give an illusion of the wheels going around. The Chief, Alonzo Craig, had just enough sense to take graft without dropping the money. There were two patrolmen. One old and drunk most of the time. The other so young the only scar he had was the mark of the attram. I had ten years on a metropolitan force, earthside. Why I left is nobody’s damn business. I have long since paid for any mistakes I made there by ending up in Nineport.
Nineport is not a city, it’s just a place where people stop. The only permanent citizens are the ones who cater to those on the way through. Hotel keepers, restaurant owners, gamblers, barkeeps, and the rest.
There is a spaceport, but only some freighters come there. To pick up the metal from some of the mines that are still working. Some of the settlers still came in for supplies. You might say that Nineport was a town that just missed the boat. In a hundred years I doubt if there will be enough left sticking of the sand to even tell where it used to be. I won’t be there either, so I couldn’t care less.
I went back to the blotter. Five drunks in the tank, an average night’s haul. While I wrote them up Fats dragged in the sixth one.
“Locked himself in the ladies’ john at the spaceport and resisting arrest,” he reported.
“D and D. Throw him in with the rest.”
Fats steered his limp victim across the floor, matching him step for dragging step. I always marveled at the way Fats took care of drunks, since he usually had more under his belt than they had. I have never seen him falling down drunk or completely sober. About all he was good for was keeping a blurred eye on the lockup and running in drunks. He did well at that. No matter what they crawled under or on top of, he found them. No doubt due to the same shared natural instincts.
Fats clanged the door behind number six and weaved his way back in. “What’s that?” he asked, peering at the robot along the purple beauty of his nose.
“That is a robot. I have forgotten the number his mother gave him at the factory so we will call him Ned. He works here now.”
“Good for him! He can clean up the tank after we throw the bums out.”
“That’s my job,” Billy said coming in through the front door. He clutched his nightstick and scowled out from under the brim of his uniform cap. It is not that Billy is stupid, just that most of his strength has gone into his back instead of his mind.
“That’s Ned’s job now because you have a promotion. You are going to help me with some of my work.”
Billy came in very handy at times and I was anxious that the force shouldn’t lose him. My explanation cheered him because he sat down by Fats and watched Ned do the floor.
That’s the way things went for about a week. We watched Ned sweep and polish until the station began to take on a positively antiseptic look. The Chief, who always has an eye out for that type of thing, found out that Ned could file the odd ton of reports and paperwork that cluttered his office. All this kept the robot busy, and we got so used to him we were hardly aware he was around. I knew he had moved the packing case into the storeroom and fixed himself up a cozy sort of robot dormitory-coffin. Other than that I didn’t know or care.
The operation manual was buried in my desk and I never looked at it. If I had, I might have had some idea of the big changes that were in store. None of us knew the littlest bit about what a robot can or cannot do. Ned was working nicely as a combination janitor-file clerk and should have stayed that way. He would have too if the Chief hadn’t been so lazy. That’s what started it all.
It was around nine at night and the Chief was just going home when the call came in. He took it, listened for a moment, then hung up.
“Greenback’s liquor store. He got held up again. Says to come at once.”
“That’s a change. Usually we don’t hear about it until a month later. What’s he paying protection money for if China Joe ain’t protecting? What’s the rush now?”
The Chief chewed his loose lip for a while, finally and painfully reached a decision.
“You better go around and see what the trouble is.”
“Sure,” I said reaching for my cap. “But no one else is around, you’ll have to watch the desk until I get back.”
“That’s no good,” he moaned. “I’m dying from hunger and sitting here isn’t going to help me any.”
“I will go take the report,” Ned said, stepping forward and snapping his usual well-greased salute.
At first the Chief wasn’t buying. You would think the water cooler came to life and offered to take over his job.
“How could you take a report?” he growled, putting the wise-guy water cooler in its place. But he had phrased his little insult as a question so he had only himself to blame. In exactly three minutes Ned gave the Chief a summary of the routine necessary for a police officer to make a report on an armed robbery or other reported theft. From the glazed look in Chief’s protruding eyes I could tell Ned had quickly passed the boundaries of the Chief’s meager knowledge.
“Enough!” the harried man finally gasped. “If you know so much why don’t you make a report?”
Which to me sounded like another version of “if you’re so damned smart why ain’t you rich?” which we used to snarl at the brainy kids in grammar school. Ned took such things literally though, and turned towards the door.
“Do you mean you wish me to make a report on this robbery?”
“Yes,” the Chief said just to get rid of him, and we watched his blue shape vanish through the door.
“He must be brighter than he looks,” I said. “He never stopped to ask where Greenback’s store is.”
The Chief nodded and the phone rang again. His hand was still resting on it so he picked it up by reflex. He listened for a second and you would have thought someone was pumping blood out of his heel from the way his face turned white.
“The holdup’s still on,” he finally gasped. “Greenback’s delivery boy is on the line—calling back to see where we are. Says he’s under a table in the back room . . . ”
I never heard the rest of it because I was out the door and into the car. There were a hundred things that could happen if Ned got there before me. Guns could go off, people hurt, lots of things. And the police would be to blame for it all—sending a tin robot to do a cop’s job. Maybe the Chief had ordered Ned there, but clearly as if the words were painted on the windshield of the car, I knew I would be dragged into it. It never gets very warm on Mars, but I was sweating.
Nineport has fourteen traffic regulations and I broke all of them before I had gone a block. Fast as I was, Ned was faster. As I turned the corner I saw him open the door of Greenback’s store and walk in. I screamed brakes in behind him and arrived just in time to have a gallery seat. A shooting gallery at that.
There were two holdup punks, one behind the counter making like a clerk and the other lounging off to the side. Their guns were out of sight, but blue-coated Ned busting through the door like that was too much for their keyed up nerves. Up came both guns like they were on strings and Ned stopped dead. I grabbed for my own gun and waited for pieces of busted robot to come flying through the window.
Ned’s
