INSTALLMENT PLAN
Clifford D. Simak
I
THE MISHAP came at dusk, as the last floater was settling down above the cargo dump, the eight small motors flickering bluely in the twilight. One instant it was floating level, a thousand feet above the ground, descending gently, with its cargo stacked upon it and the riding robots perched atop the cargo. The next instant it tilted as first one motor failed and then a second one. The load of cargo spilled and the riding robots with it.
The floater, unbalanced, became a screaming wheel, spinning crazily, that whipped in a tightening, raging spiral down upon the base.
Steve Sheridan tumbled from the pile of crates stacked outside his tent. A hundred yards away, the cargo hit with a thundering crash that could be heard and felt above the screaming of the floater. The crates and boxes came apart and the crushed and twisted merchandise spread into a broken mound.
Sheridan dived for the open tent flaps and, as he did, the floater hit, slicing into the radio shack, which had been set up less than an hour before. It tore a massive hole into the ground, half burying itself, throwing up a barrage of sand and gravel that bulleted across the area, drumming like a storm of sleet against the tent.
A pebble grazed Sheridan’s forehead and he felt the blast of sand against his cheek. Then he was inside the tent and scrambling for the transmog chest that stood beside the desk.
“Hezekiah!” he bawled. “Hezekiah, where are you!”
He fumbled his ring of keys and found the right one and got it in the lock. He twisted and the lid of the chest snapped open.
Outside, he could hear the pounding of running robot feet.
He thrust back the cover of the chest and began lifting out the compartments in which the transmogs were racked.
“Hezekiah!” he shouted.
For Hezekiah was the one who knew where all the transmogs were; he could lay his hands upon any of them that might be needed without having to hunt for it.
Behind Sheridan, the canvas rustled and Hezekiah came in with a rush. He brushed Sheridan to one side.
“Here, let me, sir,” he said.
“We’ll need some roboticists,” said Sheridan. “Those boys must be smashed up fairly bad.”
“Here they are. You better handle them, sir. You do it better than any one of us.”
Sheridan took the thee transmogs and dropped them in the pocket of his jacket.
“I’m sorry there are no more, sir,” Hezekiah said. “That is all we have.”
“These will have to do,” said Sheridan. “How about the radio shack? Was anyone in there?”
“I understand that it was quite empty. Silas had just stepped out of it. He was very lucky, sir.”
“Yes, indeed,” agreed Sheridan.
He ducked out of the tent and ran toward the mound of broken crates and boxes. Robots were swarming over it, digging frantically. As he ran, he saw them stoop and lift free a mass of tangled metal. They hauled it from the pile and carried it out and laid it on the ground and stood there looking at it.
Sheridan came up to the group that stood around the mass of metal.
“Abe,” he panted, “did you get out both of them?”
Abraham turned around. “Not yet, Steve. Max is still in there.”
Sheridan pushed his way through the crowd and dropped on his knees beside the mangled robot. The midsection, he saw, was so deeply dented that the front almost touched the back. The legs were limp and the arms were canted and locked at a crazy angle. The head was twisted and the crystal eyes were vacant.
“Lem,” he whispered. “Lemuel, can you hear me?”
“No, he can’t,” said Abraham. “He’s really busted up.”
“I have roboticists in my pocket.” Sheridan got to his feet “Three of them. Who wants a go at it? It’ll have to be fast work.”
“Count me in,” Abraham said, “and Ebenezer there and…”
“Me, too,” volunteered Joshua.
“We’ll need tools,” said Abraham. “We can’t do a thing unless we have some tools.”
“Here are the tools,” Hezekiah called out, coming on the trot. “I knew you would need them.”
“And light,” said Joshua. “It’s getting pretty dark, and from the looks of it, we’ll be tinkering with his brain.”
“We’ll have to get him up someplace,” declared Abraham, “so we can work on him. We can’t with him lying on the ground.”
“You can use the conference table,” Sheridan suggested. “Hey, some of you guys,” yelled Abraham, “get Lem over there on the conference table.”
