The Human Zero and Other Science-Fiction Masterpieces

by Sam Moskowitz

  “As well as where they’ve gone and why they’ve gone,” Hume put in. “I certainly don’t like the subtle way they sneaked off. It bodes no good. The sooner we find out what they’re up to and put a spoke in their wheel the better it’ll be for everybody.” “I’m not inclined to take the alarmist view. This vessel strikes me as being a ship of the dead.” “Then where are the dead?” Hume shook a sceptical head, clambered along the tilted catwalk towards the entrance door. “No, there’s something decidedly cockeyed about this set-up. If they’re dead, the crew wouldn’t simply evaporate. And if alive, they wouldn’t skedaddle for a purpose no more harmful than to peddle trans-cosmic doodads. He who flees hath guilt in his heart. I don’t like it!”

  Reaching the door, he lugged it open, and a reporter promptly stuck his head in and said, “You don’t like what?”

  “Domineering vampire bats,” snapped Hume.

  The reporter backed hastily from the door. “You’re kidding! There aren't any vampires in there ?”

  “You’re asking me? Look at me, just look at me!” Groaning, Hume leaned listlessly against the ship’s shell. “Can’t you see I'm as white as a sheet? They’ve gorged themselves on me! Oh, the fiendish devils!” He waved a weak hut dramatic arm. “Tell the world the dreadful news that if we don't sell our blood they’re going to come out and help themselves !”

  Then Bradley gave him a shove in the back and he fell out of the doorway. By the time he’d picked himself up from the soft turf, the reporter had faded as completely as the missing crew.

  Oft-times, canards are accepted as being more plausible than truth. At the unearthly hour of four in the morning a bitter and frantic Bradley was out and about, interviewing local night editors, telegraphing and telephoning distant ones, urging contradictions over police teletypes, and nullifying official action to impose martial law in the Isle of Man and adjacent countries of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. For two and a half hours he raced around in a sweat of apprehension, the cause of his nocturnal activity being a special night mail delivery of an official demand for all his data pertaining to a report then being set up in the papers, a report typified by the local sheet’s great headline which read:

  INVADING VAMPIRES

  HELLISH DEMANDS

  BLOOD WILL BE THE PRICE OF PEACE

  By six-thirty, exhausted but full of relief, he had successfully killed the story. He returned to bed, first making a suitably vitriolic speech to the disconcerted “Professor Ronald Montgomery Hume, famous physicist of Liverpool University,” who, “in an interview with our special correspondent,” had “drawn aside the veil and disclosed to all the world the alien horror that lurked behind.”

  At ten o’clock they were back in the ship and laboring at the stubborn clips which gripped the mysterious cylinder. The clips refused to turn. Viewed end-on, from the only position in which they could be studied, they appeared as if made to turn sidewise, but repeated hammerings made it more than apparent that they were not to be moved in that plane.

  Perspiration beaded Hume's face as he got off his aching knees and stood up. “Dammit, Phil, where’s the sense of giving a thing movable tractors and then fastening it down so that it can’t move?” He flung down his steel bar in sheer disgust; its clatter rang through the vessel. “It’s contradictory and it’s crazy.”

  “This thing comes free easily.” Bradley frowned at the object of his companion’s wrath. “I’m certain of that. It's hooked into those clips somehow, and it’s fixed so that it can be unhooked with the minimum of trouble. Somewhere there’s a key that’ll unlock it, or perhaps a tiny switch—or maybe a certain combination of those studs on that panel in the tail end.” Getting a grip on two of the cylinder’s jointed arms, he pulled mightily. They remained as rigidly fixed as if the knobs at their ends were welded to the floor. He heaved at the other pair of arms, with no better result.

  “You know,” remarked Hume, adopting a chummy tone, “this reminds me of what happens according to the most reliable authorities. Giraffemen arrive from Alpha Centauri, open up, invite you to dine upon an array of strange, exotic foods. After which they explain carefully, in good English, just how everything works. Finally they present you with complete sets of blueprints of all their gadgets.” Bah!” said Bradley.

