by Don Wilcox
“One of ’em may not recover, from what I read in the paper,” Steve said. “That’s the least of our worries.”
“But the other one may get out in a couple days.”
“If he does, we’ll get him again,” Moberly said. “Sometimes I think we’d be wiser to make a clean job of it. Then we’d have clear sailing, with no competition.”
They removed me with utmost care and were all set to leave. But again they ducked for cover. There were footsteps at the front door. A key turned. By the street light I saw the man that entered—a tall man with a bandaged forehead and one arm in a sling. It was Waldemar Williams.
If I had had a heart it would have stopped beating during the next few moments. Everything happened so fast.
My inventor had evidently just come from the hospital. Probably he had slipped away without permission. Although it was still the dead of night, some burning worry had brought him straight to this office. He had come to see about me.
He snapped on the light. He came straight toward me, his eyes ablaze with suspicions.
What happened then was dreadful. I knew it was coming. I couldn’t stop it. I heard the two hidden men exchange whispers.
Waldemar held a hand out toward me. “Are you free to move, Buzz-Bolt? I took the switch off. But I hear something’s wrong. Do you hear me?”
He took the left hand of my fake body and shook it. He was surprised at how loosely it dangled.
“Why, you’re not Buzz-Bolt!” Those were his last words. For at that instant the right steel hand struck. It swung like a hammer. Waldemar caught the blow on the side of the head. It staggered him.
Moberly’s elbow grease was back of that blow.
Steve leaped to the light switch and put the room in darkness. But I could still see. My inventor was down. He was being mauled by an arm of steel, blow after blow.
When, a few minutes later, I was carted away, my ten eyes were full of the horrible sight—Waldemar lying murdered, his bandaged head crushed, and that senseless statue of steel hovering over him with a bloody steel fist.
“They’ll get Herb out of the way for sure, now,” I moaned to myself, “and then the world will never know. They’ll always believe that I did it—that I murdered my own inventor.”
CHAPTER X
In a basement laboratory in another part of the town Moberly and Steve reassembled me.
Again, for the moment, I was complete. But they had chained and bolted my metal body to a steel girder imbedded in concrete. About all I could do was wiggle my steel fingers and blink my headlights.
They brought in three technicians, and made ready with the drafting equipment. They set up a schedule for demounting me, bolt by bolt. I watched them empty the shelves and pigeon holes along the wall, to make space for my various parts.
Their plans were interrupted by the noon headlines.
MECHANICAL MAN PULVERIZES INVENTOR.
They read aloud all the gory details. It was dreadful, to think that the man who had worked so hard to create me was gone. And as I heard them chuckle over their success, the very molecules of my steel seemed to fill with fighting anger.
The next day the technicians were ready to go to work on me, when Moberly and Steve came in and stopped them.
“Postpone it, boys. We’ve got to get him out of here.”
They chained me with three hundred pounds of chains and rolled me out to the truck. Steve drove. Moberly talked.
“Just a precaution, Steve. The younger brother in the hospital is talking.”
“The papers said he was raving,” said Steve.
“All right, raving. But at the rate he’s recovering, they may decide to listen to him. And what he says might make sense.”
Moberly admitted he was worried. It seemed that Herb was asking the cops to investigate. He was sure that I wouldn’t have committed murder.
“Some smart cop might drop into our lab for a friendly visit,” Moberly said. “If he does, there mustn’t be any signs of Buzz-Bolt around.”
They hid me in the loft of an old barn, and covered me with hay. I was chained so tight I could hardly turn. I watched them climb down the ladder.
As soon as they were out of hearing my struggle began.
It was awful. I knew that the news of “my” crime would spread like wildfire. It would go rough on Herb—if he lived. And poor Madge! I must fight free and tell them the truth. I strained at my chains.
Somewhere in the dim recesses of my cupful of human brains was a memory. In my previous life—my human life—I must have watched an exhibition of a man freeing himself from such a trap.
In this dim memory he seemed to be tied to a ladder. It was in a huge tent, and a crowd was humming with excitement, watching him try to free himself. And I was running around him, making jokes.
Where did these memories come from?
I struggled, not like a mad man, but like a clever stunt man. As if there might have been an audience. As if I had to prove that I could work myself free, without injuring myself.
I struggled, but I got nowhere. That stunt man I remembered had been tied with a rope. Three hundred pounds of chain was something else.
I couldn’t turn. I could barely shake my head. I could barely move my steel fingers. They weren’t made to serve as files, but I tried to use them that way. No good. After working for hours, through the night and into the next morning, I was able to estimate my rate of progress.
At best, it would take me 768 hours to cut through four links. Over a month! By that time Herb Williams’ laboratories would be ruined. If I worked any faster, the heat of friction would burn up my fingers and very probably set the barn on fire.
This was the most deserted hiding place you could ever imagine.
Through the hay I looked out of the open door of the barn loft toward a little feed lot to the north, and on to a curving country highway and distant hills.
For the next three days I lay there, a prisoner, languishing in chains. Twice a day I tried with my recorded voices to attract the attention of the farm hand who came to feed a few cattle. The sounds never reached him.
