by Earl
Alloy feet pounding thunderously, we sped under that cracking ceiling. A hundred feet in, I halted.
“Shoulders to the ceiling. Hold firm, men!”
It must have been a strange sight to Daggert. Thirty robots spaced along that corridor, shoulders against the sagging ceiling, legs spread for purchase. With a low rumble, the ceiling gave way. But it didn’t crunch to the floor. Thirty metal Atlases held it up! Gears clashed, cogs scraped, wheels within whined as machine-power fought the terrific pull of all-powerful gravity.
I watched with bated breath, to use the idiom. If gravity won, my thirty robots would be smashed to bits under the grinding load. Dusty and I, in the pocket at the end, would be buried beyond hope of ever seeing daylight again.
But my robots won. The ceiling stayed up. Thirty robots virtually held a mountain on their backs.
I TURNED. Dusty was calmly sleeping, slumped against the wall, his ore pan slipping from his fingers. I swept him into my arms and weaved down the corridor past the robots. I pulled erect before Daggert and set Dusty on his feet. He was rubbing his eyes, bewildered.
There was still danger for my robots. One by one, beginning at the far end, they raced forward at my order, and helped support the front end. As each robot left his position, a mass of rock fell. One by one they returned from the jaws of destruction.
The last three came out with a rush together, as the ceiling let loose completely. Two skipped to safety, but the last was caught under a falling, thundering avalanche. When we pulled away loose shale and dragged Number Eleven out, we saw that his head had been cracked like an eggshell. His iridium-sponge brain was in shreds. He was dead.
“Leave the pieces there,” Daggert said indifferently. “And get back to work!”
I stepped in front of him, facing my robots, as I saw heads jerk up. Mirrored eyes glared at Daggert.
“Take Number Eleven out quietly, men,” I ordered. Fiercely I whispered to Daggert, “Keep your mouth shut. To my robots, a friend has just died!”
Daggert watched silently as four robots picked Number Eleven’s mangled body up and slowly carried it out.
“First,” he murmured, “you robots risk your necks, this project, and all your plans for a miserable human life. Then you carry a bunged-up robot out like it was a funeral. You act like you’re humans!”
I looked in the man’s eyes. Faintly, there was a glimmer of wonder deep in them.
“Nuts!” he finished, kicking at a rock and leaving.
IT WAS not till we had all filed above ground that Dusty said anything. His wrinkled eyes were moist. He gave his clothes a little pat, raising dust.
“Going to San Simone for a bang-up good time pretty soon,” he said simply. “And I’m going to drink to you, Adam Link!”
I knew, in his peculiar scale of values, that he had paid me the highest compliment in the world . . .
“Adam!” Eve said. “Adam!”
A robot’s tone is flat, devoid of emotion. But I knew that my Eve, deep within, was sobbing. Both in joy that I was back from peril, and for what I had done.
“Adam!”
I started. It was Mary’s voice now.
“You did a wonderful, brave thing.”
“Thanks, child,” I returned.
“Child?” she blazed back. “I’m not a child! I tell you I’m not. You mustn’t treat me that way—Adam!”
AGAIN she had used my first name.
I remembered now that for a week she had failed to use the terms “Mom” or “Dad” to Eve and myself. What metamorphosis had gone on in her matured mind? But I couldn’t guess. She was mystery. And in that she was a woman.
Eve and I glanced at each other with a faint air of sadness. In so short a time our “child” had grown away from us. It made us feel old, as I suppose human parents do when suddenly they see their full-grown offspring forging a life of its own.
But Eve and I were also pleased. It was another proof that robot-minds could adopt the human viewpoint and outlook quickly. It meant that the coming robot race was not to be cold, alien, machinelike, in mind as in body.
Number Eleven, the first death among this first colony of robots, was buried beyond the mining camp, at the desert’s edge.
I spoke a few solemn words. “From dust arose, and to dust returneth!”
Another event gave me food for thought.
One evening I came up to hear a terrific commotion from the direction of the men’s barracks. I sped into a run as I heard a certain sound—that of stones striking metal. A full moon lit the scene, as I drew close.
Mary stood before the shack, stiff and straight. With a hue and cry, the Mexican and Japanese laborers were pelting her with stones and rocks they picked up. Among them were several dark-eyed women. Inevitably, some border women had drifted to the camp.
Mary was unharmed by the missiles, of course. They bounced off her hard body plates with a clinking sound. But mentally, the stones hurt. Humans pelting her as if she were a wild animal!
Mary gave a harsh cry and made for them just as I raced up. I grabbed her arm and yanked her around so violently a muscle-cable snapped.
