Unwise Child Read online

  12

  The _William Branchell_--dubbed _Brainchild_--fled Earth at ultralightvelocity, while officers, crew, and technical advisers settled down toroutine. The only thing that disturbed that routine was one particularlyrestless part of the ship's cargo.

  Snookums was a snoop.

  Cut off from the laboratories which had been provided for his specialwork at Chilblains, he proceeded to interest himself in the affairs ofthe human beings which surrounded him. Until his seventh year, he hadbeen confined to the company of only a small handful of human beings.Even while the _William Branchell_ was being built, he hadn't beenallowed any more freedom than was absolutely necessary to keep him frombeing frustrated.

  Even so, he had developed an interest in humans. Now he was beingallowed full rein in his data-seeking circuits, and he chose toinvestigate, not the physical sciences, but the study of Mankind. Sincethe proper study of Mankind is Man, Snookums proceeded to study thepeople on the ship.

  Within three days the officers had evolved a method ofSnookums-evasion.

  Lieutenant Commander Jakob von Liegnitz sat in the officers' wardroom ofthe _Brainchild_ and shuffled a deck of cards with expert fingers.

  He was a medium-sized man, five-eleven or so, with a barrel chest, broadshoulders, a narrow waist, and lean hips. His light brown hair was wornrather long, and its straight strands seemed to cling tightly to hisskull. His gray eyes had a perpetual half-squint that made him lookeither sleepy or angry, depending on what the rest of his broad face wasdoing.

  He dealt himself out a board of Four Cards Up and had gone through abouthalf the pack when Mike the Angel came in with Lieutenant Keku.

  "Hello, Jake," said Keku. "What's to do?"

  "Get out two more decks," said Mike the Angel, "and we can all playsolitaire."

  Von Liegnitz looked up sleepily. "I could probably think of dullerthings, Mike, but not just immediately. How about bridge?"

  "We'll need a fourth," said Keku. "How about Pete?"

  Mike the Angel shook his head. "Black Bart is sleeping--taking hisbeauty nap. So Pete has the duty. How about young Vaneski? He's not abad partner."

  "He is out, too," said von Liegnitz. "He also is on duty."

  Mike the Angel lifted an inquisitive eyebrow. "Something busted? Whyshould the Maintenance Officer be on duty right now?"

  "He is maintaining," said von Liegnitz with deliberate dignity, "peaceand order around here. He is now performing the duty ofAnswerman-in-Chief. He's very good at it."

  Mike grinned. "Snookums?"

  Von Liegnitz scooped the cards off the table and began shuffling them."Exactly. As long as Snookums gets his questions answered, he keepshimself busy. Our young boot ensign has been assigned to the duty ofkeeping that mechanical Peeping Tom out of our hair for an hour. Bythen, it will be lunch time." He cleared his throat. "We still need afourth."

  "If you ask me," said Lieutenant Keku, "we need a fifth. Let's playpoker instead."

  Jakob von Liegnitz nodded and offered the cards for a cut.

  "Deal 'em," said Mike the Angel.

  A few minutes less than an hour later, Ensign Vaneski slid open the doorto the wardroom and was greeted by a triune chorus of hellos.

  "Sirs," said Vaneski with pseudo formality, "I have done my duty,exhausting as it was. I demand satisfaction."

  Lieutenant Keku, upon seeing Mike the Angel dealt a second eight,flipped over his up cards and folded.

  "Satisfaction?" he asked the ensign.

  Vaneski nodded. "One hand of showdown for five clams. I have beenplaying encyclopedia for that hunk of animated machinery for an hour.That's above and beyond the call of duty."

  "Raise a half," said Mike the Angel.

  "Call," said von Liegnitz.

  "Three eights," said Mike, flipping his hole card.

  Von Liegnitz shrugged, folded his cards, and watched solemnly while Mikepulled in the pot.

  "Vaneski wants to play showdown for a fiver," said Keku.

  Mike the Angel frowned at the ensign for a moment, then relaxed andnodded. "Not my game," he said, "but if the Answerman wants a chance tocatch up, it's okay with me."

  The four men each tossed a five spot into the center of the table andthen cut for deal. Mike got it and started dealing--five cards, face up,for the pot.

  When three cards apiece had been dealt, young Vaneski was ahead with aking high. On the fourth round he grinned when he got a second king andMike dealt himself an ace.

