Cosmic Engineers

by Clifford D. Simak

  “Like a city that was built and waiting for someone. Waiting for someone who never came.”

  Something akin to terror crossed Gary’s mind. A queer, haunted feeling… a pity for those magnificent white buildings standing all untenanted.

  “A city built for billions of people,” said Herb. “And no one in it. Just a handful of Engineers. Probably not more than a hundred thousand altogether.”

  Kingsley was clenching and opening his fists again, rumbling in his throat.

  “It does seem queer,” he said, “that they never found the answer. With all their knowledge, all their scientific apparatus.”

  Gary looked at Caroline and smiled. A wisp of a girl. But one who could bend space and time until it formed a sphere… or, rather, a hypersphere.

  A girl who could mold space as she wanted it, who could play tricks with it, make it do what she wanted it to do. She could set up a tiny replica of the universe, a little private universe that belonged to her and no one else. No one before, he was certain, ever had dared to think of doing that.

  He looked at her again, a swift, sure look that saw the square-cut chin, the high forehead, the braided raven strands about her head. Was Caroline Martin greater than the Engineers? Could she master a problem that they couldn’t even touch? Was she, all unheralded, the master mind of the entire universe? Did the hope of the universe lie within her mind?

  It seemed impossible. And yet, she had thought of time and space for nearly forty lifetimes. With nothing but a brain to work with, with no tools, no chance of experimentation—all alone, with nothing but her thoughts, she had solved the deep-shrouded mysteries of space and time. Never dreaming, perhaps, that such knowledge could be used to a certain purpose.

  Metal feet scraped across the laboratory floor and Gary whirled to come face to face with Engineer 1824. The metal man had advanced upon them unawares.

  His thought came to them, clear, calm, unhurried thought, devoid of all emotion, impersonal, yet with a touch of almost human warmth.

  “I heard your thoughts,” he said, “and I am afraid that you might think I meant to hear them. But I am very glad I did. You wonder why the Engineers brought you here. You wonder why the Engineers can’t do this work unaided.”

  They stood guiltily, like schoolboys caught at some forbidden act.

  “I will tell you,” the thought went on, “and I hope you will understand. It is difficult to tell you. Hard to tell you, because we Engineers are full of pride. Conditions being different, we would never tell you.”

  It sounded like a confession, and Gary stared at the metal man in stricken surprise, but there was no sign of expression upon the metal face, no hint of thought within the glowing eyes.

  “We are an old and tired people,” said the Engineer. “We have lived too long. We have always been a mechanistic people and as the years went on we became even more so. We plod from one thing to another. We have no imagination. The knowledge that we have, the powers we hold, were inherited by us. Inherited from a great race, the greatest race that ever lived. We have added something to that knowledge, but so very little. So very, very little when you think of all the time that has passed away since it was handed to us.”

  “Oh!” cried Caroline and then put her hand up as if to cover her mouth, and it clanged against the quartz of the helmet. She looked at Gary and he saw pity in her eyes.

  “No pity for us, please,” said the Engineer. “For we are a proud people and have the right to be. We have kept an ancient trust and kept it well. We have abided by the heritage that is ours. We have kept intact the charge that was given us.”

  In the little silence Gary had a sense of ancient things, of old plays played out upon a stage that had dissolved in dust these many thousand years. A sense of an even greater race upon an even greater planet. An old, old heraldry carried down through cosmic ages by these metal men.

  “But you are young,” declared the Engineer. “Your race is young and unspoiled. You have fallen into no grooves. Your mind is free. You are full of imagination and initiative. I sensed it when I talked with you back in your own system. And that is what we need… that is what we must have.

  Imagination to grasp the problem that is offered. Imagination to peer around the corner. A dreaming contemplation of what is necessary to be done, and then the vigorous initiative to meet the challenge that the dream may bring.”

  Again a silence.

  “That is why we are so glad to have you here,” went on the Engineer. “That is why I know I can tell you what must be told.”

  He hesitated for a moment and a million fears speared at Gary’s brain.

  Something that must be told! Something they hadn’t known before. An even greater threat to face?

  They waited breathlessly.

  “You should know,” said the Engineer, “but I almost fear to tell you. It is this: Upon you, and you alone, must rest the fate of the universe. You are the only ones to save it.”

  “Upon us,” cried Tommy. “Why, that is mad! You can’t mean it!”

  Kingsley’s hands were clenched and the bearish rumble was rising in his throat. “What about those others?” he asked. “All those others you brought here, along with us?”

  “I sent them back,” declared the Engineer. “They were no help to us.”

  Gary felt the cold wind from space reach out and flick his face again. Man—and Man alone—stood between the universe and destruction. Little, puny Man. Man, with a body so delicate that he would be smashed to a bloody pulp if exposed unprotected to the naked gravity of this monstrous world. Little Man, groping toward the light, groping, feeling, not knowing where he went.

  And then the blast of trumpets sounded in the air—the mythical trumpets calling men to crusade. The ringing peal that for the last ten thousand years has sent Man out to war, clutching at his sword.

  “But why?” Kingsley was thundering.

