Twenty years earlier
Nothing had been stolen. That was the first thing.
The second was that something had very plainly been there.
The plateau went cold after sunset, the work lights threw hard white circles over the half-built settlement, and Farman met them at the eastern equipment shed twenty minutes later with a phase pistol on his hip and an expression Adams had learned to dislike.
"Doctor Morbius is supposed to be in medical."
"I am aware of where Doctor Morbius is supposed to be," said Adams.
"Good," said the surgeon, from behind him. "Somebody is."
Morbius went past all of them and inside.
The power regulator lay across the floor in pieces. Not broken. Disassembled. The outer casing had been lifted off and set aside. The primary bus was disconnected. Thirty-two internal couplings had been separated and laid out in neat rows, arranged by size.
Quinn was standing over them. "Nobody does that by accident."
Adams crouched at the edge of it. "Could somebody have been repairing it?"
"Not unless his notion of repair is to reduce it to inventory."
"Damage?"
"None."
"Missing parts?"
"None."
"How long would it take?" Morbius asked.
"To do it like that? Two hours."
Farman said, "Shed was locked at 2300. I checked it myself. First engineering shift found it this way at 0515. No forced entry. Nothing in the access log."
Julia came in behind them. The surgeon had made an attempt to stop her, and Julia had explained that she was not the patient.
"Who had authorization?" Adams said.
"Myself. Quinn. You. Two engineering supervisors."
"And Robby," said Quinn, and regretted it immediately.
Farman did not. "Where is he?"
"Outside."
He was twenty meters off under the work lights, facing the shed, and had been facing it, Morbius realized, since before any of them arrived.
"Robby," Adams said. "Were you here last night?"
"Yes."
"All of it?"
"Yes."
"Doing what?"
"Watching."
"Watching what?" said Morbius.
"The settlement."
"Did anyone go into that building?"
"No."
Farman's hand settled near his weapon. "You stood here all night and nobody went in."
"Correct."
"Then how did four hundred kilos of regulator come apart in a locked shed?"
"I do not know."
Farman looked at him for a long moment. "That's convenient."
"Jerry," said Julia.
"I'm asking questions."
"You're accusing him."
"I'm doing my job."
Robby's eyes went to Farman's hand, and then to the pistol beneath it, and stayed there.
Morbius saw it, and for the first time since he had woken in the medical bay every connection in his mind moved at once and in one direction. Exo III. Artificial life. An order of termination. The machines that had not obeyed it. Farman's hand. Robby's attention on the hand. Julia standing between the two of them with a child in her. A dismantled machine in a locked room, nothing missing, nothing broken, no witness.
Too many relationships, arriving too quickly, and not one of them with anywhere to go.
"Take your hand away from the pistol," Morbius said.
Farman turned. "I beg your pardon?"
"You are requiring him to evaluate you as a threat. Do not do that."
"And you know that how?"
Morbius opened his mouth, and found that he did not know. Not exactly. Julia was watching him.
"Jerry," said Adams.
Farman lowered his hand, and after a moment the android's eyes moved away from it. Everybody on the plateau saw it happen. Nobody said anything about it.
Adams turned back toward the shed. "Nothing gets touched until the scene is recorded. Mr. Farman, double the night watch. Mr. Quinn, lock down every powered system that isn't life support." He looked across at the android. "Robby. Stay out of the construction area tonight."
"Captain," Julia said.
"It isn't a punishment. It's an instruction."
Robby considered it for perhaps a second. "I will remain outside the perimeter."
The group began to break up. Morbius stood still. He was looking at the ground at the corner of the shed, where windblown dust lay fine over hard stone.
Julia came and stood beside him. "What is it?"
He crouched. Boot prints crossed the dust. Farman's. Quinn's. Half a dozen others. He worked along them to the strip directly beneath the shed's one narrow window. It was too small for a man and too high for anything on four legs, it was locked from the inside, and there were no marks anywhere around its frame.
The dust beneath it was smooth.
He stood up. "Nothing."
Julia made no answer. She had heard the way he said the word, which was not the way he had said it a minute earlier, and she had been married to him for nine years.
* * *
Adams left the settlement lights burning all night.
Farman posted two armed men at opposite ends of the construction area. Quinn sealed the equipment sheds himself. The Bellerophon held a continuous transporter lock on every member of the surface party.
Nothing happened.
At 0200 Farman walked the perimeter. At 0215 he walked it again. At 0230 one of his guards asked whether he intended to wear a trench into the plateau, and was told to watch his sector.
At 0247 Robby stood beyond the perimeter, precisely where he had been told to stand, and did not move.
Inside the unfinished house, Julia lay awake listening to the wind work at the panels. Her husband lay beside her, awake, and neither of them said anything, and in a little while she slept.
At 0312, two hundred and forty meters beneath the plateau, a system that had not drawn power in something over two hundred thousand years drew power.
No alarm registered it. No instrument on the surface noticed. No living person heard it.
Robby turned his head and looked at the ridge, and stood absolutely still for eleven seconds.
Then the draw stopped, and the plateau was quiet, and he went back to watching the settlement.
At first light Farman found the inner door of Laboratory Two standing open. He had locked it himself six hours before. The seal was intact. The log showed no entry. Nothing inside had been touched and nothing had been taken.
There was simply an open door where a closed one had been.
Adams stood looking at it for some while. Then he turned around.
"You were watching."
"Yes," said Robby.
"What did you see?"
The android looked past him at the doorway. "Nothing."
Farman gave a short laugh with nothing in it. "That's becoming a habit."
Robby turned toward him. "No."
"No?"
"I saw nothing," said Robby.
The distinction came into the room and settled over all of them. Morbius understood it first, and wished for the rest of his life that he had not.
The android was not telling them that he had failed to observe an event.
He was telling them that he had observed the absence of one.
Morbius looked past him at the open door, at the intact seal, at the smooth dust, and every new connection in his mind ran forward at enormous speed and arrived nowhere at all.
That frightened him more than any of them had.