  On the fifth round Vaneski got a three, and his face froze as Mike dealthimself a second ace.

  Mike reached for the twenty.

  "You deal yourself a mean hand, Commander," said Vaneski evenly.

  Mike glanced at him sharply, but there was only a wry grin on the youngensign's face.

  "Luck of the idiot," said Mike as he pocketed the twenty. "It's time forlunch."

  "Next time," said Keku firmly, "I'll take the Answerman watch, Mike. Youand this kraut are too lucky for me."

  "If I lose any more to the Angel," von Liegnitz said calmly, "I will bea very sour kraut. But right now, I'm quite hungry."

  Mike prowled around the Power Section that afternoon with a worrynagging at the back of his mind. He couldn't exactly put his finger onwhat was bothering him, and he finally put it down to just plain nerves.

  And then he began to feel something--physically.

  Within thirty seconds after it began, long before most of the others hadnoticed it, Mike the Angel recognized it for what it was. Half a minuteafter that, everyone aboard could feel it.

  A two-cycle-per-second beat note is inaudible to the human ear. If thehuman tympanum can't wiggle any faster than that, the auditory nervesrefuse to transmit the message. The wiggle has to be three or fouroctaves above that before the nerves will have anything to do with it.But if the beat note has enough energy in it, a man doesn't have to hearit--he can _feel_ it.

  The bugs weren't all out of the _Brainchild_, by any means, and the menknew it. She had taken a devil of a strain on the take-off, andsomething was about due to weaken.

  It was the external field around the hull that had decided to goof offthis time. It developed a nice, unpleasant two-cycle throb thatthreatened to shake the ship apart. It built up rapidly and then leveledoff, giving everyone aboard the feeling that his lunch and his stomachwould soon part company.

  The crew was used to it. They'd been on shakedown cruises before, andthey knew that on an interstellar vessel the word "shakedown" can have avery literal meaning. The beat note wasn't dangerous, but it wasn'tpleasant, either.

  Within five minutes everybody aboard had the galloping collywobbles andthe twittering jitters.

  Mike and his power crew all knew what to do. They took their stationsand started to work. They had barely started when Captain Quill's voicecame over the intercom.

  "Power Section, this is the bridge. How long before we stop this beatnote?"

  "No way of telling, sir," said Mike, without taking his eyes off themeter bank. "Check A-77," he muttered in an aside to Multhaus.

  "Can you give me a prognosis?" persisted Quill.

  Mike frowned. This wasn't like Black Bart. He knew what the prognosiswas as well as Mike did. "Actually, sir, there's no way of knowing. Theold _Gainsway_ shook like this for eight days before they spotted thetubes that were causing a four-cycle beat."

  "Why can't we spot it right off?" Quill asked.

  Mike got it then. Fitzhugh was listening in. Quill wanted Mike the Angelto substantiate his own statements to the roboticist.

  "There are sixteen generator tubes in the hull--two at each end of thefour diagonals of an imaginary cube surrounding the ship. At least twoof them are out of phase; that means that every one of them may have tobe balanced against every other one, and that would make a hundred andtwenty checks. It will take ten minutes if we hit it lucky and find thebad tubes in the first two tries, and about twenty hours if we hit onthe last try.

  "That, of course, is presuming that there are only t
wo out. If there arethree...." He let it hang.

  Mike grinned as Dr. Morris Fitzhugh's voice came over the intercom,confirming his diagnosis of the situation.

  "Isn't there any other way?" asked Fitzhugh worriedly. "Can't we stopthe ship and check them, so that we won't be subjected to this?"

  "'Fraid not," answered Mike. "In the first place, cutting the externalfield would be dangerous, if not deadly. The abrupt decelerationwouldn't be good for us, even with the internal field operating. In thesecond place, we couldn't check the field tubes if they weren'toperating. You can't tell a bad tube just by looking at it. They'd stillhave to be balanced against each other, and that would take the sameamount of time as it is going to take anyway, and with the same effectson the ship. I'm sorry, but we'll just have to put up with it."

  "Well, for Heaven's sake do the best you can," Fitzhugh said in aworried voice. "This beat is shaking Snookums' brain. God knows whatdamage it may do unless it's stopped within a very few minutes!"

  "I'll do the best I can," said Mike the Angel carefully. "So will everyman in my crew. But about all anyone can do is wish us luck and let uswork."

