The Automated Goliath

by William F. Temple

  That was a shot in the dark, but Drahk’s long silence confirmed a hit.

  Presently, he said sibilantly, “At least you know how the ship is navigated. That information is necessary to begin with. I do not expect you to offer it voluntarily. So I will offer to make a bargain. Regarding bargaining, you cannot rely on any promise I might make… except one. The Makkees have no equivalent to your word of honor, which is purely sentimental conception.”

  “You’re telling us nothing new,” I said. “What is the promise we’re to believe you’ll keep?”

  “The promise to torture you all slowly, one by one, until you provide the information I ask. The torture will continue to the death for your friends, Magellan—unless you speak first. If you don’t, your turn will follow. I advise you to speak before any torture is necessary. If you do that, you can have an easy, painless death, by drugs. Now, can I for once expect a sensible rather than a sentimental reaction?”

  “No,” I said. “Get lost.”

  “Completely,” said Gerry.

  “And never come back,” said Pete.

  Drahk went very still for a moment. Then he said, “So we shall have to do it the long, hard way.”

  He reached for the visaphone, but it anticipated him. A shrill Makkee voice spoke rapidly from it. Drahk answered briefly, and pressed a desk button.

  “This could be good news for all of us,” he said. “Despite your opinion, we have some reasonably able scientists.

  A team has been at work on the ship for some hours now. They think they may have discovered enough to be able to operate it. I am going to check. If it is true, you will be spared torture—but not, of course, death.”

  The door opened and George came in. We glared at him and he regarded us without shame. Drahk addressed him by some other name, in the Makkee tongue, took a ray gun from a drawer and passed it to him.

  Then he stood up, and said, “Your old friend, my old servant, will take care of you while I’m away. Your legs will be useless for a long time yet, but do not even try to move-George will ray you if you do. He knows he will lose his home here if you escape. In any case, I shall still be keeping an eye on you.”

  He swung the visaphone round to cover us. He went to the door, paused, and said, “George is a Danic. Danics, Nams, and Makkees do not have that aberration you call a conscience. Expect no repentance from George—it’s simply not in his nature.” He shut the door behind him.

  “Damn it,” I said. “What a mess I’ve made of everything.”

  “We share the blame,” said Pete, “but let’s emulate George and waste no time on repentance. I predict Drahk will be back again soon, spitting fire. For I’m sure his scientists are talking out of the holes in their heads. Consider that with the help of Prospero, and Nunn—who’s a brilliant old fool—and our team, not forgetting my good self, and Uvova, it took ten years of sweat to learn what Drahk’s boys are claiming to have discovered in a matter of hours. I don’t believe it.”

  “Neither do I,” I said, watching George, who sat in Drahk’s place, overflowing the chair, impassive as dough, twiddling the ray gun between multitudinous fingers. “Drahk will be back with the red-hot tongs.” I nodded at George. “He’s our only hope.”

  “I agree,” said Pete. He stared at George, then said earnestly, “Listen, George, Drahk has told us that he has no further use for you, and will kill you soon. We’re not trying to fool you—that is perfectly true.”

  Without returning his gaze, George said snuffingly to the desk top, “Drahk said I undead here till dead. Ic.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “And once we’re dead, you’ll be dead within a week. That’s all the lease of life he’ll allow you.”

  “I am not weak,” said George, shooting a red, indignant glance at me. “I am strongic.”

  “Confound all brainless electronic brains,” I said loudly and distinctly. “Pete, I’m wasting time talking to him. Try him in Vathicanese or a reasonable facsimile. Tell him that if he helps us to escape, well take him back to Earth with us, for there’s no future for him here—he’s probably the last of the Danics. Tell him that we have a thing called a conscience which makes us keep our promises, whereas the Makkees do not have this conscience. Remind him that he heard Drahk say that himself.”

  “Okay,” said Pete, and addressed George haltingly in the strange, clicking language of Vathic. George replied rapidly.

