She would stir, shrieking in her first lungful of air, looking about with blank mindless eyes. And Joe would come and carry her home. And he would feed her, care for her, show her how to walkit wouldnt take long, an adult body would learn those things very fast.
In a few weeks she would even be talking, be an individual, a soul. Did you ever think, Edward Anglesey, in the days when you also
walked, that your wife would be a gray four-legged monster?
Never mind that. The important thing was to get others of his kind down here, female and male. The stations niggling little plan would have him wait two more Earth years, and then send him only another dummy like himself, a contemptible human mind looking through eyes which belonged rightfully to a Jovian. It was not to be tolerated!
If he werent so tired.
Joe sat up. Sleep drained from him as the realization entered. He wasnt tired, not to speak of. Anglesey was. Anglesey, the human side of him, who for months had slept only in cat naps, whose rest had lately been interrupted by Corneliusit was the human body which drooped, gave up, and sent wave after soft wave of sleep down the psibeam to Joe.
Somatic tension traveled skyward; Anglesey jerked awake.
He swore. As he sat there beneath the helmet, the vividness of Jupiter faded with his scattering concentration, as if it grew transparent; the steel prison which was his laboratory strengthened behind it. He was losing contact. Rapidly, with the skifi of experience, he brought himself back into phase with the neural currents of the other brain. He willed sleepiness on Joe, exactly as a man wills it on himself.
And, like any other insomniac, he failed. The Joe body was too hungry. It got up and walked across the compound toward its shack.
The K tube went wild and blew itself out.
The night before the ships left, Viken and Cornelius sat up late.
It was not truly a night, of course. In twelve hours the tiny moon was hurled clear around Jupiter, from darkness back to darkness, and there might well be a pallid little sun over its crags when the clocks said witches were abroad in Greenwich. But most of the personnel were asleep at this hour.
Viken scowled. I dont like it, he said. Too sudden a change of plans. Too big a gamble.
You are only riskinghow many?three male and a dozen female pseudos, Cornelius replied.
And fifteen J ships. All we have. If Angleseys notion doesnt work, it will be months, a year or more, till we can have others built and resume aerial survey.
But if it does work, said Cornelius, you wont need any I ships, except to carry down more pseudos. You will be too busy evaluating data from the surface to piddle around in the upper atmosphere.
Of course. But we never expected it so soon. We were going to bring more esmen out here, to operate some more pseudos
But they arent needed, said Cornelius. He struck a cigar to life and took a long pull on it, while his mind sought carefully for words. Not for a while, anyhow. Joe has reached a point where, given help, he can leap several thousand years of historyhe may even have a radio of sorts operating in the fairly near future, which would eliminate the necessity of much of your esping. But without help, hell just have to mark time. And its stupid to make a highly trained human esman perform manual labor, which is all that the other pseudos are needed for at this moment. Once the Jovian settlement is well established, certainly, then you can send down more puppets.
The question is, though, persisted Viken, can Anglesey himself educate all those pseudos at once? Theyll be helpless as infants for days. It will be weeks before they really start thinking and acting for themselves. Can Joe take care of them meanwhile?
He has food and fuel stored for months ahead, said Cornelius. As for what Joes capabilities arewell, hm-m-m, we just have to take Angleseys judgment. He has the only inside information.