In parallel with these measurements, the instruments conducted another important study. The landing module represented a parallelepiped, with a square base which had sides of about eighteen meters. Its inner space took four compartments divided from each other by partitions of light-beige ceramic-metal material. They had sky blue ceilings and a grayish floor.
So the Geiger counter scattered across all four of these compartments—power, technical, biological and nursery—checked the level of radiation. It turned out that over the centuries nothing had happened to the radioisotope source; its isolation remained reliable, and it didn’t emit any harmful particles or rays.
Day after day, the environment gradually revived. On the eleventh night, the GPC-5 energized two robots and loaded the variable routines of operative response into their memory chips.
By dawn, they were fully prepared to carry out their tasks. The computer gave the command to open the entrance hatch. It rose and was fixed in a horizontal position. Then the GPC-5 turned the mobile machines to autonomous mode. The mechanical scouts “peered out,” scanned the surroundings and found that the lower threshold of the hatch rose about one and a half meters above the burnt virgin soil.
From the clamps on the wall, they unfastened a plastic ladder that could be stretched to a length of three meters. One of the robots extended it until the stairs reached the ground, then inserted the upper legs of the ladder into the special openings of the threshold. After that, the robots went down and touched the surface of the planet with their mechanical legs. They didn’t feel any emotion about this, like the ship itself when it had placed its supports on a celestial body incredibly far from Earth.
It was a clear day. A small flock of clouds soared across the sky. A light breeze blew along the river from the south, and sometimes lifted the ashes into the air. A group of animals about the size of a calf wandered nearby. They made hissing and wheezing sounds now and then. Apart from this, the receivers of the machines “heard” nothing; silence reigned, as is usual in the wild. The star Rho had risen an hour before, and their sensors noted that the air temperature at this time was plus twenty-two degrees Celsius.
Among the smoldering and blackened remains of the vegetation, one could already see fresh yellowish sprouts. It was these new shoots that had attracted animals. The inanimate rangers photographed these creatures and sent them to the former spacecraft. All three computers stored images of all the animals that had ever lived on Earth, including humans and their ancestors.
The GPC-5 described these creatures as four-legged animals with a long neck and gray skin, without any feathers or bristles. On their heads was an organ that had no analogues among earthly beings. Machines defined it as an organ of vision—an eye.
When an animal directed this biological instrument to an object, it oscillated with high frequency in a slot horizontally crossing the upper part of its head.
The machines, in accordance with the rules, had called these creatures the LH-1. This abbreviation meant that it was the first land-based herbivore about the size of a domestic animal that had been seen. The robots decided to approach the representatives of the planet. The LH-1 wheezed and fled, although almost immediately, seeing that no one was chasing them, they calmed down and continued to graze. The robots left them alone and returned to their job.
After they’d photographed the place in front of the hatch, they walked around the lander on the right while transmitting topographic data of this area to the GPC-5. There they also “saw” a burned field and a forest. The only difference was that on the side opposite the entrance hatch they found a rivulet flowing along a shallow ravine a few hundred meters north from the landing site. Slowly, meticulously inspecting the surroundings, they returned to the point where they had first put their mechanical limbs on new ground.
The animals had ceased to pay attention to creatures that didn’t resemble ordinary beasts of prey, until suddenly they became anxious again. The robot RA-5 noticed this change and switched on a circular view.
To process the image of the neighborhood, it spent one nanosecond, and after that made the following conclusions: another creature had appeared from the southwestern forest. It scared the herbivores. They retreated north and fled.
It is probably a predator. The RA-5 radioed to another robot—the RB-5. They had no reason for using a language synthesizer for at least fifteen years more, until the births of the first humans’.
The GPC-5 described the new creature as follows: in the form of its body, it resembled a hog-sized terrestrial quadruped, but had a vision organ the same as that of the LH-1. Its lower lip ended with thin snake-like proboscis which had a claw about ten centimeters long as its tip. Above that trunk it had jaws with wedge-like teeth. It was about seventy centimeters high and had as many toes on its paws as the LH-1. Namely, there were eight of them, four on each side of the sole. It also had a light-grey furless skin covered with orange lengthwise strips. It was named the LC-1 because it evidently was carnivorous, though not particularly big.
The beast ran after the prey, but they fled even more quickly from it. As soon as the predator realized that it couldn’t catch them, it stopped the pursuit; after a short hesitation, it turned to the robots. The animal headed to the closest of them, to the RB-5. The beast now moved indecisively, as the robots clearly differed from its usual prey.
The cyber-mechanical scouts rated the situation as a predator attack and activated the corresponding instruction. It said that if the first contact contained a threat, then they needed to use weapons, for self-defense and intimidation of the attacker.
They had only one armament—a maser that could radiate focused microwaves. In contrast to a laser, its beam freely penetrated into biological tissues and acted as a microwave oven. Also, the weapon didn’t need cartridges, which was its main advantage, to lessen the weight the expedition needed to carry and thus enormously decrease the amount of thermonuclear fuel needed for initial acceleration.