  'Me, too!” Hume endorsed, his tone rising, his voice becoming querulous. “Here we are, still messing around and getting no further. We're pushing and prodding without even knowing what we’re doing, and bahing like a couple of sheep.” Folding his arms across the domed head of the cylinder, he leaned his weight upon it. “Am I fed up with this whole bally—!”

  His mouth gaped and he left his sentence unfinished. Gracefully the cylinder sank under his pressure, its arms swung free, and the whole contraption rolled down the slope of the floor with a juicy clicking of caterpillar tracks. Hume dodged hastily out of the way. The cylinder rolled a mere three feet, jarred lightly against an obstructing cabinet, and stopped.

  “For Pete’s sake!” exclaimed Hume.

  Stepping forward, Bradley examined the now exposed floor clips, then the four spots on the metal plates to which the knobs of the arms had adhered so firmly. In the center of the clips a small stud jutted from the floor. Picking up the steel bar which Hume had dropped, he pushed it experimentally towards one of the spots formerly occupied by a knob, found that he could not drag the bar away. It stayed put, firmly stuck to the floor. He rammed down the stud with the heel of one boot and immediately the bar came free. Trying the other three spots, he got precisely the same results. Then he had another close look at the floor clips.

  “Say, Ron, this fixture was amazingly simple. The gadget was depressed and slid into position. When the pressure was removed it sprang up to full height, thus freeing the stud below its base, causing the arms to be gripped by the floor plates— probably electro-magnetically.

  At the same time the cylinder’s locking clips engaged in the floor clips, thus securing the whole thing. After a fashion it was bound hand and foot, but all it had to do to burst free was to sink an inch and slide out of its fastenings.” He stared at the other. “So why didn’t it?”

  “Why didn’t it?” echoed Hume. “Why should it? Surely you’re not suggesting it was intended to free itself of its own accord ?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised.” Bradley stepped across to the silent mechanism, examined its back. There was a complicated series of tiny holes all down that side, and his sharp eyes noted that they matched the equally complicated array of pins projecting from the panel against which the thing had stood. It was obvious that the cylinder’s forward rolling had broken its contact with an entire system of communication running throughout the ship, for the pins and their corresponding holes were nothing but a great multiple plug and socket. “This, I suspect, is the crew!”

  “What!” Hume yelped.

  “Look,” went on Bradley, coolly, “there’s no suitable projection on that cylinder by which it can be towed. Nevertheless, it is fitted with extremely efficient tractors. Ergo, it is capable of self-motivation. It has arms of a sort, though goodness knows what for, and those very fine screens within its slots look remarkably like ultra short-wave antenna. What other gadgets may be incorporated within its casing I can’t even imagine, but it certainly was in communication with the whole of the ship; yet it’s the only strictly independent piece of apparatus designed to function apart from the ship.

  “The popular conception of an automation is a metal dinkus caricaturing the human form, but you know and I know that that is a mechanical absurdity. Operational efficiency dictates the shape of any mechanism. Hon, I think we're looking at our first real robot, and it's a highly specialized one at that!”

  “Maybe,” conceded Hume reluctantly. He gave a leery look to the object of their conversation.

  “Somewhat similar things already exist,” pursued Bradley. “For instance, there's ‘George,' the automatic pilot. My guess is that this thing's a sort of super-Georg
e.”

  “I'll give way to you on all points,” Hume said, “except one. He's designed to toddle along on his own. He isn't toddling. In fact, he looks to me as dead as any dodo.”

  “Aye, there's the rub. The gadget has ceased to work. But if we can find what's wrong, maybe we can put it right and discover how the thing functions. Let's drag it outside and take it along to the laboratory.”

  With the aid of ropes they soon maneuvered the heavy object up the slope of the floor, along the slanting catwalk to the door. Gently they swung it out, allowed it to settle on the turf where it stood gravely contemplating this green and sunlit world. With another rope around its middle, tied under its freely swinging arms, it was pulled up to the roadway, moving easily along upon its clicking tracks, its air deceivingly reposeful and sedate. Hume eyed it suspiciously, was unable to rid himself of the peculiar feeling that this buddhistic hunk of metal was merely biding its time. But he kept his thoughts to himself.

