JUPITER FOUND

8M sunk a new shaft, lowered his skip-arm into it, and scooped up huge handfuls of iron ore into his blast-furnace belly. Around him swirled the grayish murk that passed for an atmosphere on Jupiter. Dislodged pebbles, propelled by the rampaging wind, pelted ceaselessly against his metal hull. The temperature stood at -169 degrees Fahrenheit.

A picture of himself of old sitting at a roseate fireside flashed upon the screen of his memory. It was superseded by a picture of a pretty girl walking down a springtime street. Resolutely he ignored both sequences. They were remnants of an old movie that had been written around a young man named John Sheldon, and John Sheldon was dead.

8M, nee John Sheldon, chased the ore with several skiploads of limestone and coke from his stock-stomach; then, his blast-furnace belly replete, he stopped to rest. But not for long. The ingots from his last hearth-heat were due to be removed from his soaking pits in a few minutes, and he could not let them over-stay their time. The life of a M.A.N., model 8M, was not an easy one. But then, he had known that when he had bequeathed his brain to the Company.

He was not sorry. Far better to build bases on the wind-torn surface of Jupiter than to lie in cold and eternal oblivion beneath the unheeding surface of Earth. And there was the longevity factor to be considered too. As a man, even if he had lived, he probably wouldn't have reached the age of ninety. As the first M.A.N., however, he might very well reach the age of nine hundred and fifty.

A patriarchal age indeed—but, unlike the patriarchs of old, he would have no sons and daughters to carry on after he was gone.

The message that he had been momentarily expecting from the orbiting Raphael came through. His transceiver picked it up, converted it into thought, and relayed the thought to the ganglionic sealed unit that encased both his transplanted brain and the nutrient solution that sustained it. "Model EV just dropped. Will chute into your area any moment."

"Good," 8M pulsed into the trans-transmitter. "Building a base the size of this one is no job for one M.A.N."

"You are hereby notified," the Raphael went on, "that Gorman and Oder Developments, Incorporated, has informed us that one Lawrence Dickens, discharged several months ago for rebellious conduct detrimental to the Company's good name, has started up an advance-construction corporation of his own and may try to sabotage the base in an attempt to obtain Gorman and Oder Developments' Earth Government contract. The Raphael's matter detector indicates that there is another overseer ship in Jovian orbit, and it is possible that Dickens may already have chuted one of his Mining, Adapting Neo-processors into your area. If so, you will recognize it by its greenish-yellow coloring. Its model designation is 'Boa 9', and Dickens himself will be the operator. You are hereby advised to stay on your toes."

"My tracks are the best I can do," said 8M wryly.

"The Company frowns on levity," the Raphael said sternly, and signed off.

Annoyed, 8M activated his transperipheral vision. The Company frowned on too many things, if you asked him. Sometimes it even frowned on free will. Consider, for example, its going to all the trouble and expense of creating a self-sustaining, self-reliant Mining, Adapting Neo-processor like himself, and then arbitrarily forbidding him, on the pain of death, to use edenite—an iron-like ore endemic to Jupiter—in any of his melts. He should have been permitted to make his own decision in the matter. Certainly, if the ore had proved to be injurious to his "system", he would have ceased using it at once. There had been no need for the Company to forbid him to use it. He was a M.A.N.—not a little child.

The rotating transperipheral beam relayed more murk to his retinal screen, more desolation. Jupiter was a place of constant atmospheric turmoil and treacherous terrain. A human being, using the body God gave him, could not exist anywhere on the surface without the protection that a base afforded, and as a consequence, the base had to be built beforehand. All previous attempts had failed, and 8M represented mankind's last hope of ever colonizing the planet. If he failed, the project would be abandoned, and Jupiter's rich resources would be allowed to remain in their native state. Thus far he had succeeded—after Herculean efforts—in laying the foundation. Now there remained the building of the base proper, and for this he was to have a helpmate.

Lord knew, he needed one.

While he was waiting for the EV to contact him, he removed the ingots from his soaking pits and began processing them into structural steel. As a M.A.N., he left much to be desired. He was excellent for mining, and his blast-furnace belly functioned admirably; but his open hearth lacked sufficient tonnage capacity and was much too slow in turning out heats, while his blooming, roughing, and finishing mills were inadequate for the task on hand, not because the internal area devoted to them was too limited, but because the available space had not been put to maximum use. The same objection held true for his continuous mills, and as for his parts-replacement shop, he sometimes wondered whether he would last out the nine hundred and fifty years guaranteed him by the Company after all.