  "Yes," said Dr. Fitzhugh slowly. "Yes. I understand. Thank you,Commander."

  Mike the Angel nodded curtly and went back to work.

  Things weren't bad enough as they were. They had to get worse. The_Brainchild_ had been built too fast, and in too unorthodox a manner.The steady two-cycle throb did more damage than it would normally havedone aboard a non-experimental ship.

  Twelve minutes after the throb started, a feeder valve in thepre-induction energy chamber developed a positive-feedback oscillationthat threatened to blow out the whole pre-induction stage unless it wasdamped. The search for the out-of-phase external field tubes had to bedropped while the more dangerous flaw was tackled.

  Multhaus plugged in an emergency board and began to compensate by handwhile the others searched frantically for the trouble.

  Hand compensation of feeder-valve oscillation is pure intuition; if youwait until the meters show that damping is necessary, it may be toolate--you have to second-guess the machine and figure out what's coming_before_ it happens and compensate then. You not only have to judgetime, but magnitude; overcompensation is ruinous, too.

  Multhaus, the Chief Powerman's Mate, sat behind the emergency board, avernier dial in each hand and both eyes on an oscilloscope screen. Hisred, beefy face was corded and knotted with tension, and his skinglistened with oily perspiration. He didn't say a word, and his fingersbarely moved as he held a green line reasonably steady on that screen.

  Mike the Angel, using unangelic language in a steady, muttering stream,worked to find the circuit that held the secret of the ruinous feedbacktendency, while other powermen plugged and unplugged meter jacks,flipped switches, and juggled tools.

  In the midst of all this, in rolled Snookums.

  Whether Snookums knew that his own existence was in danger isproblematical. Like the human brain, his own had no pain or sensorycircuits within it; in addition, his knowledge of robotics was small--hedidn't even know that his brain was in Cargo Hold One. He thought it wasin his head, if he thought about it at all.

  Nonetheless, he knew _something_ was wrong, and as soon as his"curiosity" circuits were activated, he set out in search of thetrouble, his little treads rolling at high speed.

  Leda Crannon saw him heading down a companionway and called after him."Where are you going, Snookums?"

  "Looking for data," answered Snookums, slowing a little.

  "Wait! I'll come with you!"

  Leda Crannon knew perfectly well what effect the throb might have onSnookums' brain, and when something cracked, she wanted to see whateffect it might have on the behavior of the little robot. Like a houndafter a fox, she followed him through the corridors of the ship.

  Up companionways and down, in and out of storerooms, staterooms, controlrooms, and washrooms Snookums scurried, oblivious to the consternationthat sometimes erupted at his sudden appearance. At certain selectedspots, Snookums would stop, put his metal arms on floors and walls,pause, and then go zooming off in another direction with Leda Crannononly paces behind him, trying to explain to crewmen as best she could.

  If Snookums had been capable of emotion--and Leda Crannon was not assure as the roboticists that he wasn't--she would have sworn that he washaving the time of his life.

  Seventeen minutes after the throb had begun, Snookums rolled into PowerSection and came to a halt. Something else was wrong.

  At first he just stopped by the door and soaked in data. Mike'smuttering; the clipped, staccato conversation of the power crew; thenoises of the tools; the deep throb of the ship itself; the underlyingoddness of the engine vibrations--all these were fed into hismicrophonic ears. The scene itself was transmitted to his brain andrecorded. The cryotronic maze in the depths of the ship chewed the wholething over. Snookums acted.

  Leda Crannon, who had lost ground in trying to keep up with Snookums'whirling treads, came to the door of Power Section too late to stop therobot's entrance. She didn't dare call out, because she knew that to doso would interrupt the men's vital work. All she could do was leanagainst the doorjamb and try to catch her breath.

  Snookums rolled over to the board where Multhaus was sitting and watchedover his shoulder for perhaps thirty seconds. The crewmen eyed him, butthey were much too busy to do anything. Besides, they were used to hispresence by this time.

  Then, in one quick tour of the room, Snookums glanced at every meter inthe place. Not just at the regular operating meters, but also at themeters in the testing equipment that the power crew had jack-plugged in.

  Mike the Angel looked around as he heard the soft purring of thecaterpillar treads. His glance took in both Snookums and Leda Crannon,who was still gasping at the door. He watched Leda for the space ofthree deep breaths, tore his eyes away, looked at what Snookums wasdoing, then said: "Get him out of here!" in a stage whisper to Leda.

