“TELL me the truth. Did you ever see sweeter engines?” Joe, the Interstellar Junkman asked. “And look at those servos!”

  “Hmm,” Gregor said judiciously.

  “That hull,” Joe said softly. “I bet it’s five hundred years old, and not a spot of corrosion on it.” He patted the burnished side of the boat affectionately. What luck, the pat seemed to say, that this paragon among vessels should be here just when AAA Ace needs a lifeboat.

  “She certainly does seem rather nice,” Arnold said, with the studied air of a man who has fallen in love and is trying hard not to show it. “What do you think, Dick?”

  Richard Gregor didn’t answer. The boat was handsome, and she looked perfect for ocean survey work on Trident. But you had to be careful about Joe’s merchandise.

  “They just don’t build ’em this way any more,” Joe sighed. “Look at the propulsion unit. Couldn’t dent it with a trip-hammer. Note the capacity of the cooling system. Examine—”

  “It looks good,” Gregor said slowly. The AAA Ace Interplanetary Decontamination Service had dealt with Joe in the past, and had learned caution. Not that Joe was dishonest; far from it. The flotsam he collected from anywhere in the inhabited Universe worked. But the ancient machines often had their own ideas of how a job should be done. They tended to grow peevish when forced into another routine.

  “I don’t care if it’s beautiful, fast, durable, or even comfortable,” Gregor said defiantly. “I just want to be absolutely sure it’s safe.”

  Joe nodded. “That’s the important thing, of course. Step inside.”

  THEY entered the cabin of the boat. Joe stepped up to the instrument panel, smiled mysteriously, and pressed a button.

  Immediately Gregor heard a voice which seemed to originate in his head, saying, “I am Lifeboat 324-A. My purpose—”

  “Telepathy?” Gregor interrupted.

  “Direct sense recording,” Joe said, smiling proudly. “No language barriers that way. I told you, they just don’t build ’em this way any more.”

  “I am Lifeboat 324-A,” the boat esped again. “My primary purpose is to preserve those within me from peril, and to maintain them in good health. At present, I am only partially activated.”

  “Could anything be safer?” Joe cried. “This is no senseless hunk of metal. This boat will look after you. This boat cares!”

  Gregor was impressed, even though the idea of an emotional boat was somehow distasteful. But then, paternalistic gadgets had always irritated him.

  Arnold had no such feelings. “We’ll take it!”

  “You won’t be sorry,” Joe said, in the frank and open tones that had helped make him a millionaire several times over.

  Gregor hoped not.

  The next day, Lifeboat 324-A was loaded aboard their spaceship and they blasted off for Trident.

  This planet, in the heart of the East Star Valley, had recently been bought by a real-estate speculator. He’d found her nearly perfect for colonization. Trident was the size of Mars, but with a far better climate. There was no indigenous native population to contend with, no poisonous plants, no germ-borne diseases. And, unlike so many worlds, Trident had no predatory animals. Indeed, she had no animals at all. Apart from one small island and a polar cap, the entire planet was covered with water.

  There was no real shortage of land; you could wade across several of Trident’s seas. The land just wasn’t heaped high enough.

  AAA Ace had been commissioned to correct this minor flaw.

  After landing on Trident’s single island, they launched the boat. The rest of the day was spent checking and loading the special survey equipment on board. Early the next morning, Gregor prepared sandwiches and filled a canteen with water. They were ready to begin work.

  As soon as the mooring lines were cast off, Gregor joined Arnold in the cabin. With a small flourish, Arnold pressed the first button.

  “I am Lifeboat 324-A,” the boat esped. “My primary purpose is to preserve those within me from peril, and to maintain them in good health. At present, I am only partially activated. For full activation, press button two.”

  Gregor pressed the second button.

  There was a muffled buzzing deep in the bowels of the boat. Nothing else happened.

  “That’s odd,” Gregor said. He pressed the button again. The muffled buzz was repeated.

  “Sounds like a short circuit,” Arnold said.