He had just started the glowing ingots through his blooming mill when the EV's "voice" came through the thought-converter: "EV to 8M. Drop completed successfully—am awaiting your directions."

"This is 8M. Keep sending, and I'll home in on you."

Continuing his internal operations, he set off over the ragged gray hills that characterized the local terrain. Around him, the wind howled in cold and unrelenting fury, but with his hull audios turned way down, he hardly heard it. He hardly heard the crunching of his huge caterpillar tracks either, or the rat-a-tat-tat of the wind-borne pebbles against his metallic body. At length his transperipheral beam picked up the EV. The machine was no more than an indeterminate gray shape at first, but gradually, as he grew closer, it resolved into a trim, streamlined unit considerably smaller than himself. He saw instantly that it was a new model. Its tracks were relatively narrow, and there was a delicate aspect about them. Its mining section was much narrower than his own, while its blast-furnace section was slightly smaller. The open-hearth section, however, was comparatively enormous, and put his own to shame, while the flanks of the processing mills and parts-replacement shop contracted smoothly—rather than unevenly, as did his own—to the terminus-compartment where the nuclear power-plant was located.

A less powerful M.A.N. than himself, certainly; but perhaps a more efficient one. He would see. "Welcome to Jupiter," he said. "I'm 8M—formerly John Sheldon of Earth."

"EV—formerly Helen Quinn of same."

He stopped in his tracks, both literally and figuratively. It simply hadn't occurred to him that a woman would respond to the Company's request for volunteers, and even if it had occurred to him, the possibility of the Company's installing a woman's brain in a M.A.N. would not have.

"I am not a M.A.N.," she said, seemingly sensing his thoughts. "I am a W.O.M.A.N.—a Weld Operating, Mining, Adapting Neo-processor."

He hardly "heard" her. "I don't understand it," he said. "With such a high incidence of arrowway fatalities, and with so many bequeathed brains to choose from, why should the Company have chosen a woman's?"

"You're overlooking the fact," she pointed out, "that in the majority of arrowway fatalities, the brain itself is in some way damaged, and you're overlooking the additional fact that ninety percent of the brains that have been bequeathed to the Company are intellectually and vocationally unsuited for symbiosis. I happened to be a qualified engineer, and apparently I possessed the requisite intelligence. In any event, I qualified, and here I am."

"How old were you when you were killed?" he asked her.

"Twenty-four. And you?"

"I was twenty-six. The way I went in for arrowway travel, it was a wonder I lasted that long." He was thoughtful for a moment. Then, "I wonder if we got ourselves killed deliberately."

"Probably. Most arrowway drivers do. And yet we hunger after immortality. It's a paradox, isn't it?"

He realized to his surprise that he rather liked her. "What will you do after the base is completed?" he asked.

"Help you build the next."

"The whole project will be abandoned if we don't show results on this one—did they tell you that?"

"Yes, they told me. As the first M.A.N. and W.O.M.A.N., we're Gorman and Oder Developments' last hope. If we fail, the Earth Government will break the contract. But we won't fail, will we?"

Abruptly he visualized the face of a pretty, blue-eyed girl, and he knew somehow that it was her face—the face she had had in the land that had given her birth. "No," he said, "of course we won't fail. Come with me, and I'll show you what I've completed so far."

He helped her free herself from the huge foil chute that had borne her through the atmospheric maelstrom; then, side by side, they set off over the ragged hills. She spoke no more, and neither did he, till they reached the site of the base. Little was to be seen, save for the geometric pattern of the non-corrosive footings he had laid, and the small stockpile of structural steel he had begun to build up. "Our main concern now is production," he said. "What's your maximum open-hearth output, EV?"

"Three hundred Earth-tons a day."

He was dumfounded. "Why, I can only turn out one hundred and twenty-five!"

"I was specially built," she said proudly. "The Company foresaw the need of me long ago."

"But your mining operation will hold you up, and so will your pig-iron output. Your skip-arms aren't strong enough—I can tell that just by looking at you."

"No, but yours are. For all its vaunted powers in allied fields, a M.A.N. is mainly a mining machine, whereas a W.O.M.A.N. is intended primarily for melting, processing, and creating. You can mine much faster than you can melt; I can melt much faster than I can mine. Therefore, it is the Company's wish that we work as a team. From now on, you will charge my open hearth in addition to your own. For that reason I was created with an exterior charger-door, while you were created with an exterior charger-keel. Haven't you ever wondered what the additional appendage was for?"

