by Roger Elwood
He followed, with Johnson, as Argus moved slowly through the ornate rooms of the castle. “His weight will spring the trapdoor, and he’ll drop into the room below. Can he get out of that room?”
“No, sir. The walls are reinforced metal. He’ll stay put.”
“Fair enough.”
“But…uh…won’t he keep dodging around that room?”
“He may,” Ballard said grimly, “till I pour quick-setting concrete in on him. That’ll immobilize the so-and-so. It’ll be easy after that to drill through the concrete and get the diamonds.”
Johnson smiled weakly. He was a little afraid of the huge, glittering robot.
“How wide is the trap?” Ballard asked abruptly.
“Ten feet.”
“So. Well, call the men with the flame throwers. Tell ’em to close in behind us. If Argus doesn’t fall into the trap, we want to be able to drive him in.”
Johnson hesitated. “Wouldn’t he simply smash his way through the men?”
“We’ll see. Put the men on both sides of the trap, so we’ll have Argus cornered. Hop to it!”
The secretary raced away. Ballard followed the robot through room after room. Eventually Johnson and three of the flame-throwing crew appeared. The others had circled around to flank the robot.
They turned into the passage. It was narrow, but long. Halfway along it was the trapdoor, concealed by a rich Bokhara rug. In the distance Ballard could see three men waiting, flame throwers ready, watching as the robot approached them. Within minutes now the trap would be sprung.
“Turn it on, boys,” Ballard said, on a sudden impulse. The crew of three walking in front of him obeyed. Fire jutted out from the nozzles they held.
The robot increased its pace. It had eyes in the back of its head, Ballard remembered. Well, eyes wouldn’t help Argus now. The rug—
A golden foot came down. The robot began to shift its weight forward, and suddenly froze as instantaneous reactions warned it of the difference in pressure between the solid floor and the trap. There was no time for the door to drop down, before Argus had instantly readjusted, withdrew his foot, and stood motionless on the verge of the rug. The flame throwers gushed out toward the robot’s back. Ballard yelled a command.
The three men beyond the trapdoor began to run forward, fire sprouting from their hoses. The robot bent its legs, shifted balance, and jumped. It wasn’t at all bad for a standing broad jump. Since Argus could control his movements with the nicest accuracy, and since his metal body had strength in excess of his weight, the golden figure sprang across the ten-foot gap with inches to spare. Flame lashed out at him.
Argus moved fast—very fast. His legs were a blinding blur of speed. Ignoring the fire that played on his body, he ran toward the three men and through them. Then he slowed down to a normal walk and continued mildly on his way. The alarm siren was screaming Ballard realized, just as it died.
For Argus, the danger was over. Here and there on his metal body the gold had melted into irregular blobs. That was all.
Johnson gulped. “He must have seen the trap.”
“He felt it,” Ballard said, his voice low with fury. “Hell! If we could just immobilize Argus long enough to pour concrete on him—”
That was tried an hour later. A metal-sheathed ceiling collapsed on the robot, a ceiling of mesh metal through which concrete could be poured. Ballard simply had liquid concrete run into the room above till the platform collapsed under the weight. The robot was below—
Was below. The difference in air pressure warned Argus, and he knew what to do about it. He lunged through the door and escaped, leaving a frightful mess behind him.
Ballard cursed. “We can’t shoot concrete at the devil. If he’s sensitized to differences in air pressure—hell! I don’t know.; There must be some way. Johnson! Get me Plastic Products, quick!” '
A short while later Ballard was closeted with a representative of Plastic Products.
“I don’t quite understand. A quick-drying cement—”
“To be squirted out of hoses, and to harden as soon as it hits the robot. That’s what I said.” I
“If it dries that quickly, it’ll dry as soon as air hits it. I think we’ve got almost what you want. A very strong liquid cementoid; it’ll harden half a minute after being exposed to air.” ;
“That should work. Yeah. How soon—”
“Tomorrow morning.”
