by Eando Binder
“Adam and I were just finishing a little experiment,” Hillory said easily Kay turned to me again. “Then everything is all right?”
“Of course, Kay. It was nice of you to be concerned and come up, but why not come back some other time, when we aren’t so busy?”
Hillory’s words, of course, through my helpless brain and larynx by proxy. I strained to put in a note of warning, distress. But a robot’s voice is in the first place devoid of human emotion.
But strangely, instead of taking the hint to go, she seemed curious over the experiment. She moved toward the control board of the helmet, connected to it by wires.
“This looks something like the helmet I used with Eve,” she said.
I could see Hillory’s impatience for her to go. But he could not afford to arouse her suspicions. He knew that she and Jack were much more my friends than they could ever be of Hillory. He began to describe the experiment in general, meaningless terms. Suddenly Kay moved.
She moved with a swiftness and purpose that startled us both. Her hand grasped the switch cutting off current to the helmet. Hillory recovered and clutched at her wrist. With a furious effort, Kay opened the switch.
That was all that was needed.
CHAPTER V
Heartbreaking Combat
THE helmet went dead. I was no longer in Hillory’s mental control.
In two bounds I was before him. I grabbed the helmet from his head and flung it to the floor. Then I grasped his two shoulders in a vise-like grip and held him. I think if my face had shown any expression at that moment, I would have been grinning—but with no trace of humor.
Hillory’s face had gone dead-white in fear. He squirmed and moaned in my adamant clutch, expecting immediate death.
Let me make a confession at this moment. For one split instant, with rage shaking every cell of my iridium-sponge brain, I thought of tearing Hillory’s head from his body. But only for an unguarded instant. Then reason came to me. A robot must never kill a human, of his own free will. It was a thing I would never do. And a thing I will never let happen again—save for the deed poor Eve was driven to do.
I merely held Hillory firmly. To Kay I said: “Thanks, Kay. You’ve saved me—”
“I knew there was something wrong!” Her lips were quivering now, in reaction to the excitement. “I knew it couldn’t be you, Adam that told me to go so brusquely. And Dr. Hillory is a poor actor.” And Kay, I reflected, was an intelligent girl.
“What is this all about? What horrible—” Kay seemed about to go to pieces.
“Buck up!” I snapped. I told the story briefly. Then I instructed her to get a bottle of acid and apply it to the instrument welded on my skull-piece. A few minutes later the vibrator fell away. I was free entirely of the helmet control!
Not till then did I release Hillory. He staggered to a chair, mute and mortally frightened. The man who had been my master sat there now, a cowering wretch.
“Hillory—” I began.
There was an interruption, outside. The dank of metal feet sounded. Through the open door I could see Eve’s body, glinting in moonlight. She had come back, also released from the mental control. She stood beside Kay’s car, swaying on her feet, as though utterly dazed and lost.
I ran out.
“Eve!” I yelled. “We’re free! Eve, dear—”
I suppose I felt at that moment as any man would, when he and his loved one are reunited after a deadly peril has passed. I extended my hand.
Eve took it, with a glad cry.
And then suddenly she yanked at my arm, throwing me to the ground. For an agonized moment I thought she had gone mad. Then, as her great body came at me I realized what had happened.
I leaped to my feet. A glance over my shoulder told me the situation. I saw within the open, lighted doorway of the cabin. Like a fool, I had forgotten about Hillory. He had picked up the helmet, turned on the power, and was fighting Kay off. Brutally, he crashed his fist against her chin and the girl toppled to the floor, knocked cold.
Hillory had no more control over me. But he did have over Eve!
Her great body came at me, under Hillory’s command. Its mighty arms clutched for me, grabbed me, squeezed with machine-given power. My frontal plates groaned. I squirmed loose somehow, and staggered back. A stunning blow from Eve’s powerful hand caught me at the side of the head. My left tympanum went dead, ruptured. I reeled.
“Eve!” I shouted. “Eve—don’t!”
