The COMPLEAT Collected SFF Works 1911-1987

by C. L. Moore

  Dyson was talking with the topmost level of his mind, waiting for enough power to accumulate, listening to the music grow stronger and stronger in his skull.

  "Maybe so," White said doubtfully. "What if the Chief sends out a signal, though? He might do it somehow. He might mark a big SOS out on the desert."

  Dyson considered the possibility, weaving it in and out of that beautiful, distant vibration of music. Martine was a problem, of course. But any problem could be solved, if you approached it the right way.

  "He'll come around," he said. "It's two against one, remember. Once he knows he can't ever get back to Earth, he'll come around. Once he knows our plans ... Who'd turn down Eden?"

  "Oh, it sounds like a lazy man's paradise, all right," White said. "That's for me. Little streams of whiskey come trickling down the rocks. Just the same, I'd kind of like to see our cargo get back home."

  "What for? It's no good."

  "Can't tell. It might be. All I'm saying is, I wish I could kick the ship on the rump and send her back to Earth."

  "How can the ship get back without the robot to guide it?" Dyson asked in a too-patient voice, his eyes unfocused as he concentrated on the gathering power in the helmet.

  -

  HE TOUCHED IT with a tentative finger and then bent to the mirror set in the wall to read the reversed image of the dial set in the helmet's front. "Won't be long now," he murmured. "We're going to need the robot, Benjy. Just remember that. Unless you want to work like a dog."

  "I been working like a dog all my life," White said. "And all the bones had the meat chawed off before I got 'em. Oh, I'm convinced, Johnny, but I can't help thinking about Poochie."

  "You'd have plenty of time to think about her in jail."

  "Guess so. Tell you what. Maybe later we can figure a way to get the cargo home. If we built another robot—it might take quite a while, but if we managed it—we could spare the one we got now."

  "Why not?" Dyson agreed quickly. "Plenty of time to work that out later on."

  "Plenty. We'll want something to keep us busy, after Eden's all built. I just—" He grinned a little sheepishly. "I don't know, I guess I just hate to give up without a struggle."

  "We aren't!" Dyson was stung. "There's no use struggling when you haven't got a chance. If there was a chance I'd be the last man to give up, Benjy. I'd fight to the last ditch. But Earth's as good as gone, and ... oh, shut up. Don't think about it."

  But he could feel it and see it—the solid planet shuddering underfoot, buckling above hollow emptiness, and the mushroom cloud rolling majestically toward the sky. Was it Man's fault? He'd picked up that fatally sharp knife of his own volition, but who gave Man the knife in the first place? God? It was the fruit of the tree of knowledge, all right, and to taste it was to die. God's fault, then, not Adam's.

  "Let's go," he said abruptly. "We haven't got all the time in the world. Where's the robot?"

  "Storage. Johnny, you thought how a court of law might feel about this?"

  "The same way they'd feel about larceny, maybe," Dyson said, and walked the control carriage out the door. As he tip-toed it along the passage he could hear White padding after him, worrying softly under his breath.

  Luckily they didn't have to pass Martine's door. Dyson urged the carriage faster, watched the trundling box rock hastily along before him like a dog on a leash. A plump Scotty, perhaps, with greyhound legs. He squeezed the bulb at the leash's end and the Scotty sprinted.

  Its radioactive sodium battery had a half-life of three years. After that, the battery could be recharged, but not without a pile to produce the right isotope. And there were no atomic piles on Mars. And there never would be. Plenty of storage batteries in the ship, but all of those, even hooked up in series, couldn't throw enough power into the ship to overcome Martian gravity. No, Mars hugged the ship to her bosom now with an unbreakable grip. Mars the mother, restraining it with strong apron strings, however foolishly it might try to plunge back across space to the world where doom awaited it. Mars would receive and hide the fuel and hold the ship to her bosom forever.

  The batteries would be useful, though. They'd help provide all the comforts of home. This world, Dyson assured himself, was going to be a perfect Eden, an Eden with modern plumbing.

  He reined the control carriage to a halt and opened the door at his shoulder. There was the robot, waiting in storage. It hung cradled in a resilient mould that rocked occasionally as balances automatically shifted and compensated inside the grey, gleaming body.