*
The next morning, Argus was herded into one of the huge! halls downstairs. A ring of thirty men surrounded the robot— each armed with a tank, filled with the quick-drying cementoid. Ballard and Johnson watched from the side lines.
He was a machine, and could develop tremendous power* He spun on his longitudinal axis, a blazing, shinning, glittering blur of light, far too fast for the eye to follow. He was like a tiny world spinning through space—but a world has gravitation. Argus’ gravitational pull was negligible. There was, however, centrifugal force.
It was like throwing an egg into an electric fan. The streams of cementoid hit Argus, and bounced, repelled by the centrifuge. Ballard got a gob of the stuff in his middle. It had hardened enough to be painful.
Argus kept on spinning. He didn’t try to run, this time. His alarm kept screeching deafeningly. The men, plastered with cementoid, continued to squirt the stuff at Argus for a while.
But the cementoid stuck to them when it was flung back. It hardened on them. Within seconds the scene resembled a Mack Sennett pie-throwing comedy.
Ballard roared commands. His voice went unheard in the uproar. But the men did not continue their hopeless task for long. They, not Argus, were becoming immobilized.
Presently the warning siren stopped. Argus slowed down in his mad spinning. He was no longer the target of cementoid streams.
He went quietly out of the room, and nobody tried to stop him.
One man almost strangled before the hardened cementoid could be dislodged from his mouth and nostrils. Aside from that, there were no casualties, save to Ballard’s temper.
It was Johnson who suggested the next experiment. Quicksand would immobilize anything. It was difficult to introduce quicksand into the castle, but a substitute was provided—a gooey, tarry mess poured into an improvised tank twenty-five feet wide. All that remained was to lure Argus into the quicksand.
“Traps won’t work,” Ballard said glumly. “Maybe stringing a wire to trip him—”
“I think he’d react instantly to that, too, sir,” Johnson vetoed. “If I may make a suggestion, it should not be difficult to drive Argus into the pit, once he’s maneuvered into a passage leading to it.”
“How? Flame throwers again? He automatically reacts away from the most serious danger. When he came to the pit, he’d turn around and go the other way. Break right through the men.”
“His strength is limited, isn’t it?” Johnson asked. “He couldn’t pass a tank.”
Ballard didn’t see the point immediately. “A midget tractor? Not too small, though—some of the castle’s passages are plenty wide. If we got a tank just broad enough to fill the hall—a pistol that would drive Argus into the quicksand—”
Measurements were made, and a powerful tractor brought into the castle. It fitted the passages, leaving no room to spare—at least, not enough to accommodate the robot. Once Argus was driven into that particular passage, he could go only one way.
The tractor, at Johnson’s suggestion, was camouflaged, so the robot’s flight-conditioned brain would not recognize and consider it as a serious factor. But the machine was ready to roll into the passage instantly.
The trick would probably have succeeded, had it not been for one difficulty. The consistency of the artificial quicksand had been calculated carefully. It had to be soft enough to drag the robot down, and stiff enough so that Argus would be helpless. The robot could walk safely under water; that had been proved days ago, in an abortive early experiment.
So the mix had surface tension, though not en
ough to bear Argus’ great weight.
The robot was maneuvered into the passage without trouble, and the tractor swung after it, blocking Argus’ escape. It rumbled slowly on, driving the robot before it. Argus seemed untroubled. When he reached the edge of the artificial quicksand, he bent and tested the consistency with one golden hand.
After that, he lay flat on his face, legs bent like a frog’s, feet braced against one wall of the passage, head pointed out over the quicksand. He thrust strongly.
Had Argus walked into the goo feet first, he would have sunk. But his weight was spread over a far larger surface area now. Not enough to sustain him indefinitely, but long enough for his purposes. He simply didn’t have time to sink. Argus skimmed over the quicksand like a skiff or a sandboat. His powerful initial thrust gave him sufficient impetus. No human could have done it, and, while Argus weighed more than a human, he had also had more strength.
