The Best of Lester del Rey

by Lester Del Rey

  He came down under the clouds, fighting for every inch of altitude. Then, far ahead, he could see the shore. There were no islands here, so it had to be the mainland. Once there, he could reach the creche in a single day.

  He passed over the shoreline at a height of five hundred feet. There was a short stretch of sand, some woods, and then a long expanse of green that must be grass. He eased the control forward, then back again. The little ship came skimming down at two hundred miles an hour. Its skids touched the surface, and it bounded upward. Sam fought the controls to keep it from nosing over. Again it touched, jerking with deceleration. This time it seemed to have struck right. Then a hummock of ground caught against one skid. The craft slithered sideways and flipped over. Sam braced himself as the ship began coming to pieces around him. He pulled himself out, staring at the wreckage. It was a shame that it was ruined, he thought. But it couldn’t be made as strong as he was and still glide through the air.

  He turned to study the world around him. The grass was knee-high, moving gently in the wind. Beyond it lay woods. Sam had seen only pictures of trees like that before. He moved toward them, noticing the thickness of the underbrush around them. Below them, the dirt was dark and moist. He lifted a pinch to his face, moving his smell receptors forward in his mouth slit. It was a rich smell, richer than the stuff in the hydroponic tanks. He lifted his head to look for the birds he expected, but he could see no sign of them. There were only insects, buzzing and humming.

  The sun had already set, he noticed. Yet it was not yet dark. There was a paling of the light, and a soft diffusion. He shook his head. Above him, tiny twinkling spots began to appear. He had read that the stars twinkled, but he had thought it only fiction. He had never been under the open sky of Earth before.

  Then a soft murmur of sound reached him. He started away, to be drawn back to it. Slowly he realized it was a sound like the description of that heard near the sea. He had never seen an ocean, either. And now one lay no more than a mile away.

  He stumbled through the woods in the growing darkness. For some reason, he was reluctant to turn on his lights. Eventually, he learned to make his way through the brush and around the trees. The sound grew louder as he progressed.

  It was dark when he reached the seashore, but there was a hint of faint light to the east. As he watched, it increased. A pale white arc appeared over the horizon and grew to a large circle. The Moon, he realized finally.

  The waves rose and fell, booming into surf. And far out across the sea, the Moon seemed to ride on the waves, casting a silver road of light over the water.

  Sam had remembered a word. Now for the first tune, he found an understanding of it. This was Beauty.

  He sighed as he heaved himself from the sand and began heading along the shore in search of a road that would take him westward. No wonder men wanted to come back to defend a world where something like this could be seen.

  The Moon rouse higher as he moved on, its light now bright enough to give him clear vision. He came over a small rise in the ground and spotted what seemed to be a road beyond it. Beside the road was a house. It was dark and quiet, but he swung aside, going through a copse of woods to reach it and search for any evidence of humanity.

  The windows were mostly broken, he saw as he approached. And weeds had grown up around it. There was a detached building beside it that held a small car, by what he could see from the single dusty window. He skirted that and reached the door of the house; it opened at his touch, its hinges protesting rustily.

  Inside, the moonlight shone through the broken windows on a jumble of furniture that was overturned and tossed about in no order Sam could see. And there were other things—white things that lay sprawled on the floor.

  He recognized them from the pictures in the books—skeletons of human beings. Two smaller skeletons were tangled in one corner with their skulls bashed in. A large skeleton lay near them, with the rusty shape of a knife shoved through a scrap of clothing between two ribs. There was a revolver near one hand. Across the room, a skeleton in the tatters of a dress was a jumbled pile of bones, with a small hole in the skull that could have come from a bullet.

  Sam backed out of the room. He knew the meaning of another word now. He had seen Madness.

  Men had learned to build good machines. The car motor barely turned over after Sam had figured out the controls, but it caught and began running with only a slight sputtering. The tires were slightly soft, but they took the bumps of the rutted little trail. Later, when Sam found a better road, they lasted under the punishment of high speed. Most of the road was clear. There were few vehicles along its way, and most of those seemed to have drifted to the shoulder before they stopped or crashed.

  The sun was just rising when Sam located the place where the factory and warehouse had served as a legitimate cover for the secret underground robot project. Fire and weather had left only gutted ruins and rusty things that had once been machines. But the section that housed the creche entrance now stood apart from the rest, almost unharmed.

  Sam moved into it and to the metal door openly concealed among other such doors. He should probably not have known the combination, but men were often careless around robots, and he had been curious enough to note and remember the details. He bent to what seemed to be an ornamental grille and called out a series of numbers.

  The door seemed to stick a little, but then it moved aside. Beyond lay the elevator,- and that operated smoothly at the combination he punched. Power was still on, at least. There was no light, but the bulbs sprang into Life as he found a switch.

  He called out once, but he no longer expected to find men so easily. The place had the feel of abandonment. And while it could have protected its workers from almost anything, there had been only enough food and water stocked here for two weeks. There were a few signs that it had been used for a shelter, but most of it was in good order.

