by Jerry
“Loring, we’ve found some humans, at least!” Grant exclaimed. “Look, he came out of that nearest opening—”
“And he’s running straight toward us!” Loring cried. “No, she’s running! It’s a girl!”
But Grant had already seen that the figure fleeing toward them was a feminine one. It was a dark-haired girl who wore for clothing a green metallic-like tunic that sheathed her slender figure only from shoulders to knees.
In her flight she seemed not to see Grant and Loring until within yards of them, then halted and recoiled, her dark eyes wide with terror. As she took in their appearance she seemed a little reassured, seemed to decide swiftly that they were a lesser peril than whatever was behind her, for she came straight on again to them.
Grant Perry saw as she reached them that her finely-cut face expressed a breathless fear. She spoke rapidly to them, and to his surprise Grant understood what she was saying. For the girl was speaking in English, an English that seemed distorted and. slurred as though by many centuries of change but that was understandable.
“Are you two mad to remain here?” she was asking Grant and Loring. “Some of the Masters may emerge at any moment—I escaped but now from that city and they will be after me!”
“The Masters—city—” Grant repeated. “What Masters are you talking about and what city?”
“I mean the Masters—they who rule!” the girl exclaimed. “And I mean the city there before your eyes—do you not see the openings of its cells?”
“Grant, those openings must be the entrances to some great underground city!” Loring exclaimed. “But what are the Masters like?” he demanded tensely of the girl. “Why are you fleeing from them?”
“Surely you know what they are like,” answered the girl incredulously. “Are you not two who have escaped from some cell? As for me, I am Eda and I escaped from there with the help of my brother Birk because the Masters had ordered me to the laboratories.”
“Loring, it’s all Greek to me!” exclaimed Grant Perry. “But whatever she’s running away from—”
He was interrupted by a sharp cry of terror from the girl Eda. She was looking back toward the well-mouths, frozen in fear.
“The Masters!” she cried. “They come! They have followed me!”
GRANT and Loring spun, were for the moment motionless themselves, amazement holding Grant. He had expected to see the girl Eda’s pursuers humans, at least, but they were machines!
There were two of them, cubical metal things four feet square, each topped by a head-like little hemisphere in which was a single glass lens with a small mouth-like aperture beneath it. They had each three jointed tubular metal arms as long as and larger than human arms, and they rolled rapidly forward on small wheels that upheld the cubical metal shapes.
Grant saw black tubes held by the arms of the things and swift consciousness of danger seized him.
“They’re machines!” Loring was babbling. “God, Grant, I was right—machines pursuing humans, mastering humans—”
“We’ve got to run for it!” Grant cut him off. “Eda, quick! Down over the beach!”
A narrow beam of blue light shot toward them from the upraised tube of one of the pursuing Masters. There came a despairing cry from Eda.
“Too late! They will kill us with the blue beams now if we try to run!”
“Grant, those beams are some deadly weapon!” Loring exclaimed. “Look, another of them!”
Another of the pale blue rays hall stabbed from the other of the two oncoming Masters, driving past the three humans. The two beams seemed a warning to them not to attempt flight, as with a sweep the beams could reach them.
Helplessly Grant watched the two weird shapes roll rapidly toward them. Eda also stood watching them come on with pale face and Loring with eyes in which intense interest and fear were mingled.
As the two Masters rolled up to them their blue beams snapped out, though each held its black tube ready for action in the pincer-like hand of one of its metal arms.
The head-like hemispheres of the things rotated slightly, the glass lens of each seeming to survey the three humans. There was something oddly human in the way in which the metal shapes inspected them.
“Loring, you’re right!” Grant Perry said in a low voice. “They’re machines! Moving, conscious machines!”
The foremost of the two Masters spoke, his voice metallic and precise, his language the same changed, distorted English as Eda’s.
He was speaking to Eda. “You are Human 44-N-626 of our Cell 382. You were ordered to the laboratories by the Master-Who-Thinks of our cell. Instead of reporting there you made your way with the help of some human yet undiscovered to our cell’s air-opening and tried to escape.
“You will go before the Master-Who-Thinks for this attempt.” The thing turned its glass lens from Eda to Grant and Loring. “It is evident that you two also are escaped humans,” the metallic voice stated dispassionately. “State the number of your cell and your serial number.”
“We never saw your city and its cells, or you either, before now!” Grant Perry told it. He found it hard to talk to this metal shape as to an intelligent being. “We’re certainly not any slaves of you who call yourselves Masters!”
“It is evident that your mental apparatus is out of order,” said the Master. “All humans serve the Masters and all humans have their assigned cells and serial numbers.”
The other Master spoke, in the same metallic voice. “Their clothing is not the regulation attire issued to humans, and their speech seems strange. It is possible that they escaped some time ago from another city of cells. It would be wise to examine them more closely.” The first Master rolled toward Grant and Loring. As its metal arms reached toward him Grant drew back dangerously, his fists clenched. The other Master raised his tube.
“You will be beamed if you resist,” came his flat metallic voice.
“Do not resist!” cried Eda tensely to Grant. “The Masters will kill you instantly!”
