“They’ll catch us,” I panted. “Where can we hide?”
“Down in the valley.”
“But the machines will get us then.”
“Save your breath and follow me. I know a place.”
We were racing along as fast as our weakened legs could carry us, toward the edge of the Glacier. I looked back to see Abud, his brute face distorted with rage, gaining rapidly on us. The other prolats were being outdistanced.
Abud shouted threateningly for us to stop, but that only made us re-double our efforts. I knew he would kill us if he caught up with us. He had his spear and we were without ours.
The steep terminus of the great Northern Glacier hove into view. Far below was the broad fertile habitable belt, stretching as far as the eye could see. A lump rose in my throat as I ran. It was our earth, our heritage down there—and here we were, fleeing for our lives, dispossessed by bits of metal and quartz, machines that we had fashioned.
Hovering in the air, on a level with us, were scout planes, vigilant guardians of the frontier.
Once a prolat had become crazed by the eternal ice and cold, and had ventured down the side of the Glacier, to reach the warm lands his thin blood hungered for. As soon as he had painfully clambered to the bottom, within the area of the televisors, a plane had swooped and crushed him, while we, lining the edge, had witnessed the horror helplessly.
Yet Keston ran on confidently. Abud was just a little way behind, bellowing exultantly, when we came to the jumping-off place. He was sure he had us now.
Keston slid from view. It was sheer suicide to go down there, I knew; yet, to remain where I was, meant certain death. Abud’s spear was already poised to thrust. There was only one thing to do, and I did it. I threw myself over the rim, just where Keston had disappeared.
I landed with a thud on a narrow ledge of ice. The surface was glassy smooth, and I started slipping straight toward the outer edge, a sheer drop of a thousand feet to the valley below. I strove to recover my balance, but only accelerated my progress. Another moment and I would have plunged into the abyss, but a hand reached out and grabbed me just in time. It was Keston.
“Hold tight and follow me,” he whispered urgently, “we’ve no time to lose. The master machine is seeing us now in the visor screen, and will act.”
I had an impulse to turn back, but Abud’s face was leering down at us.
“I’ll get you for this!” he screamed, and let himself down heavily over the ledge.
Keston edged his way along the treacherous trail, I after him. It was ticklish work. A misstep, and there would be nothing to break our fall.
I heard a siren sound, then another; and another. I wasted a precious moment to look up. A scout plane was diving for us, on a terrific slant. The air was black with aircraft converging on us. The master machine had seen us! I sensed utter malevolence in the speed of these senseless metals, thrown at us by the thing my friend had created.
But there was no time for thought. In desperate haste, we inched our way along. Abud had seen the peril, too, and lost all his truculence in the face of the greater danger. He clawed after us, intent only on reaching whatever safety we were heading for.
I could hear the zoom of the great wings when the path took a sudden turn and we catapulted headlong into a black cavern thrusting into the ice.
We were not an instant too soon. For a giant shape swooped by our covert with a terrifying swoosh, inches away from Abud’s leg as he dived after us, and it was followed by a grinding crash. The machine had been directed too close to the ice and had smashed into bits.
We crouched there a moment, panting, struggling to regain our wind. Keston had regained the air of quiet power he had once possessed. Quietly he spoke to our enemy.
“Listen to me, Abud. Up there on the ice, you played the bully, relying on your brute strength. Here, however, we’re up against the machines, and your intelligence is of too low an order to compete with them. You need my brains now. If you expect to escape from them, and live, you’ll have to do exactly as I say. I’m boss, do you understand?”
I expected a roar of rage at Keston’s calm assertion, and quietly got in back of Abud ready to jump him if he made a threatening move.
But the big brute was a creature of abject terror, staring out with fear-haunted eyes. Quite humbly he replied: “You are right. You are the only one who can beat the machines. I’ll follow you in everything.”
“Very well, then. This cave leads through a series of tunnels down through the ice to the bottom of the valley. I explored it nights when you were all sleeping.”
