A. L. Haley

There's a place for every man and a man for
every place, but on robot-harried Mars the
situation was just a little different.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Spring 1955.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Harper Breen sank down gingerly into the new Relaxo-Lounge. He placed twitching hands on the arm-rests and laid his head back stiffly. He closed his fluttering eyelids and clamped his mouth to keep the corner from jumping.

"Just lie back, Harp," droned his sister soothingly. "Just give in and let go of everything."

Harper tried to let go of everything. He gave in to the chair. And gently the chair went to work. It rocked rhythmically, it vibrated tenderly. With velvety cushions it massaged his back and arms and legs.

For all of five minutes Harper stood it. Then with a frenzied lunge he escaped the embrace of the Relaxo-Lounge and fled to a gloriously stationary sofa.

"Harp!" His sister, Bella, was ready to weep with exasperation. "Dr. Franz said it would be just the thing for you! Why won't you give it a trial?"

Harper glared at the preposterous chair. "Franz!" he snarled. "That prize fathead! I've paid him a fortune in fees. I haven't slept for weeks. I can't eat anything but soup. My nerves are jangling like a four-alarm fire. And what does he prescribe? A blasted jiggling baby carriage! Why, I ought to send him the bill for it!" Completely outraged, he lay back on the couch and closed his eyes.

"Now, Harp, you know you've never obeyed his orders. He told you last year that you'd have to ease up. Why do you have to try to run the whole world? It's the strain of all your business worries that's causing your trouble. He told you to take a long vacation or you'd crack up. Don't blame him for your own stubbornness."

Harper snorted. His large nose developed the sound magnificently. "Vacation!" he snorted. "Batting a silly ball around or dragging a hook after a stupid fish! Fine activities for an intelligent middle-aged man! And let me correct you. It isn't business worries that are driving me to a crack-up. It's the strain of trying to get some sensible, reasonable coÖperation from the nincompoops I have to hire! It's the idiocy of the human race that's got me whipped! It's the—"

"Hey, Harp, old man!" His brother-in-law, turning the pages of the new colorama magazine, INTERPLANETARY, had paused at a double-spread. "Didn't you have a finger in those Martian equatorial wells they sunk twenty years ago?"

Harper's hands twitched violently. "Don't mention that fiasco!" he rasped. "That deal nearly cost me my shirt! Water, hell! Those wells spewed up the craziest conglomeration of liquids ever tapped!"

Scribney, whose large, phlegmatic person and calm professorial brain were the complete antithesis of Harper's picked-crow physique and scheming financier's wits, looked severely over his glasses. Harp's nervous tribulations were beginning to bore him, as well as interfere with the harmony of his home.

"You're away behind the times, Harp," he declared. "Don't you know that those have proved to be the most astoundingly curative springs ever discovered anywhere? Don't you know that a syndicate has built the largest extra-terrestial hotel of the solar system there and that people are flocking to it to get cured of whatever ails 'em? Old man, you missed a bet!"

Leaping from the sofa, Harper rudely snatched the magazine from Scribney's hands. He glared at the spread which depicted a star-shaped structure of bottle-green glass resting jewel-like on the rufous rock of Mars. The main portion of the building consisted of a circular skyscraper with a glass-domed roof. Between its star-shaped annexes, other domes covered landscaped gardens and noxious pools which in the drawing looked lovely and enticing.

"Why, I remember now!" exclaimed Bella. "That's where the Durants went two years ago! He was about dead and she looked like a hag. They came back in wonderful shape. Don't you remember, Scrib?"

Dutifully Scribney remembered and commented on the change the Martian springs had effected in the Durants. "It's the very thing for you, Harp," he advised. "You'd get a good rest on the way out. This gas they use in the rockets nowadays is as good as a rest-cure; it sort of floats you along the time-track in a pleasant daze, they tell me. And you can finish the cure at the hotel while looking it over. And not only that." Confidentially he leaned toward his insignificant looking brother-in-law. "The chemists over at Dade McCann have just isolated an enzyme from one species of Martian fungus that breaks down crude oil into its components without the need for chemical processing. There's a fortune waiting for the man who corners that fungus market and learns to process the stuff!"

Scribney had gauged his victim's mental processes accurately. The magazine sagged in Harp's hands, and his sharp eyes became shrewd and calculating. He even forgot to twitch. "Maybe you're right, Scrib," he acknowledged. "Combine a rest-cure with business, eh?"

