Double Contact by James White Page B

confusion and impatience characteristic of a mind that had been expecting a different question.
    â€œRobotics isn’t my specialty,” Murchison went on, “but isn’t it usual for one to be mechanically more functional? I mean, shouldn’t it basically be a box with loco-motor appendages simpler and more versatile than the six limbs we are seeing here; with a variety of specialized manipulators sprouting out of the body without regard to aesthetic balance; and with all-around visual sensors instead of just two in the head section? If this thing had been normally organic we would classify it as a CHLI. Rather than adopting a functional robotic shape, it seems clear that this body configuration is decidedly organimorphic. My question is, why would a nonorganic intelligence copy itself on a CHLI?”
    â€œSorry, ma’am,” the captain replied, looking and feeling apologetic. “I have no answers, just a wild guess.”
    Murchison nodded and said, “Which is?”
    The captain hesitated, then said, “This isn’t my field, either. But think about the evolution of an organic life-form as opposed to that of an intelligent machine. Ignoring the religious perspective, the first begins as an accidental grouping of simple, cellular forms which takes several millions of years of environmental adaptation with other competing species to become the dominant intelligence. The second doesn’t do anything like that because, no matter how long it is given, a simple tool like a monkey wrench can never evolve through the intermediate stage of a lawn mower to become a superintelligent computer, at least, not without outside help. That simple tool has to be created by someone in the first place, and at some later stage the creator has to provide the machine with self-awareness and intelligence. Only then would there be the possibility of further self-evolution.
    â€œI’m speculating, of course,” the captain went on, “but a further possibility is that the beings who first bestowed on their machines the gift of self-aware, intelligent life are a permanent part of their racial memory—or inherited design—and that they were made, or in gratitude made the choice to remain, in their CHLI creators’ image.”
    â€œIn your opinion, friend Fletcher,” Prilicla asked, “would this entity have been capable of disabling a starship?”
    â€œNo, Doctor,” the captain replied firmly. “At least, not directly. Although composed of metal with plastic-insulated circuitry, the appendages were designed for precise and delicate work rather than hard labor or fighting, although there would have been nothing to stop it using those digits, as we DBDGs have been known to do, to operate a variety of destructive weapons. I’ll be looking for anything like that when I’m searching the ship. All the evidence points to our robot friend being dead on arrival, and the type of heat and blast injuries it sustained were too unfocused to be caused by a Corps hand-weapon.
    â€œAnd now,” it went on, looking at the opened seams in the hull plating of the ship all around them, “I have to examine the body of a larger, metal cadaver, one that is more familiar to me.”
    Prilicla used his antigravity belt to move outside and fly forward to the control deck while Murchison stayed with the captain, both to satisfy its curiosity and to help move aside troublesome debris. There was minimal risk because both of them were experienced in negotiating ship wreckage, and he was pleased that neither their voices in his headset nor their feelings indicated that they were taking risks.
    When they rejoined him, the two crescents of facial fur above the captain’s eyes, and its emotional radiation, were indicating extreme puzzlement.
    â€œI don’t understand this,” it said, gesturing aft. “Discounting the effects of atmospheric heating and buffeting on the