Collected Short Fiction

by C. M. Kornbluth

  “Go on,” said Ogden Josey, Roentgenologist of the expedition. “What happened then?”

  “Oh. We just went back to the library, took a different car, and here we are.”

  “Interesting,” said Josey. “Only I don’t believe it a bit.”

  “No?” Annamarie interrupted, her eves narrowing. “Want to take a look?”

  “Sure.”

  “How about tomorrow morning?”

  “Fine,” said Josey. “You can’t scare me. Now how about dinner?”

  He marched into the mess hall of the expedition base, a huge rotunda-like affair that might have been designed for anything by the Martians, but was given its present capacity by the explorers because it contained tables and chairs enough for a regiment. Stanton and Annamarie lagged behind

  “What do you plan to do tomorrow?” Stanton inquired. “I don’t see the point of taking Josey with us when we go to look the situation over again.”

  “He’ll come in handy,” Annamarie promised. “He’s a good shot.”

  “A good shot?” squawked Stanton. “What do you expect we’ll have to shoot at?”

  But Annamarie was already inside the building.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Descent Into Danger

  “HEY, sand-man!” hissed Annamarie.

  “Be right there,” sleepily said Stanton. “This is the strangest date I ever had.” He appeared a moment later dressed in the roughest kind of exploring kit.

  The girl raised her brows. “Expect to go mountain-climbing?” she asked.

  “I had a hunch,” he said amiably. “So?” she commented. “I get them too. One of them is that Josey is still asleep. Go rout him out.”

  Stanton grinned and disappeared into Josey’s cubicle, emerging with him a few moments later. “He was sleeping in his clothes.” Stanton explained. “Filthy habit.”

  “Never mind that. Are we all heeled?” Annamarie proudly displayed her own pearl-handled pipsqueak of a mild paralyzer. Joseph produced a heat-pistol, while Stanton patted the holster of his five-pound blaster.

  “Okay then. We’re off.”

  The Martian subway service was excellent every hour of the day. Despite the earliness, the trip to the central museum station took no more time than usual—a matter of minutes.

  Stanton stared around for a second to get his bearings, then pointed. “The station we want is over there—just beyond the large pink monolith. Let’s go.”

  The first train in was the one they wanted. They stepped into it, Josey leaping over the threshold like a startled fawn. Nervously he explained, “I never know when one of those things is going to snap shut on my—my cape.” He yelped shrilly: “What’s that?”

  “Ah, I see the robots rise early,” said Annamarie, seating herself as the train moved off. “Don’t look so disturbed, Josey—we told you one would be here, even if you didn’t believe us.”

  “We have just time for a spot of breakfast before things should happen,” announced Stanton, drawing canisters from a pouch on his belt. “Here—one for each of us.” They were filled with a syrup that the members of the Earth expedition carried on trips such as this—concentrated amino acids, fibrinogen, minerals and vitamins, all in a sugar solution.

  Annamarie Hudgins shuddered as she downed the sticky stuff, then lit a cigarette. As the lighter flared the robot turned his head to precisely the angle required to centre and focus its eyes on the flame, then eye-fronted again.

  “Attracted by light and motion,” Stanton advised scientifically. “Stop trembling, Josey, there’s worse to come. Say, is this the station?”

  “It is,” said Annamarie. Now watch. These robots function smoothly and fast—don’t miss anything.”

  The metal monster, with a minimum of waste motion, was doing just that. It had clumped over to the door; its monstrous appendages were fighting the relays that were to drive the door open, and the robot was winning. The robots were built to win—powerful, even by Earthly standards.

  Stanton rubbed his hands briskly and tackled the robot, shoving hard. The girl laughed sharply. He turned, his face showing injury. “Suppose you help,” he suggested with some anger. “I can’t move this by myself.”

  “All right—heave!” gasped the girl, complying.

  “Ho!” added Josey unexpectedly, adding his weight.

  “No use,” said Stanton. “No use at all. We couldn’t move this thing in seven million years.” He wiped his brow. The train started, then picked up speed. All three were thrown back as the robot carelessly nudged them out of its way as it returned to its seat.

