“None at all?”
“No, it was the same as turning them all off. It occurred to me they might be interfering with each other. I tried gradually stepping up the power on one of the sets, and turning down the others. Nothing noticeable happened. I had them set to create desire for sleep, and I was sure I’d notice that. But nothing happened. While I was mulling this over, there was a buzz from the communicator. I snapped it on, and the voice of one of the technicians snarled, “What kind of gas did you use on our people?”
“I was stupefied,” said Morrissey. “I didn’t even realize what he was talking about. ‘Why,’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’
” ‘You know damned well what I mean.’
” ‘No, I don’t.'” Then all of a sudden I did know. I’d been so stupefied by the tranquilizer that I’d done a clumsy job, and they’d sensed it. But I kept my mouth shut, and he said angrily, ” ‘What did you use?’
“I said, ‘Can we help it if we’ve had so much trouble they were sorry for us?’
” ‘Oh, they were, were they? Suppose you tell me these troubles, while I’m out of range of your gas or whatever it is. Go on. Let’s hear it.’
“Well,” said Morrissey, “that gave me a chill. If I couldn’t convince him, there was no telling what might happen. And he didn’t sound very easy to convince. I could only see one possible way out. It seemed to me that there had to be some effect from these three circuits. Certainly, they weren’t doing anything here. Could they, then, be producing an effect somewhere else? It was worth a try. I started telling him all the trouble we’d had—and meanwhile I varied the current to the three linked sets, and listened for some response.
“I told him all about how the accident happened, how the gravitic field distorted and held the circuit breaker shut till a section of coil burned out and vaporized, and how the next distortions knocked half the storeroom, and the spare gravitor wire, out through the hull. Then I told him what a desolate part of space it happened in.
” ‘Tough,’ he said.
“It was obvious I hadn’t got through yet. Next, I told him how we jury-rigged the main gravitor, using wire from the tender’s gravitor. I told him about all the trouble we had, from then till we got to this planet. I told him how the gravitor had knocked out the ship’s communicator, so we had to use the one in the tender, and we couldn’t get any response with that. I told him how we rewound the tender’s gravitor, came down, and, at the last minute, it malfunctioned, and we missed the spaceport and smashed down in the forest.
“About this time, he said it was too bad we hadn’t just fallen into a sun and got it over with quick. I kept readjusting the circuit. I told how Cassetti risked his life to try and fix the tender’s gravitor, and how Matthis and Warner tried to save Cassetti, and all three were all but hashed when we hit. I described the trouble we had when the gray cats tried to get us, and when the bats got in here, and the giant thing with the big head, long snout, and battering-ram tail. He said he was getting bored, and hurry it up. All the time, I kept varying the current. In my mind, I had a picture of the want-generator sweeping the surface of the planet, the field moving from place to place as I readjusted the controls. I had an idea how this might work, but was beginning to wonder if this wasn’t just wishful thinking.
“Meanwhile, I was telling how you and Hammell trekked all the way to the City, and there wasn’t a repair facility there any more. How you came back and the cultivator almost got you.
” ‘And then,'” I said, ‘they jumped out of the way of the cultivator, and a big patch of smother brush unfolded its leaves—’
“He interrupted. ‘Shorten up this tiresome tale, will you? I couldn’t care less if they fell into a gangbat nest.’
” ‘Well,’ I said, giving it up, ‘that’s about it, anyway. They stumbled out of there, came back to the ship along that path the swarm of bugs had made—”
” ‘Say,’ he said, ‘that is too bad, isn’t it? They had to come back on a bug trail, because there was no other way.’
“I couldn’t figure out if this was sarcasm,” said Morrissey, “or sympathy. I sat there holding my breath. I didn’t dare change the setting.
” ‘That is something,’ he said, a funny catch in his voice. ‘All that trouble, and now when they try to come back, they’ve got to come back on a bug trail. No wonder the guys wanted to help! Buddy, we’re all people. We’ve got to stick together. Why, I’d give you the shirt right off my back, now I see what you’ve been through. I never wanted to help anyone so much in my life. If I can get away, I’ll be out there tomorrow, early. I want to help. I’ll—’
“He went on like this so it embarrassed me. I started juggling the current to the different circuits, trying to cut it down gradually all around without changing the relationship too much. I’d figured out that it was the relative power to the three circuits that probably changed the focus, while the higher the overall power, the greater the effect.”
Roberts said eagerly, “Could you check that, too?”
“When I got it cut down far enough, he stopped babbling, and when I cut it down further yet, he finally just sounded sympathetic. I told him we’d gladly trade for the goods we’d gotten, and I said how grateful we were for their help and sympathy, and we’d cheerfully pay for the help, but he wouldn’t even think of it. I was in a sweat by the time I got through talking to him.”
“Then,” said Roberts, “we can use the thing from a distance.”
“The only trouble is, we don’t know what it’s aimed at. We only know the right setting to hit the technicians. And once they should move, we’d lose them.”
“Never mind that. They left one of their skimmers for us. Hammell and I can go up in it—one of us can keep a lookout for flying pests, and the other can guide it. It has its own communicator. We can go to different places, and you can try different settings. When we feel the effect, we’ll say a few words to let you know where we are. When we have enough of the settings plotted on a rough map, we should start to understand how to set the device to aim it anywhere.”
Morrissey beamed. “And then we can go to work on the city.”
* * *
They spent the next few days making a map, and plotting the settings that induced wants when they hovered close to any given territory. The city, they charted at night, moving low over the darkened buildings, lit from below by the heavily shielded streetlights. Meanwhile, Morrissey developed a method for focusing the device more accurately, so as to concentrate the effect or spread it over a wide region. Then they decided that they were ready to go to work in earnest.
“You can see,” said Roberts, studying the completed chart, “that we can hit any or all of the city with one exception. The computer itself is apparently unreachable.”
“Stands to reason,” said Hammell. “Desires are emotional. The closest thing that computer has to an emotion is its set of built-in directives.”
“So,” said Roberts, “we have to work through the people, not the computer. Now, the technicians left the City for exactly the same reasons that the computer has been driven to supplying only bare necessities. The people are destructive, and uncooperative. What we have to do is to correct that, right?”
“Right,” said Hammell.
Morrissey took out a sheet of paper with a list of settings. He read: “Desire for achievement, desire to excel, desire to cooperate, desire to make friends, desire to learn, desire to work hard, desire to help others. Once we get started, that computer will have the easiest time it’s had since it was made.”
“Then,” said Roberts, “it ought to be possible for the technicians to go back. And once we get the technicians back there, and the populace cooperating, then there should be no trouble getting the tools made to repair the ship.”
“Q.E.D.,” said Hammell cheerfully.
“When shall we start?” said Morrissey.
Roberts said briskly. “Right now. Why not set the want-generator on ‘desire for achievement,’ and give the whole city a good jolt for the rest of the day?”
Hammell nodded. “They certainly could use it.”