by Eando Binder
Dusty stood panting before the officer, his face twisted.
“You can’t go on!” he shrilled. “Daggert ratted, the Mexes don’t care, and Adam Link is neutral. Nobody to stop you, is there? Nobody but me! This is my country you’re invading, you yellow cowards. You won’t go another step—except over my dead body!”
Dusty stood stiff as a tree, his wrinkled old face turned up defiantly to the sun. It was sheer magnificence. One little scrawny man challenging an army! You humans can be abysmally vile. But at times you can be sublimely glorious. I’ll never forget that scene.
It happened so suddenly that even I was caught flatfooted.
The Japanese general whipped a pistol from his holster and fired pointblank at Dusty.
The crack of the gun resounded through the air. The first shot of the war! The first of countless lives to be sacrificed! Perhaps the Japanese general did it as a symbol to his army. As a token of how easily they would brush aside all future opposition.
DUSTY gasped. Slowly his knees bent. He did not fall. I had leaped to his side in one twenty-foot bound, and now held him. I saw the trickle of blood at the front. The bullet had struck near the region of his heart. He had only moments of life left.
“Dusty!” I cried. “Dusty! What have they done? What have I done?”
His pale eyes turned up to my seemingly emotionless ones.
“Adam,” he whispered. “Don’t blame yourself. I can see your side of it. You couldn’t do anything else. You couldn’t throw all them hopes and plans aside—like you did once for me, down in the mine. Stick to your guns, Adam. Keep your nose clean, you and your robots, from any of this rotten stuff. Some day—some day humans will have as much sense as you have!”
He gave a little suppressed moan of pain, then moved his lips almost soundlessly again.
“So long, pard! Don’t cry for me. I’m going to have a good time. A bang-up good time—”
The eyes filmed, rolled back. The lips quivered shut. Only a limp corpse rested in my arms. A slow swirl of dust rose from where I gripped his clothing.
Dusty was dead.
Eve and Mary, beside me, turned their eyes to the ground. My thirty robots looked at one another sorrowfully. We had all liked Dusty. Even Daggert scuffed at the ground, biting his lips.
Dusty was something that is hard to define, in you humans. He was a free soul. He was part of a philosophy of live-and-let-live that is close to the divine. And suddenly, the contrast between him and what was rolling up from the south stood out like white against black.
How can I explain? How can I describe to you the sudden, devastating rage that overwhelmed my mechanical brain till the hum of electrons nearly heated fey skull-piece?
How can I make it sound rational? I had been willing to let untold thousands of others die, in keeping with my policy of non-intervention. Thousands of others! But when Dusty fell . . . No, I can’t explain it.
I straightened up.
The Japanese general was just turning indifferently from the scene. In one leap I was before him. In one motion I jerked the pistol from his holster. The weapon of murder. I held it up—squeezed. The gun crumpled into shreds which I flung at these would-be conquerors.
My stentorian voice, like an amplifying unit turned to full power, roared down the road over the invading columns.
“I, Adam Link the robot, declare war on you!”
CHAPTER VII
Adam Link, Strategist
THE Japanese general tensed, perhaps aware of what this could mean. Spryly, barking orders, he and his men ran to their car. The machine gun of the fifth columnists turned. Its harsh chatter split the air. Bullets raked back and forth across the ranks of my robots. And Eve, Mary and myself.
I laughed within myself. I strode directly into the hail of slugs. A metallic clang filled the air. They were shooting at my abdomen, sheathed with thick protective plates. Before they thought of aiming for my more vulnerable head, I was there. I yanked the weapon out of their hands. I beat it against the ground till it fell apart. Then I hurled the mangled remains at the motorcycle troops.
All the Japanese had watched in paralyzed fascination, at this display of fantastic strength. They paled, beneath their yellow skins. In the Japanese legends, too, there is the counterpart of the Golem, the Colossus, the Juggernaut, the Frankenstein! The mighty, invincible non-human creation making war on frail mankind!
