by Jerry
“Saved,” Raleigh sighed, getting up to answer it, “by the bell.”
Captain Finley appeared on the audiovisor screen.
“Raleigh, will you and North come up to Control Cabin Two immediately?” Finley was struggling to keep his voice level. “We’ve found your robots—or rather, they’ve found us!” Without waiting for a reply, the captain switched off.
North and Raleigh leaped for the door!
* * * * *
“There”—Captain Finley pointed through the amberglass—“it is!”
Not far ahead loomed the violet, phosphorescent hull of a small space ship.
“How do you know it’s the robots?” North asked, wondering at Finley’s excitement. The phosphorescence of the ship ahead meant it had been heat-proofed, and outside of military ships, there were few space vessels that were allowed to assume the violet armor.
CAPTAIN FINLEY’S hands trembled as he produced the official registry of space ships. He spoke as he turned the pages.
“Twenty minutes after you left, Observation reported it. Five minutes later, Controls called—claimed we were being swung off our course at an eight-six degree angle. And we are!” He pointed to photographs and diagrams of a ship in the registry. “Here it is. That ship ahead is registered under the Robot Manufactory banner!”
“It’s one of the stolen boats!” Raleigh cried.
The captain continued.
“We’re faster than that ship. We’ve overtaken it and passed it, but the minute we get out ahead it holds us back. We tried to drop behind—and it pulled us! We can’t do anything but go back and forth in a straight line, and we’re going where that ship wants to take us!”
North’s cool gray eyes glinted. “Captain Finley,” North spoke rapidly, “call Communications, quickly!” Finley switched the audiovisor on. Instead of the usual robot answer, an unbroken, almost angry, silence prevailed. Again Finley pressed the switch.
“You’re wasting your time,” North said slowly. “I think your robot communications system is out. Did you send any distress signals?”
The captain’s voice came as if from a distance. “No,” he said, turning to an officer near him. “Mr. Morgan, run up to Communications. See what’s happened there.”
North peered ahead, gazing at the glowing ship that moved so darkly, so expertly, seemingly oblivious of what it was doing. To try breaking from it again, North knew was futile. And it might result in alarming the passengers. The only thing was to keep going, waiting for a chance.
The official audiovisor piped. First Mate Morgan appeared on the screen.
“Calling from Observation,” Morgan reported. “Impossible from Communications. Everything there has been destroyed. The robots are out of commission. Can’t make out what did it. I’ve started the repairs, but it looks like a week’s job. That is all.”
When Morgan finished, Captain Finley came to life. “A week!” he shouted. “We’re due in New York in a week. Now we can’t even call for help before then.”
“I don’t see what kind of help we can get,” North said softly. “We are being led by a magnetic ray that is superbly balanced to hold us, but not to tear us apart. What can military magnetic guns do to it?” He mused half aloud, “That robot ship in some way got the Communications robots to destroy our system. It would be easy enough if someone shot a powerful current through them.”
“But how?” groaned Captain Finley, “And why?”
“What these robots have done is only an indication of what more they can do,” responded North. “You must be familiar with the details of the Government Inquiry at which Raleigh and I worked with the prosecution?”
“I know very little,” Finley admitted, “These pleasure boats are like desert planets, Nobody aboard ever hears anything that’s going on outside.”
“One thing is certain,” Raleigh interposed, “These robots aren’t taking us just for the ride. We’re going to wind up someplace where the robots can have a good look at us—as a start.” Finley looked steadily at Raleigh, turning uneasily in his chair.
“What do you mean—look at us?” Finley demanded. Raleigh shot North a hesitant look. “You can speak freely before the crew.”
“Well,” Raleigh said, “it’s all bound up with the history of this case. We’ve come a long way from the early robots like model C, where you could ask for the history of an obscure office worker and get a complete answer in a moment. Those C’s and others were huge memory machines, filing systems, stationary mechanisms which could hear and speak.
“Later, the Manufactory made models with rudimentary eyes of photo-electric cells. Some moved on wheels and treads. Others had arms or tentacles. Their inner machinery grew fantastically in complexity. We’ve used them on space liners, and in innumerable industries. But the model Y’s—they’ve been at work in every scientific laboratory in the world. That’s only part of the danger—what they know.”
“What danger is there in that?” Finley demanded.
JEFF NORTH took up the question. “The danger lies not so much in what they know—but because of what other things they don’t know.” He paused, taking a breath. “I see you don’t understand me. Let’s take the old-fashioned adding robot as an example. You could give it thousands of numerals and demand an answer, whether in addition or multiplication, and the machine had to give you an answer.
“Suppose you made those units infinitely more complex, as the Manufactory people did, and you ran them into tremendous categories. You could then determine, for instance, that Chlorophyl A combined with carbon dioxide, under the influence of light, would react as Chlorophyl B or formaldehyde. That’s only a rough idea. Actually, as we found while gathering evidence for the Inquiry, the robots could handle almost anything in their categories, and they could even synthesize theoretical matter. Professor Fielding was killed by a Y-robot with a gas that no one had ever heard him mention. When we analyzed the robot, we found the formula present in unrelated parts that came from many men. The robots did the rest.”