  “Hm,” was Pete’s response, and he went into thoughtful silence.

  “What did he say?” I asked impatiently.

  Pete cleared his throat. “Well, it makes it a bit awkward. He said he feels safer with Drahk because Drahk is cleverer than you and knows what he’s doing, and you’re a fool and don’t. He added that Gerry and I followed you, and look where it’s got us.”

  Gerry laughed aloud.’

  “In short,” said Pete, “he reckons Drahk is the mastermind around here, and we three are dead ducks and in no position to make any offers.”

  “Maybe he’s right,” I said gloomily. “All the same, he’s a fool, too.”

  Pete shrugged. “It’s merely that he thinks objectively. He understands things better than he understands people.”

  The visaphone glowed. Drahk’s narrow, dirty, yellow face appeared on it and the black eyes scrutinized us. He said something in Makkee addressed to George. The Danic answered, probably confirming that everything was still under control. The screen went blank.

  “Wonder where he’s phoning from,” said Gerry.

  “Obviously a point somewhere near our ship,” I said. “The house next door, maybe.”

  I spent the next few minutes trying to think of some new approach or argument to win George to our side. And then there began a heavy rumbling sound like a really big rocket starting to take off. It increased to a roar which shook the whole building.

  George bounced to his feet and the inadequate chair fell back onto the quaking floor. He stood there uncertainly for a moment, then rushed from the room faster than I’d ever seen him move.

  “He’s scared out of his wits,” shouted Pete above the noise.

  I felt scared, too, and envied George for one thing—his ability to run.

  The roaring sound suddenly subsided, leaving a legacy of minor vibrations still thrilling our nerves, the chairs we sat on, the air itself.

  Gerry said shakily, “I’ll bet that was Drahk’s backroom boys blowing the Revenge apart—and Drahk with it, too, I hope.”

  “No,” said Pete. “Look—through the window.”

  We all looked. Gerry whistled. He and Pete were taller than me, and could see something over the sill just below my line of vision.

  “What is it? I can’t see,” I said sharply.

  “The building across the street has collapsed,” said Pete. “I can see just a part of another street with an enormous crack across it. A fissure—with a car hanging over the edge of it… We’ve just had an earthquake.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Hope the whole darn city comes down on the Makkees and buries them. If we’ve got to go, we’ve got to go. But it would be nice to know they’re going, too.”

  “Don’t be so morbid, Charles,” said Pete, and then came another loud rumbling, the herald of another shock.

  This time I thought my wish was about to be granted. Our building swayed like a sapling in a gale until I felt sick with the motion. Networks of cracks sprang up the walls of the room like some madly climbing creeper.

  To be caught by an earthquake was a frightening business at any time. But to be half-paralyzed, unable to rush out to open ground, made the situation even more nightmarish. I gripped the arms of my chair—there was nothing else to cling to.

  Then the shock passed, and everything seemed unnaturally still and quiet.

  “My gosh, another one like that and this building will fall apart,” said Gerry, wiping his wet forehead.

  We waited uneasily, and then the door, now out of plumb, was shoved open, grating on the floor. In shambled George
. His face seemed somehow whiter than ever, and his ruby eyes burned in it certainly bigger than before.

  He looked at us, and said indistinctly, “We go not-front to Earthic in your ship.”

  “We go back to Earth, George?” echoed Pete wonderingly.

  The Danic didn’t reply. He shoved his ray gun under his belt, lifted Pete clean out of his chair with one heave and slung him across his shoulders. For all his apparent flabbiness, it was clear that George was accustomed to lifting heavy weights. He began to carry Pete from the room.

  “I don’t know where I’m going, but here I go,” said Pete. They disappeared through the doorway. “Well, you never know your luck,” I said. “Maybe Drahk was wrong. Maybe George does have a conscience tucked away under all that blubber.”

  “I think he’s just plain scared of earthquakes,” said Gerry, cynically.