  Returning to the ship, Bradley gave orders for the removal of all the apparatus therein. A gang of engineers were due that afternoon, and with them he was quite content to leave the problem of how to tear out of the vessel its all too solidly fixed cabinets. Climbing the slope to the roadway, he waited with Hume for the lorry they had summoned. The acme of imperturbability, George stood between them as if waiting for a lorry was the natural sequence to a tremendous flight across space. He'd have stood with the same philosophical patience had someone lent him an umbrella.

  Public interest in the spaceship, greatly revived by the vessel's opening, died down again as a fortnight went past with no news more startling than that experts were examining its plumbing. People were no more than vaguely intrigued by obscure apparatus, and journalists soon found that to confer news value upon such enigmatic stuff was like trying to glamorize a lawn mower.

  During those two weeks sweating workers, made pungently vocal by the diabolical thoroughness of the vessel's builders, dragged out one cumbersome cabinet after another. A few smaller ones they pried loose; the big ones had to be cut free by long and tedious use of oxy-coal-gas flames. All of them were shipped to Liverpool for dismantling and study by big brains of the University, since Bradley and Hume already had more than enough on their hands including George.

  The latter still stood—and stood still—as if pondering the occult significance of his own navel, in Bradley's laboratory; and he registered no interest when the two came in and gazed at him for the hundredth time. Bradley had a small registered parcel in his hands and an expression of anticipation on his face. He put out one hand, removed the plug from George’s middle and peered into the hole that sank into George's chest. The hole was now clean of the grey powder which formerly had blocked it.

  “I just can't take him to pieces except as a last resort." said Bradley. “Once we got him apart he'd be a heller to put together again. It's best to try out everything imaginable before we start picking him to bits."

  “You've tried plenty," Hume pointed out. “You can't get him to respond to colored light-beams, nor to sounds, nor to supersonic waves or radio, impulses. Not to mention the fact that you've electrocuted him six times over. What's the program this time?"

  “As you know, I dug out that grey powder with some scrapings from the surface of that hole and sent them away for analysis. The residue proves to be mostly a dust of barium sulphate with traces of lead, and the University report says it's believed that the hole originally contained a pellet of highly radioactive salts. They'd borne a resemblance to some of our salts artificially activated by bombardment in a cyclotron. Or they may even have contained a minute portion of radium itself. Those faint traces of lead suggest it, anyway."

  “And where does all that get us?" Hume pulled worriedly at his lower lip, favored the silent cylinder with a doubtful stare.

  “That's just what I'm going to discover. Look, Ron, there's little doubt that the ship utilized atomic power. In all likelihood, so does George. No amount of simple radioactivity would provide sufficient power to move him, and he can't grab power out of thin air. Therefore, he's got his own power plant inside him, perhaps a small atomic motor which can be continually fueled by a reel of fine wire. If we accept that thesis, we're now faced with the poser of why he needs a radioactive pellet."

  "Oh Lord! groaned Hume. “I thought you'd solved that one."

  "I've given it lots of thought, perhaps too much thought, but I've produced a plausible guess. There are some explosives which can be maltreated like so much dead material and be brought to life only with the aid of a detonator. Similarly, I can conceive of atomic power being gained only with the aid of a primer. A long-lasting and ever active primer such as a radium salt!"

  "You should sell vacuum cleaners," said Hume, apropos of nothing.

  Without bothering to counter this remark, Bradley opened his parcel, took out a small metal box with a simple plunger set in one side. Carefully adjusting the opposite side of the box against the hole in the body of the cylinder, he drove home the plunger. A pellet of radioactive salt slid from the box into the depths of the hole. Quickly he rammed the metal plug into the hole, sealing it.

  "This depends upon the usual assortment of ‘ifs'—if my guess is correct, and if radioactivity is an essential primer, and if the cylinder still works, we may get results."