  Glancing out the forward porthole, Gregor saw the shoreline of the island slowly drifting away. He felt a touch of panic. There was so much water here, and so little land. To make matters worse, nothing on the instrument panel resembled a wheel or tiller, nothing looked like a throttle or clutch. How did you operate a partially activated lifeboat?

  “She must control telepathically,” Gregor said hopefully. In a stern voice he said, “Go ahead slowly.”

  The little boat forged ahead.

  “Now right a little.”

  The boat responded perfectly to Gregor’s clear, although unnautical command. The partners exchanged smiles.

  “Straighten out,” Gregor said, “and full speed ahead!”

  The lifeboat charged forward into the shining, empty sea.

  ARNOLD disappeared into the bilge with a flashlight and a circuit tester. The surveying was easy enough for Gregor to handle alone. The machines did all the work, tracing the major faults in the ocean bottom, locating the most promising volcanoes, running the flow and buildup charts. When the survey was complete, the next stage would be turned over to a subcontractor. He would wire the volcanoes, seed the faults, retreat to a safe distance and touch the whole thing off.

  Then Trident would be, for a while, a spectacularly noisy place. And when things had quieted down, there would be enough dry land to satisfy even a real-estate speculator.

  By mid-afternoon Gregor felt that they had done enough surveying for one day. He and Arnold ate their sandwiches and drank from the canteen. Later they took a short swim in Trident’s clear green water.

  “I think I’ve found the trouble,” Arnold said. “The leads to the primary activators have been removed. And the power cable’s been cut.”

  “Why would anyone do that?” Gregor asked.

  Arnold shrugged. “Might have been part of the decommissioning. I’ll have it right in a little while.”

  He crawled back into the bilge. Gregor turned in the direction of the island, steering telepathically and watching the green water foam merrily past the bow. At moments like this, contrary to all his previous experience, the Universe seemed a fine and friendly place.

  In half an hour Arnold emerged, grease-stained but triumphant. “Try that button now,” he said.

  “But we’re almost back.”

  “So what? Might as well have this thing working right.”

  Gregor nodded, and pushed the second button.

  They could hear the faint click-click of circuits opening. Half a dozen small engines purred into life. A light flashed red, then winked off as the generators took up the load.

  “That’s more like it,” Arnold said.

  I AM Lifeboat 324-A,” the boat stated telepathically. “I am now fully activated, and able to protect my occupants from danger. Have faith in me. My action-response tapes, both psychological and physical, have been prepared by the best scientific minds in all Drome.”

  “Gives you quite a feeling of confidence, doesn’t it?” Arnold said.

  “I suppose so,” Gregor said. “But where is Drome?”

  “Gentlemen,” the lifeboat continued, “try to think of me, not as an unfeeling mechanism, but as your friend and comrade-in-arms. I understand how you feel. You have seen your ship go down, cruelly riddled by the implacable H’gen. You have—”

  “What ship?” Gregor asked. “What’s it talking about?”

  “—crawled aboard me, dazed, gasping from the poisonous fumes of water; half-dead—”

  “You mean that swim we took?” Arnold asked. “You’ve got it all wrong. We were just surveying—”

  “—shocked, wounded, morale low,” the lifeboat finished. “You are a little frightened, perhaps,” it said in a softer mental tone. “And well you might be, separated from the Drome fleet and adrift upon an inclement alien planet. A little fear is nothing to be ashamed of, gentlemen. But this is war, and war is a cruel business. We have no alternative but to drive the barbaric H’gen back across space.”

  “There must be a reasonable explanation for all this,” Gregor said. “Probably an old television script got mixed up in its response bank.”

  “We’d better give it a complete overhaul,” Arnold said. “Can’t listen to that stuff all day.”

  They were approaching the island. The lifeboat was still babbling about home and hearth, evasive action, tactical maneuvers, and the need for calm in emergencies like this. Suddenly it slowed.

  “What’s the matter?” Gregor asked.

  “I am scanning the island,” the lifeboat answered.

  GREGOR and Arnold glanced at each other. “Better humor it,” Arnold whispered. To the lifeboat he said, “That island’s okay. We checked it personally.”

