Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide Volume V

Machine Language-3

She heard Subchief Sano's voice out in the corridor. She'd have to clear her screens and look busy with normal exploration in a minute. Yuka still didn't feel ready to share the news of the robot's existence with anyone.

Finally the reply came back. A real answer.

Yuka stared at the huge number. She quickly tapped it into the calculator on her screen and did the math. 1,185,520 divided by 28 gave her 42,340 days on the planet. To give the number meaning, even though the days were longer here, she divided it again, by 365, the number of days in an Earth year. Sano's voice came again, closer this time. Yuka had just enough time to see the answer before she closed the calculator and her other screens.

116. The robot had been here more than 116 Earth years, waiting for its Controllers to arrive.

As Yuka switched to her normal routine, her thoughts raced faster than the rover. The robot's makers weren't coming after all this time, which was probably good. But imagine if the colonists could access over a hundred years' worth of planetary data! They wouldn't even need the rovers any more, and they'd be ready to plan for settling the planet in the very best place.

Yuka needed that data. But how was she going to get it?

Yuka went to her bunk early that night, caught a few hours of sleep, and slipped out to return to the deserted rover control bay again. She decided she'd have to tell someone else about the robot tomorrow—it was too important to keep to herself. But she wanted one more try at getting the information herself.

She was about to step into the rover bay when she heard it—a low sob. Yuka whirled to peer down the dim corridor, but it was deserted. She was about to dismiss it as her overtired imagination when the sound came again. On quiet feet, she made her way down the hall. In an empty medical bay, she found the source.

It was Natil. He sat on the floor, his back against the wall and his knees drawn up to his chest. A surgical kit lay open on the floor beside him, although the instruments were all in place. He didn't notice Yuka staring at him.

"Natil?" She kept her voice barely more than a whisper, but still he started.

"Yuka!" His eyes went to the surgical kit and then back to her. He covered his face with his hands, and another sob escaped.

Yuka lowered herself to sit beside him. "What are you doing here?"

His voice was muffled. "I could ask you the same thing."

She half-smiled. "True. We could agree to keep each other’s secrets, though."

He drew a deep breath and blew it out in a long sigh. "I envy you, you know."

"Me?" Yuka was surprised. "What's so great about me?"

Natil reached over and tapped her mechanical arm. "This."

Yuka stared at her prosthetic. "It doesn't work so great. It's only...only a substitute for a real arm. You're still a Full."

He sighed. "Which means I'm stuck with Sano and the other Fulls, when I'd rather be with you and Arten and Gyllis."

She switched her focus to him and his tear-reddened eyes. "You're welcome with us any time. Don't you know that?"

He shook his head. "It's not that easy. Sano says the Fulls have to stick together. She makes us stay. That's why she wants two camps on the planet. One for the Fulls and one for everyone else."

Yuka blinked, taking this in. "I knew she didn't like us—but I don't understand why. Does she think we're that much of a drain on resources, that we won't be able to keep up?"

But Natil was shaking his head. "Just the opposite." He tapped Yuka's arm again. "Don't you realize the strength you have there? That your hand is capable of so much more than a flesh hand? That Arten could cover terrain with his feet that would wear me out? That Gyllis can see things with that eye—things a Full couldn't match without special equipment? No, Sano doesn't see you as weak. She's afraid of you. All of you."

Yuka twisted her body to face Natil, to argue with him. She bumped the surgical kit on the floor and realized with sudden horror what it meant. She slowly picked it up, holding it out to him. "Natil? What were you—what were you going to do with this?"

He swallowed and gave her a weak smile. "I thought, if I wasn't a Full any longer...and Gyllis' eye is really pretty cool..."

Yuka's eyes went wide, and she shook her head. "No! You mustn't! You wouldn't really do that to yourself—"

Natil sighed. "No. I couldn't do it. Which means I'm stuck with Sano." He brushed a hand across his still-wet eyes. "That's why I was crying."

If only we could access the robot's data, Yuka thought. We'd have the answer to the very best spot to settle on the planet, and everyone could to go there together. I can't tell Sano about the robot now. She'll use it to help only the Fulls.

She looked at Natil. Natil, who worked with computers.

Yuka held out a hand to him. "Come with me," she said. "We've got work to do."