The RA-5 moved to the entrance, climbed the stairs and headed to the technical compartment for the maser. Its software evaluated the outcome of the upcoming action and decided that along with the weapon, it should take a pair of plastic boxes for biological samples.
When it had done so and returned to the surface, the beast neared the RB-5 to an attack distance.
The robot’s ultra-strong hull wouldn’t have suffered if any animal had hit it with a claw, a horn or attacked it with teeth. On Earth, lions, panthers, anacondas, and other powerful predators had repeatedly confirmed this. However, the machine prepared to repel the attack anyway. The RB-5 turned to the predator and bent the elbow joints in its upper manipulators.
Slowly approaching the RB-5, the predator rolled its trunk into a spiral under its lower jaw. At the last second, the beast jumped and threw its proboscis forward, trying to pierce the machine with the sharp tip. Obviously, this was its way of attack: first, it would strike prey with its “spear”; then, perhaps, it would turn the claw inside the body and tear its entrails; also, simultaneously, it might draw closer to the victim to dig into it with its teeth.
The RB-5, ready for an attack, instantly straightened its left manipulator and stopped the impetuous claw. Meanwhile, the RA-5 had changed the curvature of the beam collector, so that the microwave radiation would be focused within the animal’s body. Then the machine released an impulse.
This shot could put about three kilojoules of electromagnetic energy into the animal’s body. It would cause the explosive evaporation of blood and lymph in the focus area, and create a hydraulic shock capable of tearing apart the animal’s insides.
As always during tests on Earth, nothing happened at first. But then the creature wheezed stridently and fell on its side, jerking several times before it finally stiffened. After scanning its corpse, the cyber-mechanical scouts identified the state of the beast as being lifeless.
The RB-5 approached the RA-5 and took the plastic boxes from it. Then, using its metal manipulator arm, it
cut a piece of flesh from the animal’s corpse, put it into one of the boxes, and snapped its lid closed. Then the RB-5 secured the container to its case on its back and went to the river. The rules required that all tools, including the limbs of robots, especially the upper ones, should be kept clean if the situation didn’t require their reuse immediately. There was no such necessity at the moment.
Having runaway from the predator, the LH-1s watched from afar the collision of their enemy with the strange new creatures. The apparent death of the beast calmed them noticeably. While the RB-5 walked to the river and washed its manipulators, the herbivores were somewhat emboldened. They were already grazing much closer to the RA-5, which stood motionless, like any idle machine.
Stay where you are. We will wait for one of the LH-1s to reach the firing range and then get the herbivore’s tissue. That was the new plan the RA-5 introduced to the other robot, still invisible from the plateau.
Their radio communication, the electromagnetic shot and the death of the predator—all this had happened in almost complete silence. This contributed to the rapid reassurance of the animals. Soon, they were grazing closer and closer to the robots.
Larger and probably older creatures were trying to stay as far away from the strange petrified object as they could. The younger ones acted with less caution, drifting closer to the lander. About twenty minutes later, one of the smaller LH-1s approached the RA-5, and this carelessness deprived it of its life. All the other members of the pack fled, hissing.
Chapter 22
The next day, the robots began to assemble a line of communication with Earth. Sometimes they interrupted their work—when the LAI-5 ordered them to bring another biological sample, or water from the river, or soil, and so on.
First, the robots mounted a two and a half meter high mast on the roof of the lander. They climbed there through special recesses previously covered with refractory plates. To the upper part of the mast, they fastened a parabolic antenna with a radius of one meter.
Above its focus, on a support sticking out of the mast, a telescope found its place. Then the RA-5 attached the engine intended to rotate these two devices to the antenna’s axis. The robots had polished these operations during training landings in the Sahara, in the Amazon jungle, in the savannah and in Antarctica.
Next they connected two optical conductors and one copper power cable to the antenna, to the telescope, and to the engine respectively. The optic cables were to transmit images of the sky from the telescope to the SOC-5, and to deliver a signal from it to the parabolic antenna for sending to Earth.
Along the mast, the roof, and the rear wall of the descent vehicle, the robots led these lines to a small hatch that covered three outlets, through which the antenna and the telescope were connected to the SOC-5 in the technical compartment.
Although the front side of the ship and, therefore, its hatch threshold, towered about two meters above the ground, here, on the back side, the lower part of the hull almost touched the ground due to a small eminence that almost reached a recess in the hull with contact sockets in it.
The RB-5 bent its two legs, shortened the third—a tail—and squatted down to get to the socket outlet. Using its multi-purpose finger, the robot first removed the tile and then unscrewed the three bolts. Next it loosened the fourth one and turned the lid around it.
Here the GPC-5 ordered them to abort the mission because of their low battery—six days had passed while they worked non-stop, day and night. The robots headed into the building to charge their batteries.
They left the unconnected cables on the ground. Climbing the mast again, to disconnect them from there, to remove from all the mounts and then to return them into the lander, according to the GPC-5’s logic, would be a waste of energy. Moreover, these wires would always stay outdoors.
