Rivets and Sprockets (7 page)

“Daddy, they are the only things alive on Mars, and they grow only near the canals. Couldn't their purpose be to suck up all the vapor that drifts down to them?”

“Naturally,” said the doctor. “Practically the conclusion I was almost arriving at. Proceed.”

“Well,” said Jim, “since they are so grubbily greedy for oxygen, it would seem that their purpose is to store it up for something.”

“Yes? Yes?”

“Maybe for a Something,” said Jim.

“H'mm! Ah, h'mmmm! Bless me, that
could
be it!”

“Then, Daddy, why don't we just fly around Mars, and look for places where the lichens have been picked? Maybe it will show us where the Something lives.”

“Sometimes,” said Dr. Bailey, “you show signs of, ah, an almost tolerable mentality—as naturally you should, since I'm your father. Sprockets, ask Ilium to take us around the daylight side of the planet. We must look for a place where lichens have been picked. Everybody on his toes! Sing out immediately if you see anything unusually unusual.”

Since Mars is only a middling planet, and the daylight half of it little wider than from here to there, relatively speaking—or no more than a quickish zip from New York to London—they were able to zip back and forth from the edge of night to the edge of dawn in a very short time.

On the first four zips they saw nothing at all unusually unusual. On the fifth zip they saw a dust storm. It came up so fast, and spread over so much of the planet, and it was so thick and red and boiling, that searching for signs of a Something in it was impossible. There was nothing to do but zip around to the night side of Mars and wait till dawn.

While they waited, Ilium and Leli taught Rivets how to play curious games with the floating space marbles. Jim wanted to play, but he couldn't keep his hands out of the lunch basket. Dr. Bailey kept pacing the saucer, impatiently snapping his fingers.

Finally Sprockets said, “Sir, it occurs to me that we might save time by trying to signal the Something.”

“Eh? Signal it? How? Has the saucer a radio?”

“Not one that we could use, sir. The saucer's radio works by thought. But since we're right here on Mars, I believe my special positronic hookup might be adequate—if I give it full power and send the proper signal.”

“What kind of signal would you send?”

“I believe, sir, I can best get the Something's attention by repeating the message we heard over Jim's do-jigger.”

“Impossible! Those sounds would abble a tape recorder! How could you remember them?”

“Sir, I remember the sounds perfectly. My difficulty will be to repeat them. If you'll turn on your wrist radio and listen, I'll make the attempt.”

The doctor was suddenly all eagerness. “Attention, everybody! Turn on your radios—Sprockets is going to signal the Something!”

Sprockets gave his radio button a double turn, adjusted his voice button, and raised his head. In a deep, grinding, rumbling—though slightly tinny—tone, he called: “Grullu-grullu-grulluwug! Hiddewoggo-hiddewoggo-buskrozor-r-r! Guwulluggowrozorkorohiddewoggobuskrozor-r-r-r-r-r-r!”

He knew it wasn't quite grinding enough, but he repeated it three times, and waited hopefully.

A second passed. Suddenly there was a little hum, and from everyone's radio poured a terrible voice. It was rumbling, deep, and grinding, and so awful to hear that Jim turned pale and put his fingers in his ears.

When it was over, the doctor's mop of white hair was standing straight up, stiff as a brush. “Heaven preserve us!” he whispered. “I'm not at all sure I care to meet the owner of that voice face to face.”

“I'll take the lichens,” Jim muttered. “
Any
time.”

But Leli sang gaily to Sprockets: “Wasn't it the most spectrumly wonderful thing to hear? We simply
must
get acquainted with this Something.”

With much reluctance Dr. Bailey said, “Er, ah, were you able to get the direction of it, Sprockets?”

“Yes, sir,” Sprockets replied, turning off his special perceptors and pointing out into the Martian night. “It is approximately three hundred and seven miles, six hundred and fifty feet to the southeast. Shall I tell Ilium to take us there, sir?”

“Um, ah, well, I suppose so,” said the doctor.

So the saucer zipped southeastward, where the Martian dawn was paling the horizon. Presently it stopped and hung poised on the slope of a great rounded red hill. Below the hill stretched a desert that might have been a sea bottom when Mars was young. One of the ancient canals ran straight through it. In the vague light everyone could see that the distant canal was dotted with lichens.

“Bless me,” said the doctor. “What a lonesome spot! There's nothing here! Are you sure this is the right place, Sprockets?”

“Positive, sir.”

Jim said: “But where could anything, even a Something, live around here? A Something has to live somewhere, if it's only a cave.”

“It
is
very puzzling,” Sprockets admitted, peering out. “I see neither a cave nor an opening in the hill. Perhaps, if I signaled again—”

“Oh, no,” the doctor said quickly. “Don't bother to bother. We'll, er, look around a bit first.”

Jim said, “I'm not putting foot outside till I know what Sprockets' instinct button has to tell us.”

Sprockets turned on his instinct button. “Wow!” he exclaimed. “There's something around here—only it's way down under us. It has to be the Something.”

“Is—is it inhospitable to humans?” the doctor asked.

“W-e-l-l, not exactly. I don't feel any particular danger—at least at the moment.”

Ilium and Leli had already snapped on their force globes and were hurrying eagerly out into the dawn to explore. The doctor peered uneasily at the hill, then his nose began to twitch. “Let's get going!” he said.

They turned on their force globes and followed Ilium and Leli outside.

“At least,” said Jim, “there are no lichens here on the hill. But there's nothing else, either. I don't know what to look for.”

At that moment Sprockets gave a little
tock
, and silently pointed at something on the smooth red rock ahead.