  “Perhaps you did,” the lifeboat answered. “But in modern, lightning-quick warfare, Drome senses cannot be trusted. They are too limited, too prone to interpret what they wish. Electronic senses, on the other hand, are emotionless, eternally vigilant, and infallible within their limits.”

  “But there isn’t anything there!” Gregor shouted.

  “I perceive a foreign spaceship,” the lifeboat answered. “It has no Drome markings.”

  “It hasn’t any enemy markings, either,” Arnold answered confidently, since he had painted the ancient hull himself.

  “No, it hasn’t. But in war, we must assume that what is not ours is the enemy’s. I understand your desire to set foot on land again. But I take into account factors that a Drome, motivated by his emotions, would overlook. Consider the apparent emptiness of this strategic bit of land; the unmarked spaceship put temptingly out for bait; the fact that our fleet is no longer in this vicinity; the—”

  “All right, that’s enough,” Gregor was sick of arguing with a verbose and egoistic machine. “Go directly to that island. That’s an order.”

  “I cannot obey that order,” the boat said. “You are unbalanced from your harrowing escape from death—”

  Arnold reached for the cutout switch, and withdrew his hand with a howl of pain.

  “Come to your senses, gentlemen,” the boat said sternly. “Only the decommissioning officer is empowered to turn me off. For your own safety, I must warn you not to touch any of my controls. You are mentally unbalanced. Later, when our position is safer, I will administer to you. Now my full energies must be devoted toward detection and escape from the enemy.”

  The boat picked up speed and moved away from the island in an intricate evasive pattern.

  “Where are we going?” Gregor asked.

  “To rejoin the Drome fleet!” the lifeboat cried so confidently that the partners stared nervously over the vast, deserted waters of Trident.

  “As soon as I can find it, that is,” the lifeboat amended.

  IT was late at night. Gregor and Arnold sat in a corner of the cabin, hungrily sharing their last sandwich. The lifeboat was still rushing madly over the waves, its every electronic sense alert, searching for a fleet that had existed five hundred years ago, upon an entirely different planet.

  “Did you ever hear of these Dromes?” Gregor asked.

  Arnold searched through his vast store of minutiae. “They were non-human, lizard-evolved creatures,” he said. “Lived on the sixth planet of some little system near Capella. The race died out over a century ago.”

  “And the H’gen?”

  “Also lizards. Same story.” Arnold found a crumb and popped it into his mouth. “It wasn’t a very important war. All the combatants are gone. Except this lifeboat, apparently.”

  “And us,” Gregor reminded him. “We’ve been drafted as Drome soldiery.” He sighed wearily. “Do you think we can reason with this tub?”

  Arnold shook his head. “I don’t see how. As far as this boat is concerned, the war is still on. It can only interpret data in terms of that premise.”

  “It’s probably listening in on us now,” Gregor said.

  “I don’t think so. It’s not really a mind-reader. Its perception centers are geared only to thoughts aimed specifically at it.”

  “Yes siree,” Gregor said bitterly, “they just don’t build ’em this way any more.” He wished he could get his hands on Joe, the Interstellar Junkman.

  “It’s actually a very interesting situation,” Arnold said. “I may do an article on it for Popular Cybernetics. Here is a machine with nearly infallible apparatus for the perception of external stimuli. The percepts it receives are translated logically into action. The only trouble is, the logic is based upon no longer existent conditions. Therefore, you could say that the machine is the victim of a systematized delusional system.”

  Gregor yawned. “You mean the lifeboat is just plain nuts,” he said bluntly.

  “Nutty as a fruitcake. I believe paranoia would be the proper designation. But it’ll end pretty soon.”

  “Why?” Gregor asked.

  “It’s obvious,” Arnold said. “The boat’s prime directive is to keep us alive. So he has to feed us. Our sandwiches are gone, and the only other food is on the island. I figure he’ll have to take a chance and go back.”