  Snookums was looking over the notations on the meter readings for theprevious few minutes. He had simply picked them up from the desk whereone of the computermen was working and scanned them rapidly beforehanding them back.

  Before Leda could say anything, Snookums rolled over to Mike the Angeland said: "Check the lead between the 391-JF and the big DK-37. I thinkyou'll find that the piping is in phase with the two-cycle note, andit's become warped and stretched. It's about half a millimeter off--plusor minus a tenth. The pulse is reaching the DK-37 about four degreesoff, and the gate is closing before it all gets through. That's forcingthe regulator circuit to overcompensate, and...."

  Mike didn't listen to any more. He didn't know whether Snookums knewwhat he was talking about or not, but he did know that the thing therobot had mentioned would have had just such an effect.

  Mike strode rapidly across the room and flipped up the shield housingthe assembly Snookums had mentioned. The lead was definitely askew.

  Mike the Angel snapped orders, and the power crewmen descended on thescene of the trouble.

  Snookums went right on delivering his interpretation of the data, buteveryone ignored him while they worked. Being ignored didn't botherSnookums in the least.

  "... and that, in turn, is making the feeder valve field oscillate," hefinished up, nearly five minutes later.

  Mike was glad that Snookums had pinpointed the trouble first and thenhad gone on to show why the defect was causing the observed result. Hecould just as easily have started with the offending oscillation andreached the bit about the faulty lead at the end of his speech, exceptthat he had been built to do it the other way around. Snookums made thededuction in his superfast mind and then reeled it off backward, as itwere, going from conclusion to premises.

  Otherwise, he might have been too late.

  The repair didn't take long, once Snookums had found just what neededrepairing. When the job was over, Mike the Angel wiped his hands on arag and stood up.

  "Thanks, Snookums," he said honestly. "You've been a
great help."

  Snookums said: "I am smiling. Because I am pleased."

  There was no way for him to smile with a steel face, but Mike got theidea.

  Mike turned to the Chief Powerman's Mate. "Okay, Multhaus, shut it off.She's steady now."

  Multhaus just sat there, surrounded by a wall of concentration, hishands still on the verniers, his eyes still on the screen. He didn'tmove.

  Mike flipped off the switch. "Come on, Multhaus, snap to. We've stillgot that beat note to worry about."

  Multhaus blinked dizzily as the green line vanished from his sight. Hejerked his hands off the verniers, and then smiled sheepishly. He hadbeen sitting there waiting for that green line to move a full minuteafter the input signal had ceased.

  "Happy hypnosis," said Mike. "Let's get back to finding out which ofthose tubes in the hull is giving the external field the willies."

  Snookums, who had been listening carefully, rolled up and said,"Generator tubes three, four, and thirteen. Three is out of phase by--"

  "You can tell us later, Snookums," Mike interrupted rapidly. "Right now,we'll get to work on those tubes. You were right once; I hope you'reright again."

  Again the power crew swung into action.

  Within five minutes Mike and Multhaus were making the proper adjustmentson the external field circuits to adjust for the wobbling of the output.

  The throb wavered. It wobbled around, going up to two-point-seven cyclesand dropping back to one-point-four, then climbing again. All the time,it was dropping in magnitude, until finally it could no longer be felt.Finally, it dropped suddenly to a low of point-oh-five cycles, hoveredthere for a moment, then vanished altogether.

  "By the beard of my sainted maiden aunt," said Chief Multhaus in awe. "Athree-tube offbeat solved in less than half an hour! If that isn't arecord, I'll dye my uniform black and join the Chaplains' Corps."

  Leda Crannon, looking tired but somehow pleased, said softly: "May Icome in?"

  Mike the Angel grinned. "Sure. Maybe you can--"

  The intercom clicked on. "Power Section, this is the bridge." It wasBlack Bart. "Are my senses playing me false, or have you stopped thatbeat note?"

  "All secure, sir," said Mike the Angel. "The system is stable now."

  "How many tubes were goofing?"

  "Three of them."

  "_Three!_" There was astonishment in the captain's voice. "How did youever solve a three-tube beat in that short a time?"

  Mike the Angel grinned up at the eye in the wall.

  "Nothing to it, sir," he said. "A child could have done it."