by Jerry
Two other robots, similar to the first, appeared in the corridor. They entered and surveyed the half-dozen space-armored men. Their tentacles flashed, sickly pink eyes looking into the amberglass helmets at the human faces. Then again they lashed out with their deadly ray, the rainbow-hued fingers of light shooting up vast sheets of flame.
Despite the armor’s insulation, the men felt the heat becoming unbearable. But the alumalloy withstood the attack. The robots paused now, tentacles once more examining.
One of the robots began to raise North to his feet, motioning the others to do the same. Slowly, the survivors of that ordeal by fire arose. Silently they trudged ahead, following the robots out of the room . . .
THE low concrete building was a circle with a circumference of more than a mile. In the center of that circle, but independent of it, was a smaller, circular building. Both structures rested atop a broad, hard-racked plateau built on the highest point of this dark planet. A brooding quiet, vast and immutable as the silence of a tomb, lay over everything, broken rarely by a thin, prolonged scream which came from the larger building.
Somewhere in that building, Jeff North stood at a barred window, looking out at the dead, dim landscape, eyes unseeing. The walls of the cell were a bare ten feet high, but to attempt escape over it meant death, as a few had found out. Apart from the undermining horror of waiting, it was safe. The planet’s atmosphere and gravity approximated that of Earth.
Near North a figure stirred. It was Captain Finley.
“North,” his voice called softly, “today’s the day!”
A cold ray of morning light passed over North’s face. His eyes were closing with fatigue, his tall body swayed uncertainly. Again that insane scream split the air, its echoes lingering long after it had died.
“Poor woman,” North said, gripping the window bars. “Whom did she lose? Husband? Daughter? And those others—which of them will be dead today, and the day after, and the day after that, until there isn’t anyone left? Whose turn today?”
In the semi-darkness, Raleigh laid a comforting hand on North.
“Jeff, it’s almost time. Listen.”
The noises of waking life were multiplying now. A dirgelike moaning that continued all day until the last human would fall into a broken slumber, had begun. Swiftly over the horizon, three tiny suns rose, bringing light. Other sounds were audible, steel feet marching. The moaning grew in intensity. Outside the cell, robots mounted on wheels were gliding swiftly along the corridors, moving large, cagelike boxes before them. The endless terror of the day was upon them. Eight days like it had gone before.
North was completely in command of himself again. The anticipation of danger was a tonic to him.
“Space armor on,” North clipped. “It’s the only thing that’s saved us so far. They’re keeping us to experiment with later.”
Hastily the men donned their armor; Raleigh, Finley, Morgan, and two men from the crew, Waters and Brent.
“The food will be here any minute now,” North reminded.
The cages were on their way back. The men knew it from the pitiful cries that welled up, the hoarse farewells. The cages rode past, filled with humans. A priest was intoning a prayer.
“Again the human guinea pigs,” came Raleigh’s voice, choked with compassion. “Taken as specimens to be dissected, murdered by a machine created by man.” He caught his breath sharply.
The clanking sound of a caterpillar tread came to him. Immediately, North motioned everyone to a prearranged position.
A tall robot, an old, familiar model K, tread-mounted, rode up to the cell. It carried a large receptacle filled with food taken from the captured liner. The K was harmless, a menial taken along by the uncontrollable Y’s. A small light gleamed from its trunk, A photo-electric cell opened the door and the robot rode in. The door closed firmly behind it. One of its three arms supported the receptacle; the other two hovered in mid-air, watchful.
“Now!” cried North.
SUDDENLY, as Waters took the food, Raleigh slid to one side, his eyes swiftly examining the back of the robot. Unmindful of the peril, he reached out a hand and touched a button, the one that activated its auditory mechanism. The robot saw him, started to turn.
“Stop!” said North. The robot stopped. “Face right!” The robot turned back. The K had not forgotten the lessons of obedience, North turned on the speech gears. “Your number?”
“K-71.” A man’s cultured voice had answered.
“What are the duties of K-71?”
“General aid.” The answer came. “Has K-71 the education to recognize a radio transmitter?”
“It has.”
“K-71 will bring to this cell a radio transmitter, immediately.”
North turned off both speech and auditory mechanisms, his face glistening with perspiration. There were scores of questions he had wanted to ask, but he could not take the time. He had to risk it. Obediently, the robot turned, opened the door, and rolled away.
“You were right,” Raleigh declared, “We’ve got a chance!”
Long, anguishing moments passed slowly. The solidity of time weighed down crushingly on the prisoners in the cell, each second a shackle. They despaired. And then, tranquilly, the robot came back, its three arms encumbered with the transmitter. Feverishly, North set up the transmitter while the robot waited for further orders.
After a time, North signaled that he was ready. In spite of the need for haste, all hesitated. Here would begin the most daring part of their plan. It would work only by an oversight on the part of the robots. They were going to draw the necessary power from the robot, from the radio that was his life-blood.
Holding the wires in his hands, North addressed the robot. “K-71, lift me to your receiver.”
