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IT WAS ONE OF GREGORY POWELL&039;S FAVORITE platitudes that nothing was to be gained fro down the stairs toward him, red hair matted with perspiration, Powell frowned

"What&039;s wrong?" he said "Break a fingernail?"

"Yaaaah," snarled Donovan, feverishly "What have you been doing in the sublevels all day?" He took a deep breath and blurted out, "Speedy never returned"

Powell&039;s eyes widened momentarily and he stopped on the stairs; then he recovered and resumed his upward steps He didn&039;t speak until he reached the head of the flight, and then:

"You sent him after the seleniu has he been out?"

"Five hours now"

Silence! This was a devil of a situation Here they were, on Mercury exactly twelve hours-and already up to the eyebrows in the worst sort of trouble Mercury had long been the jinx world of the Syste - even for a jinx

Powell said, "Start at the beginning, and let&039;s get this straight"

They were in the radio room noith its already subtly antiquated equipment, untouched for the ten years previous to their arrival Even ten years, technologically speaking, meant so much Compare Speedy with the type of robot they must have had back in 2005 But then, advances in robotics these days were treerly The air of disuse that touched everything about the roo

Donovan an: "I tried to locate hiood on the Mercury Sunside - not past two miles, anyway That&039;s one of the reasons the First Expedition failed And we can&039;t put up the ultrawave equipment for weeks yet -"

"Skip all that What did you get?"

"I located the unorganized body signal in the short wave It was no good for anything except his position I kept track of him that way for two hours and plotted the results on the map"

There was a yellowed square of parchment in his hip pocket - a relic of the unsuccessful First Expedition - and he slapped it down on the desk with vicious force, spreading it flat with the palm of his hand Powell, hands clasped across his chest, watched it at long range

Donovan&039;s pencil pointed nervously "The red cross is the selenium pool You marked it yourself"

"Which one is it?" interrupted Powell "There were three that MacDougal located for us before he left"

"I sent Speedy to the nearest, naturally Seventeen miles away But what difference does that make?" There was tension in his voice "There are the penciled dots that mark Speedy&039;s position"

And for the first time Powell&039;s artificial aplomb was shaken and his hands shot forward for the map

"Are you serious? This is irowled Donovan

The little dots that h circle about the red cross of the seleniuers went to his brown nal of anxiety

Donovan added: "In the two hours I checked on him, he circled that damned pool four times It seems likely to me that he&039;ll keep that up forever Do you realize the position we&039;re in?"

Powell looked up shortly, and said nothing Oh, yes, he realized the position they were in It worked itself out as siism The photo-cell banks that alone stood between the full power of Mercury&039;s monstrous sun and the that could save theet the selenium was Speedy If Speedy didn&039;t come back, no selenium No selenium, no photo-cell banks No photo-banks - well, death by slow broiling is one of thedone in

Donovan rubbed his red ely and expressed histock of the Systereat team of Powell and Donovan is sent out to Mercury to report on the advisability of reopening the Sunside Mining Station withthe first day A purely routine job, too We&039;ll never live it down"

"We won&039;t have to, perhaps," replied Powell, quietly "If we don&039;t do so down - or even just plain living - will be out of the question"

"Don&039;t be stupid! If you feel funny about it, Greg, I don&039;t It was cri us out here with only one robot And it was your bright idea that we could handle the photo-cell banks ourselves"

"Now you&039;re being unfair It was a ram of selenium, a Stillhead Dielectrode Plate and about three hours&039; time and there are pools of pure seleniual&039;s spectroreflector spotted three for us in five minutes, didn&039;t it? What the devil! We couldn&039;t have waited for next conjunction"

"Well, what are we going to do? Powell, you&039;ve got an idea I know you have, or you wouldn&039;t be so calm You&039;re no more a hero than I ao after Speedy ourselves, Mike- not on the Sunside Even the new insosuits aren&039;t good for ht But you know the old saying, &039;Set a robot to catch a robot&039; Look, Mike, ot six robots down in the sublevels, that we may be able to use, if they work If they work"

There was a glint of sudden hope in Donovan&039;s eyes "You mean six robots from the First Expedition Are you sure? Theytime as far as robot-types are concerned, you know"

"No, they&039;re robots I&039;ve spent all day with theot positronic brains: primitive, of course" He placed the o down"

The robots were on the lowest sublevel - all six of the cases of uncertain content They were large, extre position on the floor, legs straddled out before theood seven feet in the air

Donovan whistled "Look at the size of them, will you? The chests must be ten feet around"

"That&039;s because they&039;re supplied with the old McGuffy gears I&039;ve been over the insides - crummiest set you&039;ve ever seen"

"Have you powered them yet?"