  A few minutes later, George returned, lifted the massive Gerry as though he were a mere stripling, and made off again. I presumed that George, by leaving me till last, was still rating me as the fool of the family and therefore the least important. It was hardly flattering and I began to wonder if, indeed, he would trouble to come back for me. Then I remembered the notebook still in my pocket. Not even Pete could operate the Revenge without it. George would have to come back.

  So instead I began to wonder what had been happening at the ship. Had Drahk been injured by the quakes? If he had, how could George have learned that?

  Suddenly, the visaphone came to life. A grim and apparently quite uninjured Drahk stared at me. “So you’re still there. The earthquake didn’t—”

  He broke off as he noticed the empty chairs flanking me.

  “Where are the others?” His shrill voice rose almost to the ultra-sonic. He began calling the Makkee name he’d given George, and as if in answer, George came back into the room. Drahk addressed him peremptorily. The Danic ignored him completely and came and lifted me. As he carried me out, I looked back at the mouthing yellow face on the screen, and called, “The account has yet to be settled, Drahk. And your time is running out.”

  The melodramatic touch again. Yet I believed what I had said, though reason wondered how, if Drahk was still alive and in control of the Revenge—and it seemed that he was—three helpless cripples could even reach him, let alone deal with him.

  I saw the visaphone’s glow dim out. Then I was bobbing on George’s shoulders along an empty lobby. He began climbing stairs with no slackening of effort. It was a long staircase. We were almost at the top when the lobby below suddenly filled with agitated, hissing Makkees. It sounded like a snakepit.

  They saw us and the whole mob started rushing for the stairs.

  This mass pursuit couldn’t have been spontaneous. I guessed that Drahk had switched his visaphone call and raised a general alarm. I reached around George’s ungainly torso and snatched the ray gun from his belt. I’d not forgotten how to use the things, and expertly sprayed the long staircase and most of the lobby with the pale green rays.

  The Makkees fell in sprawling heaps, stunned or unconscious, and all the hissing died to nothing.

  George turned a corner and we emerged onto a flat and dazzlingly white roof in warm sunshine. Four flying saucers were parked there, and there was plenty of parking space for more. As George bore me to the nearest, I could see many broken towers in Murges and the debris piled high in the streets.

  And then I was under the shallow dome of the saucer, amid shafts of sunlight striking in through the circular ports. On the thickly carpeted floor (for the Makkees, comfort was indispensable anywhere) Pete and Gerry were reclining.

  “Good—a fourth for bridge,” said Pete.

  Gerry said, “What kept you, old man?”

  I grinned as George laid me beside them. He closed the aperture, and went straight to the control console and began jabbing buttons and throwing switches. We felt an upward motion. TV screens assumed a pallid life in the bright cabin. On them I saw the roof falling slantingly away from us. Makkees were pouring out onto it, making for the three remaining saucers.

  “Don’t look now, but we’re being followed,” I said.

  George, who hadn’t said a word since his sudden volte-face, wasn’t missing a thing. He juggled with an odd swiveling lever, and a white-hot dart shot away from our ship and speared the center saucer on the roof. The impact pushed it clear through the far parapet, where is disappeared throwing off incandescent flame.

  “Plumb center,” said Gerry. “That’s real shooting.”

  There seemed to be utter confusion on the roof, but we could see no details, for already the white square had dwindled to the size of a pocket handkerchief. Then our ship leveled off, following the beeline of the glittering monorails.

  And suddenly we were looking down at the Revenge, a black pill lying among the sugar cubes of the small detached houses.

  I never did discover what George had intended to do at that time. Perhaps land alongside the Revenge and make a wild solo attack on the Makkees there with the ray gun. Perhaps merely concentrate on escaping and hiding up until we three were fit enough to take an active part.

  Anyhow, at that moment Drahk slammed down his ace in the hole.

  Chapter 12

  From directly out of the sun, where it had been hovering and waiting for us like a hawk, a flying saucer dived at us.

