Adam Link: The Complete Adventures

by Eando Binder

  How diabolically clever Steele had been l While his forty robots engaged us, the terrific clatter had cloaked their weakening of the building. The workmen bodies had swiftly wrenched out a cornerstone here, a strategic beam there, an important key-support elsewhere. Then the crane and tractor men had exerted their full powers, pushing and yanking and pulling against the building till it cracked apart like a half-sawed plank.

  Steele saw that he had failed to crush us under the collapsed ruin. He leaped to the top of the pile and gazed down at us on the other side.

  “I’ve declared war on you, Adam Link! I won’t rest till I’ve destroyed you and all your robots—except Eve. Come on, men!”

  They came running for open attack. I calculated the chances. Our 38 against their 52, the odds now stood. No chance for us, in hand to hand battle. I gave the order and we retreated. Or rather we ran—and scattered. We lurked behind hedges and trees in the wide park space. Steele sent his men to ferret us out.

  A swift arm swinging a metal club wrenched from park benches—a micro-phonic groan—the metallic clang of a lifeless metal body falling as junk. Indian fighting. Ambush. It was my only chance.

  Steele lost three men that way, pursuiting us into the park, till he thought better of it. He called them off. They congregated beyond the park and headed back for the power-plant. There Frank Steele would hatch other plans to wipe us out.

  I CALLED my men around me, in the respite. I pointed to where groups of humans, here and there, peered from a distance, having watched this battle of giants.

  “We must get them out of the city,” I said. “Frank Steel will trample them down in his eagerness to get us. Besides, it is not well for humans to see robots warring.” Besides that, they were only too willing to leave—to get away from these metal warriors who would stamp humans flat if they got in the way. By a grapevine that rustled through their residential section, they heard of the trucks being brought out of garages, that would bear them to safety. Run by gasoline rather than electric power, the trucks were not stalled as all else in Utopia City was.

  All night long my robots drove back and forth, delivering humans within walking distance of the railroad junction which was our nearest contact with the outside world. Frank Steele did not bother us. Night battling was out of the question.

  At dawn, Utopia was empty of humans.

  Sam Harley and Jed Tomkins were in the last truck to leave.

  “Utopia, bah!” Harley said in parting. “I knew it wouldn’t work. Shouldn’t have been fool enough to come, in the first place. Utopia, bah!”

  “Shut up,” Jed Tomkins snapped. “If anybody ruined it, you did.” He turned to me. “So long, Adam Link. Thanks for trying. I’m going to watch the papers. If you ever advertise again, I’ll be back!”

  The truck vanished into the night. I turned back to Utopia City. I think I laughed, in a grinding sort of way.

  Utopia City was a battleground, now. A trampled Eden. Paradise Lost.

  I WILL try to give a clear picture of what has been entered in my private journal of robot history as the First Robot War. And I hope the last.

  To force our faction to face his superior force, Frank Steele had his workmen contingent systematically raze the city. We would have no hiding places, for a drawn-out defense. Starting at one end of town, they began leveling building after building.

  The robots had been builders, a few months before. Now they became wreckers. And they worked with appalling swiftness. Houses and towers toppled like tenpins. Soon the downtown section began to go, its greater structure measuring their length with thunderous crashes, as the metal termites undermined their foundations.

  Utopia City melted before our eyes, into dusty heaps of utter ruin.

  “Oh, Adam!” Eve moaned. “It was so beautiful, so wonderful. Can’t we stop them?”

  I tried, in several desperate ways. Gathering the trucks, we stormed down on them like a panzer division, trying to run them over, machine against machine. In counter-attack, Frank Steele sent his men out in the electric autos. He still had the atomic-power unit in operation, feeding them ether-borne power.

  With full speed, the little cars rammed into our trucks, smashing them. Robots jumped out of the combined wreckage, to come at each other hammer-and-tongs. Again, in the equality of hand-to-hand struggle, I could not win. And his cranemen, picking off a man of mine here and there, would grip them in their long pincers, swing them around, and hurl them high in the air to land as utter debris.

