B-12's Moon Glow Read online

  Produced by Greg Weeks, Barbara Tozier and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

  This etext was produced from _Planet Stories_ January 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

  B-12's MOON GLOW

  By CHARLES A. STEARNS

  _Among the metal-persons of Phobos, robot B-12 held a special niche. He might not have been stronger, larger, faster than some ... but he could be devious ... and more important, he was that junkyard planetoid's only moonshiner._

  I am B-12, a metal person. If you read _Day_ and the other progressivejournals you will know that in some quarters of the galaxy there isconsiderable prejudice directed against us. It is ever so withminority races, and I do not complain. I merely make this statement sothat you will understand about the alarm clock.

  An alarm clock is a simple mechanism used by the Builders to shockthemselves into consciousness after the periodic comas to which theyare subject. It is obsolescent, but still used in such out of the wayplaces as Phobos.

  My own contact with one of these devices came about in the followingmanner:

  I had come into Argon City under cover of darkness, which is the onlysensible thing to do, in my profession, and I was stealing through theback alleyways as silently as my rusty joints would allow.

  I was less than three blocks from Benny's Place, and still undetected,when I passed the window. It was a large, cheerful oblong of light, soquite naturally I stopped to investigate, being slightly phototropic,by virtue of the selenium grids in my rectifier cells. I went over andlooked in, unobtrusively resting my grapples on the outer ledge.

  There was a Builder inside such as I had not seen since I came toPhobos half a century ago, and yet I recognized the subspecies atonce, for they are common on Earth. It was a she.

  It was in the process of removing certain outer sheaths, and I notedthat, while quite symmetrical, bilaterally, it was otherwise oddlyformed, being disproportionately large and lumpy in the anteriorventral region.

  I had watched for some two or three minutes, entirely forgetting myown safety, when then she saw me. Its eyes widened and it snatched upthe alarm clock which was, as I have hinted, near at hand.

  "Get out of here, you nosey old tin can!" it screamed, and threw theclock, which caromed off my headpiece, damaging one earphone. I ran.

  If you still do not see what I mean about racial prejudice, you will,when you hear what happened later.

  I continued on until I came to Benny's Place, entering through theback door. Benny met me there, and quickly shushed me into a sideroom. His fluorescent eyes were glowing with excitement.

  Benny's real name is BNE-96, and when on Earth he had been only aServitor, not a General Purpose like myself.

  But perhaps I should explain.

  We metal people are the children of the Builders of Earth, and laterof Mars and Venus. We were not born of two parents, as they are. Thatis a function far too complex to explain here; in fact I do not evenunderstand it myself. No, we were born of the hands and intellects ofthe greatest of their scientists, and for this reason it might benatural to suppose that we, and not they, would be considered asuperior race. It is not so.

  Many of us were fashioned in those days, a metal person for every kindof task that they could devise, and some, like myself, who could doalmost anything. We were contented enough, for the greater part, butthe scientists kept creating, always striving to better their formerefforts.

  And one day the situation which the Builders had always regarded asinevitable, but we, somehow, had supposed would never come, was uponus. The first generation of the metal people--more than fifty thousandof us--were obsolete. The things that we had been designed to do, thenew ones, with their crystalline brains, fresh, untarnished,accomplished better.

  We were banished to Phobos, dreary, lifeless moon of Mars. It had longbeen a sort of interplanetary junkyard; now it became a graveyard.

  * * * * *

  Upon the barren face of this little world there was no life except forthe handful of hardy Martian and Terran prospectors who searched forminerals. Later on, a few rude mining communities sprang up underplastic airdromes, but never came to much. Argon City was such aplace.

  I wonder if you can comprehend the loneliness, the hollow futility ofour plight. Fifty thousand skilled workmen with nothing to do. Some ofthe less adaptable gave up, prostrating themselves upon the bare rocksuntil their joints froze from lack of use, and their works corroded.Others served the miners and prospectors, but their needs were all toofew.

  The overwhelming majority of us were still idle, and somehow welearned the secret of racial existence at last. We learned to serveeach other.

  This was not an easy lesson to learn. In the first place there must bemotivation involved in racial preservation. Yet we derived no pleasureout of the things that make the Builders wish to continue to live. Wedid not sleep; we did not eat, and we were not able to reproduceourselves. (And, besides, this latter, as I have indicated, would havebeen pointless with us.)

  There was, however, one other pleasure of the Builders that intriguedus. It can best be described as a stimulation produced by drenchingtheir insides with alcoholic compounds, and is a universal pastimeamong the males and many of the shes.

  One of us--R-47, I think it was (rest him)--tried it one day. He priedopen the top of his helmet and pouted an entire bottle of the fluiddown his mechanism.

  Poor R-47. He caught fire and blazed up in a glorious blue flame thatwe could not extinguish in time. He was beyond repair, and we wereforced to scrap him.

  But his was not a sacrifice in vain. He had established an idea in ourennui-bursting minds. An idea which led to the discovery of Moon Glow.My discovery, I should say, for I was the first.

  Naturally, I cannot divulge my secret formula for Moon Glow. There aremany kinds of Moon Glow these days, but there is still only one B-12Moon Glow.

  Suffice it to say that it is a high octane preparation, only a drop ofwhich--but you know the effects of Moon Glow, of course.

  How the merest thimbleful, when judiciously poured into one's powerpack, gives new life and the most deliriously happy freedom ofmovement imaginable. One possesses soaring spirits and super-strength.

  Old, rusted joints move freely once more, one's transistors glowbrightly, and the currents of the body race about with the minutestresistance. Moon Glow is like being born again.

  The sale of it has been illegal for several years, for no reason thatI can think of except that the Builders, who make the laws, can notbear to see metal people have fun.

  Of course, a part of the blame rests on such individuals as X-101,who, when lubricated with Moon Glow, insists upon dancing around onlarge, cast-iron feet to the hazard of all toes in his vicinity. He isthin and long jointed, and he goes "creak, creak," in a weird,sing-song fashion as he dances. It is a shameful, ludicrous sight.

  Then there was DC-5, who tore down the 300 feet long equipment hangarof the Builders one night. He had over-indulged.

  * * * * *

  I do not feel responsible for these things. If I had not sold them theMoon Glow, someone else would have done so. Besides, I am only awholesaler. Benny buys everything that I am able to produce in mylittle laboratory hidden out in the Dumps.

  Just now, by Benny's attitude, I knew that something was very wrong."What is the matter?" I said. "Is it the revenue agents?"

  "I do not know," said BNE-96 in that curious, flat voice of his thatis incapable of inflection. "I do not know, but there are visitors ofimportance from Earth. It could mean anything, but I have apremonition of disaster. Jon tipped me off."

&nb
sp; He meant Jon Rogeson, of course, who was the peace officer here inArgon City, and the only one of the Builders I had ever met who didnot look down upon a metal person. When sober he was a clever personwho always looked out for our interests here.

  "What are they like?" I asked in some fear, for I had six vials ofMoon Glow with me at the moment.

  "I have not seen them, but there is one who is high in the government,and his wife. There are half a dozen others of the Builder race, andone of the new type metal persons."

  I had met the she who must have been the wife. "They hate us," I said."We can expect only evil from these persons."

  "You may be right. If you have any merchandise with you, I will takeit, but do not risk bringing more here until they have gone."

  I produced the vials of Moon Glow, and he paid me in Phobos credits,which are good for a specified number of refuelings at the Centralfueling station.

  Benny put the vials away and he went into the bar. There was the usualjostling crowd of hard-bitten Earth