Grant Perry saw himself the hopelessness of resistance, let the Master approach. It was weird to have that glass lens turn attentively upon him as the thing plucked at his garments with its pincer-like hands.
The leather belt that held the flask of green time drug seemed to interest the Master, who loosed it and examined the flask of drug. Making nothing of it, apparently, the thing tossed belt and drug away and made a similar examination of Robert Loring. His belt also it detached and examined, and it also and its flask of drug it let drop into the grass.
The Master rolled back to its companion, its examination completed. “It is evident that you are escaped humans from some other cell and perhaps some other city than ours,” it told Grant and Loring, “despite your strangeness of attire. You will go with Human 44-N-626 here before the Master-Who-Thinks of our cell for further examination.”
IT ROLLED quickly around behind the three humans, leaving its companion ahead of them. “Start toward the cell-opening,” it told them. “If you make any move other than to walk ahead as ordered, you will be beamed.”
“Loring, our flasks of the green time drug are lying there in the grass!” Grant whispered tensely. “Without them we can’t get back to our own time!”
“Grant, don’t try to get them!” Loring told him. “A move to do it means death from those beams! If we can escape back out here we can find them quickly.”
Grant Perry hesitated, then as he saw the tube of the Master behind them come up suggestively, started forward with Robert Loring and Eda, following the Master ahead. They headed across the green plain toward the nearest well-like cell opening, that from which Eda had emerged.
Eda herself seemed returning to the cell from which she had fled with an evident dread. But she looked up at Grant with interest on her face as they moved along between the two metal Masters.
“Are you not really from any cell or any city of cells?” she asked. “I never heard before of humans without Masters over them.”
“
We are not even of this time, Eda,” Grant told her. “We come from a time far in the past when humans were lords of the earth, and we find them now slaves to these weird Masters.”
“These Masters—are they not machines?” Loring asked the girl tensely. “Conscious and intelligent machines?”
“Of course they are,” Eda answered. “That is why they are the Masters—machines always are wiser and stronger than humans.”
“Grant, you see that I was right, that our society was right!” burst Loring excitedly. “Machines the rulers of humanity! I knew that it would come to pass! I knew it!”
“Grant—is that your name?” asked Eda of Grant, and he nodded.
“Yes, and his name is Loring, Eda. But tell us, are there not any traditions among your people of a time when humans had no machine Masters?”
Eda frowned thoughtfully. “There are legends that tell that,” she admitted, “but only very foolish people believe them, Grant.”
“But what are they?” pressed Loring.
“They say,” Eda recalled, “that ages ago men themselves made machines. Is it not foolish to think that humans could ever make the great, wise machines? But the legends say that they did make machines to do more and more of their work for them and that in time the machines themselves made other machines.
“Then say the tales, the machines came to have more and more of power and intelligence and men less and less. And so there came a day when the machines seized power altogether and made of men their slaves, constructing their great cities of cells below ground to hold themselves and their human slaves.
“So run the legends,” Eda concluded, “but only very witless people can credit these absurd stories of a time when men were the Masters and machines the slaves.”
“Grant, you heard?” demanded Robert Loring. “The very menace our society feared, happening as we foresaw!”
“Your society was right, Loring,” Grant Perry admitted. “But who could have believed it without seeing this? Well, if we get back to our own time the twenty millions go to your society, but it looks as though our chance of getting back is slim.”
He glanced back over the plain toward the ridge where the Masters had captured them and where the two flasks of green time drug lay in the grass. As though reading his thoughts the cubical metal Master behind him shifted its beam-tube a little, and Grant again looked ahead.
They were nearing the dark round opening that was their destination. Grant Perry saw that it was approximately ten feet in diameter and that the well or pit of which it was the opening was lined with metal. Eda too was gazing at it as they came closer, an expression of hopeless despair on her face.
“The air-opening of Cell 382—my cell,” she murmured. “Soon now we three will be down in it before its Master-Who-Thinks.”
“What will they do to you, Eda?” Grant asked her. She looked up at him.
“They will send me to their laboratories, but this time it will be for vivisection.”
“For vivisection?” repeated Grant, horrified, and she nodded without evidencing as much horror at the idea he.
“Yes, Grant—any humans who show signs of insubordination are sent to the laboratories by the Masters for scientific examination to determine what mental factors cause this, so that it can be breeded out of future slaves. When a human commits some act of rebellion or attempts escape, he is sent for vivisection so that this rebellious strain can be avoided in future slaves.
“I had shown myself insubordinate several times and had been ordered to the laboratories for examination. Rather than undergo it I escaped with the aid of my brother Birk, as I told you, but now that they have me again the Masters will surely send me to the laboratories for complete vivisection.”
“They won’t!” Grant told her. “These mechanical monsters vivisecting you! I’ll see that you escape it, Eda!”
Her hand clasped his impulsively. “Grant, you can do nothing,” she told him. “You forget that here you and Loring are but slaves yourselves.”