I buzzed with my own untrained voice box. I buzzed as tirelessly as a locust. No response. That farmhand had an ear for bawling calves, but not for buzzing machinery.
“It’s hopeless,” I finally told myself. “It may be weeks or months before anyone else comes this way. If Moberly is thoroughly scared over what he’s done, I may be left to rust my life away.”
You do a lot of tall thinking at a time like that. But how useless my thoughts were when my body couldn’t function.
As always, I came back to that old tantalizing question, where had my bit of brain come from? What had the fellow been like who had possessed this living part of me before his death?
He had been prankish, that I knew. He had been generally happy and gay. He liked color and noise and crowds—
It was high noon and I was looking through the musty hay toward the highway. A traveling circus came into view, its gaudy red and gold wagons blazing in the sunshine. Ten sluggish old elephants plodded along with their trunks swaying. Animal cages, a calliope, a clown wagon—
Then and there I knew! I remembered my dark past! It all flashed back in a wave of thought that was like a flame . . . Painting my big red mouth on my white face. The red diamonds on my cheeks. The gay red and white clown suit . . . The night I saved the little girl from the fall and met my own sudden death . . .
A circus clown—that’s what I had been.
The traveling circus passed out of sight, and my memories dimmed. I was a machine, now.
Even the chemical-nurtured brain of a mechanical man must sleep sometimes. These fires of thought had tired me. Although my voice box went right on buzzing at full volume, and my automatic fingers went right on filing at the chains, my thoughts at last blacked out and I went to sleep.
CHAPTER XI
Familiar Voices
When I woke up—I have no idea how many hours or days
later—familiar voices were falling on my ears.
I was instantly on the alert. Yes, hearing my old friends Madge and Herb. A radio was playing very softly, so I knew that they were in a car. They had driven up and parked just below my hayloft.
By mere chance? Hardly. I didn’t guess at first how they had found their way here. Somehow I thought they had come to look for me. I tried to croak a loud buzz to them.
I couldn’t buzz! My voice box had played out.
I listened.
Right away I gathered from their conversation that there had been strange developments since my disappearance. An investigation was going on, and some of the star witnesses were missing.
Poor Waldemar, the victim of some mysterious outrage by a fake mechanical man, had been buried.
But the courts wouldn’t believe that the fake was not Yours Truly, the one and only Buzz-Bolt.
Herb’s testimony should have been good, but since his injury he had been out of his head a part of the time, and the court was reluctant to believe him. They were also turning a deaf ear to Madge’s testimony. At first I couldn’t understand why. Then—
“If you hadn’t admitted you were in love with me,” Herb said softly, “they would have listened. But now they believe you’re prejudiced.”
“I had to tell them the truth,” Madge said quietly.
“It was the nicest thing I ever heard anyone say in court,” said Herb, and now he made her say it again. For a little while there was silence, and I wouldn’t have interrupted it for anything.
Piecing together what I had overheard, including some remarks about Joe Moberly, I understood that they had come here hoping to find him, not me.
They didn’t know they were looking for a murderer. They only knew that Moberly had been in the office on a certain morning when I had failed to work. Madge thought he might testify. She had not found him at his address, but had gone to great effort to dig up some old addresses. Somewhere, she learned that he had once been interested in this piece of farm property. Herb, just out of the hospital, had agreed to ride out with her, just on a long hunch. So here they were, parked below my hayloft window, talking the whole thing over. And here I was, containing all the answers, yet unable to rattle my chains.
My buzz wouldn’t work, my recorded voices were too weak to carry.
What was I to do?
Once I had over-heated Blackridge’s coffee by sending electrical heat to my fingertips. I looked at the dry hay that surrounded me. I started the heat down through my trapped arm, full blast, and waited.
They turned the radio higher to listen to the part of the news that concerned them.
“Here it comes,” said Herb.
The radio announcer droned: “Sensational developments in the investigation of the robot murder case today. Herbert Williams, co-inventor, testified that the metal monster with the bloody fist is not his invention, but a cheap imitation. Miss Madge LaGrange supported this opinion. The court is weighing their words against other factors. It is well known that the Williams brothers laboratories looked to a fortune from the mass production of these Buzz-Bolts. That vision will collapse like a punctured balloon if Mr. Buzz-Bolt is a creature that turns on his own friends in the dead of night and murders them. A call has been issued for a certain Mr. Joe Moberly, whose testimony may be valuable. Meanwhile, the decision apparently hinges upon Mr. V.V. Blackridge, who will testify tomorrow. Mr. Blackridge is the real estate man for whom the mechanical monster worked, and it is believed that Mr. Blackridge and Buzz-Bolt were never on highly congenial terms . . .”
Herb snorted, “As if Uncle was ever on congenial terms with anyone! Let’s get back to town.”
They started the motor.
The wisps of hay at my fingertips grew red and began to curl up and begin to smoke.
The car was leaving. Its headlights cut a path along the lane beyond the fence. If they had looked back, then, they would have seen a small blaze in my barn loft.
The hay was dry. The flames leaped up around me. If they would only look back now! I disregarded the heat. My eager eyes followed that pair of headlights. They had reached the highway, there they were hesitating. Now my heart, so to speak, leaped like fire. They had seen! They were debating whether to come back. I’ll bet they were mystified, all right. What had they done that could have started a fire in a deserted barn?