Raising the magazine, he began reading the advertisement. And that was when he saw the line about the robots. "—the only hotel staffed entirely with robot servants—"

"Robots!" he shrilled. "You mean they've developed the things to that point? Why hasn't somebody told me? I'll have Jackson's hide! I'll disfranchise him! I'll—"

"Harp!" exploded Bella. "Stop it! Maybe Jackson doesn't know a thing about it, whatever it is! If it's something at the Emerald Star Hotel, why don't you just go and find out for yourself instead of throwing a tantrum? That's the only sensible way!"

"You're right, Bella," agreed Harper incisively. "I'll go and find out for myself. Immediately!" Scooping up his hat, he left at his usual lope.

"Well!" remarked his sister. "All I can say is that they'd better turn that happy-gas on extra strong for Harp's trip out!"

The trip out did Harper a world of good. Under the influence of the soporific gas that permeated the rocket, he really relaxed for the first time in years, sinking with the other passengers into a hazy lethargy with little sense of passing time and almost no memory of the interval.

It seemed hardly more than a handful of hours until they were strapping themselves into deceleration hammocks for the landing. And then Harper was waking with lassitude still heavy in his veins. He struggled out of the hammock, made his way to the airlock, and found himself whisked by pneumatic tube directly into the lobby of the Emerald Star Hotel.

Appreciatively he gazed around at the half-acre of moss-gray carpeting, green-tinted by the light sifting through the walls of Martian copper-glass, and at the vistas of beautiful domed gardens framed by a dozen arches. But most of all, the robots won his delighted approval.

He could see at once that they had been developed to an amazingly high state of perfection. How, he wondered again, had this been done without his knowledge? Was Scrib right? Was he slipping? Gnawing at the doubt, he watched the robots moving efficiently about, pushing patients in wheelchairs, carrying trays, guiding newcomers, performing janitorial duties tirelessly, promptly, and best of all, silently.

Harper was enthralled. He'd staff his offices with them. Hang the expense! There'd be no more of that obnoxious personal friction and proneness to error that was always deviling the most carefully trained office staffs! He'd investigate and find out the exact potentialities of these robots while here, and then go home and introduce them into the field of business. He'd show them whether he was slipping! Briskly he went over to the desk.

He was immediately confronted with a sample of that human obstinacy that was slowly driving him mad. Machines, he sighed to himself. Wonderful silent machines! For a woman was arguing stridently with the desk clerk who, poor man, was a high strung fellow human instead of a robot. Harper watched him shrinking and turning pale lavender in the stress of the argument.

"A nurse!" shouted the woman. "I want a nurse! A real woman! For what you charge, you should be able to give me a television star if I want one! I won't have another of those damnable robots in my room, do you hear?"

No one within the confines of the huge lobby could have helped hearing. The clerk flinched visibly. "Now, Mrs. Jacobsen," he soothed. "You know the hotel is staffed entirely with robots. They're much more expensive, really, than human employees, but so much more efficient, you know. Admit it, they give excellent service, don't they, now?" Toothily he smiled at the enraged woman.

"That's just it!" Mrs. Jacobsen glared. "The service is too good. I might just as well have a set of push buttons in the room. I want someone to hear what I say! I want to be able to change my mind once in awhile!"

Harper snorted. "Wants someone she can devil," he diagnosed. "Someone she can get a kick out of ordering around." With vast contempt he stepped to the desk beside her and peremptorily rapped for the clerk.

"One moment, sir," begged that harassed individual. "Just one moment, please." He turned back to the woman.

But she had turned her glare on Harper. "You could at least be civil enough to wait your turn!"

Harper smirked. "My good woman, I'm not a robot. Robots, of course, are always civil. But you should know by now that civility isn't a normal human trait." Leaving her temporarily quashed, he beckoned authoritatively to the clerk.

"I've just arrived and want to get settled. I'm here merely for a rest-cure, no treatments. You can assign my quarters before continuing your—ah—discussion with the lady."

The clerk sputtered. Mrs. Jacobsen sputtered. But not for nothing was Harper one of the leading business executives of the earth. Harper's implacable stare won his point. Wiping beads of moisture from his forehead, the clerk fumbled for a card, typed it out, and was about to deposit it in the punch box when a fist hit the desk a resounding blow and another voice, male, roared out at Harper's elbow.

"This is a helluva joint!" roared the voice. "Man could rot away to the knees while he's waitin' for accommodations. Service!" Again his fist banged the counter.

The clerk jumped. He dropped Harper's card and had to stoop for it. Absently holding it, he straightened up to face Mrs. Jacobsen and the irate newcomer. Hastily he pushed a tagged key at Harper.