  He moved back past offices and laboratories toward the rear. The real creche, with its playrooms and learning devices, was empty, he saw. No robots had been receiving postawakening training. Sam was not surprised. He knew that most of the work here had been devoted to exploring the possibilities of robots, with the actual construction only a necessary sideline. Usually, the brain complexes had been created and tested without bodies, and then extinguished before there had been a full awakening.

  He started toward the educator computer out of his old habits. But it was only a machine that had programmed his progress from prepared tapes and memory circuits. It could not help him now.

  Beyond the creche lay the heart of the whole affair.

  Here the brain complexes were assembled from components according to Jfesoteric calculations or to meet previously recorded specifications. This was work that required a computer that was itself intelligent to some extent. It had to make sense out of the desirable options given it by men and then form the brain paths needed, either during construction or during the initial period before awakening. Everything that Sam had been before awakening had come from this, with only the selection of his characteristics chosen by men. That pattern would still be recorded, along with what the great computer had learned of him during his previous return here.

  Sam moved toward the machine, gazing in surprise at the amount of work lying about. There were boxes of robot bodies crammed into every storage space. They could never have been assembled in such numbers here. And beyond lay shelves jammed with the components for the brain complexes. With such quantities, enough robots could be made to supply the Lunar Base needs for generations.

  The computer itself was largely hidden far below, but its panel came to life at his touch. It waited.

  “This is Robot Twelve, Mark One,” Sam said. “You have authorization on file.”

  The authorization from Dr. DeMatre should have been canceled. But the machine did not switch on alarm circuits. A thin cable of filaments reached out and passed into Sam’s mouth slit. It retracted, and the speaker came to life. “There i
s authorization. What is wanted?”

  “What is the correct date?” Sam asked. Then he grunted as the answer came from the machine’s isotope clock. It had been more than thirty-seven years since the men had left the Moon. He shook his head, and the robot bodies caught his attention again. “Why are so many robots being built?”

  “Orders were received for one thousand robots trained to fly missiles. Orders were suspended by Director DeMatre. No orders were received for removing parts.”

  “Do you know what happened to the men?” Sam had little hope of finding an easy answer anymore, but he had to ask.

  The machine seemed to hesitate. “Insufficient data. Orders were given by Director DeMatre to monitor broadcasts. Broadcasts were monitored. Analysis is incomplete. Data of doubtful coherence. Requests, for more data were broadcast on all frequencies for six hours. Relevant replies were not received. Request further information if available.”

  “Never mind,” Sam told it. “Can you teach me how to fly a plane?”

  “Robot Twelve, Mark One, was awakened with established ability to control all vehicles. Further instructions not possible.”

  Sam grunted hi amazement. He’d been surprised at how well he had controlled the landing craft and then the car. But it had never occurred to him that such knowledge had been built in.

  “All right,” he decided. “Start broadcasting again on all the frequencies you can handle. Just ask for answers. If you get any, find where the sender is and record it. If anyone asks who is calling, say you’re calling for me and take any message. Tell them I’ll be back here in one month.” He started to turn away, then remembered. “Finished for now.”

  The machine darkened. Sam headed out to find a field somewhere that might still have an operable plane. But he was already beginning to suspect what he would find on this travesty of Earth.

  6

  Grass grew and flowers bloomed. Ants built nests and crickets chirped in the soft summer night. The seas swarmed with marine life of most kinds. And reptiles sunned themselves on rocks, or retired to their holes when the sun was too hot. But on all Earth, no warmblooded animal could be found.

  The Earth of man was without form and void. The cities were slag heaps from which radioactivity still radiated. No fires buftied on the hearthstones of the most isolated houses. The villages were usually burned, sometimes apparently by accident, but often as if they had been fired deliberately by their owners.

  The Moon was a thing of glory over Lake Michigan. It was the only glorious thing for six hundred miles. Four returned winged rockets rested on a field hi Florida, but there was no sign of what had become of the men who rode down from the station in them. One winged craft stood forlornly outside Denver, and there was a scrawl in crayon inside its port that spelled the worst obscenity in the English language.

  There was a library still standing in Phoenix, and the last newspaper had the dateline of the day when Sam had seen the lights brighten over the cities of Earth. There was no news beyond that of purely local importance. Most of the front page was occupied by a large box which advised readers that the government had taken over all radio communications during the crisis and would broadcast significant news on the hour. The paper was cooperating with the government in making such news available by broadcast only. The same box appeared in the nine preceding issues. Before that, the major news seemed to involve a political campaign in United South Africa.

  Other scattered small libraries had differently named papers that were no different. Yet the only clue was in one of those libraries. It was a piece of paper resting under the finger bones of a skeleton that was scattered before bound copies of a technical journal. The paper was covered with doodles and stained in what might have been blood. But the words were legible:

  “Lesson for the day. Assign to all students. Politics: They could not win and that is obvious. Chemistry: Their nerve gas was similar to one we tested in small quantities. It seemed safe. Yet when they dropped it over us in both Northern and Southern hemispheres, it did not settle out as the test batches had done. Practice: Such aerosols can be tested only in massive quantities. Medicine: Janice was in the shelter with me three weeks, yet there was still enough in the air to make her die in the ecstasy of a theophany. Meteorology: The wind patterns have been known for years. In three weeks, they reach all the Earth. Psychology: I am mad. But my madness is that I am become only cold logic without a soul. Therefore, I must kill myself. Religion: Nothing matters. I am mad. God is—” That was all.

