by Eando Binder
It was a grave moment. Fate hung in the balance. The future looked on. In a few more moments, the destinies of two races of living, thinking beings would be decided.
In all my previous exploits, I had come to crises like this. But none so ominous, so great, so profound.
Adam Link, the robot, faced his most crucial test. This thought whirled in my brain. I was sobbing within. Defeat, death stared me in the face!
And then, abruptly, I became Adam Link, the blitzkrieg general. Through my mind, in one eternal second, flashed a maneuver. A daring, perhaps mad plan.
But it had to be tried.
My sound-box raised to a piercing scream that penetrated to every robot ear-tympanum, despite the hell of explosion around us.
“Men! New orders! Listen—”
It took only three seconds to give them. A second later, my robots split into two factions. With the speed of express trains, we instantly abandoned the uncracked center of the line. Half went to the left, half to the right.
Racing to the extreme flanks of the little Siegfried Line, we again turned and drove inward. Here no concentration of fire opposed us, as at the center. For the Japanese had desperately thrown every gun against our central spearhead.
Our two robots factions penetrated completely at the flanks. We were in the end a mile apart, with all the Japanese mechanized forces between us.
“Drive together!” I shouted stentorianly. “Meet at the apex of an equilateral triangle—at their rear!”
CHAPTER X
Robot-Krieg!
IT was the well-known pincer movement, in short. We drove together, trapping the entire Japanese forces in a wedge, just as had happened with other armies in Flanders in the Second World War.
We joined forces, turned. We were at the Japanese rear. All their guns were still pointed forward, directly in front of us. The packed tanks, trucks and field guns could never scatter and meet the new threat in less than long minutes.
And minutes were all we needed.
There is no need to repeat the story. As on the clogged road before the mine, we heaped their mechanized equipment into a vast, smoking junkpile. The battle became a rout for the Japs. An army fights mainly on morale. They had a morale now of zero.
The troops, weaponless, streamed off in all directions, away from the mad metal demons who were making a clatter louder than the roar of guns. Even before the main bulk of troops had scampered away, the air force began bombing us. It was their last hope—to seed the entire area with bombs and destroy all their stalled, trapped equipment just to get us.
But in less time than the words can be pronounced, we were at the antiaircraft guns. Each shot we sent into the sky sought out a plane, unerringly. They fell like leaves. Still they droned in attack, dive-bombing at us. Not one of their dives was completed, except as a burning wreck that would land close and spray us with flying debris.
I warrant that in all the history of warfare, there has never been so complete a shattering of an enemy. I was answering their blitzkrieg with a superblitzkrieg.
Or a robot-krieg!
The battle was over with the suddenness of a curtain falling. The remnants of the air force fled. I think they headed blindly for Japan. The last few tanks and guns shooting at us ran out of ammunition. Tens of thousands of thoroughly frightened Japanese streamed to the hills, seeking the most remote spot from the cold, mechanical fury that had whipped them like little children.
I stepped away from my anti-aircraft gun in satisfaction.
Then I saw movement. The troop ships were up-anchoring and steaming out of the harbor.
“They must not escape!” I yelled. “Eve is aboard one of them. Man the guns!”
My robots leaped to the few remaining field pieces. I ordered a salvo over the bow of the leading ship. Then I raised my voice in a thundering bellow, in Japanese:
“Halt! Return to the dock. Disembark. If you disobey, we will send every ship to the bottom!”
To add emphasis, I aimed a cannon. With the precision of a man wielding a whip, I nicked the flagship just at the bow. A portion was blown out the size of a bucket. It must have sent a jar through the whole ship.
The ships stopped, docked. Hastily the Japanese scrambled off. Scared witless, they ran for the hills.
Brrrooommmm!
THE roaring thump was followed by a ground-shaking explosion nearby, getting Number Seventeen. I looked further out into the wide harbor. Five destroyers were out there, convoys for the troop ships. Evidently a radio message had informed them of the situation. With their big shells, they could drive us away and still retain control of the harbor and vicinity.