But of course it was no use. It was not Eve who was attacking me. It was Hillory. And there we battled, Eve and I, two beings who loved one another but were battering at one another with the fury of giants. Eve was fighting to destroy me. I was fighting for my life.
I knew quickly that I had no chance. Eve’s body was almost twice as heavy and powerful. I was slightly quicker in movement, and that alone saved me from almost instant destruction.
Mighty blows from her great fists thundered against my body. My return blows fell short. I danced out of her grasp. Those arms had crushing strength. I tried to flee. In three mighty strides Eve had caught up, knocked me off my feet. A powerful leg rained kicks at my fallen form, denting metal and endangering delicate mechanisms within. Then the great form jumped on me. Five hundred pounds crashed down on my chest. It was very nearly the fatal blow.
But I managed to roll aside, escaping the second such stroke, aimed at my head. Hillory wanted my brain crushed. He wanted to destroy me utterly, and have Eve left under his control.
The battle could not last much longer. Within seconds I would be crushed, broken, lifeless.
I did the only thing left. I ran—but this time to the cliff edge, where I had once nearly invited death. Eve’s hands clutched at me, and then drew back. Hillory was willing to let me plunge over the cliff, and meet destruction five hundred feet below. I went over, dropping like a stone . . .
THE fall seemed interminable.
It is said that you humans, when falling or drowning, see your whole life before your mind. I saw mine—not once but a hundred times. Every detail stood out with stark clarity. But one, livid thing stood out above all others—the thought of Eve, my beloved creation, remaining alive in the hands of a human fiend . . .
Yet one part of my brain, as I fell, was cool and calculating. It kept track of my descent, counting off the feet and yards by that automatic sense of timing and measurement which is part of me.
A hundred feet to the ground! It announced that and then acted. It made my arms and legs flail, shifting my center of gravity. My body had turned head over heels four times in falling. But when I landed, it was squarely on my feet. To have landed on my head would have been immediate destruction.
I have instant reflexes. The moment my feet-plates touched ground, my leg-cables flexed, taking up as much of the shock as possible. It might be the margin to save me. The rest was a clash of grinding, bending, breaking metal that horrified my own ear. I had fallen on a patch of grassy ground, but with the force of a motorcycle hitting a stone wall at 300 miles an hour.
My mind swam out of a blur. One eye was wrecked and useless, but with the other I looked over my body. My legs were twisted, crumpled lumps that had been driven up into my pelvic region. One arm was broken completely off and lay twenty feet away. My frontal plates had split in half and now stuck half-way over my sunken head. Every cog, wire and wheel below my shoulders was scattered around in an area of more than fifty feet.
But I lived! Lived!
My brain was whole, though badly jolted. By a miracle, the battery cable to my head was intact. The battery was cracked, but working. I could move one arm slightly. I was little more than a battery, head and arm, but I lived! Fortunately, I knew no pain.
And thus I had played out my one slim chance. I had thrown myself over the cliff—but not as a suicide. I had hoped this miracle would happen. Up above, Hillory must be looking down. He must be seeing the faint patch of metal shining in the moonlight, unmoving. He would be certain of my utte
r destruction.
Perhaps now he would be turning away, ordering Eve inside. And there plotting his scheme of bringing to life a horde of mind-enslaved robots!
But I lived . . .
I began crawling. Little more than a head, battery and arm, I began crawling alone. The stump of my arm dug into the soil, flexed, and moved me an inch at a time. Behind me trailed shreds and tags of metal, all that was left of my body. My steel backbone, to which was attached the battery case, head and arm, moved as a unit, but the rest was shreds. Hour after hour I crawled along, like some strange half-mangled slug that clung to life.
Yes, I knew agony. The shattering of my body meant nothing, but my brain itself ached. Some few crushed cells were warping my electron-currents, creating a sort of hammering static. It throbbed like the beat of a great hammer. I do not know what your human pain is. But I would have gladly exchanged any possible form of it for the crashes and thuds within my brain that seemed like the sledge-blows of a mountain-tall giant.
