Free Silent Running by Harlan Thompson

get me that gray book.”
    Taking the book from Huey’s manipulator arm, Lowell quickly leafed through the pages until he came to the section he was looking for. Finally, he came to a section of the book with large color photographs.
    Quickly he read the accompanying text, then rose to pace the room.
    “I never—” He shook his head. “I just cannot figure out what’s wrong.”
    He turned back to his lab desk and expertly prepared another slide from a segment of plant root. He clipped it under the microscope.
    Once again the extreme magnification revealed the fascinating patterns of cellular activity.
    Finally, Lowell pulled away from the microscope. Frowning and perplexed, he picked up the book and again began to read.
    Hours later, his head dropped to his desk. He slept but the problem remained unsolved.
    Lowell slept through the night, with Huey and Dewey standing by, their motors whirring quietly.
    At length, he stirred, then awakened. It took a moment for him to remember, then it all came flooding back.
    Lowell pushed the book he’d been studying the night before aside and rose to face the drones.
    “ ’Morning, boys . . .” He shook the cobwebs from his head. “Huey,” he said, “go to the dome entrance and wait for further instructions.”
    Huey turned to waddle from the room, his feet making that same squeaky noise along the floor.
    “Dewey,” Lowell said, “go to the kitchen and bring me something to eat—anything. And bring it to me in Main Control.”
    Dewey turned to follow Huey.
    Lowell swung around and for the first time in days began to clean himself up.
    At length, clean-shaven and in a fresh suit, he entered Main Control. Going to the radio he turned the volume up. Static again filled the room—the same as yesterday’s, crackly with only the faintest sound of what might have been human voices. It was impossible to tell. It irritated Lowell.
    He walked out of Main Control into Drone Control, just off the big room.
    Huey’s screen showed empty. Lowell sat down, frowning. He’d told him to await orders at Dome One entrance.
    Then suddenly Huey’s image came on his screen.
    It irritated Lowell, but he let it go by, as Dewey came in with his breakfast of a tube of coffee and several cookielike cubes.
    Lowell took the tray and set it on the console, then gingerly tried the coffee. With a grimace he put it down, and turned to the microphone.
    “All right, Huey, you can explain later where you’ve been. Now, I want you to enter the dome and make a slow . . . complete . . . three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turn.”
    Huey’s image on the screen complied.
    “That’s a boy . . . Now hold it . . . stop, right there.”
    Huey obeyed.
    “That’s good, now just . . . now take a sample there.” Lowell paused a moment and said, “Dewey and I are coming to the dome. Wait right there!”
    Before Lowell could turn from the screen, he saw again the desolation of the forest. Trees stood bare-branched and dying. On the ground, two small animals fought for a morsel of food.
    Lowell sprang to his feet.
    “C’mon Dewey,” he said. “Looks like we’re going to have to find something to feed them.”
    He led the way down to the cargo hold and to one of the cars. He put Dewey in, and slid behind the wheel.
    Suddenly, on impulse, and with that same uptight feeling gnawing at him, Lowell jammed the throttle to the floorboard. They raced through the cargo hold and to the tunnel entrance.
    With a wild screeching of tires, they shot into it, and there stood Huey!
    “Huey!” Lowell slammed on his brakes, but it was too late.
    The car plowed into the little bronze-colored drone, knocking the cap off his manipulator, and sending him tumbling backward to the floor.
    Crackling fragments flew in every direction. His body continued to whir crazily.
    “Huey!” Lowell leaped from his car. “I thought I told you to stay in the forest.”
    Huey gave a feeble bleep.
    Lowell tenderly gathered the broken fragments of