  George saw it just too late. He attempted evasive action, but the other saucer cracked us on the side, a glancing blow but with plenty of ergs in it. Both saucers shot apart like cannoning pool balls. The metallic sound of the crash echoed and re-echoed thunderously inside our cabin and we were thrown across the carpet like so many packages.

  George, resilient as a rubber ball, seemed to take it as a matter of course and was promptly back at the console. He brought the ship back on an even keel.

  Gerry had finished up lying across my dead legs—I couldn’t even feel his considerable weight. He gasped and pointed. “Look at that!”

  It was a really big inward bulge in the wall, and torn wires and broken things protruded from it. They were parts of the dart launching gear. The other saucer had disarmed us at a stroke.

  “Thatic Drahk,” said George, breaking his self-imposed vow of silence. He had piloted Drahk’s saucer often, and doubtless had recognized it at sight.

  I rubbed the sore area at the back of my head, and said, “You’ve got to hand it to that guy. He was thinking ahead of us. He must have taken off directly after he gave the alarm, then waited up there to get the drop on us.”

  Neither Pete nor Gerry answered. They were watching Drahk’s saucer wheeling around for another stab at us.

  But George handled the situation brilliantly. Instead of trying to dodge, he sent our ship hurtling straight towards Drahk’s and at the last moment dropped about thirty feet and skimmed just beneath its keel. Before Drahk had quite grasped the maneuver, George was heading our ship like a bullet towards the horizon.

  “That’s the idea, George,” I said. “Run for it—the hunt’s up.”

  For the screens showed flying saucers rising from all over Murges like flocks of startled birds.

  “Drahk’s on our tail again,” said Pete. “Coming fast, too.”

  Immediately, George, without slackening its speed, took our ship down to a height of scarcely more than a hundred feet. We chased our round shadow across the streaming miles of park land. When tall trees seemed to race towards us, I shrank inwardly, remembering how George had piled up a similar saucer in Windsor Great Park.

  Drahk’s saucer hung on close behind and above. I saw now that it, too, had been damaged by the collision and was leaving a thin trail of black smoke.

  “George is not so dim,” said Pete. “This hedge-hopping is good strategy. If Drahk tries to ram us again we’ll both hit the ground. So he dare not try. But I can’t understand why he’s not shooting at us.”

  “Because he wants us alive,” I said. “So his technicians can’t have succeeded, He still wants to pick our bra
ins about the Revenge. He’s hoping to force us down.”

  “If he can catch us,” said Gerry. “But it seems to me, old man, we’re beginning to outpace him.”

  Gradually, Drahk’s ship was falling back.

  “You’re right,” I said. “The smoke’s pouring from his ship now. He must have damaged the works when he side-swiped us. There’s a whole pack of saucers behind him, though.”

  That was true, but they were only dots in the far distance. We’d had a long start on them, and they hadn’t made up any ground. The sun was moving down the sky behind them to its setting, and we were causing its descent by our swift passage. When it set, we would be entering the twilight zone which lay between Nam and Danic country. We debated whether we should drive on into the cover of night or try to play the fox, skirt the zone for a fair distance, turn, and outflank our pursuers back to the Revenge. Possibly we could make it before Drahk in his crippled ship returned there.

  I said, “Both courses are a gamble. Darkness is doubtful cover since the Makkees can see in the dark. Anyhow, there’s radar.”

  I indicated the screen with the scattering of blips which were the distant, pursuing saucers.

  Pete said, “We can detect them by radar because they’re still traveling high, specks in the sky. I doubt if they can detect us as easily—we’re hugging the ground. George knows what he’s doing. If we landed in a valley or a forest, the odds are that they’d lose us altogether.”

  “True,” I admitted. “Whereas if we tried to double back now, they might pick us up again. I’m for going on into the Danic hemisphere and taking cover. Say, does anybody feel anything—bodily, I mean?”

  “I feel tired and sort of… heavy,” said Pete. “That what you mean?”