The girl turned to him at last and smiled a little.
“So you are the kind friend I have to thank for getting me back to life!” she exclaimed. Again she flexed her arms and fingers. “You can’t believe how wonderful it is to have a body again after spending several years having mechanical things do what your limbs ought to do.” She stood up slowly, accustomed herself to the gravitation, then walked to the mirror on the wall.
“It’s positively uncanny!” she exclaimed at last. “The law of chance certainly operated to the full when you modeled me, Mr—?”
“Mills. Perry Mills is the name. This is my friend, Bill Tanner—And I might add, Miss Wancliffe, that neither of us know what’s going on. What’s the explanation of all this?”
“I’ll tell you…” The girl turned slowly from the mirror, her blue eyes grave and serious. She seated herself in the nearest chair and kept shifting her legs in bewildered delight as she talked.
“When father discovered wanthorium—which was quite by accident—all of us realized that space was open to us. Naturally, by ‘us’ I mean my father, mother, and myself. But we also realized that in visiting some planets we would of necessity meet up with some very hostile conditions—such as poisonous air, even no air at all, strange beasts and entities, all kinds of troubles. That worried father. He couldn’t see us trusting just to space suits if we wanted to make a thorough tour—so out of his doubts and plans grew the rather amazing idea of a spatial robot.”
“That colossus standing out there?” Perry asked quickly.
“That’s it, yes. There was also considerable doubt that a human body in its entirety would be able to stand the terrific speeds at which wanthorium travels, and unless we did move at a terrific speed it might take father far more than his lifetime would allow to make an extensive tour. Father finally came to a decision, and ultimately mother and I agreed with him. We got the cooperation of father’s friend, Dr. Danver Hall, and as an expert neurologist and surgeon he thought the idea was feasible. The idea was to remove our brains, a by no means difficult feat to the surgery of this twenty-first century, of course, and leave our bodies behind to be taken over on our return. The bodies would be charged with long period anaesthetic, enough to keep them in suspended animation for ten years or so. Dr. Hall would look after them.”
Perry smiled bitterly. “I see. Maybe you don’t know that they were all buried when Dr. Hall suddenly died?”
The girl shrugged. “I didn’t know, but I had a suspicion something like that might occur. Not that it matters since you are a master of synthesis. Anyhow, our three brains were connected up by Hall to the monster spatial robot, and with the three of us working in unison the different controls responded flawlessly to our brain impressions, in fact far better than a natural body. We left the Earth secretly; father did not want a word to leak out until he’d brought back some proof. We crossed space at terrific speed, made the moon our first stopping place. We’ve never left here since.”
The girl’s face hardened a little. She got up from her chair and crossed to the window, gazed out over the wilderness of machines.
“Do you realize,” she asked slowly, “that these machines are alive?”
“Alive!” gasped Tanner. “But—but they can’t be! No machine can actually be—”
“Maybe I put it badly,” Kay acknowledged, turning again. “What I really mean is that the last Selenites defeated extinction in a fashion remarkably similar to father’s idea. In the years I’ve been here I’ve picked up enough to know what they did.
“When they found that their world was falling to bits and that space-cold and airlessness was coming, they transferred their brains to machinery which would withstand the ravages of ultimate cold, and so they gained for themselves something approaching a mechanical immortality. A brain housed in a machine does not easily die because there is nothing to rapidly deteriorate—except the brain itself—and with no blood stream or other sources of impurity to impair it, it can—and does—last for tens of thousands of years. That is, on the moon here. I doubt if it could be done on Earth.
“Well, when we arrived here these machine brains trapped us entirely; they put some kind of electrical current round us that prevented wanthorium from working.
“Incidentally, where do the Selenites get all their power to do these things?” Perry demanded, gazing out on the steady activity of the machines’ rods, bars and pistons.
“From the sun. The moon is peculiar in many ways, but its biggest asset is its power to absorb the unveiled rays of the sun—electrical waves, various types of radiation, and so forth. The moon is really a gigantic storage battery. Certain veins of rock are purely magnetic; special oxides retain the currents received from the sun.
“Those two huge electrodes up there were made by the machine Selenites for utilizing the constant supply of stored energy. All power and light is derived from there. Only on certain spots on the moon is the absorptive effect missing; it turns into reflective instead through some rock faults. You might call them blind spots. Those blind spots are the source of the bright streaks and rays which are visible at high lunar noon—full moon—from Earth.”
“By which means, unless I miss my guess, you directed thought across the void?” Perry asked slowly.
“Yes, but it wasn’t quite so easy as that. Those bright streaks and rays are the source of natural carrier waves to Earth, the nearest neighbor. The sun hurls forth radio waves among other things, and of terrific power. They strike the moon and are reflected from the blind spots out into space again. Naturally, a host of them hit the Earth. They can carry any particular radiation or transmission the Selenites desire—and they do. I’ll tell you exactly what in a moment. Right now I’d better explain how my thoughts reached Earth.
