Accidental Flight Read online

dead geepee in there."

  "A geepee doesn't die. Not even become inactive; it doesn't need air."Docchi tried to think the thing through. "Not only that, a geepeemight be able to escape from the compartment. The lock would close assoon as the pressure dropped. But a geepee...."

  Anti settled down grimly. "Then there's a geepee on the loose, intenton sabotage?"

  "I'm afraid so," he admitted worriedly.

  "What are we standing here for? We'll go back to controls and pick upthe robot on radio. What it damaged, it can repair." She was partlyturned around now and saw Docchi's face. "Don't tell me," she said. "Isuppose I should have thought of it. The signal doesn't work insidethe ship."

  Docchi nodded. "It doesn't. Robots are never used aboard, so thecontrol is set in the bow antenna and the ship, of course, isinsulated."

  "Well," said Anti happily, "we've got a robot hunt ahead of us."

  "We do. And our bare hands to hunt it with."

  "Oh, come now! It's not as bad as all that. Look, the geepee was backhere when the rockets stopped. Could it get by the control compartmentwithout our seeing it?"

  "It couldn't. There are two corridors leading through the compartment,one on each side of the ship."

  "That's what I thought. We came down one corridor and no geepee was init. It has to be in the other. If it goes into a cabin, a light willshine on the outside. It can't really hide from us."

  "Sure, we'll find out where it is. But what are we going to do with itwhen we find it?"

  "I was thinking," said Anti. "Can you get around me when I'm standinglike this?"

  "I can't."

  "Neither can a geepee. All I need is a toaster, or something thatlooks like one, and I can drive the robot into the control compartmentfor Jordan to pick off." Determinedly, she began to move toward theopposite corridor. "Hurry back to Jordan and tell him what we'redoing. There ought to be another toaster on the ship. Probably there'sone somewhere in the control compartment. Bring it back to me."

  Docchi bit his lip and stared at the back of the huge woman. "Allright," he answered. "But stay where you are. Don't try anything untilI get back."

  Anti laughed. "I value my big, fat life," she said. There were otherthings she valued, but she didn't mention them.

  Docchi went as fast as the magneslippers would allow, which wasn'tvery fast. The strategy was simple, but it didn't follow that it wassound--a toaster for Jordan and one for Anti, if another could befound.

  Anti would block the corridor. A geepee might go through her, but itcould never squeeze past her. The robot would have to run for it. Ifit came toward Anti, she might be able to burn it down. But she wouldbe firing directly into the control room. If she missed evenpartially--

  The instruments were delicate.

  It wasn't better if Jordan got the chance to bring down the robot.Anti would be in the line of fire. No, that wasn't good, either.They'd have to think of something else.

  "Jordan," called Docchi as he entered the control compartment. Jordanwasn't there. Nona was, still gazing serenely at the gravityindicator.

  Lights were streaming from the corridor on the opposite side of thecompartment. Docchi hurried over. Jordan was just inside the entrance,the toaster clutched grimly in his hand. He was hitching his truncatedbody slowly toward the stern.

  Coming to meet him was Anti--unarmed, enormously fat Anti. She wasn'twalking; somehow it seemed more like swimming, a bulbous, flabby seaanimal moving through the air. She waved her fins against the wall andpropelled herself forward.

  "Melt him down!" she cried.

  It was difficult to make out the vaguely human form of the geepee. Thepowerful, shining body blended into the structure of the shipitself--unintentional camouflage, though the robot wasn't aware ofthat. It was crouched at the threshold of a cabin, hesitating betweenthe approaching dangers.

  Jordan raised the weapon and as instantly lowered it. "Get out of theway," he told Anti.

  There was no place for her to go. She was too big to enter a cabin,too massive to let the geepee squeeze by her even if she wanted it to.

  "Never mind that. Get him," she answered.

  A geepee was not a genius even by robot standards. It didn't need tobe. Heat is deadly; a human body is a fragile thing. This it knew. Itran toward Anti. Unlike man, it didn't need magneslippers. It hadmagnetic metal feet which could move fast, and did.

