Robot Trouble Read Free Page A

Norman’s line of vision.
    â€œWelcome,” repeated the butler-bot.
    â€œArf!” yipped Rin Tin Stainless Steel. Heading straight for Wendy, the canine robot began leaping around her feet. “Arf! Arf!”
    â€œMust have been a wrong number,” said Norman, slamming the door shut.
    â€œWe gotta work on his eyesight,” muttered Roger.
    â€œRinty, get off me!” cried Wendy, batting at the mechanical dog.
    â€œArf! Arf! I love you, Wendy. Will you marry me?”
    â€œThis is your work, Roger!” yelled the Wonderchild indignantly. “I’d recognize your warped sense of humor anywhere. Get this mechanical mutt off me!”
    â€œAnd break his little electronic heart?” cried Roger, who was convulsed with laughter.
    â€œThen catch!” Snatching up the yapping robot, Wendy flung it across the room.
    â€œCripes!” yelled Roger. Leaping to his feet, he snatched Rinty out of the air just before the little robot would have crashed into the wall.
    â€œWatch it, Wendy!” said Hap. “You’ll scramble his circuits!”
    â€œI couldn’t possibly scramble them more than Roger has already,” snapped the Wonderchild.
    As for Rinty, the instant Roger grabbed the robot, its gas chromatograph—an electronic nose of sorts—went into action. Sorting out the molecules that marked Roger’s chemically distinctive odor, it checked their pattern against its memory banks. Within microseconds it found a match and “recognized” Roger.
    Immediately a new program took over.
    â€œTrouble!” yapped the robot. “Big trouble. Come quick!”
    Rachel Phillips was sitting under a small scrub tree on the east side of Anza-bora Island. The South Pacific stretched vast and seemingly endless before her. She was not looking at the water, however, but at the shiny metal tube she held in her hands.
    â€œLike this?” she asked, placing her fingers delicately on the holes that lined the tube.
    â€œNo, no, no!” snapped Dr. Leonard Weiskopf, the little man sitting next to her. “Hold it like you mean business. You’re not going to break it!”
    Rachel brushed a strand of her fiery red hair away from her damp forehead.
    â€œCome, come, Rachel,” said Dr. Weiskopf, speaking more gently now. “Pay attention to the business at hand!”
    The business at hand was learning to use a pennywhistle, the cheap tin instrument Dr. Weiskopf was able to play with amazing skill and beauty. When Rachel had first approached the balding scientist about teaching her, he had been delighted at the prospect. Unfortunately, he was not always as patient as Rachel would have liked.
    â€œLet me show you again,” he said, raising his own whistle to his lips. His hands, strangely large for such a small man, almost hid the tiny instrument.
    Rachel wondered how he could make those sausage-like fingers move so swiftly over the whistle’s holes; they became a near blur whenever he hurtled through some fast-paced piece of classical musical. Now, however, he piped a slower tune, closing his eyes and swaying gently with the music. A stray breeze wafting in from the ocean stirred the fringe of gray hair that circled his shiny head.
    He seemed so lost in what he was playing that Rachel wondered if he had forgotten she was there. How peaceful he looks, she thought, remembering the impatient tones that had marked his voice just moments earlier. “What is it about music that can calm someone so?”
    â€œI beg your pardon?” said Dr. Weiskopf, lowering the pennywhistle.
    Rachel blushed; she hadn’t intended to speak aloud. “I…I was just noticing how content you seemed while you were playing that tune. I wondered what it was about music that calmed people like that.”
    â€œâ€˜Music hath charms to soothe the savage beast’?” asked Dr. Weiskopf.
    â€œBreast,” corrected Rachel.
    â€œI beg your