CHAPTER XII
A Fall Through Flames
It was hard to see what was going fastest, the hay or the roof. But right away the floor was burning too, and along with the terrific heat I began to feel the quiver of the building.
From beyond the feed lot, the spectators watched from their cars. Ten or twelve had driven in from the highway to watch the sight and wonder what could be done.
I could see Herb, now, wearing bandages on both arms. He sat in the car, calling to Madge. She had gotten a bucket of water from the watering tank, probably without knowing what she was doing. A bucket of water was no match for these flames. She looked beautiful, standing there, bewildered and half frightened over something she couldn’t understand, the high flames lighting her face.
Suddenly there was a ripping of black timbers beneath me, I was thrown to one side, my weight crushed down through fire-eaten floor, and I fell.
The clank of that fall was not loud, compared to the crackle of flames. My chains were too tight to make much noise. The sound I remember most was a scream from Madge.
“It’s a person!” she cried. “Somebody’s there, I saw them.”
And she ran right to the burning edges, peering in at my dark form. Then suddenly she saw me clearly, and recognized me.
“Buzz-Bolt! Buzz-Bolt!”
The men from the other cars were quick to come to my rescue—not because they understood what they were doing, but because they wanted to help Madge—who certainly knew what she was doing.
Someone had a log chain with a hook, and he threw it in among the falling timbers, hooked my chains and threw a hitch around the car’s rear bumper.
“Haul away,” he shouted, and out I came.
I was dragged out on my tin pants, so to speak, straight across the cowlot. The affair was pretty rough on my dignity at the moment, but anyway I was out. There would be plenty of time to repair and polish myself afterward.
Well, Mr. Palmer, this has turned out to be a rather long-winded application for a job, but I think I’ve given you a fair sample of my experiences and I have implied, quite honestly, that I do have my limitations and need the help of human beings now and then, even though I’m a pretty robust and self-sufficient robot, as robots go.
You may imagine, and you’re right, that, once I was unchained and given a chance to testify in court, I was able to clear up things for Herb and Madge.
But there was one tense moment in that court room scene when I took an awful chance. My old clowning instincts got the better of me.
Was I the true Buzz-Bolt? Was this other creature with the bloody fist a fake that had been substituted for some malicious purpose?
This was the contention of both Herb and Madge. The court wondered.
My testimony, which I would have gladly written in full on a typewriter, they refused to accept. All my recorded voices, as well as my buzz, were out of order. That fire was going to cost me some repairs.
And now a sour-faced boss by the name of Blackridge took the stand and I saw that whether we won or lost depended on his whims of this one crucial moment.
“Mr. Blackridge, will you please examine these two metal creatures and tell us which is the one that the Williams brothers manufactured and placed in your office as your assistant?”
Blackridge gave me his darkest scowl. He turned slowly to that dead metal form whose free swinging arm had been made to commit the murder.
If he identified it as Buzz-Bolt, I realized that Herb and Madge would lose everything they dreamed of. Moreover, the murderer of Waldemar would go free.
But if he admitted that I was his servan
t, he might have to put up with me again. I don’t think he wanted more of me. I had brought him too much trouble.
He started past me. A whim, an ornery whim, an act of spite. He was going to cut me cold.
I marched over to him so suddenly that he backed up against the wall in surprise, just as he had done once before. You should have seen his eyes pop at me. And he reached—you guessed it—right for those two pet hairs that struck up from the top of his bald head.
“Don’t pull them out, Buzz-Bolt!” he yelled. “You promised me, Buzz-Bolt!”
I stopped and smiled. Then Blackridge saw the absurdity of his words, and, believe it or not, he smiled, just for one rash moment.
That did it, and nobody in court had any doubts about it.
I’m still working for Mr. Blackridge, Mr. Palmer, but gradually I’m learning to talk, and I know V.V. Blackridge doesn’t like it, that’s why I’m looking for a better job.
Daytimes preferred. Herb Williams lets me go out at nights, by the way, and just at present I’m hot on the trail of a murderer named Joe Moberly. Would you like to hear about it?
Well, maybe some other time.
THE KETTLE IN THE PIT
First published in Amazing Stories, October 1947
In the Pit of Horrors, there was a Kettle. And from the fire around the Kettle there came a writhing hag—a hag whose tentacles of flame controlled a primitive folk!
CHAPTER I
She circled three times before landing. Phil should be here—if! If that mysterious map could be trusted.
She landed. She taxied the plane into the brush, jumped out and walked. A small circle around the plane. Then a larger one.
She gripped the pistol. “Verena.”
That was the name engraved on the handle. Her name. Phil had given her that pistol. “It will be useful on this planet,” he had said.
The gravity here was heavy. Walking was painful. But gas must be saved. She walked in larger circles. The map was in one hand, the pistol in the other. This must be right—the sandflat, the three sharp purple peaks to the north, the towers of stone to the south. Fantastics towers. Reminded her of giant chess men. Brownish-red, scoured by blowing sands. He might have crashed into one of them.