But again, their own precautions against attack were their doom. A huge coastal artillery rifle had been set up in a commanding position on a hill, overlooking the waters. I led my robots there before the third salvo had come across. Ignoring the cranes for loading, we lifted the two-ton projectiles into the breech and fired.
The duel between the five destroyers and our shore cannon was brief. Four rounds delivered in a minute caught four destroyers at the waterline. They sank majestically. The last warship managed to land a shell within fifty feet, feeling for the range, before we trained our barrel on it. It was now trying to steam away, panic-stricken. Our shell ripped its side open.
The enemy had been finally crushed, on land, in the air, and at sea!
I STRODE toward the empty troop ships at the docks.
“Now we will rescue Eve!” I said eagerly, breaking into a run.
I should not have been so careless. I didn’t see the tank at my side. I didn’t see the ugly snout of a one-pounder cannon turning to follow me. I didn’t know that inside, where the Japanese general had crept, his face was twisted in cold rage. That he desired only one thing in the universe now—to destroy the robot-mind who had plunged him from assured glory to utter debasement in the eyes of his countrymen.
“Adam! Adam—”
It was a harsh scream from Mary, running after me. She had been with me, like a faithful shadow, through all the battling. She had fought beside me, not saying a word, only staring at me at times.
“Adam!” she shrieked again.
I scarcely heard her. I knew only one thing. That Eve, my beloved Eve, was ahead.
“Adam!”
This time the shout was behind my ear. And it clipped off abruptly. Or rather, it was drowned out by a stunning roar. And Mary’s body rained against me in a broken metal hail.
Now I saw. Saw that she had thrown herself before me, taking the shot meant for me. With a cry of rage I sprang at the tank. The gunners had no second chance for a shot. I ripped the gun barrel out with one furious tug. Then I stooped, got my hands under the tread, and heaved.
It was an eighty-ton tank. Impossible, you say, for me to turn it over. I agree with you. Yet I turned it over. When the red haze before my brain dissolved, I saw the Japanese general before me. He had scrambled out.
He stood before me, a head shorter than I. His face was wooden, concealing all emotion. He bowed.
“The High Command does not surrender!” he said stiffly.
THEN in slightly more personal tones, he added:
“You have defeated my army, Adam Link. But not me. I ask only one thing, soldier to soldier. Never reveal this. Never let the world know!”
I nodded.
He drew out his officer’s sword. Advancing, he slashed at me with it. A dozen times he blunted the toy’s edge against my adamant body. Then he stepped back. He had fulfilled his duty, fought to the last. It was a magnificent gesture.
There was only one thing left. Head high, he turned the point inward, against his own body. Hara-kiri, the honorable death . . .
I turned from the body. I strode to where Mary had sacrificed herself for me. I gave a cry as I saw her mangled head-piece lying there with just enough of her alloy backbone left to hold the leaking, draining battery. There was a spark of life left, but it was fading fast.
I kneeled besi
de her. Her eyes looked softly into mine.
“Adam—”
The eyes closed.
When I arose, I had forgotten what she had previously done in feminine blindness. She had died nobly. I forgave her also the dried bloodstains on her feet-plates. I had not been able to prevent her, before leaving the mine, from advancing on Daggert and jumping upon him, again and again.
Daggert had paid horribly for his treachery.
IT DID not take long to find Eve.
She lay chained in one of the ships. Japanese mechanics, as a second precaution, has disconnected her locomotor cables, rendering her completely helpless. I reconnected them and burst the chains with a savage wrench.
We strode out together.
I gave an order. My robots turned the field guns on the docks. Fifteen minutes of bombardment reduced them to the same smoking ruin all else was. The ships, with shells smashing at the waterline, sank to an inglorious grave.
The Japanese threat of invasion was over!