Such thoughts, for a moment, must have overwhelmed them. They were almost ready to bolt, shrieking in fear.
But they were too well trained. The general was screeching orders. The men heard. Their mounted machine guns began to bark. The concentrated fire of hundreds of them began to sweep over us.
I was yelling orders too. My thoughts work with the rapidity of light. A few seconds before I had never dreamed I would be fighting a vast army. Now I was. And already I had figured out a complete plan of attack.
Bullets showered against our steel bodies. Eventually they would strike vital spots—our eyes, or swivel joints, or thin back plates. My robots accepted my declaration of war instantly. They had to, in sheer self-defense.
Our phalanx broke. Thirty-three metal forms leaped, each to a motorcycle. One swift tug and the vehicle was overturned, soldiers sprawling on their faces. Another second to rip the machine gun loose, smash it against the cycle’s motor, wrecking both beyond repair. Then on, to the next nearest motorcycle.
In five minutes, the area before the mine was strewn with motorcycle wreckage. Bewildered Japanese soldiers, weaponless, straggled away. The last dozen cycles attempted to speed away. My robots followed my example. I pounded after one, caught the rear, and snapped my wrist. Over went the cycle, over and over, ending up a ruin. The two soldiers, well trained, simply rolled over the ground, then picked themselves up and ran.
They ran as if the devil were after them. But we did not pursue. They could not harm us, only their machines of destruction.
“Do not take human life deliberately!” I thundered at my robots. “Just destroy their apparatus!”
Eve and I had overturned the general’s car first. He and his staff had run back down the road. I saw them reach the first of the armored tank columns. They stopped the tanks. The whole army ground to a stop.
This was battle! They were meeting their first opposition.
I LOOKED around the immediate vicinity. The motorcycle contingent had been completely routed, wrecked. Here and there a robot was kicking a motor in with his metal feet-plates, to insure its worthlessness. We had destroyed much valuable equipment.
“Good work!” I called to them. “But the rest won’t be so easy. Those tanks have powerful guns that can blow us to bits with a direct hit. Now—”
A one-pounder shell screamed over our heads and exploded against the barracks, blowing in the side. The Mexicans had long before left the scene. Daggert had run with the Japanese. Only us robots were left at the mine.
Another shell exploded in the ground to the side, digging a pit.
My robots shuddered. We fear death too. Soon a stinging barrage would come from the enemy, against which even our metal bodies could not stand.
“Listen, men!” With a rapidity no human can duplicate, I gave orders. Before the barrage had really begun, my robot force scattered.
We crept behind a hill, then charged down on the road. We went in twos, each pair for a tank. The Japanese bad had no time to begin deploying apart from their close, clogged formation.
Most of their gunfire was thus ineffective, since it might hit their own numbers. The guns that did bellow were being aimed at ground targets faster and trickier than any they had ever seen or dreamed of.
Two to a tank. Eve and I reached our first. Ducking under its guns, we slipped our fingers under the caterpillar treads and heaved. The small five-ton vehicle easily turned over on its side.
One out of action! We ducked to the next, repeating the performance.
And all through the small-tank contingent, the other pairs of r
obots were doing the same. Tank after tank went over, useless with its treads churning empty air, its guns turned skyward. The Japanese scrambled out, those that could, and milled about helplessly. They had pistols and fired these at us. Mosquitoes would have been as effective.
Robots in action, letting out their full powers, move with the speed of any high-grade machine. The tanks went over like tenpins. In twenty-three minutes, three hundred tanks were out of action. They blocked and jammed the road for hundreds of yards.
I had not lost a robot yet. Robots are not just machines. They are swift, intelligent minds. Our dodging and weaving through their fire must have seemed uncanny to the slow reflexes of the Japanese humans. Long before they could fire a heavy gun pointed at us, we had seen and leaped clear.
As with the motorcycles, the last few dozen tanks attempted to speed away from the terrible metal nemises. I understand they are built to do seventy-five miles an hour. A robot can do a hundred. It was simple for a pair of robots to chase a tank down, throw a piece of iron into the treads to stop it, then flop it on its side. I had given orders to that effect.