  “Because,” said the Engineer, “we could not work with them. They could not work with one another. We could hardly understand them. Their process of intelligence was so unfathomable, their thought process so twisted, that understanding was almost impossible. How we ever made them understand sufficiently to bring them here, I will never know. Many times we almost despaired. Their minds are so different from ours, so very, very different. Poles apart in thought.”

  Why, sure, thought Gary, that would be the way one would expect to find it.

  There was no such thing as parallel physical evolution, why should there be parallel mental evolution?

  “Not that their mentality is not as valid as our intelligence,” said the Engineer. “Not that they might not have even a greater grasp of science than we. But there could have been no co-ordination, no understanding for us to work together.”

  “But,” said Caroline, “we can understand your thoughts. You can understand ours. And yet we are as far removed from you as they.”

  The Engineer said nothing.

  “And you look like us,” said Tommy, quietly. “We are protoplasm and you are metal, but we each have arms and legs…”

  “It means nothing,” said the Engineer. “Absolutely nothing how a thing is made, the shape that one is made in.” There was almost an edge of anger in his thoughts.

  “Don’t you worry, old man,” said Herb. “We’ll save the universe. I don’t know how in hell we’ll do it, but we’ll save it for you.”

  “Not for us,” the Engineer corrected, “but for those others. For all life that now exists within the universe. For all life that in time to come may exist within the universe.”

  “There,” said Gary, hardly realizing that he spoke aloud, “is an ideal big enough for any man.”

  An ideal. Something to fight for. A spur that kept Man going on, striving, fighting his way ahead.

  Save the universe for that monstrosity in the glass sphere with its shifting vapors, for the little, wriggling, slug-like things, for the mottled terror with the droopy mouth and the glint of humor in his e
yes.

  “But how?” asked Tommy. “How are we going to do it?”

  Kingsley ruffled at him. “We’ll do it,” he thundered.

  He wheeled on the Engineer. “Do you know what kind of energy would exist within the inter-space?” he asked.

  “No,” said the Engineer, “I cannot tell you that. Perhaps the Hellhounds. But that’s impossible.”

  “Is there any other place?” asked Gary in a voice cold as steel. “Anyone else who could tell us?”

  “Yes,” said the Engineer. “There is one other race. I think that they might tell you. But not yet. Not yet. It is too dangerous.”

  “We don’t care,” said Herb. “We humans eat up danger.”

  “Let us try it,” said Gary. “Just a couple of us. If something happened, the others would be left to carry on…”

  “No,” said the Engineer, and there was a terrible finality in the single thought.

  “Why can’t we go out ourselves and find out?” asked Herb. “We could make a little universe just for ourselves. Float right out into this fifth-dimension space and study the energy that we find.”

  “Splendid,” purred Kingsley. “Absolutely splendid. Except there isn’t any energy yet. Won’t be until the two universes rub and then it will be too late.”

  “Yes,” said Caroline, smiling at Herb, “we have to know before the energy is produced. When the universes rub, it will flood in upon us in such great quantity that we’ll be wiped out almost immediately. The first contracting rush of space and time will engulf us. Remember, we’re just inside the universal rim.”

  “I do not entirely understand,” said the Engineer. “You spoke of making a universe. Can you make a universe? Bend space and time around a predetermined mass? I am afraid you jest. That would be difficult.”

  Gary started. Was it possible that Caroline had done something an Engineer thought impossible to do? Standing here, it seemed so simple, so commonplace that space-time could be bent into a hypersphere. Nothing wonderful about it. Just something to be slightly astonished at and argued about. Just a few equations spread upon a sheet of paper.

  “Sure we can,” bellowed Kingsley. “This little lady has it figured out.”

  “The little lady,” commented Herb, “is a crackajack at figures.”

  The Engineer reached out his hand to take the sheet of calculations that Kingsley was handing to him. But as he reached out his arm little red lights began to blink throughout the laboratory and in their ears sounded a shrill, high-pitched whine—a whine that held a note of sinister alarm.

  “What’s that?” yelled Kingsley, dropping the sheet.

  The thought of the Engineer came to them as calm as ever, as absolutely devoid of emotion as it bad always been.

  “The Hellhounds,” he said “The Hellhounds are attacking us.”

  As he spoke, Gary watched the sheet of paper flutter to the floor, a little fluttering sheet that held the key to the riddle of the universe scratched upon it in the black scrawlings of a soft-lead pencil.

  The Engineer moved across the laboratory to a panel. His metallic fingers reached out, deftly punched at studs. A wall screen lighted up and on it they saw the bowl of sky above the city. Ships were shooting up and outward, great silver ships that had grim lines of power about them. Up from the roofs they arrowed out into space, squadron after squadron, following a grim trail to the shock of combat. Going out to meet the Hellhounds.

  The Engineer made adjustments on the panel and they were looking deeper into space, far out into the darkness where the atmosphere had ended. A tiny speck of silver appeared and rapidly leaped toward them, dissolving into a cloud of ships. Thousands of them.

  “The Hellhounds,” said the Engineer.

  Gary heard Herb suck in his breath, saw Kingsley’s hamlike hands clenching and unclenching.

