"Asimov, Isaac - Robot City 05 - Refuge - Robert Chilson 1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Asimov Isaac)

Ariel looked momentarily interested, then shrugged. "I'm all right."

Mandelbrot looked keenly at her, pausing in his ridiculous motion of scraping frost off his eyes, but said nothing. He had said nothing to Derec yet, but Derec knew that he was worried, too. Ariel had a serious disease. A fatal disease, she had said. It had caused her occasional pain before this, stabbing muscular aches, and she frequently seemed feverish and headachey and generally out of it; sometimes she even had hallucinations. But this prolonged gloom was new, and worrisome.

"So there's water for showerr, yess?" said Wolruf. She was the size of a large dog and not infrequently went on all fours, but usually walked upright, for her front paws were clumsy-seeming hands, ill-shaped by human standards but clever with tools.

"Give it half an hour," Derec said. The furry alien needed showers daily in a ship where there was no escape from each other.

"Derec, shall I prepare food?" Mandelbrot asked. "It approaches the usual hour for your meals."

Ariel roused herself, said, "I'll do that, Mandelbrot. What do you want, Derec, Wolruf?"

There were no potatoes ready. Of course he did not expect to find real food in a spaceship, and it took time for the synthesizer to prepare a specialty item. "Stew would be fine. Keep varying the mix and it'll be a long time before I get bored with it."

"I eat same as you," Wolruf said.

"Borscht today," said Ariel with a smile that seemed natural. "We've got lots of tomato sauce, and besides, I like it."

"It's wonderful to have a commercial synthesizer and a large stock of basics," Derec said, cheering at her cheer. "Remember our experiments in Robot City?"

She made a face. "Remember? I'm trying to forget."

Dr. Avery's ship was well-equipped. Indeed, they could live indefinitely out here--at least until the micropile gave out, or their air and water leaked away. The water purifier used yeast and algae to reclaim sewage, the plants then being stored as basic organic matter for the synthesizer.

Derec, having removed the suit with motions suitable to a contortionist, stowed it away in its clips beside the airlock. Mandelbrot immediately went to it and checked it over. Reaching to the ceiling of the cabin, Derec touched off, tippy-toed off the floor, and back off the ceiling. Called "brachiating," it was the most efficient mode of movement within a cabin in free-fall.

He turned on the receiver. It was tuned to BEACON-- local. A calm, feminine-sounding robotic voice spoke. "Beacon Kappa Whale Arcadia. Report, please. Beacon Kappa Whale Arcadia. Report, please." Turning off the sound, Derec glumly checked the indicators. Kappa Whale was coming in on the electromagnetic band, both laser and microwave. They were getting minimal detection on the hyper-wave, however.

"I don't understand it," he muttered. Ariel glanced at him over her shoulder as she floated before the cooking equipment.

Wolruf joined him. "Wass broken by Doctorr Avery, do you think?"

"Sabotage? I don't know. It was picking up Kappa Whale beautifully when we took off from Robot City."

They had left the planet of robots hurriedly in this stolen ship. Dr. Avery, who had created the robots that went on to build Robot City, had been pursuing them for reasons none of them understood. Though Derec suspected that Ariel knew more about the enigmatic and less-than-sane doctor than she had said.

Once off the planet and safe from Dr. Avery, they discovered that either there were no astrogation charts in the ship, or they were well concealed in its computer. Though positronic, that was not a full-fledged positronic brain. Had it been, they could have convinced it that without the charts they would die in space. Under the First Law of Robotics, it would be unable to withhold the charts, regardless of the orders it had been given.

The First Law of Robotics states: A robot may not knowingly harm a human being, or knowingly allow a human being to come to harm.

Orders would have come merely under the Second Law, which is: A robot must obey the orders of a human being, except where this would conflict with the First Law.

But the computer was merely a more complicated calculator, incapable of the simplest robotic thought. Robotic ships with positronic brains had been tried, and had all failed, because all full-sized positronic brains were designed with the Three Laws built into them. Necessarily, they were too intent on preventing possible harm to their occupants. Since space travel is inherently unsafe, they had a tendency to go mad or to refuse to take off.

"I feel like hitting the damn computer, or kicking it," he said.

Wolruf grinned her rather frightening grin. "Ho! 'Ou think, like Jeff Leong, all machines should have place to kick?"

"Or some way to jar information loose. I'm convinced there must be charts in there somewhere--"