But worse than that “physical” agony was my mental torment.
What if the twisted cables and gears of my arm failed? What if the battery cracked wide open? What if a little bolt or wire slipped out of place? At any moment it might happen. And I would lie there, dead. Or paralyzed, awaiting death. And up there in my cabin-laboratory, Hillory, and poor Eve . . .
But metal is sturdy. And Dr. Link had built my body with care. I crawled all that night and the next day, through woods, meadows and stretches of boulder-strewn land. I knew where I was going, if I could get there. Twice humans passed near me. I lay still. They would probably destroy me, with the deeds of Hillory pinned on Adam Link. Once, reaching a brook, it took me an hour to figure a crossing. I could not risk water, for fear of a short-circuit. I nudged a log into the stream. It caught against rocks. I crawled across.
But I will not go into the nightmarish detail of that journey. Forty-eight hours later, again at night, I had crawled five miles. Before me lay a farmhouse, the nearest one, I had known, to my hideaway. It had a telephone.
CHAPTER VI
“Vengeance Is Mine!”
I REACHED the back door. Luckily, as with many unmolested farmer folk, it was unlocked. I made my way in and found the telephone, but it was on the wall out of my stunted reach. Working as soundlessly as I could, I pulled a chair over. From that perch, I was barely able to reach the phone. It was the old-fashioned hand-ringing type, still prevalent in that region.
With my one good hand I lifted the receiver, left it dangle, and rang the bell. A sleepy operator answered. I hurriedly gave the long-distance number in the city nearby. Jack’s number. He had mentioned it to me during Ms visit.
I heard the ringing of the phone at the other end. I also heard a stir from one of the other rooms. Jack answered at the same time that a burly farmer appeared, snapping on the lights.
“Jack!” I yelled. “It’s Adam Link! Come and get me! Trace this call—”
That was all I had time for. The farmer blazed away at me with a shotgun he carried. The first shot wrecked my arm, making me completely helpless. The second, by its concussion, tumbled me from my perch. I fell to the floor with a clatter and lay still. The farmer did not know what he had shot at, whether beast or nameless thing. He shut himself up in the next room, then, with his wailing family. I will never know what he thought of the whole thing.
Jack arrived within an hour, in his car and took me away, explaining to the farmer as incoherently as the farmer stammered his story. In the car were Kay and Tom Link.
Kay wept unashamedly.
“Adam! You’re alive—thank God!”
I told my story briefly. Kay told hers. Hillory had released her, of course, after I was gone. Kay had returned to the city. In a red rage at Hillory, Jack had driven to his place, the next day—yesterday. He had not met Hillory, only the menacing form of Eve, who waved for him to leave. Hillory spoke, through Eve, saying he was preparing papers for patent, on the helmet-control of robots.
Back in the city, Jack had called Tom, who came by plane from the east. They had been discussing, when I called, some legal way to forestall Hillory.
Tom Link, my “cousin,” looked at me sadly. “Meeting you this way hurts, Adam!” he said sincerely. “I didn’t know you were in trouble.” My last letter to him had not revealed my hideaway or purpose.
He went on grimly. “We must stop Hillory some way. We can try to pin the murder and robbery on him, with yourself as chief witness. You have legal status, since your trial, Adam. Failing in that, we can contest his patent, or file counter-patent, or—”
Tom was vague, uncertain. It was a tricky situation. I thought of a court trial, which I had once sat through, and all the clumsy machinery of law. And I thought of Eve in Hillory’s hands all that while, going mad perhaps . . .
I think my voice must have startled them, as I broke in. Perhaps for once something of the burning emotion I felt reflected in my dead, mechanical tones.
“Vengeance,” I said, “is mine!”
