned, ready for its takeoff into the inconceivable.

Gerald Black, who, as one of the bright young men in etherics engineering, rated a front-row view, cracked his large knuckles, then wiped his sweating palms on his stained white smock and said sourly, 'Why don't you bother the general, or Her Ladyship there?'

Nigel Ronson, of Interplanetary Press, looked briefly across the gallery toward the glitter of Major General Richard Kallner and the unremarkable woman at his side, scarcely visible in the glare of his dress uniform. He said, 'I would, except that I'm interested in news.'

Ronson was short and plump. He painstakingly wore his hair in a quarter-inch bristle, his shirt collar open and his trouser leg ankle-short, in faithful imitation of the newsmen who were stock characters on TV shows. He was a capable reporter nevertheless.

Black was stocky, and his dark hairline left little room for forehead, but his mind was as keen as his strong fingers were blunt. He said, 'They've got all the news.'

'Nuts,' said Ronson. 'Kallner's got no body under that gold braid. Strip him and you'll find only a conveyor belt dribbling orders downward and shooting responsibility up­ward.'

Black found himself at the point of a grin but squeezed it down. He said, 'What about the Madam Doctor?'

'Dr. Susan Calvin of U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men, Incorporated,' intoned the reporter. 'The lady with hyper-space where her heart ought to be and liquid helium in her eyes.

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