“That’s that!” I bawled with my amplifying larynx unit at full power. The sound could be heard for a mile, even in that din. “Splendid work, men! But no time to loaf. Get after the trucks and big tanks. Watch out for those bigger guns!”
I WILL not attempt to give all the details.
In brief, we went after each unit in turn, with more precision than the blitzkrieg masterminds had ever dreamed possible. I felt almost sorry for the Japanese High Command, seeing their mighty, superb mechanized army falling apart like rotten fruit. Three things gave us a tremendous advantage, even against vastly superior armament. Speed, mobility and intelligence. We could move faster than their fastest tanks. We could maneuver quicker than any man-made swivel. And we were always a jump ahead mentally.
The trucks of special attack troops, with their automatic weapons, were easy victims. Four robots on a side could dump them over with one synchronized heave. Men sprawled miserably in the alkali dust. Some turned on us with their machine guns, peppering us with lead. That is, for about two seconds.
Then robot hands with crushing strength would jerk the guns away and beat them against the ground, till bolts and flying pieces sprayed for yards.
My robots, grim and silent at first, soon began to cheer and yell. It was great sport. And it was laughable to see the astounded, babbling Japanese staggering around, trying to figure out who had dropped the sky on them.
We took no lives, as I constantly reiterated, lest my robots forget. We brushed the enemy aside, merely flailing their lethal toys to shreds. We bashed in truck motors with any metal club we could pick up. Our work was as thorough as a barrage of big artillery shells.
“Oh, Adam, this is positively the funniest thing I’ve ever seen!” Eve, always beside me, was laughing hysterically inside. So was I.
“This is fun!” Mary commented excitedly. She had stuck close to me too. “It was getting a little monotonous at the mine, anyway.”
There had been moments of extreme danger, and one of them came again. A nearby tank somehow righted itself—one tread digging into loose sand and gaining traction—a n d the vengeful Japanese within instantly rammed it straight for us three robots. I flexed both arms, shoving Eve and Mary to right and left out of harm’s way. I had no time myself to escape.
There was only one possible salvation, before the five-ton juggernaut crunched over me. I stooped, leaning forward. When the blunt-ended prow reared over me, I placed my shoulder against it and straightened with a snap that very nearly pulled every muscle cable loose.
But it worked. The tank flipped nose up and around, turning a somersault. Hurtling me, it landed ten feet beyond with a rending crash. The Japanese know a form of wrestling called jiu-jitsu. I had, in effect, used one of their principles for throwing a much heavier opponent.
THE terrific strain of that heave, however, left me staggering. I stumbled and fell over a stone.
“Adam! Are you hurt? Adam—”
I knew it must be Eve kneeling over me, in agonized alarm. Then I saw another metal form shoulder her aside. Mary cuddled my head in her arms.
“Adam! Adam dear!”
I don’t know what other things she murmured, like a girl who had for the first time seen a loved one harmed. I was myself in an instant, jumping up.
“I’m all right,” I said half irritably to the two of them.
“Oh, Adam, I’m so glad!” Mary breathed. “I don’t know what I’d do if ever you were harmed—”
She suddenly broke off, at Eve’s stare. For a moment Mary looked from one to the other of us, then raised her head defiantly as if to say something. Something that would shock and stun us more than the tank’s paralyzing attack.
But she never said it.
Brrroooommmmm!
We heard the heavy thump. We stiffened. It brought us back to the war. There was a high-pitched whistle. Then a frightful explosion. Robot Number Seven, a hundred feet away, was blown to bits. They were firing field guns, far to the rear! Artillery shells were one thing we had to fear. And one thing we could not outrun.
Our overconfidence vanished. The Japanese general had finally spoken with his biggest weapons. Peering down the long, stalled columns of the army, I saw where his trained gun crews had deployed, setting up their field pieces in a wide semicircle. The big tanks and all the army behind were protected.