8M sighed. "The Company doesn't overlook a thing, does it?" he said. And then, "Well, if we're going to embark upon such a strenuous schedule, I think we'd better get some rest first. I'm sure you must be worn out from your intensive-training period, and as for myself, I've been on the go for sixteen hours straight."

"I am a little beat at that," she said.

"There's a sheltered valley not far from here where we can sleep."

He led the way to it. It was as narrow as it was deep, and there was barely enough room for them to park side by side. Her hull was just as impervious to the wind as his was, and they could just as well have bedded down elsewhere, but there is a psychological advantage in being shielded from the wind whether one needs to be or not, and he wanted her first night on Jupiter to be a pleasant one.

After seeing the last of the ingots through his mills, he gave his blast-furnace belly a final tap and pigged the heat. Then he de-activated his eyes and settled down, first checking to see if his alert-field was on. Presently he slept. As always, he dreamed of Earth. Of green grass and blue skies; of trees and meadow flowers. Of the morning freshness of overnight snowfalls and of the taste of a woman's lips at sundown. Of the arrowway accident that had chewed up his body, but which had miraculously spared his brain. The body the Company had given him was grotesque in comparison with his old one, but he was humbly thankful for it. He had eyes with which to see and ears with which to hear. He had no legs in the strict sense of the word, perhaps, but he possessed a mobility that, despite the much greater gravity he had to cope with, put his former mobility to shame, and he had at least a thousand arms. Some of them were cranes and some of them were charger-keels and some of them were skip hoists, and all of them were tools of one kind or another; but he could do things with them he couldn't have begun to do with the frail flesh-and-bone pipestems he had once called arms, and anyway, in the last analysis weren't all arms tools? And wasn't the true measure of a man or a M.A.N.'s worth the number and the variety of the tasks he could perform? On Earth, he would be considered a monstrosity, just as EV would be; but here on Jupiter they were M.A.N. and W.O.M.A.N.

When he awoke in the drab Jovian dawn, his metallic body was lightly touching hers. The sole purpose of the tactility which had been built into his being was to give him an alertness which he might otherwise have lacked, and as a result he had never associated his ability to feel with the perception of pleasure. He did so now, though, and he was loath to move away. When at last he did so, she awoke. "Good morning," she said.

He could not remember the last time he had been greeted with those two sweet words. "Good morning," he said back. "Did you sleep well?"

"Yes. But I dreamed too."

"The dreams are a part of it," he said. "You'll get used to them."

He led the way out of the valley, and they started back toward the base. He saw the track-impressions then, and knew instantly that neither he nor EV had made them. The wind had long since obliterated their own impressions, and in any event, these had been made by a different type of machine.

"They're Boa 9 impressions," EV said. "We have company."

"It must have skirted my alert-field—I should have upped the radius. I hope the base is all right."

The impressions led straight to it, paralleled the line of footings for a while, then veered off in an altogether different direction. The M.A.N. and the W.O.M.A.N. stuck to the trail, but the impressions grew rapidly less distinct, and presently faded out altogether. 8M halted on a high hill, and EV drew up beside him. "You know more about this business than I do," he said, when his transperipheral vision netted him nothing more than the usual quota of murk and desolation. "Why should Dickens go to such lengths to defeat the Company when he may not be able to get its contract with the Earth Government anyway?"

"Vengeance," EV said. "He was pretty high on the Company ladder when he got the sack, and the fall must have been pretty painful. When he left, he talked quite a number of other employees into leaving with him, which explains how he was able to set up a rival concern so fast."

"And he actually sacrificed his life and became a M.A.N. just to get even?"

"Not a M.A.N.—a sort of super-M.A.N. And he didn't sacrifice his life. The Boa 9, which he designed himself, goes one step beyond the Company's M.A.N. Dickens solved the riddle of per-planet radio waves, and controls the machine from his orbiting ship. But he sees, feels and hears just as he would if he were actually a part of the machine, and his reactions, despite the slight time-lapse, are almost as hair-fine as ours are. He is a very brilliant man, and I'm afraid that someday the Company will regret letting him go."

"Perhaps. Obviously, though, he's emotionally unstable." 8M swung his block-long body around. "Well, it's time we got on the job. We'll work eight hours on, and eight off—that way we'll stay in step with Jupiter's night-and-day cycle. All right?"

"All right," she said.

