I, Robot - Isaac Asimov [36]
“A great man,” marveled Donovan. “How simple that makes it. Now translate that into English, Master.”
“Translating it into baby talk would suit you better. I mean that we’ve got to find out what order it is that Dave gives just before everything goes black. It would be the key to the business.”
“And how do you expect to do that? We can’t get close to him because nothing will go wrong as long as we are there. We can’t catch the orders by radio because they are transmitted via this positronic field. That eliminates the close-range and the long-range method, leaving us a neat, cozy zero.”
“By direct observation, yes. There’s still deduction.”
“Huh?”
“We’re going on shifts, Mike.” Powell smiled grimly. “And we are not taking our eyes off the visiplate. We’re going to watch every action of those steel headaches. When they go off into their act, we’re going to see what happened immediately before and we’re going to deduce the order.”
Donovan opened his mouth and left it that way for a full minute. Then he said in strangled tones, “I resign. I quit.”
“You have ten days to think up something better,” said Powell wearily.
Which, for eight days, Donovan tried mightily to do. For eight days, on alternate four-hour shifts, he watched with aching and bleary eyes those glinty metallic forms move against the vague background. And for eight days in the four-hour in-betweens, he cursed United States Robots, the DV models, and the day he was born.
And then on the eighth day, when Powell entered with an aching head and sleepy eyes for his shift, Donovan stood up and with very careful and deliberate aim launched a heavy book end for the exact center of the visiplate. There was a very appropriate splintering noise.
Powell gasped, “What did you do that for?”
“Because,” said Donovan, almost calmly, “I’m not watching it any more. We’ve got two days left and we haven’t found out a thing. DV-5 is a lousy loss. He’s stopped five times since I’ve been watching and three times on your shift, and I can’t make out what orders he gave, and you couldn’t make it out. And I don’t believe you could ever make it out because I know I couldn’t ever.”
“Jumping Space, how can you watch six robots at the same time? One makes with the hands, and one with the feet and one like a windmill and another is jumping up and down like a maniac. And the other two . . . devil knows what they are doing. And then they all stop. So! So!”
“Greg, we’re not doing it right. We got to get up close. We’ve got to watch what they’re doing from where we can see the details.”
Powell broke a bitter silence. “Yeah, and wait for something to go wrong with only two days to go.”
“Is it any better watching from here?”
“It’s more comfortable.”
“Ah— But there’s something you can do there that you can’t do here.”
“What’s that?”
“You can make them stop—at whatever time you choose—and while you’re prepared and watching to see what goes wrong.”
Powell startled into alertness, “Howzzat?”
“Well, figure it out yourself. You’re the brains you say. Ask yourself some questions. When does DV-5 go out of whack? When did that ‘finger’ say he did? When a cave-in threatened, or actually occurred, when delicately measured explosives were being laid down, when a difficult seam was hit.”
“In other words, during emergencies,” Powell was excited.
“Right! When did you expect it to happen! It’s the personal initiative factor that’s giving us the trouble. And it’s just during emergencies in the absence of a human being that personal initiative is most strained. Now what is the logical deduction? How can we create our own stoppage when and where we want it?” He paused triumphantly—he was beginning to enjoy his role—and answered his own question to forestall the obvious answer on Powell’s tongue. “By creating our own emergency.”
Powell said, “Mike—you’re right.”
“Thanks, pal. I knew I’d do it some day.”
“All right, and skip the sarcasm. We’ll save it for Earth, and preserve it in jars for future long, cold