  “I think,” said Josey abruptly, “we’d better go back by the return car and see about the other side of the station.”

  “No use,” said the girl. “There’s a robot on the return too.”

  “Then let’s walk back,” urged Josey. By which time the car had stopped at the next station. “Come on,” said Josey, stepping through the door with a suspicious glance at the robot.

  “No harm in trying,” mused Stanton as he followed with the girl. “Can’t be more than twenty miles.”

  “And that’s easier than twenty Earth miles,” cried Annamarie. “Let’s go”

  “I don’t know what good it will do, though,” remarked Stanton, ever the pessimist. “These Martians were thorough. There’s probably a robot at every entrance to the station, blocking the way. If they haven’t sealed up the entrances entirely.”

  THERE was no robot at the station, they discovered several hours and about eight miles later. But the entrance to the station that was so thoroughly and mysteriously guarded was—no more. Each entrance was sealed; only the glowing teardrop pointers remained to show where the entrance had been.

  “Well, what do we do now?” groaned Josey, rubbing an aching thigh.

  Stanton did not answer directly. “Will you look at that,” he marvelled, indicating the surrounding terrain. The paved ground beneath them was seamed with cracks. The infinitely tough construction concrete of the Martians was billowed and rippled, stuck through with jagged ends of metal reinforcing I-beams. The whole scene gave the appearance of total devastation—as though a natural catastrophe had come along and wrecked the city first; then the survivors of the disaster, petulantly, had turned their most potent forces on what was left in sheer disheartenment.

  “Must have been bombs,” suggested the girl.

  “Must have been,” agreed the archaeologist. “Bombs and guns and force beams and Earth—Marsquakes, too.”

  “You didn’t answer his question, Ray,” reminded Annamarie. “He said: ‘What do we do now?’ ”

  “I was just thinking about it,” he said, eyeing one of the monolithic buildings speculatively. “Is your Martian as good as mine? See if you can make out what that says.”

  “That” was a code-symbol over the sole door to the huge edifice. “I give up,” said Annamarie with irritation. “What does it say.”

  “Powerhouse, I think.”

  “Powerhouse? Powerhouse for what? All the energy for lighting and heating the city comes from the sun, through the mirrors up on the surface. The only thing they need power for down here—the only thing—Say!”

  “That’s right,” grinned Stanton. “It must be for the Mars-Tube. Do you suppose we could find a way of getting from that building into the station?”

  “There’s only one way to find out,” Annamarie parroted, looking for Josey for confirmation. But Josey was no longer around. He was at the door to the building, shoving it open. The others hastened after him.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Pursuit

  “DON’T wiggle, Annamarie,” whispered Josey plaintively. “You’ll fall on me.”

  “Shut up,” she answered tersely; “shut up and get out of my way.” She swung herself down the Martian-sized manhole with space to spare. Dropping three feet or so from her hand-hold on the lip of the pit, she alighted easily. “Did I make much noise?” she asked.

  “Oh, I think Krakatoa has been loud
er when it went off,” Stanton replied bitterly. “But those things seem to be deaf.”

  The three stood perfectly still for a second, listening tensely for sounds of pursuit. They had stumbled into a nest of robots in the powerhouse, apparently left there by the thoughtful Martian race to prevent entrance to the mysteriously guarded subway station via this route. What was in that station that required so much privacy? Stanton wondered. Something so deadly dangerous that the advanced science of the Martians could not cope with it, but was forced to resort to quarantining the spot where it showed itself? Stanton didn’t know the answers, but he was very quiet as a hidden upsurge of memory strove to assert itself. Something that had been in the bobbin-books . . . “The Under-Eaters”. That was it. Had they anything to do with this robot cordon sanitaire?

  The robots had not noticed them, for which all three were duly grateful. Ogden nudged the nearest to him—it happened to be Annamarie—and thrust out a bony finger. “Is that what the Mars-Tube looks like from inside?” he hissed piercingly.