  I lost ten more men, to their seven, before I withdrew.

  I next tried bombarding the wrecking crew, as they worked on the side of buildings, exposed. My robots hurled great stone blocks, to dislodge them. Frank Steel sent out a covering force, and their barrage of concrete bombs rained back at us. Again I had to withdraw.

  I tried burning them out, setting flame to park trees when the wind was right. The wall of fire swept to the building they were demolishing. Eager tongues of flame licked at them, but it only served to weaken the building faster. The wrecking robots were unharmed except for an oxide coating on their metal bodies.

  UTOPIA CITY came down stone by stone.

  In one day, it was more than three-quarters razed. I knew that at the next dawn, Frank Steele would have me cornered. He would level the last few structures, and then I would have to face him in the open, either at the city-site or out on the desert.

  One building still stood, in the desolate center of town—the power-plant. Within was the undamaged atomic-power unit. Frank Steele must be still working on the blue-print, before he destroyed the only existing model. With the blueprints, after victory over me, he could build a new city—Robot City, center of robot dictatorship.

  All night long I stared at the building, symbol of the greatest achievement of Adam Link, inventor.

  I laughed harshly. Symbol of Utopia’s fall!

  At dawn I spoke to my remaining 25 robots.

  “This will be our last stand, men. We are outnumbered. Fight as you’ve never fought before. If we die, we have died nobly!”

  As the gray of dawn burst into red glare, the enemy appeared. A grim, silent, formidable phalanx of 45. We took our stand in the open. No use to run.

  The two lines came to grips, with a resounding clash, like two lines of armored knights of Medieval times. Robot fought robot, with mighty metal clubs no human could have lifted. A battle of metal Sampsons, before which the mightiest dinosaurs of a past age might have fled, screaming in terror.

  The din must have reverberated as distant thunder far out into the desert. Gears clashed, cogs whined, wheels spun screechingly as the full mechanical powers of Herculean machine-men were exerted. Rivets, bolts, springs, cracked body-plates flew for yards as the club blows took toll. Often a robot Would fight as he went down piecemeal. An arm shattered, and he would use his other arm. His side ripped out, he would turn his protected side. A leg off, he would hop. Both legs off, he would wield his club from a lying position till finally his antagonist battered his remaining arm to shreds. Then, at last helpless, he would await the final blow—to his brain.

  Even the legendary gods, with their thunderbolts, might have stumbled away in fear, to let these metal colossi alone.

  Curiously, the rangers came, rather than gods. The departed people must have entered an alarm. Sirens screaming, squad cars and motorcycles roared up—but unheard. Unheard, the head officer shouted for us to stop. They emptied their pistols at us—unheard. Then, after one good look, they turned and fled again, shaken to the roots of their souls.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw them go, these humans who had witnessed a sight unparalled in history. They would laugh, if they ever saw humans fight, and think again of this titanic battle that shook the very Earth.

  I turned back.

  Each time a robot fell, whether enemy or ally, I groaned. For this I had created them—to smash each other’s skulls open like savage beasts.

  “Come, Eve,” I said brokenly, pulling h
er away. We had fought only in defense, Eve and I, withholding death-blows. We had created them, Eve and I.

  WE slipped back, skirting a ruin. The battleground blocked out to our eyes, but the furious din, like ten thousand machines whining and roaring and thundering, followed us relentlessly.

  “We’re leaving?” Eve gasped. “But Frank Steele will win!”

  I shook my head, as we reached my laboratory-ruin. Steele had demolished it first, lest I made some instrument of destruction as a weapon.

  “Help me dear the center space,” I said. “Hurry!”

  In an hour, between us, we had shoved broken stone and debris aside. A trap-door flush with the floor was exposed. I jerked it up, and we slipped into a tunnel. The battle-sounds faded, where the last few of my men—judging by the decreased volume—were staving off final extinction.

  Then all was silent, as we ran as fast as we could in utter darkness.

  “What is this tunnel?” Eve asked, astonished.