The robot raised him high in air. North worked feverishly, the others reading in the engraved frown on his forehead the progress he was making. Suddenly they saw consternation light his dark gray eyes. In that instant North jumped down. He had seen the unexpected loom, realized it too late!
“I’ve set off an alarm,” North hissed. “The Y’s will be here any minute. We haven’t enough oxygen to stay in the armor if they attack. Got to get out of here!”
“K-71,” Raleigh shouted, “open the door!”
Unquestioning, the robot slid the door back. Running awkwardly in their space armor, the men sped down the corridor as sounds of pursuit multiplied behind them.
A tiny light flicked on, throwing up threatening shadows in the corner of a vast room where five men stood close together. Waters was dead. They could still see him throw himself under the robots’ steel legs, disorganizing them long enough for his comrades to find safety in an open door not far away. They were safe for the time being.
The light had fallen on several immense casks, marked plainly to show they were filled with rubber. Nearby were crates of amberglass, copper, great boxes filled with chemicals. The full amount of the supplies there, including metals, fuels, and machinery, was beyond calculation.
“Lord!” came North’s muffled voice. “We’ve stumbled on their warehouse! I hadn’t dreamed they could take along so much. They have everything they need here, and with robots that come from every industry, every laboratory, there isn’t anything they can’t do.” He nodded grimly as he added, “Except think creatively!”
THAT, North knew, must prove their undoing in the end, and before it might be reached, all might be killed. He clenched his gauntleted hand. They had to be stopped, but how? Jeff North knew he had no answer.
“They anticipated something like that interference idea,” North had explained to the others. “They equipped themselves with short wave receivers. They sent out a wave so short that it travels in practically a straight line from the point of issuance to each robot, unlike the usual waves which blanket an area that supplies all within it. The wave follows the robot, something like a dog on a leash. We can only get one at a time, and only that by breaking the short wave to it. The only way is
to intercept the wave with a conductor of some sort, before it reaches the robot.
“That’s what I did accidentally—my alumalloy gauntlets acted as conductors. The only catch was that I saw it had been rigged up to shoot back an alarm. If we’d got the transmitter working aboard the Southern Star, we’d have been safe. They had to use long wave there—too much metal around. And that’s why the walls are only ten feet high all through here, and the robots at least fifteen. They take no chances.”
So he had learned, but too late. “Jeff!” Raleigh called. “Listen!”
A door was sliding open in the room adjoining theirs. Raleigh’s face was contorted. “They’re after us!”
“No,” North said, searching the sounds for an explanation. “Something is going on in there.”
Other noises were coming from over the wall, the sound of many steel feet marching in and halting. A flood of light poured into the adjacent room, spilling illumination over the walk. Taking advantage of the noise, North clambered atop a large crate and peered down, risking their lives If he were discovered. He had to risk them. Their lives had been forfeit overlong.
Jeff North’s eyes froze him where he stood. There, in an absolutely bare room, stood a score of super Y’s, the twenty-foot robots that were the supreme expression of the robot’s terrible capabilities. These violet Y’s were standing in a circle, motionless, soundless, like some weird, diabolical conference of machines. These were the metal brains that lay behind the tragedy of the Southern Star.
A door opened and another robot marched in, taller and broader than the rest. It moved easily on five legs which were fitted with small wheels, now retracted. Its violet metal was colored more intensely than the others, its eyes were more numerous. Two glass mounds came from its trunk. There were three short tubes, unconnected, which North recognized as heat-ray projectors. Here stood the newest and greatest of them all—a master robot!
How many others like this were being made? What chance would mankind have against widespread havoc and destruction before the robots were stopped? These questions thrust themselves frantically into North’s numbed brain as he stared down at the grotesque scene.
As if by some signal, all the robots but one left the room to the master robot. That one robot advanced to the master. It reached out a tentacle and switched on the auditory mechanism of the taller robot. Then it pressed its own speech button. From its metal larynx issued a flow of recorded speech.
White-faced, North heard Pascal’s Law. “Pressure in Fluids: Pressure applied to an enclosed fluid is transmitted equally in all directions without loss, and acts with equal force on equal surfaces.”
THE new master robot was being instructed in physics! The robot was going on and on. Was this how the robots transmitted their specialized knowledge to each other? These little droplets of learning, of information, of thousands of odds and ends, trickled one on another until they formed a mighty torrent! The robot could store it all in its infinite mind, automatically filed away, to use them as other robots would soon suggest, for there were robots that knew of almost every human activity.
North came down from the crate and told the others the meaning of the voice in the next room . . .
Hours passed. The hybrid voice, the voice of many men, continued speaking. Once they recognized the slow, measured tones of Professor Freund expounding on a new use of Indium. They listened unwillingly, maddened by their helplessness.
After some time, the robot ceased. The sound of a robot leaving and another entering came to them. Presently, they heard an outpouring of material on interplanetary travel. The synthesis was being engineered! One robot would follow another until each had emptied itself. And then the master robot would have it all. He would know the stars and their orbits; what happened if fire were applied to flesh, to wood, to glass; the danger of a magnetic gun. Thousands of voices would teach it, and it would learn.
