The Place Where

by Rodion Pretis

  “I can only assume that he deliberately ran into the ranks of our modules in order to get as close to the ship as possible.” Why - I don't know yet, but I don't like it at all.

  “Good, but what are we going to do now?”

  This question was raised at once from several sides.

  There was a long silence before Eumuk spoke:

  - I gave the Stop command to all the modules because I did not want to risk the ship. But now, I see, risk is necessary. Allow all modules to approach the ship a thousand yards away for inspection. Everyone who comes closer will be destroyed, and without warning. Clear? Well, now: “Step march!”

  When Module Five stopped a thousand yards from the Sarafand, in the distance, behind a large ship, only one light flickered. The experienced surveyor gazed steadily at him.

  “I would like to know what it is,” said his partner.

  “Why don't you just ask him about it?” Sargnor answered.

  Voiseus sat motionless for several seconds.

  - Okay, let's ask now.

  He pressed the intercom key.

  “Hello, says Voycey, module Five.” We are already near the ship. Who comes up next?

  “Lamerex, module One,” came a reassuringly familiar voice. - Hello, Victor, Dave! Glad to see you ... unless, of course, it's you.

  “Of course, what did you think?”

  There was a slightly made laugh of Lamerex:

  “I can't even imagine ...”

  Voysey was about to turn off the microphone, but then changed his mind:

  “I hope Evmuk will figure out what's what, and without talking, he will tear this seven to shreds before she throws something out with us.”

  “And if she's not going to throw anything away, then how?” Maybe she's just glad to tease us, ”said Sargnor and pulled out a sandwich. He hoped to have a tight meal with a steak on board the ship, but it seems that dinner is late.

  - What do you mean? - asked Voysey.

  - Even on Earth there are birds that willingly imitate the voice of man; monkeys who like to imitate people in everything, and without any back thought. Such is the manner of their behavior, and nothing more. Perhaps this thing is just a superimitator and takes the form of any new object that it sees, just like that, not even wanting it.

  “A creature capable of taking the form of a forty-foot machine?!” Well, Dave, you know! I believed you about the drums, but then you grabbed over the edge.

  Sargnor shrugged and set to work on the sandwich again. He saw drumbons during his one hundred and twenty-first trip, on a planet with great attraction. They were animals in the form of a wheel, in which, in contrast to people and most other living creatures, the blood remained constantly in place, below, and the body continuously rotated, providing circulation. It was very difficult for the experienced surveyor to convince newcomers that drumbones really exist - drumbones and hundreds of other no less strange creatures. The main drawback of the current over-fast flights was that travels now did not enrich the mind and did not broaden their horizons.Voisey, for example, was at a distance of five thousand light-years from Earth, but since he didn't even notice the road, mentally he still did not go beyond the orbit of Mars.

  On the video screen of module Five, other machines gradually appeared, until finally all seven were lined up at an equal distance around the black pointed tower "Sarafanda", forming a regular circle. Captain Evmuk remained silent while the machines performed the maneuver, but the replicas provided by the module teams continued to be heard continuously from the reproducer. Someone, seeing that everyone is alive and well and nothing bad happens, with each new moment more and more recovering from fear. Jokes rained down ...

  The laughter broke off instantly when Eumuk finally spoke.

  “Before listening to your suggestions,” he said calmly, “I want to remind you to not get closer to a ship closer than a thousand yards.” Everyone who violates it will be immediately destroyed. Now we proceed, as they say, to the debate.

  The onset of radio silence was first interrupted by Pollen's self-confident and harsh voice from Module Four. He traveled to sixteen expeditions and now wrote a book about his impressions. True, he never once allowed Sardzhnor to look at the manuscript, and the latter strongly suspected that he, Sardzhnor, had been exposed by Pollen in the comic role of a kind of all-knowing old-timer.

  “It seems to me,” Pollen began in a pompous manner, “that we are dealing here with the classical problem of formal logic ...”

  “In short, Pollen,” someone interrupted angrily.

  - Good. So, the fact remains. We need to find a way out of this situation. The main parameters of the task are as follows: there are six of our machines that are no different from each other and the seventh lurking among them ...

  Sargejor sharply pressed the intercom key.

  “I'm amending,” he said calmly.

  “Who is this, Sargejor?” Asked Pollen. - As I said, the seventh car ...

  “I'm making an amendment.”

  “This is Sargnor, isn't it?” Well, what do you want, Dave?

  - To me? I just want to help you with logical reasoning, Clifford. We are dealing with six machines and one very interesting living creature ...

  - What ?!

  - Yes ... With a gray man.