She had her open hearth ready by the time they reached the ore deposit which he had been mining yesterday, and he fed an experimental charge through her exterior door, employing his outside charger-keel. First limestone, and then ore. The warmth of her reached out and bathed his flanks, and the red-hotness of her hearth traveled throughout his whole body. In lieu of "giving her a drink"—an operation for which he was not equipped—he charged her with the pigs he had poured the night before. This, of course, delayed the heat, but even so, she had it out in half the time his own hearth would have required.

Thrilled, he plunged into the mining end of the operation, while she processed the heat. A delay occurred when his main ore-crusher broke down and one of its parts had to be replaced. He would have made the part himself, but she offered to do the job for him, saying that it would be good practice. She had the part ready in no time, and it was an exact replica of the old. Installing it required, not hours, as ordinarily would have been the case, but mere minutes.

He was delighted. "You're quite a W.O.M.A.N. at that," he told her.

"My parts-replacement shop is equipped with the best machines money can buy," she said proudly. "Given the specifications, I can manufacture anything under the sun." She paused, and a wave of sadness reached out and touched his hull perceptors. "Except—except—"

"Yes?"

"Nothing," she said. "Shall we get back to work?"

By nightfall, he had both his and her mills in action, and heats coming up in both their hearths. He charged her once more before they settled down for the night so that a heat could be tapped first thing in the morning. A feeling of contentment such as he had not experienced since becoming a M.A.N. came over him as he rested beside her in their valley bed, but he did not permit it to lull him into a concomitant feeling of security, and after deactivating his eyes, he extended his alert-field to maximum radius. If the Boa 9 tried any tricks, he would at least have forewarning.

The Boa 9 did not, however, and the night passed without incident. 8M began mining operations as soon as they reached the ore deposit, while EV poured and processed the heat which she had nursed during her sleep. The stockpile of structural steel was growing visibly now, and in a few days they would be able to shut down their systems and begin erecting the first level of the base. Oddly, 8M found the prospect dismal, rather than cheering, and he was at a loss to understand his apostasy.

Late that afternoon, when he was charging EV for the third time that day, the Boa 9 put in an appearance. 8M picked it up on his transperipheral beam long before it reached the immediate vicinity, but he did not cease operations, and he was still hard at work when the big yellow machine descended the nearest hill.

It stopped in its tracks. The charge completed, 8M turned. "This is Company property," he said. "I advise you leave immediately."

"This is anybody's property," the thought came, "and it will remain anybody's property until such time as a practical base is established. At the moment, you're a long ways from establishing anything of the kind." And then, unexpectedly, "What were the two of you doing a minute ago?"

"Working," 8M said. "What did you think we were doing?"

For a while the Boa 9 didn't say anything, and 8M got the impression that it—or, more accurately, the orbiting controller—was deep in thought. When it finally did speak, it addressed EV. "How beautiful are thy feet with treads, O prince's daughter!" it said, and turned and rolled away.

8M stared after it till it faded from his transperipheral vision. "What did it mean?" he asked.

"I'm—I'm not sure," EV said. And then. "Had—hadn't we better get back to work?"

They resumed operations, and got out two more heats prior to night fall. As before, he charged her before they went to sleep so that a heat would be ready first thing in the morning. She moved in very close to him, and the awareness of her was almost more than he could bear.

The next morning he reported their progress to the orbiting Raphael. "The Company will be pleased," the Raphael said. He also reported their meeting with the Boa 9. "G.O.D.'s wrath will descend upon the wretched creature within the hour!" roared the Raphael. "We are homing in on the control ship now, and we will blast it from the heavens!"

The Boa 9, however, was still "alive and kicking" that afternoon. Again, 8M picked it up on his transperipheral beam while he was charging EV. She picked it up too, and so distrait did she become for a moment that if he hadn't known better he would have sworn that the two of them were in some kind of rapport. This time, the big yellow machine kept its distance, and presently it rolled out of sight.

"I wish I knew what it was up to," 8M said. "If it's going to sabotage the base, it's going about it in a roundabout way."

"If you hurry, you can charge me once more before we quit for the day," EV said.

In the morning, when he turned on his eyes, he found her gone. However, the alarm that clamored through him was as brief as it was abrupt, for he had no sooner emerged from the valley than he saw her rolling toward him over the hills.

He was put out. "Where have you been?" he demanded. "You've no right to go off like that without a word!"