  As their eyes became acclimated to the gloom—they dared use no lights—the others made out the lines of a series of hoops stretching out into blackness on either side ahead of them. No lights anywhere along the chain of rings; no sound coming from it.

  “Maybe it’s a deserted switch line, one that was abandoned. That’s the way the Tube ought to look, all right, only with cars going along it,” Stanton muttered.

  “Hush!” it was Annamarie. “Would that be a car coming—from the left, way down?”

  Nothing was visible, but there was the faintest of sighing sounds. As though an elevator car, cut loose from its cable, were dropping down its shaft far off there in the distance. “It sounds like a car,” Stanton conceded. “What do you think, Og—Hey! Where’s Josey?”

  “He brushed me, going toward the Tube. Yes—there he is! See him? Bending over between those hoops!”

  “We’ve got to get him out of there! Josey!” Stanton cried, forgetting about the robots in the light of this new danger. “Josey! Get out of the Tube! There’s a train coming!”

  The dimly visible figure of the Roentgenologist straightened and turned toward the others querulously. Then as the significance of that rapidly mounting hiss-s-s-s became clear to him, he leaped out of the tube, with a vast alacrity. A split second later the hiss had deepened to a high drone, and the bulk of a car shot past them, traveling eerily without visible support, clinging to and being pushed by the intangible fields of force that emanated from the metal hoops of the Tube.

  Stanton reached Josey’s form in a single bound. “What were you trying to do, imbecile?” he grated. “Make an early widow of your prospective fiancée?”

  Josey shook off Stanton’s grasp with dignity. “I was merely trying to establish that that string of hoops was the Mars-Tube, by seeing if the power-leads were connected with the rings. It—uh, it was the Tube; that much is proven,” he ended somewhat lamely.

  “Brilliant man!” Stanton started to snarl, but Annamarie’s voice halted him. It was a very small voice.

  “You loud-mouths have been very successful in attracting the attention of those animated pile-drivers,” she whispered with the very faintest of breaths. “If you will keep your lips zipped for the next little while maybe the robot that’s staring at us over the rim of the pit will think we’re turbo-generators or something and go away. Maybe!”

  Josey swiveled his head up and gasped. “It’s there—it’s coming down!” he cried. “Let’s leave here!”

  THE three backed away toward the tube, slowly, watching the efforts of the machine-thing to descend the precipitous wall. It was having difficulties, and the three were beginning to feel a bit better, when—

  Annamarie, turning her head to watch where she was going, saw and heard the cavalcade that was bearing down on them at the same time and screamed shrilly. “Good Lord—the cavalry!” she yelled. “Get out your guns!”

  A string of a dozen huge, spidershaped robots of a totally new design were charging down at them, running swiftly along the sides of the rings of the Tube, through the tunnel. They carried no weapons, but the three soon saw why,—from the ugly snouts of the egg-shaped bodies of the creatures protruded a black cone. A blinding flash came from the cone of the first of the new arrivals; the aim was bad, for overhead a section of the cement roof flared ghastly white and commenced to drip.

  Annamarie had her useless paralyzer out and firing before she realized its uselessness against metal beings with no nervous systems to paralyze. She hurled it at the nearest of the new robots in a highly futile gesture of rage.

  But the two men had their more potent weapons out and firing, and were taking a toll of the spider-like monstrosities. Three or four of them were down, partially blocking the path of the oncoming others; another was missing all its metal legs along one side of its body, and two of the remainder showed evidence of the accuracy of the Earthmen’s fire.

  But the odds were still extreme, and the built-in blasters of the robots were coming uncomfortably close.

  Stanton saw that, and shifted his tactics. Holstering his heavy blaster, he grabbed Annamarie and shoved her into the Mars-Tube, crying to Josey to follow. Josey came slowly after them, turning to fire again and again at the robots, but with little effect. A quick look at the charge-dial on the butt of his heat-gun showed why; the power was almost exhausted.

  He shouted as much to Stanton. “I figured that would be happening—now we run!” Stanton cried back, and the three sped along the Mars-Tube, leaping the hoops as they came to them.