  -

  GIGANTIC AND INHUMAN. Segmented like an ant, thorax and abdomen linked by a universal joint. Many specialized limbs. That was the robot. It had bulb-shaped eyes set in its abdomen, for underwater vision. A turret-tower of mosaic eyes, some for day and some for night, rose from the top of the thorax.

  Lion-yellow, these eyes looked at Dyson.

  Urging the carriage before him, he stepped quickly into the room and moved to one side uneasily, trying to elude that steady stare. But he could not, of course. There were always facets whose optic axes faced the observer accurately enough to reveal the dark pigments around the visual sense-cells. Any spider can do the same trick. But the false pupils' stare unnerved Dyson.

  He reached for a dial on the control unit. White hissed a nervous warning from the door, and Dyson closed his mouth on an equally nervous retort. After all, it had been over a month since he had worn the transmitter, and if the robot fell down the noise would wake the dead.

  He turned the dial very gently. The music deepened in his skull. And the robot stirred majestically, lifting its thorax. You could hear oiled steel moving sweetly on oiled steel. Solemnly the great gleaming creature climbed from its cradle and crossed the room, walking with no remotest likeness to the motion of life.

  Dyson met it in the center of the floor, at the chart-table, shooing the control-carriage before him on its nimble legs. Together man and robot bent above the table, the robot's thoracic section hanging enormous above Dyson's shoulder, reared upright and curving over him while a compound crown of eyes focused on the maps.

  Dyson spun the selector until the right chart came up and spread itself out on the table in moulded relief that took the shadows of the room in miniature perfection, casting long fingers of shade across the tiny plastic valleys that duplicated what lay just outside the ship. It was perfect duplication, every hill slope and plateau showing clear. There was even—and Dyson blinked to see it—a blunt oval replica of the ship they stood in.

  He felt a little dizzy, half believing that inside that vinylite bulge on the map was a doll-sized room where a doll-sized Johnny Dyson stood watching a doll-sized chart ...

  Above him the robot creaked conscientiously as it lowered its compound focus toward the map. Dyson shook off the illusion of infinitely repeated Johnny Dysons receding into the microcosm and touched the map with a careful finger, thinking into the transmitter as his fingers traced a course from the ship across the plain and up the hillside. The robot watched. Faint, remote clickings could be heard from inside it as it memorized the path.

  Dyson was just attempting to shake off the further illusion that a multiplicity of other and larger Johnny Dysons extended the opposite way, into the macrocosm, when a harsh, crisp voice spoke like God's, out of the air.

  "Dyson!" the voice said. "Dyson!"

  -

  WHITE INHALED with a soft, appalled gasp. Dyson looked up sharply, feeling his stomach turn over. For he hadn't heard the inter-com click on. There had been no warning. And that could mean it had been on all the time. His voice and White's could have been babbling their mutinous plans straight into Martine's office, straight into his listening ears.

  "Dyson, report to my room. At once!"

  Dyson gulped. Then he shook his head at White and lifted a warning finger. If the inter-com had been open both ways, caution didn't matter now. Still, if Martine knew what they were doing, why waste time with the inter-com. The Chief's quarters were less than half a
ship's length away. And Martine had long legs and a loaded revolver.

  "Reporting, sir," Dyson said hoarsely.

  "That's all."

  There was no concluding click to prove the inter-com had been shut off. Dyson kept his finger raised.

  White was having difficulty in swallowing.

  There was still a chance, a good chance if Dyson hurried. He bent over the chart again, moving his finger along the course he meant the robot to travel. He worked fast, but accurately. His orders clicked out with almost mechanical precision into the precise, mechanical brain of the robot. It took about thirty seconds to finish.

  Then the robot stepped back. Its huge thorax lowered on the gently purring joint, and it walked quickly out of the room. Walked—rolled—glided. There is no word for the gait of an organism like that. It went smoothly and quite fast, making no sound except for the faint, small noises within it as mechanisms adjusted to the task at hand. Clicking with metallic thoughts, it moved away.