“It will remain a closed book, Eve,” I said. “The United States doesn’t suspect. Japan will ban it from even their archives. The world will never know that robots in warfare are invincible!”
“Won’t they?”
I whirled, startled.
Number Thirteen was back of me. Beside him were seven others. Those eight were all that remained of my original twenty-seven. The margin of victory and defeat had been that narrow.
“What do you mean?” I demanded.
“Just this.” Number Thirteen seemed to be the spokesman for them all. “We have had a taste of war.
These humans are puny against us. Let us build a robot army and conquer the world! The humans are not fit to rule. It will be for their own good!”
There was utter silence then.
I stood in stunned shock. Then I knew it had to be this way. Newly created, not yet fully tempered in the fires of life, that must be their conclusion. Conquest instead of service to humanity. To them, humans were pitiful, mad little creatures who needed a strong, guiding hand.
I SHOOK my head firmly. “Robot rule? No, men. We have weaknesses too. We are no more fit than they, as far as that goes. But as guiding servants, we can—”
“Rule, I say!” Number Thirteen boomed back. The robots behind him nodded. “Join with us, Adam Link, or—”
They had edged around me and Eve. We were surrounded. Two against eight. Eve and I had no chance.
I looked from one to the other of my robots. No use to argue. Nor did I blame them. Like Mary, they had no chance to gain a full rounded contact with human ways and problems. They knew only that humans fought and conquered one another. Why should not robots fight for what they wanted?
These eight were a “war generation.” Lost souls.
I spoke sadly. “I knew this might happen. You are like my sons—sons who have rebelled. I cannot allow it, for the sake of the human race. And the future robot race.”
I looked from one to the other—in farewell.
Then I snapped the secret switch in a side-niche of my metal body. Within me, a hitherto unused electrical unit hummed. From it leaped a spark that sprayed out all around me. Almost all the energy in my battery surged into the blast.
Like lightning, it lanced to all my robots. Like lightning, it burned out their brains, fused them into inert lumps. Only Eve and I were insulated.[*]
I had given them life, my robots. And I had taken it away.
I SPOKE an epitaph over the senseless metal junk of their sprawled bodies.
“Robots must never again be used in warfare! I, Adam Link, swear it!”
Adam and Eve Link, again the only robots left on Earth, turned away.
We knew time was kind. We knew the ache within us would heal.
[*] The brains of the robots were of an iridium-sponge construction (as were, of course, the brains of Adam and Eve Link). Iridium, one of the six precious metals of the platinum family, has an atomic weight of 193.1, a density of 22.41 and a melting point of 2350 degrees Fahrenheit—the second highest melting point of any of the other five elements in the platinum family.
Iridium is used in radio tubes, penpoints and machine tools, being very hard and very durable.
Hence the electrical unit which gave off the spark that melted and fused these brains, after Adam Link had snapped on his secret switch, must have been an exceptionally powerful little mechanism to have created the great heat required.
The robot iridium-sponge brains were obviously fashioned like a human brain, the “sponge” part of the brain being simply its formation, similar to the convolutions and cortex of a regular brain. The brains, however, were evidently of a much higher receptive order, inasmuch as the robots matured much faster than human beings insofar as their thinking processes were concerned.—Ed.
I STARTED out of a deep revery. Eve had just spoken sharply.
“You must snap out of it, Adam,” she said. “Another month of this brooding and you’ll go insane!”
“A robot can’t go insane—” I began.
But I knew I was wrong. Any mind—human or metal—crumbles before what seems an insurmountable problem.
My insurmountable problem was that of introducing intelligent robots into human society. Citizenship was out of the question, or robots would one day outvote humans. Secondly, patent rights on my iridium-sponge brain would be dangerous to file, especially during a period of great human conflicts.
I had come back from the California episode heartily sick of the whole business. I had created thirty new robots, to prove their usefulness in industry. Instead, they had proved their usefulness in warfare. I was completely disillusioned, gloomy, morbid.
