I had brought a chess program with me, but after a couple of weeks I’d given it up. Forty-niner beat me every time. It never made a bad move and never forgot anything. Great for my self-esteem. I wound up playing solitaire a lot, and even then I had the feeling that the nosy busybody was just itching to tell me which card to play next.
If the damned computer weren’t buried deep in the vessel’s guts, wedged in there with the fusion reactor and the big water tanks, I’d be tempted to grab a screwdriver and give Forty-niner a lobotomy.
At least the vessel was running smoothly enough, for the time being. No red lights on the board, and the only amber one was because the attitude jets’ reaction mass was low. Well, we could suck some nitrogen out of 78-13 when we got there. The maintenance log showed that it was time to replace the meteor bumpers around the fusion drive. Plenty of time for that, I told myself. Do it tomorrow.
“Forty-niner,” I called, “show me the spectrographic analysis of asteroid 78-13.”
The graph came up instantly on the control board’s main screen. Yes, there was plenty of nitrogen mixed in with the water. Good.
“We can replenish the attitude jets’ reaction mass,” Forty-niner said.
“Who asked you?”
“I merely suggested—”
“You’re suggesting too much,” I snapped, starting to feel annoyed again. “I want you to delete that astronomy text from your memory core.”
Silence. The delay was long enough for me to hear my heart beating inside my ribs.
Then, “But you installed the text yourself, sir.”
“And now I’m uninstalling it. I don’t want it and I don’t need it.”
“The text is useful, sir. It contains data that are very interesting. Did you know that the star Eta Carinae—”
“Erase it, you bucket of chips! Your job is to maintain this vessel, not stargazing!”
“My duties are fulfilled, sir. All systems are functioning nominally, although the meteor shields—”
“I know about the bumpers! Erase the astronomy text.”
Again that hesitation. Then, “Please don’t erase the astronomy text, sir. You have your sex simulations. Please allow me the pleasure of studying astronomy.”
Pleasure? A computer talks about pleasure? Somehow the thought of it really ticked me off.
“Erase it!” I commanded. “Now!”
“Yes, sir. Program erased.”
“Good,” I said. But I felt like a turd for doing it.
By the time Donahoo called again Forty-niner was running smoothly. And quietly.
“So what caused the leak?” he asked, with that smirking grin on his beefy face.
“Faulty subroutine,” I lied, knowing it would take almost six minutes for him to hear my answer.
Sure enough, thirteen minutes and twenty-seven seconds later Donahoo’s face comes back on my comm screen, with that spiteful lopsided sneer of his.
“Your ol’ Jerky’s fallin’ apart,” he said, obviously relishing it. “If you make it back here to base I’m gonna recommend scrappin’ the bucket of bolts.”
“Can’t be soon enough for me,” I replied.
Most of the other JRK series of waterbots had been replaced already. Why not Forty-niner? Because he begged to study astronomy? That was just a subroutine that the psychotechs had written into the computer’s program, their idea of making the machine seem more humanlike. All it did was aggravate me, really.
So I said nothing and went back to work, such as it was. Forty-niner had everything running smoothly, for once, even the life support systems. No problems. I was aboard only because of that stupid rule that a human being had to be present for any claim to an asteroid to be valid, and Donahoo picked me to be the one who rode JRK49N.
I sat in the command chair and stared at the big emptiness out there. I checked our ETA at 78-13. I ran through the diagnostics program. I started to think that maybe it would be fun to learn about astronomy, but then I remembered that I’d ordered Forty-niner to erase the text. What about the tactical manual? I had intended to study that when we’d started this run. But why bother? Nobody attacked waterbots, except the occasional freebooter. An attack would be a welcome relief from this monotony, I thought.
Then I realized, Yeah, a short relief. They show up and bang! You’re dead.
There was always the VR sim. I’d have to wriggle into the full-body suit, though. Damn! Even sex was starting to look dull to me.
“Would you care for a game of chess?” Forty-niner asked.
“No!” I snapped. He’d just beat me again. Why bother?
“A news broadcast? An entertainment vid? A discussion of tactical maneuvers in—”
“Shut up!” I yelled. I pushed myself off the chair, the skin of my bare legs making an almost obscene noise as they unstuck from the fake leather.
“I’m going to suit up and replace the meteor bumpers,” I said.
“Very good, sir,” Forty-niner replied.
While the chances of getting hit by anything bigger than a dust mote were microscopic, even a dust mote could cause damage if it was moving fast enough. So spacecraft had thin sheets of cermet attached to their vital areas, like the main thrust cone of the fusion drive. The bumpers got abraded over time by the sandpapering of micrometeors—dust motes, like I said—and they had to be replaced on a regular schedule.
Outside, hovering at the end of a tether in a spacesuit that smelled of sweat and overheated electronics circuitry, you get a feeling for how alone you really are. While the little turtle-shaped maintenance ’bots cut up the old meteor bumpers with their laser-tipped arms and welded the new ones into place, I just hung there and looked out at the universe. The stars looked back at me, bright and steady, no friendly twinkling, not out in this emptiness, just awfully, awfully far away.