  7

  The creche was still the same, of course. Sam sat before the entrance, staring at the Moon that was rising over the horizon. It was a full Moon again, and there was beauty to it, even here. But he was only vaguely aware of that. Below him, the great computer was busily integrating the mass of tiny details he had gathered together with all of the millions of facts it knew. That job took time, even for such a machine.

  Now it called him over the radio frequencies, as he had ordered it to do earlier hi the day. He issued the formal command for it to go ahead.

  “All data correlated,” it announced. “None was found fully coherent with previous data. Degree of relevancy approaches zero. Data insufficient for conclusion.”

  He grunted to himself and put the machine back on stand-by. He had expected little else. He had known there was too little material for a logical conclusion.

  But his own conclusion had been drawn already. Now he sat under the light of the Moon, staring up at the sky, and there was a coldness in his brain complex that seemed deeper than the reaches of space.

  They had come from somewhere out there, he thought bitterly. They had appeared more than a century before and snooped and sniffed at Earth, only to leave. Now they had come back, giving Earth only a week’s warning as they approached. They had struck all Earth with glowing bombs or radiation that ruined the cities of men. And when men had still survived, they resorted to a deadly mist of insanity. “They dropped it over us,” the npie had said. And the wonderful race Sam had knoi#a’Bad died in madness, usually of some destructive kind.

  There had not even been a purpose to it. The Invaders hadn’t wanted the Earth for themselves. They had simply come and slaughtered, to depart as senselessly as they had departed before.

  Sam beat his fists against his leg so that the metal clanged through the night. Then he lifted his other fist toward the stars and shook it.

  It was wrong that they should get away. They had come with fire and pestilence, and they should be found and met with all that they had meted out to mankind. He had supposed that evil was something found only hi fiction. But now evil had come. It should be met as it was usually met in fiction. It should be wiped from the universe in a suffering as great as it had afflicted. But such justice was apparently the one great lie of fiction.

  He beat his fists against his legs again and shouted at the Moon, but there was no relief for what was in him.

  Then his ears picked up a new sound and he stopped all motion to listen. It came again, weakly and from far away.

  “Help!”

  He shouted back audibly and by radio and was on his feet, running toward the sound. His feet crashed through the brush and he leaped over the rubble, making no effort to find the easy path. As he stopped to listen again, he heard the sound, directly ahead, but even weaker. A minute later he almost stumbled over the caller.

  It was a robot. Once it had been slim and neat, covered with black enamel. Now it was bent and the bare metal was exposed. But it was still a Mark Three. It lay without motion, only a whisper coming from its speaker.

  Sam felt disappointment strike through all his brain complex, but he bent over the prone figure, testing quickly. The trouble was power failure, he saw at once. He ripped a spare battery from the pack he had been carrying on his search and slammed it quickly into place, replacing the corroded one that had been there.

  The little robot sat up and began trying to get to its feet. Sam reached out a helping hand, starin
g down at the worn, battered legs that seemed beyond any hope of functioning.

  “You need help,” he admitted. “You need a whole new body. Well, there are a thousand new ones below waiting for you. What’s your number?”

  It had to be one of the robots from the Moon. There had never been any others permitted on Earth.

  The robot teetered for a moment, then seemed to gain some mastery over its legs. “They called me Joe. Thank you, Sam. I was afraid I couldn’t reach you. I heard your radio signal from here almost a month ago, but it was such a long way. And my radio transmitter was broken soon after we landed. But hurry. We can’t waste time here.”

  “We’ll hurry. But that way.” Sam pointed to the creche entrance.

  Joe shook his head, making a creaking, horrible sound of it. “No, Sam. He can’t wait. I think he’s dying! He was sick when I heard your call, but he insisted I bring him here. He—”

  “You mean dying? There’s a man with you?”

  Joe nodded jerkily and pointed. Sam scooped the h’ght figure up in his arms. Even on Earth, it was no great load for his larger body, and they could make much better tune than by letting the other try to run. Hal, he thought. Hal had been the youngest. Hal would be only fifty-nine, or something like that. That wasn’t too old for a man, from what they had told him.

  He flicked his lights on, unable to maintain full speed by the moonlight. The pointing finger of the other robot guided him down the slope and to a worn, weed-covered trail. They had already come more than five miles from the entrance to the creche.

  “He ordered me to leave him and go ahead alone,” Joe explained. “Sometimes now it is hard to know whether he means anything he says, but this was a true order.”

  “You’d have been wiser to stick to your car and drive all the way withyhinf,” Sam suggested. He was forcing his way throufh-aitangle of underbrush, wondering how much farther they had to go.