“It was blind chance, in the first place. The moment we realized we were trapped we tried to radio Earth, but the electric shield around our robot blocked the transmission. Finally we hit on another idea. Thought waves, of far shorter length than radio, got safely through the shield. We converted our radio apparatus into a thought wave transmitter—not very difficult since thought and radio waves are almost identical except for length. We directed our combined concentrations to the natural carrier beam on the surface, occurring every full moon.
“We kept it up at every full moon, through the years. We hoped finally to effect a radio set somewhere on Earth and get a message through. Our only chance in doing that lay in a radio set somewhere having the exact reception coils necessary. A mighty slim chance! If we did strike one, our instruments would reveal quickly enough that we were in contact. For years nothing happened.”
The girl fell silent for a moment; then her eyes brightened.
“Then I suddenly realized that my particular concentrations had impacted on something and were being interpreted—but it wasn’t a radio, because my father’s and mother’s thoughts were not being received at all. Finally I worked out the reason. Somehow, a brain had come into being, a brain identical with my own. My every thought was functioning through a body, just as if I were a living being. It could only mean that by some chance an exact duplicate of myself, with an exactly duplicate brain had been created. How, or why, I did not know. The impulse to speak reacted perfectly and my image spoke in sympathy. You understand now?”
“Clearly enough,” Perry nodded. “It was, in a sense telepathic remote control, the only difference in this case being that thought waves reacted instead of radio. Even though I can understand that, I do not understand why a brain alone should be the vital secret of life and living manifestation.”
“It isn’t!” the girl contradicted quickly. “A brain is the organ of thought interpretation. Thought is life; without it there can be no life. The actual source of thought is a mystery, unless it be the ether of space itself interpreted through individual brains—but the fact remains that so long as a brain can interpret thoughts it can make a body live. That was why your synthetic model of me did not live until it had a
thinking brain inside it. You could not create thought, therefore not life. Remember the famous saying—‘I think, therefore I live’.”
Perry was silent for a long time when the girl stopped talking. Then at last he said slowly, “I don’t think I ever heard of a more ingenious way of sending for help.”
Kay shrugged. “Without that one chance of you forming molecules and atoms identical to my original body I could never have done it. I have you to thank for real life, a real body, and—” She paused and sighed. “But there I go! We’re not out of the woods yet by any means. From what I’ve learned of these Selenites, they are trying to get the Earth for their own uses. For generations they have tried to wipe out humanity with specially devised radiations. The only effect was, in certain cases, to produce lunacy among some individuals at full moon. That’s an acknowledged fact, of course.”
Perry smiled. “Of course. Hence the word ‘lunatic’.”
“Just after we got here the Selenites devised a new system of control, reacting directly on female brains, which are far more sensitive to ethereal changes than those of the male. Every living female, human, animal, insect, and so forth, was wiped out, was it not?”
“That was why I made you,” Perry said bitterly.
“Humanity will die because it cannot procreate,” Kay said pensively. “But the Selenites have still to conquer space travel. When we arrived here they realized the secret was in their grasp; but up to now we’ve resisted every attempt to make us divulge it. They undoubtedly hope to finally wear us out; that’s why they’ve held us here. They have hopes too of finding some way to get hold of earthly bodies if they ever reach Earth. They want that more than anything else in the universe—to be rid of these encumbering machines they go about in. So as things stand, I guess it’s stalemate.”
Chapter VII
“We’ll Give the Selenites Our Secret…”
A silence fell on the little control room. Perry stood with his chin sunk on his chest. Tanner finally spoke.
“Queer, isn’t it, that these machine people have allowed us to take Kay’s brain from the robot without attacking us?”
The girl laughed shortly. “You’ll probably find that they’ve got you here as firmly as the robot. Your controls will probably be dead.”
“What?!” Perry gasped, and swung to the control board.
The girl was right. The wanthorium plates failed to respond as the berylium shields slid to one side.
“There you are!” Kay sighed. “It’s a neat way of keeping a prisoner. Fortunately, the electric current doesn’t affect flesh and blood; that’s why we’re all right—also why you could move me from the robot without any ill effects.”
Tanner gave a grunt. “Now that we know everything we’re no better off! The Earth is still devoid of women, and since it takes a living brain to give life to a synthetic model how the devil are we going to do it? In any case we’re stuck here, and these damned machines will probably attack us before long.”
“Only if you attack them,” the girl put in quietly. “Stay passive, and you’ve nothing to fear.”
“But we can’t stay passive! We want action.”
“Living brains— Synthetic models,” Perry said suddenly, starting to pace up and down. “Let’s get this thing straight. We have here a situation wherein two worlds are at loggerheads because they’re both driven by desperate necessity to need something the other possesses. Miss Wancliffe, as I see it these Selenites want to take over the Earth so they can devise ways and means of having natural bodies again on a young world, without recourse to mechanical aid. Right?”
“Just that,” Kay nodded.
“Hmmm … Because they feared opposition they wiped out the female half of the human race, knowing the remainder would perish within a century?”
“Right again.”
“They are scientists of a high order,” Perry went on slowly, gazing thoughtfully in front of him. “Therefore they did not destroy through any vicious sense, but because it seemed to them the only method of gaining their end, even as a man might slay his favorite horse for meat if hunger drove him to it. That does not make him a devil at heart.”