“Why should they want to kill?” the Captain interrupted. “You make them sound as if they can think.”
“They can—almost,” North said. “But scientifically speaking, they don’t want to kill. It began with the Lenox Y, constructed especially for the Lenox Physiology Laboratories, to perform simple dissections at first and then learn more. That Y-robot was fifteen feet high, weighing half a ton.
It had an eye in each of its three tentacles and in each of its four steel legs. These were the first to kill. Why?
“We made an intense study of them. The results were distinctly unnerving. Their records of complicated biological or chemical facts concerning human life were invariably blurred! They could not digest it! Just as the adding robot strived to get the final answer, so did the Lenox Y’s! But how could they get an answer unknown even to their human masters? What is the answer to the riddle of life? That’s what the Lenox robots wanted to get!”
North paused a moment to light a slender Venusian cigarette, then continued.
“Several times the Lenox robots picked up men, but each time a blue ray stopped them. One day they acted too quickly, and before they were stopped they had killed four men—but not for the sake of killing. They had experimented, in the manner of their masters. They were after the answer! They were sent to the Manufactory and hell really broke loose there. We found that in the process of overhauling, their speaking mechanisms had been allowed to go full blast, and every open robot there got what the Lenox Y’s had—question and no answers.
“It was like the spread of some mechanical fever. Every robot that could act on the information did so, all of them experimenting in their own specialized way. And as the killings mounted, the Manufactory called in all the Y’s. Not knowing better as yet, the company allowed the open overhauling to go on, and the fever became worse.”
North ground out his cigarette, then went on.
“The last crowning touch was ironical. Because of their
great cost, the robots were taught to avoid self-destruction. Every so often, a model Y would ‘see’ one of its own number destroyed and go completely wild. They were being stopped from getting the answer. They had to get away. No fear, no emotion, nothing—there really wasn’t any will, couldn’t be, because they were machines. As long as one robot was active, it could turn on the others, and in this day and age where we use robots so much, there was sure to be one functioning. And what if that one had the fever?”
NORTH paused.
“One day they broke out and killed forty people. Police ripped their insides apart with magnetic rays. Then came the Inquiry and all this came to light. The Court condemned model Y, every variation of it, and recalled all of them. With the Inquiry over, Raleigh and I went to Exota for a vacation. But it seems now that when all adaptations of model Y got together, they worked out a better escape, without the aid of a single human being.
“That’s the most horrible part of it. The Manufactory grammed us that the robots took along others, and lots of raw material, as well as their own broadcasting station . . .” North stopped. The official audiovisor was piping.
First Mate Morgan appeared on the screen.
“Captain Finley, the passengers have begun to notice we’re off our course. What’s the official excuse?”
Finley swore under his breath, the first words he had uttered in minutes. It seemed to relieve him.
“Post a notice,” Finley ordered. “Say there’s a comet warning, or a meteor shower or any damned thing you like. Keep the passengers busy, somehow. That’s all.”
The captain arose. “God,” he muttered, “we’ll have to wait until we pass close enough to some inhabited planet or way station to get a message out.” His face flushed darkly, his fists were clenched. “Twelve hundred souls aboard—kidnaped by robots! Where is it going to end? Where?”
He was shouting now. North and Raleigh sat by, powerless to help. Slowly, the captain’s fruitless anger subsided, and brokenly, he went to the amberglass window and looked out . . .
Three weeks passed, slow weeks that saw each flickering hope die. The Southern Star had repaired its communications system, manned it with men, but uncannily the liner had been led zigzagging through space so that it never had a chance to speak to the outside Universe. Now and then their receivers picked up interplanetary alarms sent out for them, but they could not match the powerful transmitters of the planet stations. They remained silent to an anxious Universe.
The great Southern Star, which in millions of miles of space travel had been as punctual as a terrestial trolley, was two weeks overdue. The passengers, mounting rapidly from uneasiness to the verge of panic, were hardly reassured. The liner’s officers, lying gallantly, pointed to its violet-glowing companion in space, claiming it to be a military escort.
Captain Finley had long before opened the ship’s stores, freely dispensing champagne, staging parties and balls. It could not continue.
ON the twenty-second day of captivity, their instruments determined the presence of a heavenly body of some magnitude. Moments of frenzied activity followed. Captain Finley called on the two men whom he had come to regard with increasing respect and affection.
“North,” exclaimed the captain, “there’s a large planetoid ahead, and we seem to be slowing down to land on it. But my charts show that there should be nothing at this point in space!”
Raleigh looked up from the telectroscope. “It’s a planetoid,” he agreed. “Almost invisible, although we’re not far from it. I seem to make out habitations on one of its high points.”
Jeff North was lost in reverie. Unconsciously he took Raleigh’s gesticulating hands and held them still, his lips silently saying, “Stop twitching, damn it.” Presently, he spoke aloud.
“Why shouldn’t there be a body here in space? Remember how many planets have been discovered, not by observation, but by mathematical configuration. This is evidently a body, which instead of reflecting light, absorbs it. The fact that it is so far off the beaten path of space travel could explain why it has remained unknown.”