  “Number Nine and I built it secretly, from my laboratory to the power-house, at odd times,” I told her. “Dips down through bed-rock. Easy to drill it out, with the atom-crushing hammers I invented for excavation work. I never did quite trust Frank Steele. I wanted quick access to the power-plant any time grave emergency arose. This is the emergency. If the powerhouse isn’t too well guarded, we have a chance—”

  We sped under the battleground, under the city, to the power-house in the center. If we had tried the same route above, Steele’s men would have spied us and given chase.

  The tunnel sloped up, under the powerhouse floor. I pushed up the trap-door set unnoticed in a supply room. We tip-toed to the door and looked out into the main room. Frank Steele was there, as I expected, busily working over the blueprint with two other robots.

  He looked out of a window.

  “Isn’t that battle over yet?” he said impatiently. “I won’t feel easy till they bring Adam Link’s smashed head to me.”

  I leaped out.

  “Here’s my head, Frank Steele!” I roared. “I’m delivering it in person!”

  I bounded at them, taking full advantage of the surprise. I had picked up a steel beam in the supply room, ten feet long. I swung this in a whistling arc. It came down on the foremost robot’s head, splitting him from head to pelvis, spraying wheels and wires through the air.

  One out of action.

  THE other robot ran aside, to escape me, with Eve after him. I faced Frank Steele. I swung my great bludgeon again.

  But recovering, Steele had had time to snatch up a similar steel bar from his desk, evidently kept on hand for protection. He swung his. The two metal clubs banged together. Again and again we wielded our clubs, each striving to catch the other before he could parry.

  Frank Steele was as quick and strong as myself, and with equal mental reflexes. For long seconds we ferociously, silently, battered at one another. Glancing blows landed. I caught Steele on the shoulder, ripping rivets and plates away. Steele stove in my left side, failing only by a millimeter from smashing my main electrical distributor.

  Our steel clubs became twisted and cracked. One of my blows finally knocked his away, but at the same time, mine shivered apart. I threw the useless stump at him. He dodged. We came at each other with alloy fists, delivering blows that would have knocked an elephant fifty feet back with a spine broken throughout its length.

  We fought on, like metal gladiators who never tired, never weakened. How could I win? I had received some damage, in the previous battling with his men. Frank Steele was fresh, whole, except for what damage I had inflicted, returned in kind. He had the advantage, in the long run.

  I prayed for a break. It came.

  In a split-second silence, while we fell back from-each other, no sound drifted in from outside—from the other battleground.

  “We’ve won!” Frank Steele shouted triumphantly. “My men destroyed your last robot, Adam Link. My men are coming to help me now—”

  The blow that landed squarely in his face, while he was off-guard, might have dented the side of a battleship. It completely shattered my arm, as sections of steel telescoped and fell apart. But it also cracked Frank Steele’s skull. The iridium-sponge within ripped apart from its anchorage, bringing to him the blankness of non-existence.

  His eye-mirrors reflected a stunning surprise. Then they clicked shut limply. His metal body stood a moment, swaying. There was a metallic click inside, as mechanisms all ground to a stop. Then the alloy corpse sprawled full length on the floor, with a disphan clatter.

  I stared down. The first Benedict Arnold of the robot race was dead.

  I turned.

  Eve was sitting on top the fallen form of the third robot, which lay with its head twisted off its neck-piece, from Eve’s hammerlock and wrench. She was staring down at the blank eye-mirrors. And weeping within. A mental woman, Eve could not kill without utter remorse.

  I grabbed her hand and yanked her erect. “Frank Steele’s remaining men are coming. Quick! Into the tunnel.”

  I remained only to set a series of switches on the control-board of the atomic-power unit. Then I jerked down a master switch that would feed sand-fuel into the disintegration chamber at a mounting rate. When the excess loads of released energy began to seek escape—

  I leaped into the tunnel after Eve. We raced down into it, for fifteen seconds.

  Then we were knocked flat. The ground around us trembled like jelly, followed by a deafening blast of sound. The tunnel walls gave way, showering down tons of rock. We were buried.