I looked at him in amazement. I had not known anything about his midnight wanderings. He saw my glance.
“I’m sorry, Meron, but I thought it wiser to say nothing of my plans, even to you, until they had matured. Let us go.”
Outside hundreds of craft were hurtling across the opening. Escape that way was clearly impossible.
“No doubt the master machine is hurrying over high explosives to blast us out,” Keston said indifferently; “but we won’t be here.”
We started down a tortuous decline, crawling on hands and knees. We had not progressed very far when we heard a thud and a roar behind us, followed by a series of crashes.
“Just as I thought. The master machine is firing terminite into the cavern. What a high degree of intelligence that thing has! Too bad we’ll have to smash it.” He sighed. I verily believe he hated to destroy this brain child of his. Yet just how he was going to do it, I did not know.
There passed hours of weary, tortured stumblings, and slitherings, and sudden falls—down, always down, interminably. A pale glimmering showed us the way, a dim shining through the icy walls.
At last, faint with toil, bleeding and torn from glass-sharp splinters, we reached a level chamber, vaulted, surprisingly, with solid rock. It was good to see something of the earth again, something that was not that deadly, all-embracing ice. At the far end lay a blinding patch. I blinked.
“Sunlight!” I shouted joyously.
“Yes,” Keston answered quietly. “That opening leads directly into the valley on our land.”
Abud roused himself from the unreasoning dread he had been in. It was the first time he had spoken.
“Let us get out of here. I feel as though I’m in a tomb.”
“Are you mad?” Keston said sharply. “The visors would pick you up at once. You wouldn’t last very long.”
Abud stopped suddenly. There was a plaintive, helpless note to him. “But we can’t stay here forever. We’d starve, or die of cold. Isn’t there some way to get back to the top of the Glacier?”
“No—only the way we came. And that’s been blocked with terminite.”
“Then what are we going to do? You’ve led us into a slow death, you with your boasted brains!”
“That remains to be seen,” was the calm retort. “In the meantime, we’re hungry. Let us eat.”
And the amazing man drew out of his torn flapping furs the gobs of meat he had cut from the dead bear. I had quite forgotten them. With a glad cry, I too reached into my garments and brought out my supply.
Abud’s eyes glinted evilly. His hand stole stealthily to the bone knife in its skin sheath. His spear had been dropped long before.
“None of that,” Keston said sharply. “We’ll all share equally, even though you have no food. But if you try to hog it all, or use force, you’ll die as well as we. There’s only enough for a meal or two; and then what will you do?”
Abud saw that. He needed Keston’s brains. His eyes dropped, and he mumbled something about our misunderstanding his gesture. We let it go at that. We had to. He could have killed us both if he wished.
So we divided our food with painstaking fairness. How we gorged on the raw red flesh and thick greasy fat! Food that would have disgusted us when we lived and worked in the Central Station, now was ambrosia to our sharpened appetites. When not the least scrap was left, and we had slaked our thirst with chunks of i
ce from the cavern floor, I spoke.
“What is that plan you spoke of, Keston, for reconquering the earth from the machines?”
Abud looked up abruptly at my question, and it seemed to me that a crafty smile glinted in the small pig eyes.
Keston hesitated a moment before he spoke.
“I confess my plans have been materially impeded by this sudden predicament we find ourselves in, thanks to our good friend here.” He ironically indicated Abud.
The big prolat merely grunted.
“However,” Keston continued, “I’ll have to make the best of circumstances, without the aid of certain materials that I had expected to assemble.
“The idea is a simple one. You’ve noted no doubt how the terminus of the Glacier opposite the Central Control Station overhangs. The brow, over a thousand feet up, extends out at least a hundred feet beyond the base.”
I nodded assent, though Abud seemed startled. Many times had Keston and I speculated on the danger of an avalanche at this point, and wondered why the Station had been built in such an exposed place. Once indeed we had ventured to suggest to the aristo Council the advisability of removing the Central Control to some other point, but the cold silence that greeted our diffident advice deterred us from further pursuit of the subject.