  Now it would go directly to the fuel supply chamber. Dyson's mind ran ahead of the great shining ant-shaped thing and traced its course out of the ship and across the face of Mars, as he had just traced it across the map. Over the plain, up the slope, into the cavern he had found weeks ago and marked for just this purpose. Load by load the fuel would accumulate there until not an ounce remained in the ship. And nobody but Johnny Dyson would ever know where it was. Nobody, that is, if the robot's memory track were erased in time.

  As the huge, majestic metal thing vanished down the corridor White caught Dyson's eye and drew his finger across his throat.

  Dyson grinned. He reached for a stylo pad with one hand and turned down the control-power with the other.

  "All set," he wrote. "Robot has orders. Keep transmitter on. Robot will signal when finished. Then erase memory track." He underlined the last sentence twice for emphasis and held it under White's nose.

  God's voice spoke again, peremptorily out of the empty air.

  "Dyson! I'm waiting!"

  "Yes, sir—coming."

  Now he would have to move fast. He waited impatiently—and yet reluctantly, too—while the music of the spheres died slowly out of his skull. While its faint vibrations still rang he lifted the helmet off and fitted it on White's head. Neither of them dared to speak.

  Dyson turned and ran.

  -

  HE SLOWED DOWN by the time he reached Martine's closed door, and his strong will buckled slightly in the middle. What was going to happen now? Suppose Martine's first words were an accusation?

  ... Never mind, the take-off was due tomorrow. All three men would be needed. At worst, Martine would say unpleasant things. They might be very unpleasant—if the inter-com had been on long enough.

  Actually, the more urgent thing was what White would do. His conviction was shaky, at best. And he had full control of the robot now. He was entirely capable of recalling it, replacing the fuel and letting events take their own disastrous course, back to Earth, if Dyson left him alone long enough for his nerve to fail. So much depended on Dyson now—so terribly much.

  He had a moment's deep longing to lay his burden down. If he just stood here silent long enough, something might happen ...

  Which was, he realized, exactly the sort of philosophy that kept Earth rolling along the old familiar groove toward atomic holocaust.

  He made himself knock on the door.

  -

  Martine's collar was open at the throat. He had his shoes off and his feet in neatly darned wool socks were crossed comfortably on the desk. Johnny Dyson stared at him in shocked amazement. He had never seen the Chief before except in full uniform, rigidly correct. Now Martine's face reminded him somehow of the robot deactivated. When he saw the bottle on the desk he knew why.

  For the first time he saw that Martine had a fat, soft face.

  The big slob, Dyson thought exultantly. So he's solved that problem, all by himself. He's got a turn-off switch, after all. I won't have to kill him, later on. There won't be any trouble I can't handle. He can have all the whiskey he wants. We can make the stuff. Just pull out the nail in his foot, let the fire drain out, and refill with ninety-proof Martian vin du pays, home brewed. No, distilled. Doesn't matter. You can make the stuff out of anything. All you need is a ferment. And there's plenty of ferment in this ship right now.

  He restrained his immediate mad impulse to spit in Martine's eye and declare his intentions, which was probably just as well, for the Chief kept a revolver in his desk. Dyson waited, at attention, until Martine, who had been looking vacantly at the ceiling, glanced down and saw him.

  "Oh. At ease. Sit down, Dyson."

  "Yessir," Dyson said with a respect he no longer felt. It was hard to keep the triumph out of his voice. He should have realized that Martine had to be a second-rater too. They couldn't have spared him for this trip if he'd been first rate. "Thanks, sir," he said.

  Martine waved at the desk, where a second, and empty, glass stood beside a full one and the bottle.

  "Pour yourself a drink, Dyson."

  -

  THIS WAS too good to be true. Dyson moved forward willingly, because from the desk he could see the inter-com switch. While whiskey gurgled into the glass he leaned forward enough to observe that the switch was closed, after all. So Martine hadn't heard a thing. So the plan should work out perfectly, if White played along.

  "Happy landings, sir," he said, lifting his small glass.

  "Happy landings," Martine nodded, sniffing at his.

  But they meant very different things. Dyson was thinking, "We've already made ours. And it's going to be happy ever after, world without end, amen." Not like Earth. This is the way the world ends—how did that line go? That quoted-to-death line with the irritating ending. He couldn't quite remember. This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but—but—Never mind.