  TWENTY-FOUR hours later, we had dug our way out. The force of the blast had been cushioned enough, in our refuge, to merely bury us without crushing our bodies flat.

  We emerged into sunshine at the bottom of a wide, shallow pit in the desert floor.

  It was five miles wide, created by the greatest explosion in human history. A pound of matter had burst into pure energy, like a blast of super-dynamite.

  We climbed wearily to the crater’s rim, and strode out into the desert. We looked back.

  Not one stick or stone—or atom—of Utopia City remained.

  It was all in limbo now. My hopes and dreams. My brave Number Nine. My Frankenstein. My Eden. It was all behind me, lost forever in a strange combined memory of nightmare and Paradise.

  “You were right, Eve,” I said. “Utopia is a dream toward which men must work—but never achieve. Perhaps it is best so—as a shining, glorious goal that guides like a light and never goes out.”

  “Oh, Adam!” Eve sobbed. “I’m so sorry—for you. You tried so hard against the impossible!”

  I shrugged.

  “Amen,” I sighed in resignation. “Adam Link will have to content himself with lesser experiments.”

  I Adam Link the robot, saved the earth!

  You will find no slightest clue to this event, in any public source of information. Nor have I any proof. There are things buried in the most secret and guarded archives of nations and regimes that never see the light of history. This is one of them.

  But yet, I saved the Earth and mankind. Saved them from a menace more deadly than any on record.

  Fantastic statement! The mouthings of a brain twisted by delusions of grandeur, you say. A psychopathic case history. Opium works on robots as well as humans!

  Let me tell the story. Judge for yourselves.

  It began one warm July evening, three months ago. Eve and I were alone in our isolated Ozark “home” talking over the crushing failure of our Utopia experiment. I felt dreary, soul-sick.

  “Eve,” I was saying, “we’re done. We’re finished. Everything we’ve tried in the world of humans has failed. I give up.”

  “Adam! Don’t say that. We’ll prove our worth yet—”

  “No,” I grated. “We have no worth—except as a few dollars worth of mechanical parts. We’re intelligent robots, but we’re of no Earthly use whatsoever!” I repeated the bitter self-denouncement. “We’re of no Earthly use whatso—”
>
  Interruption came, in the form of a knock at the door.

  We started, looking at each other. Who was visiting us? Who had taken the winding, little-known road leading to our door? A pack of humans, perhaps, to once and for all rid Earth of robots?

  “Don’t resist,” I told Eve. “I suppose it had to come to this—our extinction.”

  I flung open the door. There was no pack. There was just one human—a man with hat pulled low, one hand resting in a pocket as though gripping a pistol. He gave me a glance, darted his eyes around the cabin, then stepped in. Back in the shadow was his car, in which he had arrived. He had an air of profound secrecy.

  “Adam Link?” he asked quite unnecessarily. I cannot easily be mistaken for Clark Gable or any human.

  “Yes. Who are you?”

  For answer, he drew back the flap of his coat, displaying a small medallion whose inscription he explained.

  “Secret Service of the United States. I am Joe Trent, Operative Number 65. We want you, Adam Link!”

  “Official lynching?” I hissed, and suddenly my brain smoked with rage. “Go! You humans won’t finish me off this easily. Go and come back with all your army. You’ll have to blast me out of the hills, if you want me!”

  I would go down in Earth history as a one-man rebellion, holding off a mighty army for days and weeks. They couldn’t deny me that last flash of glory.

  “You refuse?” the Secret Service man said.

  I nodded grimly, waiting for him to threaten me with all the forces of the army, navy, and air corps.

  Instead, his shoulders seemed to sag a little. His voice changed to pleading.

  “You don’t understand!” he cried.

  “We’re in trouble. Washington’s in trouble!”

  I stared.

  “In trouble? You mean you’ve come to ask my—help?”

  He nodded eagerly.

  “I’ve been sent here by the—”

  Breaking off, he went to the door, peered out cautiously as though fearing eavesdroppers, then closed it carefully. He turned back. What was the need for all this elaborate secrecy?