THREE days later, working day and night at an accelerated, driving pace, I had a new body. I was in Dr. Link’s old workshop, my “birthplace.” Tom had locked the place without removing its contents, for sentimental reasons. I had been created here, over a year before. Now a new Adam Link was replacing the old.
My new body was eight feet tall. Bringing me only as a living head, Tom and Jack had, under my instructions, connected me to a broken, partly dismantled robot body Dr. Link had first made for me, then discarded as not quite what he wanted. Working with this basis, I rebuilt the body piece by piece, strengthening, improving, employing greatly advanced mechanical principles.
At last it was done, and I prepared to leave.
Kay, Jack and Tom wore solemn faces. Within, I was solemn too. I knew what I had to do.
“I’ll bring Hillory down alive,” I promised grimly. “But before that—” I could not finish the thought.
Kay burst out into tears. She loved Eve too.
I left. I had told them to come up, if I did not return in twenty-four hours, with police. Hillory could be arrested for living on my property, already signed over to Jack and Kay. Perhaps then they might win a legal victory over him.
I WAS there at dawn. If I had thought to surprise Hillory asleep, I saw my mistake. Eve’s form, sitting before the cabin, rose up mechanically, with a shout of alarm. Hillory had somehow rigged her up as a sentry.
The cabin door flew open and Hillory’s bald head peered out. He saw me running up as fast as I could. His eyes popped. I must have seemed to him like a ghost from the dead—a robot’s vengeful ghost.
But he darted back in, obviously to his helmet-control, and Eve’s great form lumbered out to meet me. This I knew was inevitable, that I would have to battle Eve again.
“You escaped death somehow, Adam Link!” Eve’s voice said. But I knew it was Hillory talking, through her. I had no way of telling whether he was perturbed or not. “I’ll smash you completely this time, before my eyes!” he concluded defiantly.
I stopped ten feet before Eve’s crouching, waiting form.
“Eve, listen. I know you can hear and understand.” I went on rapidly. “I have to battle you, perhaps kill you! It is the only way. I must destroy you if I can, so that Hillory does not destroy me. Hillory must not be allowed to introduce robot-slaves. This is all torture to you, darling, I know. You are fighting me when you don’t want to. And I will be bent on your destruction—even, if necessary, that of your brain. Your life! I love you, Eve. Forgive me—”
“Love!” scoffed the robot before me. For a moment I thought it was Eve. Then I knew it was Hillory, hearing my words, and mocking. “Mechanical puppets, both of you!”
And then we were battling.
HOW can I describe that battle? A battle between two metal titans, each with the ruthless machine-powered strength of dozens of men? It seemed unreal even to me.
We came together with a clang that resounded through the
still mountain air like a cannon’s roar. We locked arms, straining to throw each other. But now I was no longer at a disadvantage. We were equally matched. Two robots constructed for maximum power, speed and endurance. Unyielding meted against unyielding metal.
We looked into each other’s eyes, told each other that though our bodies fought, our minds loved.
We broke apart. We came at each other with swinging arms. Mailed fists clanked against our adamant armors. The blows would have broken the back of an elephant. Within us, gears, cogs and wheels clashed in spurts and reverses as we weaved and danced around like boxers in a ring. We did not move as agilely as human boxers, however. The robot body must ever be inferior, in sheer efficiency, to nature’s organic robots.
Suddenly my adversary—I no longer thought of her as Eve, but Hillory—stepped back, stooping. He shot forward in a football tackle, toppling me backward. Then, while I lay slightly stunned, he picked me up by heel and arm and flung me over his head. I landed with a metallic crash. The next second a huge boulder whizzed past my head. Then another . . . but I was dodging.
I was on my knees when he came at me, hammering at my skull-piece with his ponderous arms. I flung my arms up in protection. He sought to destroy my brain. Once that was crushed, my powerful body was senseless junk.
I lunged forward at his knees, hurling him to the ground with a thunderous crash. I had my chance then—a perfect chance to stamp my iron heel down on the head, crunching it. But I didn’t. Eve’s eyes stared at me.