  “What a time for a hurdle race!” gasped Annamarie, bounding over the rings, which were raised about a foot from the ground. “You’d think we would have known better than to investigate things that’re supposed to be private.”

  “Save your breath for running,” panted Josey. “Are they following us in here?”

  Stanton swivelled his head to look, and a startled cry escaped him. “They’re following us—but look!”

  The other two slowed, then stopped running altogether and stared in wonder. One of the robots had charged into the Mars-Tube—and had been levitated! He was swinging gently in the air, the long metal legs squirming fiercely, but not touching anything.

  “How—?”

  “They’re metal!” Annamarie cried. “Don’t you see—they’re metal, and the hoops are charged. They must have some of the same metal as the Tube cars are made of in their construction—the force of the hoops acts on them too!”

  That seemed to be the explanation. . . . “Then we’re safe!” gasped Josey, staggering about, looking for a place to sit.

  “Not by a long shot! Get moving again!” And Stanton set the example.

  “You mean because they can still shoot at us?” Josey cried, following Stanton’s dog-trot nonetheless. “But the can’t aim the guns—they seem to be built in, only capable of shooting directly forward.”

  “Very true,” gritted Stanton. “But have you forgotten that this subway is in use? According to my calculations, there should be another car along in about thirty seconds or less—and please notice, there isn’t any by-path anymore. It stopped back a couple of hundred feet. If we get caught here by a car, we get mashed. So—unless you want to go back an sign an armistice with the robots? I thought not—so we better keep going. Fast!”

  THE three were lucky—very lucky. For just when it seemed certain that they would have to run on and on until the bullet-fast car overtook them, or go back and face the potent weapons of the guard robots, a narrow crevice appeared in the side of the tunnel-wall. The three bolted into it and slumped to the ground.

  CRASH!

  “What was that?” cried Annamarie.

  “That,” said Josey slowly, “was what happens to a robot when the fast express comes by. Just thank God it wasn’t us.”

  Stanton poked his head gingerly into the Mars-Tube and stared down. “Say,” he muttered wonderingly, “when we wreck something we do it good. We’ve ripped
out a whole section of the hoops—by proxy, of course. When the car hit the robot they were both smashed to atoms, and the pieces knocked out half a dozen of the suspension rings. I would say, offhand, that this line has run its last train. “

  “Where do you suppose this crevice leads?” asked Annamarie, forgetting the damage that couldn’t be undone.

  “I don’t know. The station ought to be around here somewhere—we were running toward it. Maybe this will lead us into the station if we follow it. If it doesn’t, maybe we can drill a tunnel from here to the station with my blaster.”

  Drilling wasn’t necessary. A few feet in, the scarcely passable crevice widened into a broad fissure, through which a faint light was visible. Exploration revealed that the faint light came from a wall-chart showing the positions and destinations of the trains. The chart was displaying the symbol of a Zeta train—the train that would never arrive.

  “Very practical people, we are,” Annamarie remarked with irony. “We didn’t think to bring lights.”

  “We never needed them anywhere else on the planet—we can’t be blamed too much. Anyway, the code-panel gives us a little light.”

  By the steady, dim red glow cast by the code-panel, the three could see the anteroom fairly clearly. It was disappointing. For all they could tell, there was no difference between this and any other station on the whole planet. But why all the secrecy? The dead Martians surely had a reason for leaving the guard-robots so thick and furious. But what was it?

  Stanton pressed an ear to the wall of the anteroom. “Listen!” he snapped. “Do you hear—?”

  “Yes,” said the girl at length. “Scuffling noises—a sort of gurgling too, like running water passing through pipes.”

  “Look there!” wailed Josey.

  “Where?” asked the archaeologist naturally. The dark was impenetrable. Or was it? There was a faint glimmer of light, not a reflection from the codepanel, that shone through a continuation of the fissure. It came, not from a single source of light, but from several, eight or ten at least. The lights were bobbing up and down. “I’d swear they were walking!” marvelled Ray.