Robot

Epilogue

     The next day the lab was tidied up and the robot's dust remains stored for examination.
Tracy rang her father in Washington and explained what happened. He cut short his visit there, and returned that night.

The following afternoon he visited Tracy in her office in the Mars Research Unit.
"We found out what happened," he said. "Ed Weisman, John Harris and I worked on the computer most of last night and this morning. There was a subroutine cleverly hidden in the computer's programming. It was designed to execute when we started working on robotics."

"Who put it there?" Tracy asked.

"A former employee, name of James Spicer. He was a computer programmer. We fired him about six months ago when he was discovered leaking information to outside companies. He must have known he was going to get caught, so he committed this little piece of sabotage before he left. The robot was meant to kill as many people as it could before we found some way to destroy it."

"He must have been deranged. Are you going to find him and prosecute him for attempted murder?"

"He's already paid the penalty. He died in a car accident in Perth two months ago. He was well known to the police for a few shady deals."

"The man was a genius. What a waste."

"We extracted his plans for the robot from the programming, so our new robotics unit can have a look at them and adapt them to suit our own applications later down the track. You did well, Tracy. You saved the day, but you were damn lucky that robot didn't kill you."

"I know, I know. I'm still a bit shaky every time I think about that thing with its laser finger pointing at me."

"Well things should be back to normal in a couple of days. Your lab is being repaired and System A will be back on line tomorrow. We dismantled the explosive device in molecular unit, so it's safe to use it, and Andrew Lewis is happily back working on his industrial robot. By the way, what are you and Laurence working on in your nano tech lab after hours?"

"I'll let you know, Dad, when I get some results."

"Okay, just as long as it isn't anything to do with robots."

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For those of you who follow the "Silver Star" series this story chronologically goes after "Time Shift" and before "Top Secret".