So he shot out, angling across the tank, buoyed by surface tension and carried on by his impetus. The quicksand got hold at last and bogged him down, but by that time Argus’ powerful hands reached their destination, the edge of the tank. Another door was in the wall at that point, and Ballard and Johnson were standing on the threshold, watching.
They dodged before Argus trampled them in his automatic fight-reaction away from the quicksand tank.
The robot dripped goo over a dozen valuable rugs before he dried. But after that he was no longer so dazzling a spectacle. However, his abilities were unimpaired.
Ballard tried the quicksand trick again, with a larger tank and smooth walls, on which the robot could get no grip. Yet Argus seemed to learn through experience. Before entering a passage now, he would make certain that there were no tractors within reach. Ballard concealed a tractor in an adjoining room where Argus could not see it, and the robot was induced to go into the fatal passage; but he ran out again the moment the tractor clanked into movement. Argus had an excellent sense of hearing.
“Well—” Johnson said doubtfully.
Ballard moved his lips silently. “Eh? Get that stuff from the quicksand washed off Argus. He’s supposed to be a show-piece!”
Johnson looked after Ballard’s retreating figure. His eyebrows lifted quizzically.
Ballard had a tough session with the televisor. His enemies were closing in from all sides. If only the end of the month would come, when he could get the new diamonds! His holdings were falling in ruin around him. And that damned robot held the key to—everything!
He gave such orders as he could and wandered upstairs, to Argus’ room. The robot, newly cleaned, stood by the window in a blaze of sunlight, a figure of fantastic beauty. Ballard noticed his own reflection in a nearby mirror. Instinctively he drew himself up.
It was a singularly futile gesture. The silent presence of Argus was like a rebuke. Ballard looked at the robot.
“Oh, damn you!” he said. “Damn you!”
Through the visor the impassive face of Argus ignored him. A whim had made Ballard shape the robot to resemble a knight. Somehow the idea seemed less satisfactory now.
Ballard’s long-suppressed inferiority complex was suffering badly.
The golden knight stood there, towering, beautiful, mighty. There was dignity in its silence. It was a machine, Ballard told himself, merely a machine that man had made. He was certainly better than a machine.
But he wasn’t.
Within its specialized limits, the robot had greater intelligence than his own. It had security, for it was invulnerable. It had wealth—it was wealth, a Midas without the Midas curse. And it had beauty. Calm, huge, utterly self-confident, Argus stood ignoring Ballard.
If Ballard could have destroyed the robot then, he might have done so. If only the damned thing wouldn’t ignore him! It was wrecking his life, his power, his empire—and doing so unconsciously. Malice and hatred Ballard could have faced; as long as a man is important enough to be hated, he is not a cipher. But, to Argus, Ballard simply did not exist.
The sunlight blazed yellow from the golden cuirass. The diamonds sent out rainbow rays into the still air of the room. Ballard did not realize that his lips had drawn back into a snarling rictus—
After that events moved swiftly. The most notable was the impounding of the castle, a result of Ballard’s avalanching economic collapse. He had to move out. Before he did so, he risked opening the annealing chamber on the new diamonds, a week before the process was finished. The result was worthless carbon. But Ballard could not have waited a week, for by that time the castle and all it contained would have been out of his possession.
Except the robot. That was still his own—or, rather, it belonged technically to his divorced wife. The documents he and Jessica had signed were thoroughly waterproof and legal. Ballard secured a court judgment; he was permitted to enter the castle and take away the robot at any convenient time. If he could find a way of immobilizing Argus long enough to dismantle the creature.
In time he might hit on a way. Maybe. Maybe—
Ffoulkes summoned Ballard to a conference, superficially a luncheon engagement. For a time Ffoulkes talked of casual matters, but there was a sardonic gleam in his eyes.
At last he said, “How are you getting on with that robot of yours, Bruce?"
“All right.” Ballard was wary. "Why?”
“The castle’s impounded, isn’t it?”
“That’s right. But I can get the robot whenever I like. The court ruled in my favor—special circumstances.”
