"He's got it, but can he push it through to them? It's my idea that he can't, that he's at the wrong angle to put much power in his signal. There's a lot of steel between him and the robots and that's weakening his beam."
"Maybe you've got something," said Jordan. "I'll burn the emergency stuff out. If it doesn't work we won't need it again anyway." He flipped the dials until the lights above them were blazing fiercely.
"Energized geepees are requested to lend assistance. This is an emergency. Place the tank in the ship. At once. At once."
Geepees were not designed to sift contradictory commands at nearly the same level of urgency. Their reasoning ability was feeble but the mechanism that enabled them to think at all was complicated. In one respect they resembled humans: borderline decisions were difficult. A ship in distress—an asteroid in danger. Both called for the robot to destroy itself if necessary. It seemed as if that was all that would be accomplished.
"More power," whispered Docchi.
"There ain't more," answered Jordan, but somehow he coaxed an extra trickle out of the reserves.
Marionettes. But they were always that, puppets on invisible wires. And now this string led toward one action. Another, intrinsically more important but suddenly less powerful, pulled for something else. Circuits burned in electronic brains. Microrays fluttered under the stress. They didn't know. They just didn't know.
But there had to be a choice.
Stiffly the geepees moved in and grasped the tank. The quality of their decision was strained. They were pushing themselves more than the tank but inch by inch the huge twisted structure rolled up the ramp.
"When it's completely on, raise the ramp." Docchi wasn't aware that he could hardly be heard.