  "You're off duty," Martine said. "Relax."

  "I'll try, sir."

  "We've done a hard job," Martine said with satisfaction. "Six months in the field. Shoddy equipment. Only three of us to do everything. It's been quite a responsibility. If anything had gone wrong—" He took another drink. "Well, the ore's loaded, the records went off to Earth half an hour ago and everything's done. Every microscopic, piddling, vital detail. Tomorrow we go on duty again. But our mission's accomplished."

  "For all the good it will do in the long run," Dyson said, and told himself to shut up. He looked down warily at the glass in his hand, surprised to find it empty. Careful, Johnny, careful, he thought.

  "What do you mean?"

  "Oh, I don't know. After all, the nuclear physics boys have been working on the problem a long time without getting anywhere, haven't they? I don't see—"

  "Are you a qualified nuclear physicist?"

  "I came within an ace of being one," Dyson said.

  Martine stared at him. "What happened?" "Oh, I don't know." Dyson shrugged. "I guess I just realized finally how hopeless it all was. A good thing, too, from my viewpoint. If I were qualified now I'd be back home working on military projects like all the other competent boys. Whether they want to or not. It's practically martial law back there now."

  "Got to be," Martine said, looking at him curiously. "You can't just give up, you know."

  It was the same thing White had said, and it infuriated Dyson. They wouldn't see! He caught his breath for a sharp rebuttal, but what good would that do? None so blind, he thought, and remarked instead: "People don't change, sir. That's the trouble. People in general are—well, a bad lot, I'm afraid. They're bringing on the Blow-Up and no one can stop it. No matter what anybody does."

  "Very likely," Martine said, bored. "Have another drink."

  "Thanks, sir." Dyson leaned over and poured himself a second glass, wondering as he did so why he kept on calling the Chief sir ... For the first time, he realized, it didn't matter whether or not he irritated Martine. The important point was to allow time to get the fuel hidden. After that, Martine would stop being
an officer automatically. (Of course, there was the revolver in the desk. He mustn't go too far.)

  "Where's White?" Martine asked. It was perfectly clear that he was bored. Maybe White would offer better entertainment.

  "He's—resting," Dyson said wildly.

  "Oh yes, energizing the robot for the take-off. I forgot. Well, now you've had your drink why don't you spell him? Maybe he'd like a drink, too."

  -

  DYSON KNEW he had to say something that would catch the Chief's interest—it didn't matter what—anything, anything. White must be left to do what he was doing until the job was accomplished. All doubt in his mind vanished as to whether White was actually operating the robot as he had promised. Dyson was suddenly confident about that. The only thing that mattered was to let him finish, to give him time, to keep Martine quiet.

  "Sir," he said, "sir, I'd like your opinion. You've had experience. If I'm wrong I wish you'd tell me. Is it wrong to feel my generation's been cheated of its rights?"

  Martine yawned. Then he leaned back to flip a switch, and a tape began to play Lili Marlene with infinitely saccharine emphasis.

  "You think the world owes you a living, eh?" he asked unpleasantly.

  "No, sir! Well—yes. Yes, a living, that's all. I want to stay alive. It isn't much to ask, is it? And the Blow-Up—"

  "Dyson, you've got atomophobia. Just try to remember that when we get back to Earth you'll have a better perspective. I know the last six months haven't been a picnic, but we had a job to do. Now—"

  "I've had perspective," Dyson said. "Ever since I was a kid. Sir, my father was Dr. Gerald Dyson."

  Martine opened his eyes.

  "Oh, So that's how you qualified for this trip. I wondered. You had the right technical training, of course, but—I wondered."

  "Oh yes, I had training. My father insisted on that. He worked on one of the first bombs, you know. He was one of the men who said, 'Oops, sorry.' Afterward he got a mission in life—to find an atomic control. Of course, there isn't any. He'd just lighted a stick of dynamite and handed it over to me. Until I was old enough to stand up for my rights and say the devil with it. Parents always try to compensate for their failures through their children. But I've finally got clear 'away from Earth. For the first time in my life I'm out from under the shadow of—" He paused, looked down at his glass, shuddered a little.