Chapter III
The City of Machines
THEY had come by then to the edge of the metal-lined shaft or pit, and Grant saw now that a spiral stepless stair or ramp led down into the shaft. With the two Masters guarding them still the three moved down this into the shaft.
Glowing bulbs set in the shaft’s metal wall illuminated its interior. They went down it fifty feet and came to its floor. At the shaft’s bottom was a round room, all around the metal wall of which were square metal doors. A Master with black beam-tube stood guard at the center of this round room.
Grant and Loring saw tube-openings above each of the closed metal doors. The girl Eda explained it, as one of their guards went to one of the doors.
“These twelve doors are the doors of the corridors that branch out into this cell like a wheel’s spokes from the hub. Off each corridor open the different rooms, rooms of the machines, work-rooms where the machines reproduce themselves, supply rooms and slave rooms and the like. The tube-openings above the doors draw air from this shaft through the corridors and rooms.
“The Master stationed here is to prevent any humans from getting up the spiral stair to the surface,” she added, and then in a whisper, “I could not have done so had not my brother Birk attacked the Master on guard here. Birk killed that Master and I escaped upward, but Birk himself had to flee back into a corridor to avoid discovery.”
“Can the Masters be killed, then?” Grant asked in surprise.
“Not really killed, Grant,” said Eda, “but if their hemispherical heads are crushed they are like dead until repaired.”
Their two guards forced the three through the open door into a dim-lit, metal-lined corridor, closing the door behind them. As they started along it a question of Loring brought the information from Eda that each cell held a thousand Masters and ten thousand humans.
“A thousand Masters and ten thousand humans to a cell!” Loring repeated. “Grant, how many of them must there be in all this city of cells? We saw hundreds of shaft-openings, cell-openings, in the plain!”
“I do not know how many cells there are in the city,” Eda said. “Humans are not allowed to pass from one cell to another through the underground passes, though the Masters do so. I know though that beside the Master-Who-Thinks of each cell, the entire city has a single Master-Who-Thinks also, who rules supreme in it.”
“By heaven, it’s incredible!” Grant Perry exclaimed. “An immense city of cells, a city of machine masters and human slaves, underground. And there must be other cities—maybe many of them!”
By then they were meeting others in the corridor, a few of the weird cubical metal Masters rolling along it on errands of their own, and a number of the human slaves, men and women, young and old.
All of them were dressed, Grant saw, in the same abbreviated metallic tunic such as Eda wore, and it was apparent that this was a regulation attire. They seemed to Grant astonishingly like people of his own day, the younger men stalwart and most of the girls pretty. But he saw that all shrank against the wall to allow the metal Masters to pass, cringing visibly to the weird cubical things.
Most of the humans carried tools or burdens of some sort. Grant had noticed that the doors along the corridor they followed were kept closed but as they passed one, two humans, men, were coming out and he had a glimpse through the half-opened door of the interior of the room beyond.
It was a medium-sized room lined or faced also with metal and in it at the moment were three of the metal Masters and a dozen humans. The Masters rested motionless while the humans, with oils and thick cloths, burnished and cleaned their cubical metal forms. Only a glimpse of the weird scene was given Grant as they passed but it shook and horrified him with its sheer strangeness.
A little farther along the corridor they saw a room lined with tiers of bunks and this Grant guessed to be one of the slave-rooms. They passed closed doors also from behind which came the clash and stamp and hum of great machines.
�
��Work-rooms where the machine Masters make new Masters,” Eda said. “In some of them humans are not allowed, ever.”
“God, what a weird world!” Grant Perry exclaimed. “Loring, it’s a nightmare!”
“It’s what the people of our own time can’t—couldn’t—see coming!” Loring answered.
The two Masters conducting them halted them, opened a door and thrust them in, and as they followed and closed the door Grant and Eda and Loring found themselves in a square, metal-walled room that was not large but that was intensely silent.
“The Master-Who-Thinks!” whispered Eda. Grant and Loring stared. “The Master-Who-Thinks of this cell!”
At the rooms center on a low dais rested a Master unlike any of the dozen or more of cubical metal things they had seen thus far. It had no cubical body at all, but was all hemispherical head, a head that was a half-sphere of metal six feet across, resting motionless on its dais.
IT HAD turned its glass lens toward the three as they entered with their two guards. Eda shuddered beneath that gaze, clung closer to Grant who put his arm across her shoulders and stared defiantly at the glass lens of the Master-Who-Thinks. One of the two Masters guarding the three rolled forward toward the Master-Who-Thinks and made report in metallic voice.
“We have recaptured Human 44-N-626 as you ordered, who had escaped out of the cell to the surface. With her, when apprehended, were two humans who refused to give their cell and serial numbers and whom we have brought back with her.”
From the mouth-opening of the Master-Who-Thinks came its own toneless metallic voice. “It is well. I will attend first to 44-N-626.”
The thing spoke to Eda, its glass lens turned upon her. “44-N-626, you were ordered to report to the laboratories for examination. Instead you went to the cell’s air-opening shaft with some other human not yet apprehended. Your companion killed the Master guarding the air-shaft by crushing his brain-case with a heavy tool, while you escaped to the surface.