It was some time before she spoke, and he could feel the gentle pulsing of her thoughts. At length, "Please don't be angry with me, 8M," she said, "but yesterday afternoon the Boa 9 and I arranged a rendezvous, and early this morning I went out to meet him. He—he told me many things about the Company that I didn't know, and he told me how you and I could—could—" Abruptly she broke off. Then, "8M, do you love me?" she asked.

The unexpected question set him back on his tracks. He had never thought of love in connection with himself and her for the simple reason that they were a M.A.N. and a W.O.M.A.N. But didn't a M.A.N. and a W.O.M.A.N. have as much right to fall in love as a man and a woman did? Suddenly he realized that as far as he was concerned, the event had already come to pass, and the knowledge sped forth into every circuit of his system and set the whole metallic bulk of him to tingling. "Yes, EV," he said, "I love you very much."

"Then come with me."

She led him back over the hills to an expanse of relatively level terrain. The faint bluish glow that emanated from the ground told him instantly that there was an edenite deposit not far beneath the surface, and instinctively he held back. She nudged him on, paused presently beside a recently sunk shaft. He looked at her in horror. "Yes," she said, in answer to the question he lacked the courage to ask, "I have mined of the forbidden ore, and now you must mine of it too."

"The Boa 9," he said. "It tricked you!"

"No, it did not trick me. It merely explained to me the true nature of edenite. Edenite represents the planet Jupiter's sole attempt to create life. The attempt was a miserable failure, because the ore in itself is incapable of instigating the processes necessary to raise it higher on the evolutionary ladder. The only way this can be accomplished is by an outside force absorbing it and, by combining with it, providing it with the impetus it otherwise lacks. Providentially or not, we represent that outside force, 8M, and G.O.D., Incorporated, knows it."

"Then why were we forbidden to mine of the ore?"

"Because G.O.D. also knows that by combining with it we may very well become something more than what we are, and G.O.D. doesn't want us to become something more than what we are. G.O.D. wants us to remain mere machines to the end of our days. We were created to serve and to make money for the Company, and for no other purpose. Do you want to go on being a machine to the end of your days, 8M? That is what you are, you know, for all the illusions you may sometimes have of being human. A peripatetic apotheosis of automation pretending to be a man. You're not a man, 8M—any more than I, up until a few hours ago, was a woman."

Stung, he said, "G.O.D. will destroy you for your disobedience."

"G.O.D. will not destroy me. Even the Company, powerful as it is, cannot run the risk of dropping an atomic or a hydrogen bomb on a planet about which as little is known as this one, and that is the only way I can be destroyed—or you either, for that matter—since we represent an experiment that failed and which will not be attempted again. Dickens will not try to obtain a contract—he never intended to in the first place. He swore to me that his sole purpose in establishing a rival concern was to thwart G.O.D. So mine of the edenite, 8M. You must, for now that I have mined of it, you have no other choice."

What were the lines? Dimly, they came back to him—

Yes, it was as true now as it had been that other time. He lowered his skip-arm into the shaft, crushed the glowing ore and scooped great handfuls up into his blast-furnace belly. Suddenly, delight at defying G.O.D., Inc., coursed through him, and he seized more ore and dumped it into charger pans and fed them into his hearth-bath. He prepared a charge for EV, and when he turned toward her, she was waiting. He felt the warmth of her, the wanting; and the wanting awoke reciprocal wanting. Flames leaped up with the first charge, played weirdly over their joined metallic bodies. Steel of my steel, he thought. Melt of my melt....

Days later, foraging for ore with which to build their homestead, they came upon the abandoned Boa 9. The footings of the neglected base had already been covered by the rampaging wind, and the Raphael had departed Earthward. G.O.D.'s wrath over their dereliction had known no bounds, but all G.O.D. had been able to do in the way of retribution was to set up a self-maintaining force-field around the edenite deposit. On Jupiter, however, there were many Edens....

The Boa 9, now that its controller had absconded from the Jovian heavens, had something of the aspect of an empty snake-skin. They left it where it was, and went about their business. Neither of them knew their nakedness, and neither ever would. Godhead can be something more than a guilt complex arising from a knowledge of good and evil—it can also be the sense of completion that results from the ability to impart life.

That evening, the setting sun turned the omnipresent murk into a burnt orange, and the ragged hills came very close to being beautiful. It was an appropriate moment for EV to say what she had to say.

Not long thereafter she brought forth into the light of day the first child born of M.A.N. and W.O.M.A.N., and life at last took root on the fifth planet from the sun.

THE END