  IN a few moments they could feel the lifeboat swinging, changing direction. It esped, “At present I am unable to locate the Drome fleet. Therefore, I am turning back to scan the island once again. Fortunately, there are no enemy in this immediate area. Now I can devote myself to your care with all the power of my full attention.”

  “You see?” Arnold said, nudging Gregor. “Just as I said. Now we’ll reinforce the concept.” He said to the lifeboat, “About time you got around to us. We’re hungry.”

  “Yeah, feed us,” Gregor demanded.

  “Of course,” the lifeboat said. A tray slid out of the wall. It was heaped high with something that looked like clay, but smelled like machine oil.

  “What’s that supposed to be?” Gregor asked.

  “That is geezel,” the lifeboat said. “It is the staple diet of the Drome peoples. I can prepare it in sixteen different ways.”

  Gregor cautiously sampled it. It tasted just like clay coated with machine oil.

  “We can’t eat that!” he objected.

  “Of course you can,” the boat said soothingly. “An adult Drome consumes five point three pounds of geezel a day, and cries for more.”

  The tray slid toward them. They backed away from it.

  “Now listen,” Arnold told the boat. “We are not Dromes. We’re humans, an entirely different species. The war you think you’re fighting ended five hundred years ago. We can’t eat geezel. Our food is on that island.”

  “Try to grasp the situation. Your delusion is a common one among fighting men. It is an escape fantasy, a retreat from an intolerable situation. Gentlemen, I beg you, face reality!”

  “You face reality!” Gregor screamed. “Or I’ll have you dismantled bolt by bolt.”

  “Threats do not disturb me,” the lifeboat esped serenely. “I know what you’ve been through. Possibly you have suffered some brain damage from your exposure to poisonous water.”

  “Poison?” Gregor gulped.

  “By Drome standards,” Arnold reminded him.

  “If absolutely necessary,” the lifeboat continued, “I am also equipped to perform physical brain therapy. It is a drastic measure, but there can be no coddling in time of war.” A panel slid open, and the partners glimpsed shining surgical edges.

  “We’re feeling better already,” Gregor said hastily. “Fine looking batch of geezel, eh, Arnold?”

  “Delicious,” Arnold said, wincing.

  “I won a nationwide contest in geezel preparation,” the lifeboat esped, with pardonable pride. “Nothing is too good for our boys in uniform. Do try a little.”

  Gregor lifted a handful, smacked his lips, and set it down on the floor. “Wonderful,” he said, hoping that the boat’s internal scanners weren’t as efficient as the external ones seemed to be.

  Apparently they were not. “Good,” the lifeboat said. “I am moving toward the island now. And, I promise you, in a little while you will be more comfortable.”

  “Why?” Arnold asked.

  “The temperature here is unbearably hot. It’s amazing that you haven’t gone into coma. Any other Drome would have. Try to bear it a little longer. Soon, I’ll have it down to the Drome norm of twenty degrees below zero. And now, to assist your morale, I will play our national Anthem.”

  A hideous rhythmic screeching filled the air. Waves slapped against the sides of the hurrying lifeboat. In a few moments, the air was perceptibly cooler.

  GREGOR closed his eyes wearily, trying to ignore the chill that was spreading through his limbs. He was becoming sleepy. Just his luck, he thought, to be frozen to death inside an insane lifeboat. It was what came of buying paternalistic gadgets, high-strung, humanistic calculators, over-sensitive, emotional machines.

  Dreamily he wondered where it was all leading to. He pictured a gigantic machine hospital. Two robot doctors were wheeling a lawnmower down a long white corridor. The Chief Robot Doctor was saying, “What’s wrong with this lad?” And the assistant answered, “Completely out of his mind. Thinks he’s a helicopter.” “Aha!” the Chief said knowingly. “Flying fantasies! Pity. Nice looking chap.” The assistant nodded. “Overwork did it. Broke his heart on crab grass.” The lawnmower stirred. “Now I’m an eggbeater!” he giggled.

  “Wake up,” Arnold said, shaking Gregor, his teeth chattering. “We have to do something.”

  “Ask him to turn on the heat,” Gregor said groggily.

 

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