"Here you are, Mr. Breen. I'm sure you'll find it comfortable." With a pallid smile he pressed a button and consigned Harper to the care of a silent and efficient robot.

The room was more than comfortable. It was beautiful. Its bank of clear windows set in the green glass wall framed startling rubicund views of the Martian hinterland where, Harper affectionately thought, fungi were busy producing enzymes that were going to be worth millions for him and his associates. There remained only the small detail of discovering how to extract them economically and to process them on this more than arid and almost airless planet. Details for his bright young laboratory men; mere details....

Leaving his luggage to be unpacked by the robot attendant, he went up to the domed roof restaurant. Lunching boldly on broiled halibut with consomme, salad and a bland custard, he stared out at the dark blue sky of Mars, with Deimos hanging in the east in three-quarter phase while Phobos raced up from the west like a meteor behind schedule. Leaning back in his cushioned chair, he even more boldly lit a slim cigar—his first in months—and inhaled happily. For once old Scribney had certainly been right, he reflected. Yes sir, Scrib had rung the bell, and he wasn't the man to forget it. With a wonderful sense of well-being he returned to his room and prepared to relax.

Harper opened his eyes. Two robots were bending over him. He saw that they were dressed in white, like hospital attendants. But he had no further opportunity to examine them. With brisk, well-co-ordinated movements they wheeled a stretcher along-side his couch, stuck a hypo into his arm, bundled him onto the stretcher and started wheeling him out.

Harper's tongue finally functioned. "What's all this?" he demanded. "There's nothing wrong with me. Let me go!"

He struggled to rise, but a metal hand pushed him firmly on the chest. Inexorably it pushed him flat.

"You've got the wrong room!" yelled Harp. "Let me go!" But the hypo began to take effect. His yells became weaker and drowsier. Hazily, as he drifted off, he thought of Mrs. Jacobsen. Maybe she had something, at that.

There was a tentative knock on the door. "Come in," called Harper bleakly. As soon as the door opened he regretted his invitation, for the opening framed the large untidy man who had noisily pounded on the desk demanding service while he, Harp, was being registered.

"Say, pardner," he said hoarsely, "you haven't seen any of them robots around here, have you?"

Harper scowled. "Oh, haven't I?" he grated. "Robots! Do you know what they did to me." Indignation lit fires in his pale eyes. "Came in here while I was lying down peacefully digesting the first meal I've enjoyed in months, dragged me off to the surgery, and pumped it all out! The only meal I've enjoyed in months!" Blackly he sank his chin onto his fist and contemplated the outrage.

"Why didn't you stop 'em?" reasonably asked the visitor.

"Stop a robot?" Harper glared pityingly. "How? You can't reason with the blasted things. And as for using force—it's man against metal. You try it!" He ground his teeth together in futile rage. "And to think I had the insane notion that robots were the last word! Why, I was ready to staff my offices with the things!"

The big man placed his large hands on his own capacious stomach and groaned. "I'm sure sorry it was you and not me, pardner. I could use some of that treatment right now. Musta been that steak and onions I ate after all that tundra dope I've been livin' on."

"Tundra?" A faint spark of alertness lightened Harper's dull rage. "You mean you work out here on the tundra?"

"That's right. How'd you think I got in such a helluva shape? I'm superintendent of one of the fungus plants. I'm Jake Ellis of Hagerty's Enzymes. There's good money in it, but man, what a job! No air worth mentionin'. Temperature always freezin' or below. Pressure suits. Huts. Factory. Processed food. Nothin' else. Just nothin'. That's where they could use some robots. It sure ain't no job for a real live man. And in fact, there ain't many men left there. If old man Hagerty only knew it, he's about out of business."

Harper sat up as if he'd been needled. He opened his mouth to speak. But just then the door opened briskly and two robots entered. With a horrified stare, Harper clutched his maltreated stomach. He saw a third robot enter, wheeling a chair.

"A wheel chair!" squeaked the victim. "I tell you, there's nothing wrong with me! Take it away! I'm only here for a rest-cure! Believe me! Take it away!"

The robots ignored him. For the first time in his spectacular and ruthless career Harper was up against creatures that he could neither bribe, persuade nor browbeat, inveigle nor ignore. It shattered his ebbing self-confidence. He began waving his hands helplessly.

The robots not only ignored Harper. They paid no attention at all to Jake Ellis, who was plucking at their metallic arms pleading, "Take me, boys. I need the treatment bad, whatever it is. I need all the treatment I can get. Take me! I'm just a wreck, fellers—"

Stolidly they picked Harper up, plunked him into the chair, strapped him down and marched out with him.