In the beginning, in those ten days after the fire, when the robots still remained inside the ship, predators sometimes visited the landing site. But they soon lost interest in the inanimate settlement, as they never found anything edible there.
As the robots started to work, the beasts began to appear again at night. The remains of dead animals attracted them. One day, the robots killed one importunate LC-1 and left his body nearby. That night, its fellows came to reconnaissance, ate its corpse and then roamed around in the hope of finding more food.
One of them accidentally touched a cable lying on the ground and pulled it a little. As a result, its end hit the leg of another creature. The frightened animal struck this optical line several times with the sharp end of its trunk, and then bounced aside. The cable lay motionless, with nothing dangerous emanating from it. The animal calmed down. Eventually, having found no more meat at that place, they returned to the forest.
In the morning, resuming their work, the robots unscrewed the individual covers from each outlet and connected each cable to the corresponding connector.
After that, the SOC-5 set about checking entire line and the devices comprising it. Before long it completed the operation and confirmed the readiness of the machine settlement for contact with Earth.
Actually, one of the optical cables had already lost its transparency, as the previous night during the predator’s senseless attack, a tiny lump of dirt had been pushed into its connector. To eliminate this interference, robots could have just shaken the dirt out of the connector. But the RB-5 simply plugged it into the appropriate outlet.
The SOC-5 should have easily detected that one of the optical conductors was inactive, and informed one of the mobile machines about the malfunction.
But in reality, the SOC-5 couldn’t cope with this simple task. The foundation for its failure had been caused by one engineer almost three centuries before. He’d been testing the efficiency of the line after he had drunk alcohol. Absent-mindedly, he hadn’t noticed that a drop of sparkling water had fallen on the equipment under test.
The mineral water had of course quickly evaporated, but a ferruginous patina, literally several hundred molecules thick, had remained on the surface of the chip. Of course, it was absolutely undetectable with the naked eye, or even with an ordinary optical microscope. This patina didn’t show itself in any way during the numerous tests, remaining just the thinnest film on the surface of the chip, unable to affect its internal structure.
Nevertheless, due to diffusion, these molecules gradually penetrated into the core structure of the chip. It was a very slow process, especially as it took place at low temperatures, but, still, two hundred and fifty years turned out to be enough time. It so happened that the invading iron molecules had integrated into the working circuit of the chip in such a way that they changed its operating parameters, unnoticed by other circuits.
Now, for each checkout routine, the damaged circuit looked like it was working perfectly. As a result, the part could correctly respond to external requests, and communicate properly with other microcircuits, although it couldn’t perform its direct functions at full scale.
Chapter 23
The study of the essence of the indigenous biology took three months. In the tissues of the creatures dwelling in the area, the biological laboratory didn’t find a structure similar to DNA or genes. Instead, the Life Assembling Instrument 5 established that their main biological instruction was something like a computer program that executes 3D printing. Finally, the machine determined with absolute certainty that the local creatures weren’t suitable for feeding the newcomers, and vice versa—the hosts couldn’t consume the guests. They were both biologically neutral to each other.
The SOC-5 sent its scheduled message to Earth, containing information about the perfect suitability of this planet. But because of the cable pollution and chip damage, the report didn’t even reach the antenna, let alone move further across space.
While the LAI-5 was doing its job, the robots implemented their own program. Two hundred meters west of the spacecraft, they prepared a plot of land—a rectangular area two kilometers long and one kilometer wide. They thoroughly
cleaned it and then covered it with dry plants. After that, the machines set fire to this territory.
Due to the hotbed conditions, the first seeds of grass and other vegetables were planted directly into the soil. Several days later, normal seedlings sprouted, which the robots transplanted each to their own site, prepared in advance. Two years later, the farm already had a pasture capable of feeding a small herd of domestic animals.
At the next stage, the LAI-5 began to create animals and their internal flora. The gene assembler changed the DNA of the grass, and as a result, eight weeks later, embryos appeared in two large chambers. After nine months and ten days, they had developed into a pair of newborn calves.
The robots fed the little animals with an artificial nutrient mixture prepared from processed terrestrial flora. Soon, two more calves appeared in the cattle-pen made by robots from large plants which resembled earth trees but which had an orange color, as did every plant on the planet surface.
The three small cows and a bull developed normally, and gradually got used to vegetative fodder. They grew up, and their weight, size, and the composition of their blood and tissues showed that these animals were absolutely healthy representatives of their species.
To inform mankind about the implementation of another step, the machines sent a report to Earth. It also didn’t leave the SOC-5 compartment, even by a millimeter. By then, five years had passed since the landing day.
Three years after these events, in addition to cows there appeared bees, sheep, dogs, geese and hens. The machines no longer needed artificial nutritional mixtures to feed their new pets. Instead, they already had milk, the supply constantly growing in quantity. They simply poured the excess onto the soil, enriching it with terrestrial organic matter.
The colony continued to send messages, although again to no avail. It tried to tell earthlings that the domestic animals were breeding normally and the farm was developing according to schedule. The machines described the total area covered by cultivated plants and listed all the herbs, fruits and vegetables, not forgetting to describe their productivity.
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