“We’re digging here for Max,” Gideon yelled back. “Do it yourself.”
“We can’t,” bawled Abraham. “Steve is fixing to get our transmogs changed…”
“Sit down,” ordered Sheridan. “I can’t reach you standing up. And has someone got a light?”
“I have one, sir,” said Hezekiah, at his elbow. He held out a flash.
“Turn it on those guys so I can get the transmogs in.”
Three robots came stamping over and picked up the damaged Lemuel. They lugged him off toward the conference table.
In the light of the flash, Sheridan got out his keys, shuffled swiftly through them and found the one he wanted.
“Hold that light steady. I can’t do this in the dark.”
“Once you did,” said Ebenezer. “Don’t you remember, Steve? Out on Galanova. Except you couldn’t see the labels and you got a missionary one into Ulysses when you thought you had a woodsman and he started preaching. Boy, was that a night!”
“Shut up,” said Sheridan, “and hold still. How do you expect me to get these into you if you keep wiggling?”
He opened the almost invisible plate in the back of Ebenezer’s skull and slid it quickly down, reached inside and found the spacehand transmog. With a quick twist, he jerked it out and dropped it in his pocket, then popped in the roboticist transmog, clicked it into place and drove it home. Then he shoved up the brain plate and heard it lock with a tiny click.
Swiftly he moved along. He had switched the transmogs in the other two almost as soon as Ebenezer had regained his feet and picked up the kit of tools.
“Come on, men,” said Ebenezer. “We have work to do on Lem.”
The three went striding off.
Sheridan looked around. Hezekiah and his light had disappeared, galloping off somewhere, more than likely, to see to something else.
The robots still were digging into the heap of merchandise. He ran around the pile to help them. He began pulling stuff from the pile and throwing it aside.
Beside him, Gideon asked: “What did you run into, Steve?”
“Huh?”
“Your face is bloody.”
Sheridan put up his hand. His face was wet and sticky. “A piece of gravel must have hit me.”
“Better have Hezekiah fix it.”
“After Max is out,” said Sheridan, going back to work.
They found Maximilian fifteen minutes later, at the bottom of the heap. His body was a total wreck, but be still could talk.
“It sure took you guys long enough,” he said.
“Ah, dry up,” Reuben said. “I think you engineered this so you could get a new body.”
They hauled him out and skidded him along the ground.
Bits of broken arms and legs kept dropping off him. They plunked him on the ground and ran toward the radio shack.
Maximilian squalled after them: “Hey, come back! You can’t just dump me here!”
Sheridan squatted down beside him. “Take it easy; Max. The floater hit the radio shack and there’s trouble over there.”
“Lemuel? How is Lemuel?”
“Not too good. The boys are working on him.”
“I don’t know what happened, Steve. We were going all right and all at once the floater bucked us off.”
“Two of the motors failed,” said Sheridan. “Just why, we’ll probably never know, now that the floater’s smashed. You sure you feel all right?”
“Positive. But don’t let the fellows fool around. It would be just like them to hold out on a body. Just for laughs. Don’t let them.”
“You’ll have one as soon as we can manage. I imagine Hezekiah is out running down spare bodies.”
“It does beat all,” said Maximilian. “Here we had all the cargo down – a billion dollars’ worth of cargo and we hadn’t broken -”
“That’s the way it is, Max. You can’t beat the averages.”
Maximilian chuckled. “You human guys,” he said. “You’ always figure averages and have hunches and…”
Gideon came running out of the darkness. “Steve, we got to get those floater motors stopped. They’re running wild. One of them might blow.”
“But I thought you fellows -”
“Steve, it’s more than a spacehand job. It needs a nuclear technician.”
“Come with me.”
“Hey!” yelled Maximilian.
“I’ll be back,” said Sheridan.
At the tent, there was no sign of Hezekiah. Sheridan dug wildly through the transmog chest. He finally located a nuclear technician transmog.