“But how could the robots find it?” Finley asked, perspiring heavily.
“You forget,” North reminded, “that these robots combine many of the best minds on Earth and the knowledge in them. In its infinite units, is as unlimited in application as there are permutations of those units. They cannot create entirely, but permutations can, in a way, create the new from the old.
“What if the robots have a way of combining resources? They have already heat-proofed a ship, and now they are space-traveling. No one robot could do that. Every one of them is a specialist in something. They must have combined in some way. And if the mathematical and astronomical robots effected a synthesis, as a beginning to which other robots contributed—There’s your answer.”
“By all the triple-tailed comets of heaven!” Finley exploded. He sat down, stunned.
“There’s no reason to worry,” Raleigh said in his nervous manner. “It’ll be over the minute we land. We’ve already set up an interference transmitter. We’ll broadcast radio waves that’ll knock hell out of the robots’ motors. Then there’s always the hand magnetic guns and the sizzlers, once those robots get out from that ship.” He pointed comfortingly to the quartz arsenals of heat ray rifles along the walls.
Captain Finley squared his shoulders, rising to the audiovisor. “Mr. Morgan,” he spoke into it, “assemble the crew. We’re passing out weapons. See if you can squeeze the passengers into the auditorium. I’m going to make a little speech.”
Captain Finley never made that speech. Before he had finished emptying the arsenals, Observation piped the alarm—too late! The dark planet below had suddenly rushed up, its deceptive contours veiling the distance. The liner’s fall was so swift that before the stratometer’s wild gyration could warn them, the Southern Star had dived into the face of the dim planet, Hundreds of voices screamed in terror, and in its sickening, body-racking halt, the occupants of the great ship were hurled about like dice in a box . . .
WHEN Jeff North regained consciousness, George Raleigh’s anxious face was peering down at him. He was sprawled against one of the walls of the wrecked ship.
“My head,” North groaned. “Feels like a broken egg shell.”
Raleigh’s compressed lips stretched into a semblance of a grin. “You’ve been out an hour,” he said, hardly audible.
The figure of a man in crimson alumalloy space armor staggered into the room; normal walking was impossible. Through the amberglass helmet the sweat-streaked face of Captain Finley was visible. Lurching, he made his way to North. He removed the helmet and shut off the oxygen supply.
“Thank God you’re safe,” Finley declared. His voice shook with emotion, “Lord, what hell! Everything smashed in the Communication cabins—your interference transmitter along with it. There’s a gash in the hull. The outside atmosphere is pouring in. Didn’t know if it was safe.” He pointed mutely to his oxygen valve. “Artificial gravity gone in half the ship. In the auditorium . . .” He covered his face with his hands.
North struggled to his feet, opening the space armor cabinets. He motioned several men to don the alumalloy armor. Silently, he and Raleigh did the same. A rescue party had to be organized. He went to the window. The layered amberglass had withstood the impact of their crash, but it was dark.
Finley answered North’s unspoken question. “Whole foresection of the ship is sunken. The ground here seems to be some kind of a viscous soil, like jelly.”
Despairing shouts rang through the fallen liner, the blending anguish of hundreds of human voices. Accompanying it came the sounds of metal being torn apart, fierce, grating noises. Only magnetic guns could have made that sound and all the ship’s guns were here in this room! Heavy thuds, increasing in volume as they came nearer, vibrated the structure of the liner. Yet closer it came. The battered men in the room turned their eyes to the doorway.
A low sigh breathed through the room as the first
robot stopped at the threshold. It stood at an angle, firmly adhering to the sloping floor. Jeff North and Raleigh gasped. They had never seen such a robot! It was a violet-glowing metal monster, new in design. It stood twenty feet high and was five feet across at its broadest point. Surmounting its mass was a small radio receiver. From its trunk radiated eight long tentacles, like the groping arms of some hideous mechanical octopus, and each of these arms was thickly studded with large photo-electric cell eyes, emitting an unwinking pinkish glare.
Directly under the tentacles, a colorless glass mound protruded from the trunk. Under that the end of a short, hollow nozzle stuck out It stood balanced on three stumpy, massive legs, jointed in several places. Its tentacles were now moving gracefully as it focused its eyes on the men before it.
At the far end of the room, a handful of the crew were seizing weapons. Before they could be warned against futile onslaughts on the violet armor and the equalizing magnetic emanations, the men fired on the robot!
The air in the room crackled with heat. Instinctively, North called out to those who could to enclose themselves within their space suits. The robot turned majestically to face the attacking men, most of them still clad in their torn, aerated-cloth tunics. It pressed a button on its side. Immediately the hand guns were wrenched from the men. The weapons flew through the room and crashed harmlessly against the robot’s heavy frame.
Again the robot pressed a button. From the glass mound in its trunk flashed a kaleidoscopic ray of brilliant colors, followed by a shower of sparks from the hollow nozzle. Instantly the far end of the room was a huge sheet of flame! Slowly, the robot wheeled, enveloping everything in the path of that ray with fire. The momentary flames died as quickly as they had appeared. The men who had been unprotected by space armor were already cinders—but those enclosed in it were safe. They did not understand why.