"No There wasn&039;t any reason to I don&039;t think there&039;s anything wrong with theht talk"

He had unscrewed the chest plate of the nearest as he spoke, inserted the two-inch sphere that contained the tiny spark of atoy that was a robot&039;s life There was difficulty in fitting it, but he ain in laborious fashion The radio controls of more modern models had not been heard of ten years earlier And then to the other five

Donovan said uneasily, "They haven&039;t moved"

"No orders to do so," replied Powell, succinctly He went back to the first in the line and struck him on the chest "You! Do you hear me?"

The monster&039;s head bent slowly and the eyes fixed the voice - like that of a rated, "Yes, Master!"

Powell grinned huet that? Those were the days of the first talking robots when it looked as if the use of robots on Earth would be banned The ood, healthy slave complexes into the damned machines"

"It didn&039;t help them," muttered Donovan

"No, it didn&039;t, but they sure tried" He turned once more to the robot "Get up!"

The robot towered upward slowly and Donovan&039;s head craned and his puckered lips whistled

Powell said: "Can you go out upon the surface? In the light?"

There was consideration while the robot&039;s slow brain worked Then, "Yes, Master"

"Good Do you knohat a loer "Yes, Master"

"We will take you up to the surface then, and indicate a direction You will go about seventeen ion you will meet- another robot, smaller than yourself You understand so far?"

"Yes, Master"

"You will find this robot and order hi him back by force"

Donovan clutched at Powell&039;s sleeve "Why not send him for the selenium direct?"

"Because I want Speedy back, nitwit I want to find out what&039;s wrong with hiht, you, follow me"

The robot remained motionless and his voice rumbled: "Pardon, Master, but I cannot You ether with a thwack, blunt fingers interlacing

Powell stared and then pinched at his ed "We&039;ve got to ride hiuess that&039;s the idea I don&039;t knohy, though I can&039;t see- Yes, I do I told you they were playing up robot-safety in those days Evidently, they were going to sell the notion of safety by not allowing them to move about, without a mahout on their shoulders all the time What do we do now?"

"That&039;s what I&039;ve been thinking," o out on the surface, with a robot or without Oh, for the love of Pete" - and he snapped his fingers twice He grew excited "Give ot I haven&039;t studied it for two hours for nothing This is a Mining Station What&039;s wrong with using the tunnels?"

The Mining Station was a black circle on the ht dotted lines that were tunnels stretched out about it in spiderweb fashion

Donovan studied the list of symbols at the bottom of the s to the surface, and here&039;s one maybe three miles away from the selenium pool There&039;s a nuer - 13a If the robots know their way around here-"

Powell shot the question and received the dull "Yes, Master," in reply "Get your insosuit," he said with satisfaction

It was the first time either had worn the insosuits - which marked one time more than either had expected to upon their arrival the day before - and they tested their limb movements uncomfortably

The insosuit was far bulkier and far uglier than the regulation spacesuit; but withal considerably lighter, due to the fact that they were entirely nonmetallic in composition Composed of heat-resistant plastic and che unit to keep the air bone-dry, the insosuits could withstand the full glare of Mercury&039;s sun for twenty minutes Five to tenthe occupant

And still the robot&039;s hands forhtest atoure into which Powell had been converted

Powell&039;s radio-harshened voice boomed out: "Are you ready to take us to Exit 13a?"

"Yes, Master"

Good, thought Powell; they ht lack radio control but at least they were fitted for radio reception "Mount one or the other, Mike," he said to Donovan

He placed a foot in the i upward He found the seat comfortable; there was the humped back of the robot, evidently shaped for the purpose, a shallow groove along each shoulder for the thighs and two elongated "ears" whose purpose now seemed obvious

Powell seized the ears and twisted the head His mount turned ponderously "Lead on, Macduff" But he did not feel at all lighthearted

The gigantic robots h the doorway that cleared their heads by a scant foot, so that the twoa narrow corridor in which their unhurried footsteps boo, airless tunnel that stretched to a pinpoint before thenitude of the task accomplished by the First Expedition, with their crude robots and their start-froht have been a failure, but their failure was a good deal better than the usual run of the System&039;s successes

The robots plodded onith a pace that never varied and with footsteps that never lengthened

Powell said: "Notice that these tunnels are blazing with lights and that the temperature is Earth-normal It&039;s probably been like this all the ten years that this place has remained empty"

"How&039;s that?"