It was a fragment of a lichen. It looked as if it had been cut by a mowing machine.

“Jeepers!” came Jim's whispered voice over the radio. “How did that get here?”

Suddenly the voices of Ilium and Leli were singing in Sprockets' receiver. “Something has been this way! It dropped pieces of lichen.”

All at once the trail was plain. It led halfway up the hill, then stopped abruptly before a high, curving expanse of rock that blocked their way. Along the bottom of the rock were small pieces of dead and dried lichen. It was almost as if they had fallen from some conveyance going through a door.

But there was no door here, not the faintest sign of a door. There was only the bare red rock of the hillside, scoured smooth by countless Martian dust storms.

The doctor stared at the blank rock in front of him. “Sprockets, turn on your special perceptors. Maybe you can see something we can't.”

“I've already tried that, sir. All I can see is solid rock.”

Then Sprockets heard Leli singing: “Isn't this the most spectrumly clever way for a Something to hide his outer door?”

“It's most spectrumly flumdiddling,” Sprockets sang back. “How do you know this is his outer door?”

“It just
has
to be. This isn't the first Something we've investigated.”

“But how—”

“You have another button,” she said. “Why don't you use it?”

Sprockets remembered the special button on the side of his head that controlled his ultraviolet perceptors. It was so very special that he wasn't supposed to touch it except under the most ultraspecial circumstances, and then for only a few seconds at a time.

Certainly this was a most ultraspecial circumstance.

Sprockets turned the button. Instantly he shone all over with a strange violet fire. Violet fires danced about his head and shot in blazing streaks from his eyes. He looked like a hot hobgoblin. The sight of him would have scared a stranger out of seven years' growth. But Leli clapped her hands in delight and sang, “Oh, Sprockets, I didn't know you could be so positively purplishly beautiful!”

Sprockets hardly heard her. He was able to look right through the rock. It really was a door, though a most curious one, and it opened into a large room within the hill.

7

They Enter a Door

Sprockets turned off his very special button and slumped down before the rock, feeling a little limp. The problem facing him was enough to give any small robot a limpish feeling, and he doubted that he could solve it with all his buttons turned on full.

The others crowded about him, questioning.

“The entire rock is a door,” he answered, trying not to sound as baffled as he felt. “I was unable to detect any possible way it could be opened from the outside. It's nine feet thick, and it must weigh thousands of tons—even here on Mars.”

“Oh, dear me!” muttered the doctor, and slumped down beside him, shaking his head. “This is most unsettling.”

“Aw, there must be a trick to it,” Jim said, approaching confidently. “Did you notice any locks?”

“Neither locks nor hinges. It seems to slide inward in some manner strange to me,” said Sprockets.

“Why don't we try pushing it?” Jim suggested. “If it's balanced right, its weight wouldn't count.”

Jim and Rivets tried pushing it in a dozen different places. The great rock refused to budge.

“But if it's a door, it's
got
to open someway,” Jim said. “Sprockets, ask Ilium and Leli what they think.”

Sprockets did, and answered dolefully: “Ilium says there are only four ways to open a door: by
force
, by
key
, by
order
, and by
request
. He says the first is most unpurplish and primitive, and that he doesn't recommend it. And he says the second is quite old-fashioned, and that no intelligent Something would bother with it.”

“That leaves only
order
and
request
. B-but grief and Moses, how do you go about
ordering
a door like this to open?” asked Jim.

“Ilium says it can't be done unless you have mastery over the door,” Sprockets answered.

Jim slumped down beside his father. “If that's the case, no one can
order
the door to open except the Something. Do we have to
request
the Something to open it for us? How about it, Daddy?”

“Er, h'mm. Bless me, I'm afraid that's the only solution.”

“Sir,” said Sprockets, “shall I signal the Something and—and attempt to make known our, er—”

“Oh, no!” said the doctor, giving a slight shudder. “Not right now. Let's all consider the problem deeply.”

“But, my goodness,” Rivets began. “I can't see any
problem
. I'm not awful bright, but I know my
manners
. If a door is closed, and you want to enter, the proper thing to do is
knock.
”

And Rivets strode up to the great stone door and knocked, very politely.

Almost instantly, it opened. It slid soundlessly out of sight into the hillside, exposing a large cavelike space with another door at the farther end.

Ilium and Leli clapped their hands in delight, and each took Rivets by an arm and ran inside. “Hurry!” they sang to Sprockets. “It will close in a moment.”

Dr. Bailey was too astounded to protest when Sprockets caught his hand and drew him in after the others. Before the doctor could turn around and say, “Bless me,” the great stone door had closed behind him.

“I declare,” muttered the doctor, peering about. The place was dimly lighted by a strange blue light that seemed to come from nowhere. “I—I declare!”

“Daddy,” said Jim. “We're in an air lock. I can hear air rushing in from somewhere. We'd better watch the other door.”

The other door opened as they turned toward it, and everyone hurried through it. They were now in a bright blue circular room covered with curious designs. Directly in front of them were two broad passages sloping downward.

The passage on the left was lighted by a deep red glow. The one on the right was a rich blue-green, the color of seawater.

At the sight of the passages the doctor's nose began to twitch, and his mop of hair began to flop with rising excitement. “Sprockets,” he ordered, “test the air and tell me if it is safe for humans.”

“One moment, sir.” Sprockets turned off his force globe and adjusted his nose button. Air was something he did not need, but his nose button was extremely sensitive to it, and if it contained the wrong mixtures, he would have known it on the instant.

“Sir,” he announced, “you will find the air safe, warm, and delicious. It contains a touch of ozone and a whiff of spring blossoms.”