“Mary,” I demanded. “What—”
Daggert strode from among the men. His face was flushed with liquor.
“Listen, Link,” he growled. “You and your damned robots keep your tin noses out of our affairs. This one has been sneaking around several nights, looking in the windows. Spying on us!”
“Mary!” I gasped. “Why?”
Mary’s indirect answer was still more startling.
“A woman was just killed in there!”
“So what?” Daggert bellowed. “Lolita went after Amelia’s man, and Amelia put a knife in her back. These are our human affairs. You robots have nothing to do with them. I’m warning you, Link. My men don’t like any mixing with a bunch of phonographs on wheels, which is all you are. You robots keep your distance.”
We had been delegated by Daggert into a caste. Into pariahs. I didn’t care about the murdered woman—this was the raw, practically lawless border region—but Daggert had brought up the issue of robots in human society.
I was ready to argue heatedly, as always before on that—to me—touchy subject. Dusty had been tugging at my arm for minutes. I didn’t feel it. But a bit of dust swirling into my mirrored eyes, causing the shutters to click, announced his presence.
“Take it easy, pard,” he whispered. “Feeling’s been running high among them cutthroats.”
ALMOST as he warned me a mob growl came from their midst. They had picked up shovels, picks, crowbars. They were advancing, with all the murderous intent of a lynching mob. Daggert looked scared, suddenly. He hadn’t expected a crisis so soon.
But abruptly the mob stopped in its tracks. I swiveled my head and saw why. Eve had raced down into the shaft and returned with the other robots. They stood behind me in a solid phalanx, silent, shiny, formidable. Thirty robots against thirty men! Three hundred men would not have dared attack us.
The human mob forgot its temper and lounged back. They pretended to be setting the tools in neater piles.
“What were you saying, Daggert?” I queried.
“I don’t want any trouble with you, Adam Link,” he grunted. “We’re getting along okay, so far. Just keep that robot from sneaking around, like she has, and everything will be all right.”
He turned away, shoving his men back into the barracks. They would plan how to bury the dead woman secretly and never tell the authorities.
“Mary,” I began, “now—”
“Don’t lecture me!” she pouted. “I didn’t mean any harm. I just wanted to watch those humans a little. I’m old enough to know what I’m doing—Adam!”
I didn’t lecture her. I said nothing. But I began to see that Mary had acquired wilfulness. She was human—too human at times!
CHAPTER V
The Fifth Column
A THIRD event erased the previous two events from my mind. “Adam! Adam!”
I took off my protecting goggles. The gritty dust set loose in mining operations would raise havoc, lodging in our finely machined eye lenses. I waved Number Nineteen to take over, and let Dusty lead me to a quieter corridor. I could see he was excited.
It was five o’clock in the morning. My automatic sense of timing told me that. Why wasn’t he sleeping?
“Been to Tojunga,” he explained. “Went with the supply truck last night.”
Tojunga was the Mexican town just below the border, fifty miles south. A dirty, squalid place, as I had heard, hardly worthy of human habitation.
“You went down there for your bang-up good time?” I asked, a little repelled at the thought. “Instead of north to San Simone?”
Dusty wrinkled his nose. “No. My bottle ran low. In a mean temper, Daggert wouldn’t sell me one from his stock. So I had to go myself. The truck went down there to pick up some fresh fruit cheap.”
“Well?” It all seemed pointless.
“One of our Jap laborers came along. For the ride, he says. But he acted queer. I took a drink in a dive, next to his table. Another Jap walks in, sits down.”
“Well?” I was really impatient now.
“The second Jap was in a military uniform!”
I stared. What was Dusty leading up to? Why was there a chilled, dumbfounded air about him?
He went on, the words bubbling out.
“I’ve knocked around these parts all my life. I understand some Japanese. Enough to learn that the Japs have a secret base just below the border, on the Gulf of California. I didn’t catch it all clear. But the Jap officer says something about being ready. An attack at dawn!”
“Attack!” I grasped the little prospector’s arm, squeezing. “You’re drunk!”
He was screeching suddenly, as though his nerves had let go.
“You’ve got to listen to me, Adam! You’re the only one with sense enough to listen and do something. I tell you, I heard it! They’ll cross the border at down. The Japs are coming!”
I squeezed tighter. “You’re drunk! Dusty, you’ve made this all up—”
My fingers relaxed suddenly. I stiffened. A second later I bent double and put my left tympanum-ear against the solid rock beneath us. Sound carries well through rock, for miles and miles. And my microphonic ear picks up the faintest of impulses and amplifies them to the beat of a drum, at will.
