“It was not an attempt at humor, sir. A ship is approaching us and hailing us at standard communications frequency.”
I looked up at the speaker set into the overhead of the airlock.
“Is this part of your psychological programming?” I groused.
Forty-niner ignored my sarcasm. “Backtracking the approaching ship’s trajectory shows that it originated at Ceres, sir. It should make rendezvous with us in nine hours and forty-one minutes.”
I stomped out of the airlock and ducked into the bridge, muttering, “If this is some wiseass ploy of yours to keep me from—”
I looked at the display panel. All its screens were dark: conserving electrical power.
“Is this some kind of psychology stunt?” I asked.
“No, sir, it is an actual ship. Would you like to answer its call to us, sir?”
“Light up the radar display.”
Goddamn! There was a blip on the screen.
I thought I must have been hallucinating. Or maybe Forty-niner was fooling with the radar display to keep me from popping the airlock hatch. But I sank into the command chair and told Forty-niner to pipe the incoming message to the comm screen. And there was Donahoo’s ugly mug talking at me! I knew I was hallucinating.
“Hang in there,” he was saying. “We’ll get you out of that scrap heap in a few hours.”
“Yeah, sure,” I said, and turned off the comm screen. To Forty-niner, I called out, “Thanks, pal. Nice try. I appreciate it. But I think I’m going to back to the airlock and opening the outer hatch now.”
“But sir,” Forty-niner sounded almost like he was pleading, “it really is a ship approaching. We are saved, sir.”
“Don’t you think I know you can pull up Donahoo’s image from your files and animate it? Manipulate it to make him say what you want me to hear? Get real!”
For several heartbeats Forty-niner didn’t answer. At last he said, “Then let us conduct a reality test, sir.”
“Reality test?”
“The approaching ship will rendezvous with us in nine hours, twenty-seven minutes. Wait that long, sir. If no ship reaches us, then you can resume your suicidal course of action.”
It made sense. I knew Forty-niner was just trying to keep me alive, and I almost respected the pile of chips for being so deviously clever about it. Not that I meant anything to him on a personal basis. Forty-niner was a computer. No emotions. Not even an urge for self-preservation. Whatever he was doing to keep me alive had been programmed into him by the psychotechs.
And then I thought, Yeah, and when a human being risks his butt to save the life of another human being, that’s been programmed into him by millions of years of evolution. Is there that much of a difference?
So I sat there and waited. I called to Donahoo and told him I was alive and damned hungry. He grinned that lopsided sneer of his and told me he’d have a soysteak waiting for me. Nothing that Forty-niner couldn’t have ginned up from its files on me and Donahoo.
“I’ve got to admit, you’re damned good,” I said to Forty-niner.
“It’s not me, sir,” he replied. “Mr. Donahoo is really coming to rescue you.”
I shook my head. “Yeah. And Santa Claus is right behind him in a sleigh full of toys pulled by eight tiny reindeer.”
Immediately, Forty-niner said, “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” by Clement Moore. Would you like to hear the entire poem, sir?”
I ignored that. “Listen, Niner, I appreciate what you’re trying to do but it just doesn’t make sense. Donahoo’s at corporate headquarters at Vesta. He’s not at Ceres and he’s not anywhere near us. Good try, but you can’t make me believe the corporation would pay to have him come all the way over to Ceres to save a broken-down bucket of a waterbot and one very junior and expendable employee.”
“Nevertheless, sir, that is what is happening. As you will see for yourself in eight hours and fifty-two minutes, sir.”
I didn’t believe it for a nanosecond. But I played along with Forty-niner. If it made him feel better, what did I have to lose? When the time was up and the bubble burst I could always go back to the airlock and pop the outer hatch.
But he must have heard me muttering to myself, “It just doesn’t make sense. It’s not logical.”
“Sir, what are the chances that in the siege of Leningrad in World War II the first artillery shell fired by the German army into the city would kill the only elephant in the Leningrad zoo? The statistical chances were astronomical, but that is exactly what happened, sir.”
So I let him babble on about strange happenings and dramatic rescues. Why argue? It made him feel better, I guess. That is, if Forty-niner had any feelings. Which he didn’t, I knew. Well, I guess letting him natter on with his rah-rah pep talk made me feel better. A little.
It was a real shock when a fusion torch ship took shape on my comm screen. Complete with standard registration info spelled out on the bar running along the screen’s bottom: Hu Davis, out of Ceres.
“Be there in an hour and a half,” Donahoo said, still sneering. “Christ, your old Jerky really looks like a scrap heap. You musta taken some battering.”
Could Forty-niner fake that? I asked myself. Then a part of my mind warned, Don’t get your hopes up. It’s all a simulation.
Except that, an hour and a half later, the Hu Davis was right alongside us, as big and detailed as life. I could see flecks on its meteor bumpers where micrometeors had abraded them. I just stared. It couldn’t be a simulation. Not that detailed.
And Donahoo was saying, “I’m comin’ in through your main airlock.”
“No!” I yelped. “Wait! I’ve got to close the inner hatch first.”
Donahoo looked puzzled. “Why the fuck’s the inside hatch open?”
I didn’t answer him. I was already ducking through the hatch of the bridge. Damned if I didn’t get another electric shock closing the airlock’s inner hatch.
I stood there wringing my hands while the outer hatch slid open. I could see the status lights on the control panel go from red for vacuum through amber and finally to green. Forty-niner could fake all that, I knew. This might still be nothing more than an elaborate simulation.
