Asimov, Isaac - Robot 07 - The Stars Like Dust.pdf - Isaac Asimov - Planetar81

The Stars Like Dust

by Isaac Asimov

Chapter One - The Bedroom Murmured

The bedroom murmured to itself gently. It was almost below the limits of

hearing - an irregular little sound, yet quite unmistakable, and quite deadly.

But it wasn't that which awakened Biron Farrill and dragged him out of a

heavy, unrefreshing slumber. He turned his head restlessly from side to side

in a futile struggle against the periodic burr-r-r on the end table.

He put out a clumsy hand without opening his eyes and closed contact.

'Hello,' he mumbled.

Sound tumbled instantly out of the receiver. It was harsh and loud, but Biron

lacked the ambition to reduce the volume.

It said, 'May I speak to Biron Farrill?'

Biron said, fuzzily, 'Speaking. What d'you want?'

'May I speak to Biron Farrill?' The voice was urgent.

Biron's eyes opened on the thick darkness. He became conscious of the dry

unpleasantness of his tongue and the faint odor that remained in the room.

He said, 'Speaking. Who is this?'

It went on, disregarding him, gathering tension, a loud voice in the night. 'Is

anyone there? I ' would like to speak to Biron Farrill.'

Biron raised himself on one elbow and stared at the place where the

visiphone sat. He jabbed at the vision control and the small screen was alive

with light.

'Here I am,' he said. He recognized the smooth, slightly asymmetric features

of Sander Jonti. 'Call me in the morning, Jonti.'

He started to turn the instrument off once more, when Jonti said, 'Hello,

Hello. Is anyone there? Is this University Hall, Room 526? Hello.'

Biron was suddenly aware that the tiny pilot light which would have indicated

a live sending circuit was not on. He swore under his breath and pushed the

switch. It stayed off. Then Jonti gave up, and the screen went blank, and was

merely a small square of featureless light.

Biron turned it off. He hunched his shoulder and tried to burrow into the

pillow again. He was annoyed. In the first place, no one had the right to yell at

him in the middle of the night. He looked quickly at the gently luminous

figures just over the headboard. Three-fifteen. House lights wouldn't go on

for nearly four hours.

Besides, he didn't like having to wake to the complete darkness of his room.

Four years' custom had not hardened him to the Earthman's habit of building

structures of reinforced concrete, squat, thick, and windowless. It was a

thousand -year-old tradition dating from the days when the primitive nuclear

bomb had not yet been countered by the force-field defense.

But that was past. Atomic warfare had done its worst to Earth. Most of it was

hopelessly radioactive and useless. There was nothing left to lose, and yet

architecture mirrored the old fears, so that when Biron woke, it was to pure

darkness.

Biron rose on his elbow again. That was strange. He waited. It wasn't the fatal

murmur of the bedroom he had become aware of. It was something perhaps

even less noticeable and certainly infinitely less deadly.

He missed the gentle movement of air that one took so for granted, that trace

of continuous renewal. He tried to swallow easily and failed. The atmosphere

seemed to become oppressive even as he realized the situation. The

ventilating system had stopped working, and now he really had a grievance.

He couldn't even use the visiphone to report the matter.

He tried again, to make sure. The milky square of light sprang out and threw a

faint, pearly luster on the bed. It was receiving, but it wouldn't send. Well, it

didn't matter. Nothing would be done about it before day, anyway.

He yawned and groped for his slippers, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his

palms. No ventilation, eh? That would account for the queer smell. He

frowned and sniffed sharply two or three times. No use. It was familiar, but

he couldn't place it.

He made his way to the bathroom, and reached automatically for the light

switch, although he didn't really need it to draw himself a glass of water. It

closed, but uselessly. He tried it several times, peevishly. Wasn't anything

working? He shrugged, drank in the dark, and felt better. He yawned again on

his way back to the bedroom where he tried the main switch. All the lights

were out.

Biron sat on the bed, placed his large hands on his hard-muscled thighs and

considered. Ordinarily, a thing like this would call for a terrific discussion

with the service staff. No one expected hotel service in a college dormitory,

but, by Space, there were certain minimum standards of efficiency one could

demand. Not that it was of vital importance just now. Graduation was coming

and he was through. In three days he'd be saying a last good-by to the room

and to the University of Earth; to Earth itself, for that matter.

Still, he might report it anyway, without particular comment. He could go out

and use the hall phone. They might bring in a self-powered light or even rig

up a fan so he could sleep without psychosomatic choking sensations. If not,

to Space with them! Two more nights.

In the light of the useless visiphone, he located a pair of shorts. Over them he

slipped, a one-piece jumper, and decided that that would be enough for the

purpose. He retained his slippers. There was no danger of waking anybody

even if he clumped down the corridors in spiked shoes, considering the thick,

nearly soundproof partitions of this concrete pile, but he saw no point in

changing.

He strode toward the door and pulled at the lever. It descended smoothly and

he heard the click that meant the door release had been activated. Except that

it wasn't. And although his biceps tightened into lumps, nothing was

accomplished.

He stepped away. This was ridiculous. Had there been a general power

failure? There couldn't have been. The clock was going. The visiphone was

still receiving properly.

