Read Online Eyes of the Killer Robot by John Bellairs - Free Book Online Page B

In the evenings, they usually dropped by the professor's house to see how he was doing with the robot. It was funny to watch him pretending to be a handyman: he would dress in old jeans and a red flannel shirt, and he would take measurements and talk about screw eyes and wing bolts, but it was pretty obvious that he didn't have the faintest idea of what he was doing. Slowly the robot got put together, and the professor's fingers got covered with Band-Aids. One day, about a week after the trip to New Hampshire, he called up Johnny and Fergie and told them that the robot was all assembled, except for the glass eyes. He wanted them to come down and see the eyes put in, and they would have a modest little celebration, with chocolate cake and champagne. Grampa and Gramma Dixon were invited too, and they said that they would come. Grampa was very interested in seeing the robot, and also a little bit scared—he remembered the way he had reacted when he first saw the robot, fifty years before.
    At nine o'clock that evening, everybody was down in the basement workshop, munching homemade fudge cake and sipping cheap New York State champagne. In the middle of the room stood the robot. It was mounted on its metal platform, and it looked very odd indeed: the outside was sculpted to look like a baseball player in uniform, and the pinstripes of the player's shirt and pants were painted red. On the head was a metal baseball cap with a large S (for Spiders) stamped on the front, and under the creature's nose was a curling metal mustache. One arm hung limp, but the other—the throwing arm—was cocked back, ready to fire. The empty eyes seemed to stare unpleasantly at the people who milled about, sizing the robot up.
    "It's certainly an amazing gizmo," said the professor, waving his fork at the robot. "And what is most amazing is this: I can't for the life of me figure out how old Sloane made it work! All the gears and things inside it are in their proper place, but the motor's missing. There isn't even any place—as far as I can see—where the silly motor was mounted! And yet, something made it run. Didn't he demonstrate the thing for your team, Henry?"
    "That's right, Rod," said Grampa, nodding. "The darned whatchamajigger threw like Cy Young. It was like shootin' a baseball out of a cannon! But when we asked Sloane what made the thing go, he laughed an' said that the power source was a secret."
    The professor made a puckery face. "It's certainly a well-kept secret," he said dryly. "I suppose there must have been an electric motor inside the thing, and then later he managed to wipe out all traces of it. Weird, eh?" With a loud harrumph, the professor put his champagne glass down and went over to his workbench. There lay the spectacle case that held the two glass eyes. Silence fell, and everyone who was standing near the robot stepped back a pace or two.
    "Now, then," said the professor with a nervous cough. He moved toward the robot, stood up on tiptoe, and took a tube of rubber cement from his shirt pocket. After putting just a little dab of cement in each socket, he took the eyes out of their holder and pressed them into place. Then he stepped back, and the people who were watching applauded. It was faint, polite applause, because everybody was nervous. They all expected something strange to happen when the eyes were put in. The robot stared blankly ahead, but that was all. He did not even look terribly real, the way wax figurines sometimes do.
    "So there!" said the professor as he wiped his gluey fingers on a cloth. "I'm disappointed in a way—I almost thought old Ziggy there would step down off his pedestal and have a drink with us."
    Everybody laughed, and immediately the party got a great deal more relaxed. Johnny and Fergie went over into a corner and started playing a pinball machine, and the three older people went upstairs to the living room, so they could sit and talk. After a half-dozen games, the two boys