  Docchi couldn't close his eyes, though he wanted to. He had to watch.The geepee torpedoed into Anti. And it was the robot that was thrownback. Relative mass favored the monstrous woman.

  The electronic brain obeyed its original instructions, whatever thosewere. It got to its feet and rushed toward Anti. Metal arms shot outwith dazzling speed and crashed against the flesh of the fat woman.Docchi could hear the thud. No ordinary person could take that kind ofpunishment and live.

  Anti wasn't ordinary; she was strange, even for an accidental, livingfar inside a deep armor of flesh. It was possible that she never feltthe crushing force of those blows. Amazingly, she grasped the robotand drew it to her. And the geepee lost the advantage of leverage. Thebright arms didn't flash so fast nor with such lethal power.

  "Gravity!" cried Anti. "All you've got!"

  She leaned against the struggling machine.

  Gravity. That was something he could do. Docchi turned, took two stepsbefore the surge of gravity hit him. It came in waves, the sequence ofwhich he was never able to disentangle. The first wave staggered him;at the second his knees buckled and he sank to the floor. After thathis eardrums hurt. He thought he could feel the ship quiver. He knewdazedly that an artificial gravity field of this magnitude wasimpossible, but that knowledge didn't help him move.

  It vanished as suddenly as it had come. Painfully his lungs expanded.Each muscle ached. He rolled to his feet and lurched past Jordan.

  He didn't find the mass of broken flesh he expected. Anti was alreadystanding.

  "Oof!" she grunted and gazed with satisfaction at the twistedgrotesque shape at her feet. The electronic brain had been smashed,the body flattened.

  "Are you hurt?" asked Docchi gently, awed.

  She waggled the extremities of her body. "Nope, I can't feel anythingbroken," she said solemnly. She moved back to get a better view of therobot. "I'd call that throwing my weight around. At the right time, ofcourse. The secret's timing. And I must say you picked up your cuewith the gravity well." Her laughter rolled through the ship.

  "It wasn't I," said Docchi.

  "Jordan? No, he's just getting up. Then who?"

  "Nona," said Docchi. "It had to be her. She saw what had to be doneand did it. But how she got that amount of gravity--"

  "Ask her," said Anti with fond irony.

  Docchi grimaced and limped back into the control room, followed byAnti and Jordan. Nona was at the gravity panel, her face pleasant andchildlike.

  "Gravity can be turned on or off," said Docchi puzzledly, searchingher face for some sign. "And regulated, within certain narrow limits.But somehow you doubled or tripled the normal amount. How?"

  Nona smiled questioningly.

  "Gravity engineers would like to know that too," said Jordan.

  "Everybody would like to know," Anti interrupted irritably. "Exceptme. I'm too pragmatic, I suppose, but I want to know when we start therockets and be on our way."

  "It isn't that easy," sighed Jordan. "A retracted combustion cap inflight generally means at least one burned-out tube." He made his wayto the instrument panel and looked at it glumly. "Three."

  "A factor." Docchi nodded. "But I was thinking about the robot."

  Anti was impatient. "An interesting subject, no doubt. What about it?"

  "Where did it get instructions? Not radio; the hull of the ship cutsoff all radiation. The last we knew, it was in our control."

  "All right, how?"

  "Voice," said Docchi. "Cameron's voice, to be exact."

  "But he was in the rocket dome," Jordan objected.

  "Think back to when we were loading the
tank. We had to look throughthe telecom and the angle of vision was bad. We couldn't see much ofthe cargo lock. Anti couldn't see anything that wasn't directlyoverhead. Both Cameron and the geepee managed to get inside and wedidn't know it."

  Jordan hefted his weapon. "Looks like we've got another hunt on ourhands. This time a nice normal doctor."

  "Keep it handy," said Docchi, glancing at the toaster. "But be carefulhow you use it. One homicide and we can forget what