Another shell landed. It failed to get one of us. Instead it blew a truck to atoms. Also a dozen poor Japanese who’d been running from the scene. The High Command was willing to bombard their own advance forces, to get us. Life is cheap, in the blitzkrieg bible.
The barrage never blossomed. Before the third tentative feeler shell came over, I was shouting orders. Thirty-two robots sped for those field guns. We zigzagged, thirty feet at a bound. The highly trained gunners were not trained to pick off huge metal jackrabbits.
Reaching the guns, we shoved the humans away. Grasping the barrel with a full grip in both arms, a robot would crack it loose from its breech. Then, using it as a mighty club, he would batter the instrument flat.
The field guns went as fast as all before into the junkheap.
And, shortly, the big tanks. Dodging their small-cannon fire, six robots would tackle each individually. Metal backs strained, steel muscle cables shrieked in protest at the load, electricity crackled from our joints. But over they went! Eighty tons of massive metal, big as a house.
Over they went, like clumsy turtles. Then the crews would pop out of the turrets, like smoked-out rats. A robot would go in, with a metal bar. The smashing sounds within told of elaborate controls and instruments showering into debris. When the robot came out, the tank was just an empty hollow shell. Engines, oil and treads were a sort of gritty porridge, leaking from all sides.
Those tanks would have had a low quotation from a scrap-iron concern, being such a scattered mess.
“Well,” I yelled proudly, “that just about takes care of everything—”
Brrroooommmmm!
A BOMB exploded among us, getting Robot Number Twenty-eight. I looked up. I had forgotten the invaders’ aircraft. Fifty bombers droned overhead like vengeful wasps, dropping their eggs of destruction.
“Scatter!” I commanded. “Use the anti-aircraft guns I told you not to destroy.”
My robots’ shiny forms spread, making small individual targets to the planes above. I ran with Eve and Mary to the nearest mounted anti-aircraft unit.
In forethought, I had told my men not to wreck these guns, as they could not be used against us in the first place.
I examined the intricate machinery carefully. In three seconds I had figured out its principles.
I explained swiftly to Eve and Mary. Eve took over the sights. Mary fed the ammunition. I sat at the firing mechanism.
My first burst of shots from the pompom unit brought down a bomber in flames. It was ridiculously easy to make a hit. Oth
er guns began to pepper, operated by my robots. We blasted planes down with the ease of machines that can’t make a mistake. In a war of machines, what can be more effective than machines with minds?
We were in our element.
When ten bombers went down within five minutes, the rest of the Japanese air force turned tail. That was the last resistance. When we ran down the road toward the foot-soldiers, waving our arms wildly at them, they did not merely retreat.
They ran, they stumbled, they clawed at one another to get away!
“Halt!” I said to my men.
CHAPTER VIII
The Poison of Jealousy
MY robots and I stopped and looked.
Back of us the road and countryside were strewn with metal debris. Before us, the entire Japanese army was in rout. They wouldn’t stop till they had reached the border.
I let out a purely animal shout. Thirty-three robots had defeated an entire mechanized division! Thirty-three robots had blocked the invasion of the United States! Thirty-three robots had made history!
My eyes turned. No, not thirty-three. I called roll There were silences for Numbers Seven, Ten, Sixteen, Twenty-four and Twenty-eight. Casualties—five. Blown to bits by direct hits with large-caliber guns.
We heard a groan. Number Sixteen was not dead. His lower half was gone. His upper half was a tangled ruin, with a cracked battery barely trickling current through his brain-circuit. Perhaps he could be saved—
Then we saw the gaping hole in his skull, the shredded brain areas within.
I bent over Number Sixteen.
“Licked them, didn’t we, Adam Link?” he croaked. “I don’t mind dying, as long as our kind go on, doing good—”
His voice clicked off. It was like a telephone receiver being hung up. He was dead.
Around me, my robots were silent, sad. We felt deeply now the loss of five who had worked side by side with us, talked with us, lived with us for three months. We were the first small tribe of intelligent robots in human history. And robot history. Those five martyrs would be revered down through time, in robot archives.