"Cheap energy; cheapest in the System Sunpower, you know, and on Mercury&039;s Sunside, sunpower is soht rather than in the shadow of a y converter The heat is turned into electricity, light, y is supplied and the Station is cooled in a simultaneous process"

"Look," said Donovan "This is all very educational, but would youthe subject? It so happens that this conversion of energy that you talk about is carried on by the photo-cell banks mainly - and that is a tender subject with uely, and when Donovan broke the resulting silence, it was to change the subject co with Speedy, anyway? I can&039;t understand it"

It&039;s not easy to shrug shoulders in an insosuit, but Powell tried it "I don&039;t know, Mike You know he&039;s perfectly adapted to a Mercurian environ to hiround He&039;s foolproof-or, at least, he should be"

Silence fell This time, silence that lasted

"Master," said the robot, "we are here"

"Eh?" Powell snapped out of a seet us out of here - out to the surface"

They found themselves in a tiny substation, eed hole in the upper reaches of one of the walls by the light of his pocket flash

"Meteorite, do you suppose?" he had asked

Powell shrugged "To hell with that It doesn&039;tcliff of a black, basaltic rock cut off the sunlight, and the deep night shadow of an airless world surrounded thee abruptness into an all-but-unbearable blaze of white light, that glittered froround

"Space!" gasped Donovan "It looks like snow" And it did

Powell&039;s eyes swept the jagged glitter of Mercury to the horizon and winced at the gorgeous brilliance

"This eneral albedo of Mercury is low andlike the Moon, you know Beautiful, isn&039;t it?"

He was thankful for the light filters in their visiplates Beautiful or not, a look at the sunlight through straight glass would have blinded the at the spring therhty centigrade!"

Powell checked his own and said: "Uh Atmosphere, you know"

"On Mercury? Are you nuts?"

"Mercury isn&039;t really airless," explained Powell, in absent the binocular attachers of the insosuit were clus to its surface - vapors of the h for Mercurian gravity to retain You know: seleniuallium, potassium, bismuth, volatile oxides The vapors sweep into the shadows and condense, giving up heat It&039;s a sort of gigantic still In fact, if you use your flash, you&039;ll probably find that the side of the cliff is covered with, say, hoar-sulphur, or maybe quicksilver dew

"It doesn&039;t hty indefinitely"

Powell had adjusted the binocular attachments, so that he seemed as eye-stalked as a snail

Donovan watched tensely "See anything?"

The other did not answer ihtful "There&039;s a dark spot on the horizon that ht place But I don&039;t see Speedy"

Powell cla for better view, till he was standing in unsteady fashion upon his robot&039;s shoulders Legs straddled wide, eyes straining, he said: "I think I think- Yes, it&039;s definitely he He&039;s co flnger He had no binoculars, but there was a tinybrilliance of the crystalline ground

"I see hi!"

Powell had hopped down into a sitting position on the robot again, and his suited hand slapped against the Gargantuan&039;s barrel chest "Get going!"

"Giddy-ap," yelled Donovan, and thumped his heels, spur fashion

The robots started off, the regular thudding of their footsteps silent in the airlessness, for the nonmetallic fabric of the insosuits did not transmit sound There was only a rhyth

"Faster," yelled Donovan The rhythe

"No use," cried Powell, in reply "These junk heaps are only geared to one speed Do you think they&039;re equipped with selective flexors?"

They had burst through the shadow, and the sunlight came down in a white-hot wash and poured liquidly about theination or do I feel heat?"

"You&039;ll feel rim reply "Keep your eye on Speedy"

Robot SPD 13 was near enough to be seen in detail now His graceful, streahts as he loped with easy speed across the broken ground His name was derived from his serial initials, of course, but it was apt, nevertheless, for the SPDthe fastest robots turned out by the United States Robot amp; Mechanical Men Corp

"Hey, Speedy," howled Donovan, and waved a frantic hand

"Speedy!" shouted Powell "Come here!"

The distance between thecut down momentarily -of the fifty-year-old antique mounts of Donovan and Powell

They were close enough now to notice that Speedy&039;s gait included a peculiar rolling stagger, a noticeable side-to-side lurch- and then, as Poaved his hand again and sent maximum juice into his compact head-set radio sender, in preparation for another shout, Speedy looked up and saw the for a h he were swaying in a light wind

Powell yelled: "All right, Speedy Come here, boy"