“Think you can catch the thing. I don’t. Gunther was a smart man. If he made that robot invulnerable. I’ll bet you won’t be able to get your hands on it. Unless you know the key phrase, of course.”
“I—” Ballard stopped. His eyes changed. “How’d you know—”
“That there was a code? Gunther phoned me just before he…ah…met his unfortunate accident. He suspected you were going to kill him. I do not know the ins and outs of the thing, but I got a telecall from him that night. All he said was to tell you what the key code was—but not to tell you till the right time. Gunther was pretty farsighted.”
“You know the code?” Ballard said, his voice expressionless.
Ffoulkes shook his head. “No.”
“Just what do you mean?”
“Gunther said this: ’Tell Ballard that the key code is what he finds on the wire tape—the name and number of the patent for making artificial diamonds.’”
Ballard looked at his fingernails. The wire tape. The secret he had found only by tricking and killing Gunther. Only in his mind now did that information exist—“McNamara, Torsion Process, Patent No. R-735-V-22.”
And Gunther must have keyed the robot to that chain of phrases before he died.
“Finished?” Ffoulkes asked.
“Yeah.” Ballard got up, crumpling his napkin.
“This is on me…One more point, Bruce. It would be distinctly to my advantage if diamonds became valueless. I’ve sold out all my diamond holdings, but plenty of my competitors have interests in the African mines. If the bottom falls out of the market, I can do some good for myself.”
“Well?”
“Would you tell me that patent number?”
“No.”
“I thought not,” Ffoulkes said, sighing. “Well, goodby.”
Ballard commandeered a truck, well armored, and hired a dozen guards. He drove out to the castle. The officer at the gate nodded agreeably.
“Want to go in, sir?”
“Yes. I have permission—”
“I know that, sir. Go right ahead. You’re after your robot?” Ballard didn’t answer. The castle, after he had entered, seemed strange to him. Already there had been alterations, rugs removed, pictures stored, furniture carried away. It was no longer his.
He glanced at his watch. Five after two. Argus would be making his rounds. The great hall—
Ballard headed for it. He caught sight of the golden robot emerging into the hall and beginning its slow circuit. Two men f
ollowed it, just beyond the circle of reaction. They were police guards.
Ballard walked toward them. “I’m Bruce Ballard.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What…what the devil! Aren’t you Dangerfield? Ffoulkes* chief of staff? Wh—”
Dangerfield’s blank face didn’t change expression. “I've been sworn in as special deputy. The authorities consider your robot too valuable to be left unguarded. We’re detailed to keep an eye on it.”
Ballard didn’t move for a moment. Then he said, “Well, your job’s finished. I’m taking the robot away.”
“Very well, sir.”
“You can leave.”
“Sorry, sir. My orders were not to leave the robot unguarded for a moment.”
“Ffoulkes gave you those orders,” Ballard said, his voice not quite under control.
“Sir?”
Ballard looked at the other guard. “Are you Ffoulkes’ man, too?”
“Sir?”
Dangerfield said, “You’re quite free to remove your robot whenever you wish, but until it’s out of the castle, we mustn’t take our eyes off those diamonds.”
They had, as they talked, been following Argus. Now the robot moved on into the next hall and commenced its slow circuit. Ballard ran around in front of the creature. Covering his lips with one hand, he whispered, “McNamara, Torsion Process, Patent No. R-735-V-22.”
The robot kept on walking. Dangerfield said, “You’ll have to say it louder, won’t you?”
He was holding a little notebook and stylo.
Ballard stared at the other for a moment. Then he ran in toward Argus, beginning to whisper the code phrase again. But the robot instantly fled till it was beyond Ballard’s triggering nearness.
He couldn’t get close enough to whisper the code. And if he said it loudly enough for Argus to hear, Dangerfield was ready to carry the formula to Ffoulkes. What Ffoulkes would do was obvious—publicize the process, so that the bottom would fall out of the diamond market.
The trio moved on, leaving Ballard where he was. Could there be a way out? Was there any way of trapping the robot?