“Now, you know as well as I,” Keston resumed, “that a glacier is merely a huge river of ice, and, though solid, partakes of some of the qualities of freely flowing water. As a matter of fact, glaciers do flow, because the tremendous pressure at the bottom lowers the melting point of ice to such a degree that the ice actually liquefies, and flows along.”
I followed him eagerly in these elementary statements, trying to glimpse what he was driving at, but Abud’s brute features were fixed in a blank stare.
“This glacier does move. We’ve measured it—a matter of an inch or two a day. If, however,”—Keston’s voice took on a deeper note—“we can manage to hasten that process, the Glacier will overwhelm the countryside.”
He paused, and that gave me a chance to interpose some objections.
“But hold on a moment. In the first place it is an absolute impossibility with the means at our command, or even with every appliance, to melt the face of the whole Northern Glacier. In the second place, even if we could, the whole world would be overwhelmed, and then where would we be?”
Keston looked at me a trifle scornfully. “Who said we were going to melt the entire glacier? Remember I spoke only of the place of the overhang. Set that in motion, and we don’t have to worry about the problem any further.”
“Why not?” I inquired incredulously. “Suppose you do wipe out all the machines in this particular vicinity, won’t there be tremendous numbers left all through the Equatorial Belt?”
“Of course,” he explained patiently, “and what if they are? What are all these machines but inanimate mechanisms, things of metal and rubber and quartz. What makes them the monsters they have become?”
I smote my forehead in anger. “What a fool! Now I see it. It’s the master machine you’re after.”
“Exactly,” he smilingly agreed. “Overwhelm, destroy this devilish creature of mine, with its unhuman intelligence, and the machines are what they were before: merely obedient slaves.”
I pondered that a moment. “And how, may I ask, are you going to force this old Glacier to move.”
His face clouded. “That’s the trouble. Up on the ice I was working on that problem, and had managed secretly to rig up a contrivance that would have done the trick. But we can’t go back for it. That way is blocked.” He mused, half to himself. “If only we could lay our hands on a solar disintegrating machine, the difficulty would be solved.”
At the name, Abud’s face, that had been a study in blank incomprehension, lit up.
“Solar disintegrating machine?” he inquired. “Why there’s one stationed not more than a few hundred yards away from here. This area, 2-RX, was my sector, you know.”
“Of course, of course,” shouted Keston, “I’d quite forgotten. The very thing. You’re not half bad, Abud, if you’d only stop trying to rely on brute strength instead of brains,” he concluded.
Abud said nothing, but I noticed a quick flash of hatred that passed in an instant, leaving a blank countenance. I thought to myself, “You’ll bear watching, my fine fellow. I don’t trust you at all.”
Keston was speaking. “We’ll have to wait until nightfall. The master machine won’t expect us down at the base, so I’m positive the search-rays won’t be focused along the ground. We’ll sneak to the machine, smash its visor and radio units, so it won’t give the alarm, and haul it back. Then I’ll show you what’s next to be done.”
Night came at last, leaden footed, though we were burning with impatience. Very softly we crawled out of the cave, three shadows. Fortunately there was no moon. The great Glacier loomed ominously above us, dimly white. High overhead hovered the green signal lights of the machine planes, their search rays focused in blinding glares on the rim of the upper ice.
It did not take us long to find the dark bulk of the disintegrator. It was a squat cylinder, for all the world like a huge boiler. At one end there up-ended a periscope arrangement which broadened out to a funnel. In the funnel was a very powerful lens, cut to special measurements. The light of the sun, or any light, for that matter, was concentrated through the lens onto a series of photo-electric cells, composed of an alloy of selenium and the far more delicate element, illinium. A high tension current was there created, of such powerful intensity that it disintegrated the atoms of every element except osmium and indium into their constituent electrons. Consequently the interior as well as the long slit nozzle orifice at the other end, were made of these resistant metals.