Wait! It could have been the boys, bless their erratic souls. It was done

sometimes. Infantile, of course, but he'd taken part in these foolish practical

jokes himself. It wouldn't have been difficult, for instance, for one of his

buddies to sneak in during the day and arrange matters. But, no, the

ventilation and lights were working when he had gone to sleep.

Very well, then, during the night. The hall was an old, outmoded structure. It

wouldn't have taken an engineering genius to hocus the lighting and

ventilation circuits. Or to jam the door, either. And now they would wait for

morning and see what would happen when good old Biron found he couldn't

get out. They would probably let him out toward noon and laugh very hard.

'Ha, ha,' said Biron grimly, under his breath. All right, if that's the way it was.

But he would have to do something about it; turn the tables some way.

He turned away and his toe kicked something which skidded metallically

across the floor. He could barely make out its shadow moving through the

dim visiphone light. He reached under the bed, patting the floor in a wide arc.

He brought it out and held it close to the light. (They weren't so smart. They

should have put the visiphone entirely out of commission, instead of just

yanking out the sending circuit.)

He found himself holding a small cylinder with a little hole in the blister on

top. He put it close to his nose and sniffed at it. That explained the smell in

the room, anyway. It was Hypnite. Of course, the boys would have had to use

it to keep him from waking up while they were busy with the circuits.

Biron could reconstruct the proceedings step by step now. The door was

jimmied open, a simple thing to do, and the only dangerous part, since he

might have wakened then. The door might have been prepared during the

day, for that matter, so that it would seem to close and not actually do so. He

hadn't tested it. Anyway, once open, a can of Hypnite would be put just inside

and the door would be closed again. The anesthetic would leak out slowly,

building up to the one in ten thousand concentration necessary to put him

definitely under. Then they could enter - masked, of course. Space! A wet

handkerchief would keep out the Hypnite for fifteen minutes and that would

be all the time needed.

It explained the ventilation system situation. That had to be eliminated to

keep the Hypnite from dispersing too quickly. That would have gone first, in

fact. The visiphone elimination kept him from getting help; the door jamming

kept him from getting out; and the absence of lights induced panic. Nice kids!

Biron snorted. It was socially impossible to be thin-skinned about this. A joke

was a joke and all that. Right now, he would have liked to break the door

down and have done with it. The well-trained muscles of his torso tensed at

the thought, but it would be useless. The door had been built with atom blasts

in mind. Damn that tradition!

But there had to be some way out. He couldn't let them get away with it. First,

he would need a light, a real one, not the immovable and unsatisfactory glow

of the visiphone. That was no problem. He had a self-powered flashlight in the

clothes closet.

For a moment, as he fingered the closet-door controls, he wondered if they

had Jammed that too. But it moved open naturally, and slid smoothly into its

wall socket. Biron nodded to himself. It made sense. There was no reason,

particularly, to jam the closet, and they didn't, have too much time, anyway.

And then, with the flashlight in his hand, as he was tu way, the entire

structure of his theory collapsed in a horrible instant. He stiffened, his

abdomen ridging with tension, and held his breath, listening.

For the first time since awakening, he heard the murmuring of the bedroom.

He heard the quiet, irregular chuckling conversation it was holding with

itself, and recognized the nature of the sound at once.

It was impossible not to recognize it. The sound was 'Earth's death rattle.' It

was the sound that had been invented one thousand years before.

To be exact, it was the sound of a radiation counter, ticking off the charged

particles and the hard gamma waves that came its way, the soft clicking

electronic surges melting into a low murmur. It was the sound of a counter,

counting the only thing it could count - death!

Softly, on tiptoe, Biron backed away. From a distance of six feet he threw the

white beam into the recesses of the closet. The counter was there, in the far

corner, but seeing it told him nothing.

It had been there ever since his freshman days. Most freshmen from the

Outer Worlds bought a counter during their first week on Earth. They were

very conscious of Earth's radioactivity then, and felt the need of protection.

Usually they were sold again to the next class, but Biron had never disposed

of his. He was thankful for that now.

He turned to the desk, where he kept his wrist watch while sleeping. It was

there. His hand was shaking a little as he held it up to the flashlight's beam.

The watch strap was an interwoven flexible plastic of an almost liquidly

smooth whiteness. And it was white. He held it away and tried it at different

angles. It was white.

That strap had been another freshman purchase. Hard radiation turned it

blue, and blue on Earth was the color of death, It was easy to wander into a

path of radiating soil during the day if you were lost or careless. The

government fenced off as many patches as it could, and of course no one ever

approached the huge areas of death that began several miles outside the city.

But the strap was insurance.

If it should ever turn a faint blue, you would show up at the hospital for

treatment. There was no argument about it. The compound of which it was

made was precisely as sensitive to radiation as you were, and appropriate

photoelectric instruments could be used to measure the intensity of the

blueness so that the seriousness of the case might be determined quickly.

A bright royal blue was the finish. just as the color would never change back,

neither would you. There was no cure, no chance, no hope. You just waited

anywhere from a day to a week, and all the hospital could do was to make

final arrangements for cremation.

But at least it was still white, and some of the clamor in Biron's thoughts

subsided.

Asimov, Isaac - Robot 07 - The Stars Like Dust.pdf

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: