Astounding Science Fiction (UK Edition) — page 26: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

24 all reason! That Willie should have dared— He was looking deep into the eye now, and he could see—Wiillie! The little robot was sitting in the Chamber of Public Safety with his metal fingers wrapped around the teleo-electronic impulse-sending apparatus. Gleaming wires descended from Willie’s brain box to the apparatus, and behind him loomed the featureless gray walls of the chamber. But it seemed almost as though Monitor 236 could have stretched out his hand, and touched Willie. “Willie!” *“Master!” There was no mistaking the look in Willie’s eyes. He was welcoming his maker home. He seemed now almost to be running toward his maker across the Central Square. “Willie!” “Master!” “Willie!” “Master!” Suddenly the great, volitionless robot blinked, swung about on its ponderous heels, and went clumping across the Central Square to where the Half Body stood brooding in the blueness, with towered eyes that seemed to command the city’s outermost domes and the everlasting cliff wall beyond. Instinctively Monitor 236 knew that the robot was pointing at an inscription at the base of the statue. But he couldn’t quite make out the inscription from where he was standing. His temples were bursting and he had to move up very close to the pedestal, and even then he had to squint and strain. For an instant he seemed to be staring at the pro- jecting metal letters through a shimmering veil behind which great pylons towered and as though his eyes had lost their focusing power and were burning holes through the back of his head. Then, quite suddenly, the shimmering subsided and the veil was gone. The inscription read: THE MAN WHO CONQUERED TIME | MONITOR 236 BORN 2857 DISAPPEARED IN TIME 2887 Willie, the thinking robot, sat in the Chamber of Public Safety, his metal legs dangling, and stared down through the eye of a volitionless robot at his maker’s white ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION face. Stared down into the great Central Square and heaved a sigh of relief. He’d have a lot of explaining to do, but everything was going to be all right now. The master was getting his memory back. He had recognized that bust of himself which had been erected in his honor down in the Central Square, and a glorious change had taken place in him. The master’s face had changed unmistak- ably. It was no longer the face of a bar- barian but that of a Monitor. Gone was the tightness about the lips of his master, and the savage intensity which had smoldered in his stare. He, Willie, hadn’t known that traveling in time would warp his maker’s mind. Amnesia—and the master had had it bad. Willie did know about amnesia, having had mearly a million years to mull over the metalfilm psychiatric data in the Chamber of Public Safety. He hadn’t known that the master weuld have it when he returned. He had only known that the master would return, and that he, Willie, must remain a faithful keeper of the flame. There is no limit to a robot’s patience. Kven when the time cylinder had reap- peared, and the rude descendants of his maker’s people had accepted him as one of themselves he, Willie, had kept the moto- ways moving, the great, volitionless robots clumping to and fro on their appointed tasks. In his cold robot’s mind’s eye, Willie went back across wide wastes of years. He saw again his maker climbing into the time cylinder, brooking no opposition. He saw Monitors 235 and 237 clamping down the lid of the cylinder over the master’s calm, determined face, skeptical to the last, ex- changing glances which said as plain as words: “Time travels involves too many im- ponderables. The odds against him are a million to one.” . Well, the master had invented a thinking robot,-so why not a cylinder that could travel far into the future? Monitors 235 and 237 had scoffed at Willie, too. But he, Willie, had survived for a million years—had out- ' lasted all the Monitors and all the soft- spoken, civilized people. He had survived and so had his memories. Time could not blur them, and now, in his cold mind’s eye, he could see the cylinder comiclooks (©)