In every particle of a fact it would automatically find relationships where they were to be found. Its knowledge would be filed away, comprehensive, complete to the smallest detail. And then, when the master robot knew all, the Lenox Ys would come, imparting their deadly questions—and others would switch on its fearsome weapons. There would be more of them . . . more . . . more . . . each the combination of all the robots; each seeking, dissecting, crushing, killing, until they had used up all their supply of humans and raw materials and went marauding through space for more.
Why, thought North, were they sitting there, waiting to be caught? Death from hunger or thirst could outwit them even if the robots failed to find them. There must be a way! Human ingenuity—the creative mind—were they useless?
Suddenly he cried out! His eyes had alighted on a crate marked, “Handle With Care—ES Generator.” In an instant he was tugging at the crate, opening it. The others looked on wondering.
“George,” North called, “cut two chunks of rubber from that pile there, chunks large enough to cover my feet completely. Lay a rug of the stuff over that crate near the wall.”
Raleigh asked no questions. With Finley and Morgan helping, the crate was opened, disclosing an electrostatic machine of the highest capacity. Quickly, North set it in motion. From Raleigh he took the two large rubber pads, wrapping them securely around his feet. Then, holding a small magnetic gun, he approached the machine and brought his gauntleted hand into contact with its copper conductor.
“Don’t come near me,” North warned. “I’ve got a tremendous charge of static electricity in me now. If you touch me, it will pass to you and be wasted.”
“Jeff!” cried Raleigh, “you’re mad. It can’t work!”
“All right,” North said, “I’m mad.” His eyes were shining. “This is our one chance to get out of this. If only there’s no alarm beam along the top of this wall.”
His face was almost gay with daring as he closed his helmet and opened the oxygen valve, using the last of his precious supply. “Here I go!” his lips said soundlessly as he climbed on the rubber-covered crate.
FROM atop the wall he threw a large nut at the two robots. It fell clearly in view of the smaller, completed robot. The robot turned. Its tentacled eyes saw North. At once its magnificent ray played over North, a halo of flame surrounding him as he kept clambering over the wall. He had to get to the robot, but approaching it might mean death from one sweep of its crushing tentacles. The robot would use them if it had to, for North was no longer a passive specimen. He knew he had to get to the robot before it had time to lift one of those huge metal arms. And he could not risk that drop of ten feet which might throw him off balance for a fatal split second.
North revealed his magnetic gun, turned it on. Instinctively, as North had counted on, the robot pressed its counter magnet, changing its protective shield to a powerful ray of its own. It was as if North had been sucked into a whirlpool by a tremendous eddy. Impelled by the magnetic ray acting on the alumalloy armor, North was lifted bodily from his feet, yanked off the wall, and dashed against the robot’s trunk. A blinding flash of lightning shot out at the crashing contact as the whole static electric charge ripped into the robot. North lay stunned at its feet, completely at its mercy.
But it was dead! As dead, paradoxically, as it had ever been. The charge had ripped its internal mercury switches apart, burnt every fine wire in it, destroyed the brain and heart of the machine! It had committed suicide by electrocution!
Perhaps the alarm had gone out! North struggled erect. He had to act quickly. Opening his helmet, he turned to the calm, witnessing master robot.
“Go to the central transmitting station,” North commanded. “Allow nothing to stop you. Destroy every piece of radio equipment there!”
North paused and turned on the speech mechanism. How much had this new robot already learned?
“Is this order intelligently dispersed?” North asked. It was the old key question.
The robot was silent. Its new machinery functioned slowly.
At length it answered. “Yes.�
�
“Act on the order!”
The robot wheeled and exited, its steel legs thundering slowly down the corridor. Willing hands hauled Jeff North back over the wall. There the men stood together. Not a word was spoken. Life or death for countless numbers depended on whether the creation of the robots would successfully carry out the orders given it by a human.
The concrete building was filled all at once with the grating sounds of metal moving in mad confusion; treads, wheels, legs, going in a furious din. The adjacent room was the deafening vortex of the pandemonium. A door leading from it to the warehouse was being hammered upon. In a moment, a robot with the necessary light ray would open it. The master robot had had to leave the large building, travel across the rocky ground to the smaller one, pass by innumerable guards. The noise was growing louder and louder. The door was beginning to move . . .
All at once it stopped. And then it was quiet, just as it had been in early dawn.
Crowds of men were busily repairing the Southern Star.
Captain Finley was speaking to North.
“We’ve enough material here to rebuild everything. And best of all, we can take off from that angle by firing the fore rockets.”
From out of the milling crowds nearby, Raleigh and Morgan rushed up.
“Stop twitching,” North grinned.
“That colored ray,” Raleigh shouted breathlessly, heedless of North’s remark. “We’ve analyzed it! Those robots gave us something there. It’s a high-powered ray, something like a Gamma, but what it does is knock off the two outer rings of electrons and smash the nucleus of the oxygen molecule. That makes it the same as a hydrogen molecule—fills the atmosphere with hydrogen. Then the robot shoots his sparks and bang!—fire! Don’t you think—”
