Close to Critical

Clement, Hal. Close to Critical. Series: Mesklin. Serialized in three parts, Astounding (US) May, June, July 1958. New York: Ballantine Books, 1964. For other publications, see Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDb).[1]

On one of Clement's "hellworlds" of high gravity and, let's say, challenging atmosphere,[2] life exists and thrives enough to produce sentient native creatures. Onto this world a robot probe descends, steals eggs from a native, and raises a brood. The robot gets the name "Fagin," as in the character from Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist and raises and teaches the alien children. Note for the robot, the human-run space station from which it is voiced, and for a "space-going bathyscaphe."[3] (a "free-diving self-propelled deep-sea submersible, consisting of a crew cabin similar to a bathysphere, but suspended below a float rather than from a surface cable, as in the classic bathysphere design").[4]

RDE, with thanks to JJP, 30June2020