  Sargnor patiently waited for the noise to subside, glancing sidelong at the angry face of his partner. Did he himself look like this when he first heard about this creature? Legends about him were not widespread, but no, no, and they were found on planets where the memories of the indigenous inhabitants went deep enough into the past. As usual, the facts were distorted, but the essence was always the same: gray people, their struggle with whites and defeat.

  The gray race did not leave any traces that the later army of Earth archaeologists could find, but myths continued to exist. And the most interesting thing for those who wanted and knew how to listen was that the storytellers - it doesn't matter what they looked like and what kind of life they led: whether they walked the earth, flew through the air, swam or crawled , they called the gray people in the same word, as they called themselves.

  - What is such a gray person? What he really is?

  This question was asked by Karlen from module Two.

  “A big gray monster, a monster that can turn into any thing or any living thing,” Pollen explained. “Sargnor cannot even take a step without him and drags him all over the Galaxy.”

  “He cannot turn himself into any object,” Sargnor retorted. “He can only change his appearance, but inside he remains the same gray man.” You may not agree with me, Clifford.

  “I understand you, Dave.” A gray person would confirm your every word ...

  - We ask captain Evmuk to go through the xenological data storage units and determine: firstly, the probability of the existence of gray people; secondly, the possibility that the seventh module is one of them.

  Sargnor noted to himself that this time there was no joke, and he breathed a sigh of relief. If he is right, then they did not have time for conversations. Essentially speaking, there was apparently little time at all. The bright double sun was already rising above the horizon formed by the jagged peaks of distant mountains. In the next seventeen months, the planet will move too close to these two red-hot clumps of matter, and Sardzhnor would like to get away from Praila 1 at this time. However, not only people wanted this.

  * * *

  Kendar was very surprised to notice that with increasing interest he was following the thoughts of these edible creatures.

  His race never created machines, it relied on the strength, agility, speed and variability of its large gray bodies. In addition to his innate neglect of technology, Kendar spent several thousand years in the world of hell, where no cars could stand, no matter how well designed. Therefore, he was shocked by the thought of how much these fragile edible creatures depend on their products from metal and plastic. Most of all he was struck by the discovery that, it turns out, the metal
shells served them not only as a means of transportation, but also as a means of preserving and maintaining life.

  Kendar tried for a moment to imagine how he entrusts his life to the cares of a complex and often perishing mechanism, but the thought itself made him shudder with fear. He hurriedly threw it away and concentrated his terrible mind on the task of getting as close to the ship as possible in order to suppress the will and mind of all who were sitting in it. First of all, this must be done with the one whom they call captain Evmuk, and done before he uses his terrible weapon.

  This was precisely the reason for his mistake when he tried to subjugate such a creature as Captain Evmuk.

  Sarjnor looked at the laconic inscribed copper plate riveted to the ship's computing unit. In the care of this artificial mind, they gave their lives from the first to the last minute of each cartographic expedition.

  On the tablet it was written:

  EVMUK

  The crew believed that these letters mean: electronic ship control computer. But how true this is, no one knew for sure. People, Sardjnor suddenly realized, have a habit of treating a lot as a matter of course.

  Calmly and quietly, struggling with an ever-increasing sense of hunger, Kendar prepared for an attack.

  * * *

  Sargnor looked in surprise at his right hand.

  He was about to drink a cup of coffee to moisten his dried throat, and reached for the power pipe. A quarter-inch arm came off the chair and again fell powerlessly onto the armrest, Sargnor instinctively tried to help himself with his left, but she also did not move, and then he realized that he was paralyzed.

  For a whole minute the surveyor looked stupidly in front of him, and, having regained consciousness, he saw that he was completely exhausted in the struggle with his stiff muscles. Snakes of cold sweat ran all over. He pulled himself together and appreciated the situation, trying to understand how it turns out that he is still able to control at least the eye muscles.

  The partner was also paralyzed - only a barely perceptible tremor of the facial muscles betrayed that Voysey was still alive. A surveyor visited planets where animals, defending themselves, surround themselves with a field capable of suppressing the nervous activity of other animals. Such creatures were most often found on planets with a very great attraction, where predatory animals were as listless and slow as their victims. Sargnor tried to speak with Woisei, but, as expected, was unable to control his vocal chords.

  Suddenly it dawned on him that someone else's voices were still heard from the loudspeaker.

  “What is there to think in particular,” said Pollen. - An ordinary logical task for freshmen. It's just about your part, Evmuk. Let's say you call the module number and give it a command - to retreat back so many yards. Thus, the real six cars are separated from the seventh, or on one command two will leave at once ...

  Sargejor cursed his inability to move and reach the intercom key to plug Pollen's throat before late, but at that time the latter's words were drowned in the piercing, dissonant howl of an interfering radio station. And Sargnor, with a sense of relief, realized that this was the seventh module. Pollen almost had and signed them all a death sentence.