Through a special process the tremendously powerful current was forced through the wide-angled nozzle in a spreading thin plate ray that sheared through earth and rock and metals as if they were butter.
Such was the machine we were after.
It was but the work of a few seconds to smash the delicate television and sono-boxes placed on the top of every machine. Now we were sure no warning could be given the master machine as it sat in its metallic cunning at the control board, ceaselessly receiving its messages from the area apparatus focused above it.
Quietly, very quietly, we trundled the precious instrument along on its wheel base. The green lights dotted the sky above: the search-rays were firmly set on the rim.
At last, without any untoward alarm, we reached the welcome shelter of the base, but not, as I had expected, back to our tunnel. On the contrary, Keston, who had directed the party, had led us almost a quarter mile away. I looked up again, and understood.
The great overhang of the Glacier was directly above us!
Without a word, with hardly a sound, we trundled the disintegrator into a natural niche we found in the icy surface. It was almost completely hidden; only the funnel with its lens protruded into the open. The nozzle orifice was pointing directly at the interior of the ice pack.
“Now everything is set properly,” Keston remarked with satisfaction as he straightened up from adjusting the various controls on the machine. “When the first ray of the morning sun strikes the lens, the disintegrator will start working. It will shear through a layer of ice over a radius of at least a mile. That huge crevasse, coupled with the terrific heat and the pressure from the mountain of ice above, will start the whole Glacier moving, or I’ll be very much mistaken.”
“Come, let us get back to our shelter before the alarm is given.”
As he started to move, a dark bulk loomed ominously in front of us—Abud. His voice was harsh, forbidding.
“Do you mean to say nothing further is to be done here—that the disintegrator will work without any attention?”
“That is just what I said,” Keston replied, somewhat surprised. “Step aside, Abud, and let us go. It is dangerous to remain here.”
But Abud made no move to comply. Instead he thrust back
his great shaggy head and gave vent to a resounding laugh.
“Ho-ho, my fine friends! So you were the brainy ones, eh? And Abud, the obedient dull-wit again? How nicely you’ve been fooled! I waited until you accommodatingly evolved the plan to reconquer the world, and put it into effect.
“Now that you’ve done so, I’ve no further need for you.” The voice that heavily tried to be mocking, now snarled. “You poor fools, don’t you know that with you out of the way, I, Abud, will be the Lord of the World. Those prolats up there know better than to disobey me.”
“Do you mean you intend to kill us?” Keston asked incredulously.
“So you’ve actually grasped the idea!” was the sarcastic retort.
Meanwhile I was gradually edging to the side, my hand reaching for the bone knife in my bosom.
Abud saw my movement. “No, you don’t!” he roared, and sprang for me, his long gleaming knife uplifted. I tugged desperately at my weapon, but it was entangled in the ragged furs. In a moment he was on top of me. Involuntarily I raised my arm to ward off the threatened blow, raging despair in my heart.
The point fell, but Keston struck at the savage arm with all his might, deflecting the blade just in time. It seared my shoulder like a red hot iron, and in the next instant all three of us were a rolling, kicking, snarling trio of animals. We fought desperately in the dark. There were no rules of the game. Biting, gouging, kicking—everything went.
Keston and I, weakened as we were from long starvation and the biting cold, were no match for our powerful, huge-muscled opponent, well clad and well nourished as he was. Though we fought with the strength of despair, a violent blow from his huge fist knocked Keston out of the fight. Hairy fingers grasped my throat. “I’ll break your neck for you,” he snarled, and his hands tightened. I struggled weakly, but I was helpless. I could just see his hateful face grinning at my contortions.
I was passing out—slowly, horribly. Keston was still motionless. Colored lights danced before my eyes, little spots that flared and died out in crashing blackness. Then the whole world leaped into a flaming white, so that my eyeballs hurt. In the dim recesses of my pain-swept mind I thought that strangulation must end like this. The brightness held dazzlingly.
The Arthur Leo Zagat Science Fiction Megapack Page 15