“What the hell are you driving at?” Tanner demanded bluntly.
Perry smiled faintly. “Way back in 1980, Earthlings finally learned that the surest means of lasting security is gained by arbitration. You remember the friendship over the world, the study of different nations’ greatest needs? How there finally grew out of exchange and cooperation a bloodless and permanent world peace? Well, that taught every true man that violence is not the way to settle a difference. Cooperation is the secret.
“I’m trying to put those ideals into effect right here. Call me an ambassador or diplomat for Earth, if you like—but I think that right under my hands there lies the solution to both difficulties. It all depends how I work. These people are not vicious, otherwise they would have slain, or somehow destroyed the three-brained robot long ago and learned its secret. Instead they prefer to wait until it is given up through sheer necessity—”
“More likely because it’s the only way they’ll get it,” Tanner snapped. “They’d never find that secret without being told, would they, Miss Wancliffe?”
“Unlikely,” she confessed; and looked at Perry queerly. “What are you getting at?”
“Just this. The Selenites can’t act without space travel. The human race cannot survive without female brains to be fitted to synthetic bodies. That isn’t a mathematical puzzle—it’s common sense. Suppose, in return for the secret of space travel the Selenites consented to have their brains—the female ones—fitted to synthetic earthly bodies? Our race would be saved.”
“You’re screwy!” Tanner shouted. “The Earth would be overrun with Selenites in no time. Lord! Think of the wars there’d be! It’s playing right into their hands. Superscientific Selenites versus the last men of earth? Not darn likely!”
“Wars? No!” Perry shook his head firmly. “The moon was once part of the Earth. At root, Earthlings and Selenites are of the same basic protoplasm. They’ve evolved differently because of different planetary states, that’s all. Superscience doesn’t beget war, but progress.”
“Yeah – like the slaughter of every woman on Earth, eh?” Tanner snapped.
“Science would call that necessary elimination.” Perry paused, looked at Tanner and the girl each in turn. “Can’t you see?” he demanded. “The Selenites will never discover wanthorium unless we give it to them, and we can’t escape either. On the other hand, the human race can’t survive unless Selenite brains are used. That’s the top and bottom of the matter.”
“Maybe you’re right,” admitted Kay, musing. “After all, they could advance Earthly knowledge enormously.”
“Exactly.” Perry was smiling strangely. Tanner had a queer inner conviction that Perry had not told everything that was in his mind. He knew that enigmatic smile too well.
Perry swung suddenly to the girl.
“How does one communicate with these machine folk?” he asked briefly.
Turning, she pointed through the window to one particular machine composed of an enormous cylinder supported on two side trestles. It looked remarkably like a gigantic dictaphone. At the moment the cylinder was motionless.
“That’s it, an electrical thought recorder,” she said quietly. “It takes the impressions of thought waves on the drum, then by some process I don’t propose to explain it changes your language into lunar by internal mathematical means, afterwards changing lunar back into English. That’s what we’ve used to communicate.”
“Do these machines read thoughts?” Perry asked anxiously.
“The machines themselves can’t read thoughts—only the recorder can do that—and only then when you directly concentrate on your message.”
“Good!” Perry’s nod was distinctly relieved. He turned to the closet and took out his space suit. In a few minutes he was outside, standing before the strange machine. The drum was slowly ro
tating.
Tanner glanced at the girl by his side.
“I still don’t like it,” he muttered. “If you ask me anything, Perry’s sealing the doom of Earth more certainly than it’s sealed already.”
“I wonder if he is…” The girl’s eyes were thoughtful. “I trust him. After all he’s done for me, I’d trust him to the ends of the universe.”
Tanner said nothing. He was frowning in perplexity.
Perry spent an hour giving his message, and in the ensuing hour he did little save pace the control room anxiously completely ignoring the meal Tanner had prepared for the three of them. Time and again he went to the window, until at last he saw the waited sign—a long roll of metal ejected from the strange cylinder.
In minutes he was outside and in again, only pausing long enough to take off his space suit helmet, then unrolling the metal message eagerly. For a moment he stared wonderingly at the faultless spelling and execution of the stylus indented message, then gave a whoop of joy as he read, Kay and Tanner staring over his shoulder.
“They agree!” he shouted exultantly. “They agree! Read for yourselves!”
They didn’t need telling. The answer stared up at them.
“Your message has been received with interest by our people. We have debated the matter and have decided to accept your proposition. We realize that it would be impossible for you to provide us with bodies such as we used to have because you have no knowledge of the anatomy of lunar beings. Further, we realize that our construction on earthly lines is the only way for us to achieve ease on your planet.
“We wish you no ill—only our own advancement and the possession of bodies instead of imprisoning machines. We shall place ourselves in your hands, but as a safeguard during our synthetic construction on Earth we propose that our numbers should stand guard to prevent any possible deception. We trust you, but you cannot be answerable for the rest of your race.
“All we need is Wanthorium. In our machine bodies we can fly through space without ships. The fact that we shall keep faith with you is self-evident, because we need earthly bodies more than anything else in the universe. In return for this, the secrets of lunar science will later be yours.”
John Russell Fearn Omnibus Page 51