  “Stronger than ever,” said the Engineer. “Perhaps with new and more deadly weapons, perhaps more efficient screens. I am afraid, so very much afraid, that this means the end of us… and of the universe.”

  “How far away are they?” asked Tommy.

  “Only a few thousand miles now,” said the Engineer. “Our alarm system warns us when they are within ten thousand miles of the surface. That gives us time to get our fleet out into space to meet them.”

  “Is there anything we can do?” asked Gary.

  “We are doing everything we can,” said the Engineer.

  “But I don’t mean you,” said Gary. “Is there anything the five of us can do? Any war service we can render you?”

  “Not now,” said the Engineer. “Perhaps later there will be something. But not now.”

  He adjusted the screen again and in it they watched the defending ships of the Engineers shooting spaceward, maneuvered into far-flung battle lines—like little dancing motes against the black of space.

  In breathless attention they kept their eyes fixed on the screen, saw the gleaming points of light draw closer together, the invaders and the defenders. Then upon the screen they saw dancing flashes that were not reflections from the ships, but something else—knifing flashes that reached out, probed and stabbed and slashed, like a searchlight’s beam cuts into the night. A tiny pinpoint of red light flashed momentarily and then went out. Another flamed, like lightning bugs of a summer night, except the flash was red and seemed filled with a terrible violence.

  “Those flashes,” breathed Caroline. “What are they?”

  “Exploding ships,” said the Engineer. “Screens break down and the energy drains out and then an atomic bomb or ray finds its way into them.”

  “Exploding ships,” said Gary. “But whose?”

  “How can I tell?” asked the Engineer. “It may be theirs or ours.”

  Even as he spoke a little ripple of red flashes ran across the screen.

  * * *

  Chapter Ten

  « ^ »

  HALF the city was in ruins, swept and raked by the stabbing rays that probed down from the upper reaches of the atmosphere, blasted by hydrogen and atomic bombs that shook the very bedrock of the planet and shattered great, sky-high towers of white masonry into drifting dust. Twisted wreckage fell into the city from the battle area, great cruisers reduced to grotesque metal heaps, bent and burned and battered out of all semblance to a ship, scorched and crushed and flattened by the energy unloosed in the height of battle.

  “They have new weapons,” said the Engineer. “New weapons and better screens. We can hold them off a little longer. How much longer I do not know.”

  In the laboratory, located in the base of one of the tallest of the skyscrapers in the great white city, the Engineers and the Earthlings had watched the battle for long hours. Had seen the first impact of the fleets, had watched the first dogfight out at the edge of atmosphere, had witnessed the Hellhounds slowly drive the defenders back until the invaders were within effective bombardment distance of the city itself.

  “They have a screen stripper,” said the Engineer, “that is far more effective than anything we have ever seen. It is taking too much of our ships’ energy to hold up their screens under this new weapon.”

  In the telescopic screen a brilliant blue-white flash filled all the vision-plate as a bomb smashed into one of the few remaining towers. The tower erupted with a flash of blinding light and disappeared, with merely the ragged stump of masonry bearing mute testimony to its once sky-soaring height.

  “Isn’t there anyone who can help us?” asked Kingsley. “Surely there is someone to whom we might appeal.”

  “There is no one,” said the Engineer. “We are alone. For thousands of light years there are no other great races to be found. For millions of years the Hellhounds and the Engineers have fought, and it has always been those two and just those two alone. Thus it is now. Before, we have driven them off.

  Many times have we destroyed them almost to the point of annihilation that we might hold their cosmic ambitions under proper check. Now it seems they will be the victors.”

/>   “No other race,” said Gary, musing, “for thousands of light years.”

  He stared moodily at the screen, saw a piece of twisted wreckage that had at one time been a ship crash into the stump of broken tower and hang there, like a bloody, smoke-blackened offering tossed on the altar of war.

  “But there is,” he said. “There is at least one great race very near to us.”

  “There is?” asked Caroline. “Where?”

  “On the other universe,” said Gary. “A race that is fully as great, as capable as the Engineers. A race that should be glad to help us in this fight.”

  “Great suffering snakes,” yelped Herb, “why didn’t we think of that before?”

  “I do not understand,” said the Engineer. “I agree they are a great race and very close to us. Much too close, in fact. But they might as well be a billion light years away. They can do us no good. How would you get them here?”

  “Yes,” rumbled Kingsley, “how would you get them here?”

  Gary turned to the Engineer. “You have talked to them,” he said. “Have you any idea of what kind of people they might be?”

  “A great people,” said the Engineer. “Greater than we in certain sciences. They are the ones who notified us of the danger of the approaching universes. They knew they were nearing our universe when we didn’t even know there was another universe other than our own. Such very clever people.”

  “Talk to them again,” said Gary. “Give them the information that will enable them to make a miniature universe… one of Caroline’s hyperspheres.”

  “But,” said the Engineer, “that would do no good.”

  “It would,” said Gary, grimly, “if they could use the laws of space to form a blister on the surface of their universe. If they could go out to the very edge of their space-time frame and create a little bubble of space—a bubble that would pinch off, independent of the parent universe and exist independently in the five-dimension inter-space.”