  It would be more practical to ask Evmuk to fire each module in turn with a low-power laser beam. Even if a gray person is able to withstand it, spectrographic analysis would find that he has a different chemical composition. It would be possible to give an order to all modules to release their small repair robots to the plain. Sargnor strongly doubted that the stranger could repeat the maneuver, where you need to divide yourself into two parts.

  A significant drawback of these methods was that a gray person would not give people time to implement them. The correct decision, if any, should give an instant answer, and Sargnor did not believe in his ability to find it.

  Only by virtue of habit, he again and again continued to analyze the situation, sorting through the available data one by one, and suddenly realized what the voices coming from the speaker meant. Since Pollen and others could talk among themselves, it means that they are out of the reach of a gray person. This means that he can affect people only at a relatively short distance.

  The discovery inspired him. Sargnor glanced at the video screens. Nearby were two modules. The other four cars were much further, on the opposite side of the circle, and, as he noticed, one of them blinked headlights in a timid attempt to get in touch using Morse code. Sargnor did not waste time deciphering the transmitted message - partly because he had forgotten this alphabet a long time ago, and partly because he had concentrated all his attention on two neighbors, one of which was probably the enemy. Here, high in the sky against the background of stars, the Sarafand blinked with lights - it was Evmuk who responded with confident high-speed clusters of dots and dashes.Sardzhnor wanted to laugh - by the way, Emuk did not forget to teach Morse code lessons.

  The ongoing howl of someone else's radio station made it difficult to think, but Sargnor did not give up. A vague, still vague idea began to take shape in his brain. There seems to be some kind of contradiction ...

  Voysey reached with his right hand to the control panel and turned on the engines. For a moment, Sargnor decided that the state of paralysis was over, but he was immediately convinced that he himself still could not move his arm or leg. Voysey's face turned white like chalk, saliva flashed on his chin, and Sargnor realized that his partner was acting like a mechanism remotely controlled by the seventh module. Well, it seems the last hour has come, Sargnor thought. The gray man decided to move their car forward in order to distract Eumuk's attention. The experienced surveyor was nearly hit by the thought that he couldn't manage to distract anyone, and that without hesitation he would turn into steam any who crossed the invisible border of the thousand-zone zone.

  The car moved slowly over rough ground.

  Sargnor made another desperate attempt to free himself from invisible bonds, but everything was in vain. What is the seventh module up to? His range is limited, so apparently he decided to take a distracting maneuver to get closer to the Sarafand himself. But it does mean hope.

  It seemed that the truth illuminated the brain of an experienced surveyor, but then he was frightened even more, if possible. “I know the truth,” he said to himself, “but I should not think about it because a gray person can read thoughts from a distance. If I think about it ... "

  Voisey's hands fell on the engine control levers, and the module rushed forward ...

  “... then the gray man learns that ... Shut up! Think about something else: about champagne, which you might never have to try, about drumbons, rolling in their own pool of blood, closed on all sides, but in no case think about ... Oh, I almost had it I didn ' t ... I almost thought about ... Ahh: I can't resist ... Evmuk !!! ”

  * * *

  The distance separating Kendar from the spacecraft was so small that, if he were in better shape, he would have crossed it in two jumps. Now it will take a little more time, but Kendar knew for sure that no one would stop him. He rushed forward. Behind him, a little slower than he expected, two cars, taken by him under their control, moved towards the ship. One of the seated edible creatures tried in vain to suppress a thought, but now was not the time to do it. While changing color and shape, Kendar safely passed the required distance - and triumphantly thrust his mind and will into the ship.

  No effect.

  And then, with a force sufficient to destroy any living creature in the blink of an eye, an ultra-laser beam hit. The pain was excruciating. He had not yet experienced such a thing. But worse than any pain were the thoughts that he clearly read in the minds of those who were in the ship - minds cold, harsh and decisive.

  And for the first time in his life, fear seized him.

  A moment later he was dead.

  * * *

  Sargnor, well-fed and contented, sat back in his chair, lit a pipe and looked with a condescending glance at the Sarafanda wardroom. During the gala dinner, he made a firm decision, and knew tha
t it was correct. He is quite satisfied with the role of the most experienced member of the expedition. Let the more nimble small ones put it in their books in a ridiculous way, and cousins exclude him, if they want, from the case - he intends to remain in cartographic management until he bends down. Here is his calling, here is his life.

  At the opposite end of the table, Pollen wrote notes about the expedition into his notebook.

  - And then you, Dave, enlightened that the gray man is simply not able to understand machine philosophy? Asked Pollen.

  - Yes. The gray man didn't use cars even in the best of times. And the thousands of years spent on Preil 1, where no car could stand it, led to the fact that our life closely connected with machines turned out to be something incomprehensible to him.