It was getting a bit chilly, it always gets chilly at night, the robots don’t really care too much about the heat and cold unlike us humans.  So, I flipped my collar up a bit and stuck my hands in my pockets. I figured I could walk a little bit faster too.

You know walking towards the rocket field on the robot planet, reminds me of walking to the little schoolhouse I used to walk to Texas.  That was back before the depression.  I hope I can help the robots as well as FDR has helped America…gee, he’s just about the best thing since my Ma’s apple pie.  I love apple pie.

Boy, was it getting dark, but I knew I had to get that power source, after all Dr. Webster and I had gone through to get it.  As it got dark near the rocket field I remembered a childhood friend of mine Victor Swiff, he had decided one day he was going to see if he could go a whole day like a blind person, he’d do his normal routine but without the ability to see! When he got up that morning he tied a blindfold as tight as he could and started to walk outside his house to round up the goats, but as he walked out he missed stepped on his porch and went tumbling off and then the wildest thing happened he fell face first into a pile of rusty old and half-chewed cans and both his eyes were poked out! So now Vick Swiff really is blind! Life can pull some funny tricks on you.

I started walking to the robot space field where I’d left the Explorer to be maintenanced by rocket-mechanic robots.  As I walked under the clear sky of the invisible robot planet, the planet’s automated atmospheric controls cooled the air and dimmed the artificial lighting to prepare for “night-mode”.  Gosh, this always reminded me of the dusk of my far away Texas.  Which is sort of funny because Texas is about as different from a robot planet as a cow is to a bull.  Of course, cows and bulls are not that different really, maybe it’s more like a cow is to a kangaroo! I wonder if they’ve ever had robot kangaroos? Well, I could think about later, right now I had to get that green energy tube!

Boy, was it great to back on the Robot planet, I mean not as great as being back on Earth, or at the newspaper office brewing up coffee for Molly, or washing down the hogs with my Ma back in good ole Texas, but after what Dr. Webster and I had been through it was a real thrill seeing that invisible planet rush at me in the cockpit of the Explorer. It’s funny, I shouldn’t be able to see the Robot planet since it’s shielded and hidden by supermachines created by the late, great Cerebretron, but since my brain is like a mini-cerebretron, it, that is, my brain can “see” the Robot planet! Wowzers, sometimes I out think myself! Anyway, we rushed Dr. Webster to the robot infirmery and Dr. Zorokof met us up there, she was more wound up than a horse with a burr under it’s saddle, I guess that’s because she loves the doc, gosh, I wonder if they want to get married if I’ll have to marry them?  Being the king of the robots and all, but I’m not their king, they’re americans and americans don’t have kings! Well, Dr. Webster is an american. Anyway, I was about to go to my quarters and get some rest, when I remembered that we’d left the green power tube back on the ship and as I remembered that a chill went up my spine!!!

With Augie, the Explorer’s automated, holographic guide guiding me, I was able to get the knocked out Dr. Webster back to the ship in a jiffy! Gosh, it was great to see the Explorer in all of it’s silver beauty.  Once aboard I stripped Webster’s space suit off and laid him onto his space-bed.  Augie then examined him using the Explorer’s internal sensors, Augie’s like a doctor-cook-pilot-library all rolled into one! Augie told me that Dr. Webster was in a stable condition but that he should be attended to by the medical robots back on the robot planet.  I put the green tube we had recovered from the space-wreck into a container and strapped myself into the pilots seat, and before you could spit into a bucket, I was blasting off full throttle back to the Robot Planet!!!

As I pulled the limp body of the knocked-out Dr. Webster I did everything I could think of to keep from passing out myself! I thought about all the times Miss Sloan had told me that a good reporter never sleeps until the story was put to bed, and then I thought how comfy my old bed back at the pig ranch in good old Texas was, and then I thought you can’t keep a good Texan down, and then I thought I could maybe just lie down for a minute and take a break, and then I remembered that the break in Dr. Webster’s face mask was only filled up with space clay! That’s when I told myself to shake the cobwebs out of my head and get the doctor back to the ship, so I pulled him even harder and I must not have been watching where I was putting my feet, because the next thing you know I was falling over like a stack of hay! I hit the ground pretty hard and I was just thinking that maybe the two of us were goners! When I heard someone ask me if I was all right! All right? I was super! And I laughed out loud as I looked up and saw Augie the Explorer’s holographic guide! I knew then I had to be close to our rocket ship!

All of a sudden I had an idea, I grabbed a piece of the space wreck that was now scattered all around us and I concentrated real hard. The material started to melt and become like clay, I pressed it against Dr. Webster’s face plate and the hissing stopped. I thought real hard again and the space clay sealed the cracks! I knew it would last until we got back to the Explorer, but that’s when I remembered that Dr.Webster was still hurt. Turning that wreckage into clay had really tired me out, but I knew I didn’t have much time, I picked the doctor up and started carrying him back the way we came, boy was he heavy! But, I promised him I’d get him back safe, I was hoping I wouldn’t break that promise!

Dr. Webster pointed towards the space hatch and we both made our way to it faster than a Texas tornado! He went out first and then pulled me up and back out into the dusty ghost world that had been ravaged so long ago by the Zygonians.  The hill that had grown over most of the ancient wrecked spaceship started to tremble and keeping our balance was like trying to stand on top of a bucking bronco, before you knew it we were both rolling down the hill, but it was a real lucky thing because all of a sudden the ship exploded, if we’d still been up on it, we’d have been more blown up than a fourth of july firecracker!  I was thinking how lucky we had been when I looked over at Dr. Webster, he was lying on his back and the faceplate of his space suit was cracked and air was wooshing out, his eyes were closed and some blood was coming out of his nose! I could tell he was still breathing, but I thought to myself, even with my mind powers would he have enough air to get back to our ship, The Explorer!!!