  The anxious watchers were not long in doubt about the workability of their subject. For many strangely elongated seconds the cylinder rested on its tracks and quietly digested the contents of its innards. Then, suddenly and somewhat shockingly, it emitted a faint, high-pitched hum like that of a dynamo heard from a distance.

  Hume and Bradley exchanged glances, the latter's triumphant, the former's wary. Unconcernedly, the cylinder hummed on, its note steady, unwavering, and only just on the verge of audibility. Then, with a swiftness that momentarily paralyzed the two onlookers despite their expectation, the thing whipped up its four knobbed arms, stretched them sidewise, and rotated its body.

  It was only the trunk or cylindrical portion that revolved; the square base and its pair of tracks did not move. But the cylinder, its arms fully stretched, buzzed round and round like a ship’s capstan. It made ten or a dozen complete revolutions before it changed its tactics at a speed which again caught the watchers napping. With complete decisiveness, the thing dropped its arms to its sides, clanked its tracks, made a swift half-turn and charged through the open door. Before the dumbfounded Hume and Bradley could collect their wits it had made another dexterous turn and was racing along the passage.

  "Come on!” yelled Bradley. Springing through the doorway, he rushed after the fleeing machine, Hume pounding hard at his heels.

  So speedy was the prey that it was all they could do to remain within ten feet of it, and so sharp and accurate were its turns, that their clumsier cornering threatened to lose them distance. As if making a desperate bid for freedom, the thing shot down the long passage, cornered, charged down another passage, cornered and entered the large front hall. Here it sped to within a couple of yards of the main exit, and at first Bradley thought it was going to hurl itself through the closed door. But it didn’t.

  Six feet from the obstruction it halted, extended its arms and revolved again. The pursuers got up to it, panting, stood and watched it while their minds dealt with the problem of what to do next.

  “Get a rope,” said Bradley. "We’ll drag it back to the lab.”

  The words were hardly out of his mouth when a small, white-haired man came in through the main door, caught the outlandish spectacle of the two breathless men and the weirdly spinning cylinder. The newcomer paused just inside, catered to his own curiosity while his right hand obligingly continued to hold the door ajar. An uncanny feeling of what was to come smote Bradley, and he roared:

  “Quick, close that door!”

  But too late. Even as the other's unnerved fingers released the door, the cylinder ceased its revolutions, slapped down its arms and whizzed headlong through the gap. The do
or closed behind it, and Bradley lost precious time lugging it open once more. Cursing, he heaved the door wide. Unless he could grab and hold the escapee it was going to topple full length down the dozen stone steps opposite the door, and it might be smashed beyond repair. Frantically he jumped forward.

  Out in the sunlight and the free air, the robot had extended its arms again, holding them rigidly in the horizontal plane and pointing to the four corners of the compass. It was not rotating, but its tracks emitted a low, oily buzz as it sped towards the head of the steps. Bradley yelped in agonized apprehension as the thing almost reached the critical point, then gasped when he saw it make another of its amazing turns and race to the left. Evidently its uncanny sense of obstructions in its path was equalled by its uncanny sense of pitfalls.

  In its leftward run it came near to charging full tilt into the foot high concrete edging of the approach, but at the last moment it saved itself with another window of his cab to stare at the violent swerve and rushed back towards the main door. This unexpected maneuver caught Bradley on one foot. He swung himself round in hot pursuit, to collide violently with Hume in full chase behind. The pair clutched at each other, caught a glimpse of the pale, horrified features of the person who had opened the door, saw him hastily slam it in the path of the speeding machine.

  But the latter had no designs upon the entrance. Within a few feet of the doorway it turned again, buzzed and hummed along the asphalt path in front of the building. It made another twist, came off the path and on to the grassy bank leading down to the street. The slope of the bank was such that the whole machine leaned forward at a precarious angle as it went down, but it did not topple. In seeming defiance of the law of gravitation, it tilted right over as it tracked down the bank, its four arms still outstretched, then came upright when it gained the level of the street.