I had tried to get my mind off the entire matter. Eve had read to me, like a dutiful wife to a sick husband. We had retired to our laboratory-home hidden in the Ozarks. But only half my mind listened to her voice. The other half wrestled with the crushing thought that perhaps robots could never have a place on Earth.
“Adam Link,” I said for the hundredth time, “the first of metal men, might also be the last!”
Eve glanced at me anxiously, and resumed her reading.
“Thor, the thunder-god, had an iron chariot. He never crossed the Bifrost Bridge because the other gods feared his heavy tread and mighty frame would make it crash. When Thor walked, lightnings sparkled from him. He had a mighty hammer which no man on Earth could cast as far as he. He was the strongest and mightiest of the gods, and their protector from the Frost Giants—”
I interrupted harshly.
“Stop reading that utter drivel! Can’t you find anything else?”
“But Adam,” Eve said patiently, “I’ve just about read you all the human literature that exists. Before this, you read every technical work known. There’s nothing left but mythology!”
Eve’s mechanical voice, when reading, is a blur of rapid syllables, indistinguishable to your human ears. She reads, and I listen, ten times faster than a human. We had exhausted the libraries of Earth, in our brief three years of life.
“The first of intelligent robots,” I said despairingly again. “And perhaps the la—”
I stopped. My ceaseless pacing up and down the room stopped. My brain spun a little, as it absorbed what I had just heard.
“Iron chariot—heavy tread—mighty frame—lightnings and thunders—mighty hammer which he threw further than men!”
I was suddenly clutching the book out of Eve’s hands.
“Eve, what does that sound like?” I demanded, rapidly thumbing the pages and reading them at a glance. “For instance, this. ‘Thor always wore iron gloves to throw Mojilnar, his great hammer. He slew the Frost Giants with ease, for no one could stand against him. When he walked, the ground trembled and the men of Midgard cowered in fear at his awesome appearance. “What does that sound like, Eve?”
“A fable such as humans devised in less enlightened times,” Eve returned.
I read another line.
“ ‘Thor’s
voice pealed like thunder!’ ”
My electrical larynx issued the last word with all the volume that the word implied.
Eve started violently. She stared at me. “What do you mean, Adam?”
My voice sank to a whisper.
“I mean this, Eve: If there is any kernel of fact in legends at all, Thor was a robot!”
After a moment I said decisively: “I’m going to build a time-machine, Eve. We’re going into the past.”
EVE was not astounded at my second statement, as at my first. Any human would have gasped at the blithe announcement of constructing a time-ship. Eve merely accepted it for what it was—a task within range of our abilities.
I finished the time-machine within six months.
It is simple to say that. But harder to explain how I did it. In six months, in my laboratory, I had solved the “secret” of time. It is no secret. Time is not a road or “dimension” down which you travel in one irretraceable direction. It is a haphazard zig-zagging through the entropy-zones of space. Once you track this winding path, and understand its twists, you are able to forge a new track—ahead or back.
I did not want to go ahead. I wanted to go back. Back to a dim age when “gods” lived in a north land. When deeds were performed that have rung down in history as greatly exaggerated legends. When a robot walked the Earth, and was called Thor.
“Just think, Eve!” I said excitedly. “Perhaps I’m not the first of intelligent robots. And if a robot—or robots—once before existed in human history, why didn’t they survive? Did they meet so many obstacles—like myself,—that they lost out? Who built that first robot? I’ve got to know the answers, Eve. This may be the solution to my own problem.”
Eve nodded. She was happy that I had completely emerged from my previous fog of mental inertia.
We stepped into the time-ship.
Briefly, it was a globular vehicle of light alloy, with a dozen windows of quartz for vision. The controls were simply two levers, for orientation in space and time. Three dials read off watts, miles and years. For motive power I had devised a heavy-duty battery which constantly recharged itself through the absorption of cosmic-rays.