An hour later, Natil sat back in the chair Yuka had pulled up for him at her rover station. He shook his head. "I can't do it," he said. "I can't crack a pass code in an alien language, even after all the communications work the rover did. That you did," he added. "We'd have to know more about these Controllers, their culture, about the robot's programming—I don't even know where to start."

Yuka blinked back tears. She'd been so sure Natil would be the answer. "All right. Let's find out what we can." Her left hand was getting better at typing, and she quickly sent

She wasn't sure the scout robot would have an answer for that, but in a moment, an image appeared on her screen. She didn't know what she'd been expecting—some kind of weird, blobby alien, maybe—but the Controller was not like that.

"Another robot!" Natil breathed.

The Controller had only four legs, unlike the scout robot's six, but they were jointed like the robot's. The Controller also had four arms, with sockets at the ends that looked like they could adapt to various shapes and purposes. The lower body was sleek and streamlined, perfectly suited to support the robot's limbs. But it was the upper part of the Controller that made Yuka gasp.

The upper part of the Controller had a head, and a face.

Not a human head and face—definitely an alien species, because the shape of the head and the placement of the eyes and mouth were just wrong...and there was no recognizable nose...but the Controllers were part machine and part flesh. At the base of the neck the blue-green skin melded with the sleek metal gradually and seamlessly, so it was hard to tell where the two parts joined. She thought of the little ridge of skin, always a bit tender, where her prosthetic arm attached to her shoulder. Had the Controllers once replaced limbs and other body parts that way, too, and eventually become something that was neither creature nor machine, but a perfect blend of both?

"Not a robot. It's a cyborg," Natil said, correcting himself when he saw what she saw. "But—how long did you say the scout robot has been here?"

"At least 116 years," Yuka said. "I guess the Controllers could live that long if they're mostly machines, but I still have a feeling they're not coming. So the scout is never going to get to share its data with them."

"Wait. Wait, wait," Natil said, holding his palms up. "You're a cyborg, what if—"

"I'm a cyborg?" Yuka stared at him.

He shrugged. "Well, sure. A cyborg is an organism with enhanced abilities, or repairs made with artificial parts or technology, right?" He looked pointedly at her arm.

Yuka held up her left hand, flexing the green fingers. "I guess so. I never thought of it that way."

"So if you could show the scout that you're like a Controller—"

"Or even convince it that I'm just a different kind of Controller," Yuka said, catching Natil's enthusiasm, "it might give me the data even if I don't have a pass code."

Natil grinned. "I think it's worth a try."

Yuka thought for a minute. "Could you get that surgical kit you had earlier?"

Natil looked momentarily confused, then nodded and left the rover bay. Yuka sent a message to the scout.

There was no answer right away. Was the robot scout "thinking" about it? What would its programming allow? Natil came back with the surgical kit in his hand and a worried look on his face.

"What are you—"

"Don't worry." Yuka took the kit and opened it, selecting a laser scalpel. Carefully, she sliced a long opening down the green covering on her left forearm. She saw Natil grimace and shook her head slightly. "It doesn't hurt. I feel a little tingling that lets me know the skin has been damaged, but that's it." She peeled back the skin to expose the inner workings of the arm—metal bones, thin wires, electronic circuits, and microprocessors. She crossed the arm over her chest, resting her left hand against her right shoulder.

"Take a picture of me," she told Natil. "Get the arm, and my face." He took the picture quickly and loaded the file into the rover control console. Yuka sent the image to the robot scout.

,> she typed.

No answer. They waited.

"What's taking it so long?" Yuka folded the green skin back, covering the inner workings of her arm. "I know it has to translate the language and make sense of what I said, but it was getting pretty fast at that."

"I guess it has to go through its programming to find if it has instructions for this situation," Natil said. "I don't know what level of artificial intelligence the scout has—if it can think for itself or apply reason to a problem. If it's only limited-memory AI, and they didn't code in any protocols for—"

The robot scout's message interrupted him, appearing on Yuka's screen.

it read.

"You did it!" Natil grinned.

"We did it," Yuka said. "And with this, we're all going down to the planet together. We can find the very best place to settle. Even Sano won't be able to argue with that."

She looked at her screen, where the rover showed her the robot scout, balanced on its spindly but strong legs. Behind it, blue grasses waved in the breeze, and purple water lapped at the shoreline. It was a strange planet, inhabited by many strange things, including this robot.

But it was about to become home.