What I heard, perhaps fifty miles south, was the rumble of tanks!
AT THE same time, just outside, I heard an ominous rat-tat—tat-tat! I had heard one before. It was a machine gun!
I raced above, and halted short at the scene I saw in the red glow of dawn.
Our ten Japanese “laborers” were clustered behind the machine gun. They had just fired, in warning, over the heads of the remaining men.
Daggert’s voice came from among his men, as he struggled forward.
“What the hell is this?” he yelled. “What’s going on here? Where did you get that machine gun? Listen, you yellow runts, this is mutiny! I’ll have you arrested. I’ll—”
A precise, cold voice cut in. One of the Japanese stood erect. Beneath his laborer’s denim was the unmistakable bearing of a trained soldier.
“You will please be quiet and listen to me,” the Japanese said with ironic politeness. “This mine is in our hands. Do not resist and you will not be harmed. Submit quietly. Soon the first detachments will come through here. So sorry, but your mining operations will have to be suspended—indefinitely.”
“In your hands? Submit? Detachments?” Daggert was utterly bewildered. “You talk like there’s a war going on here!”
War! The word to me was like a sledge blow against my brain.
Instantly I understood. Fifth column work! The Japanese “laborers” were all part of the scheme. Traitors, in brief. The mine was in enemy hands already. This was one phase of that newly invented method of human warfare—blitzkrieg!
My mind staggered. The whole universe seemed to spin about me. Blitzkrieg! Unsuspected by the people of the land to the north, an enemy was invading. No formal declaration of war. That too was part of the technique.
The same revelation must have ground through Daggert’s mind. Shock settled over his face.
“You mean—an army is coming?” he breathed.
The Japanese officer nodded. “It will arrive in an hour. Please be calm.”
The men around Daggert promptly flopped to the ground, rolling and lighting their usual cigarettes. They were Mexicans. They were uninterested in the event, as long as it meant no harm to them. Daggert stood alone facing the machine gun.
He looked at me suddenly.
Man and robot, we looked at each other. I saw a strange, appealing gleam in his eye. For the first time, he looked upon me as a man, a friend, an ally, in this moment of dark crisis. In one mental upheaval, I knew that now he regarded me as something closer to him than any of the Japanese or Mexicans.
“Adam Link,” he half stammered. “Adam, are you—with me?”
Strange, that my moments of triumph often come with moments of impending tragedy. Daggert had become my friend at last He was appealing to me—man to man.
The Japanese officer stiffened. Obviously my part in the setup was unsolved. I was, as yet, an unpredictable factor in the queer drama being played out in this isolated region.
I didn’t answer immediately. I was thinking.
DAGGERT’S EYES flicked around and suddenly shone.
“Adam!” he shouted. “Jump in that truck near you! Drive away. The bullets can’t hurt you. Drive north and warn the country. Warn the United States that it’s being invaded. Hurry, Adam!”
The muzzle of the machine gun swung toward me threateningly. I hadn’t moved. But not because of fear, for I could laugh at bullets.
“Adam!” Daggert groaned. “Why are you hesitating? Hurry!”
“I’m not going, Daggert,” I said slowly.
He gasped, staring. But I had made up my mind not to be a metal Paul Revere.
“I have made a vow, Daggert. Robots must never be used in warfare. If I did what you ask, I would be committing myself—and all my robots—to intervention on your side. I’m sorry, but robots cannot take sides in the civil wars of the human race!”
Daggert sat down on the ground, shaking his head as if it were all too much for him. Little more was said. An hour later, a cloud of dust appeared on the southern horizon.
CHAPTER VI
Adam Link in War!
I WATCHED something that I knew would later be a great historical event. The invasion of America!
First came motorcycles with mounted machine guns. Then small swift tanks, rattling along the rough, unpaved dirt road. Behind lumbered monstrous eighty-ton tanks, the muzzles of small cannon bristling at all sides, ready to rake the countryside.
Following behind were armored trucks, loaded with soldiers carrying automatic rifles and tripod machine guns. Foot-soldiers could be seen far to the rear, tramping along steadily—thousands and thousands of them, steel helmets glinting in the rising sun. Artillery units, supply trains, hospital corps, communications corps, and reserves brought up the rear.
It was a complete mechanized division. The kind that in the European War of 1940 had cut opposing armies to ribbons.
Overhead soared a flight of aircraft—bombers, fighters, and reconnaissance.
Blind, stupid fools! The term aptly applies to the entire human race. When will you learn that the fruits of power are bitter, poisonous?
Again I vowed, seeing this array of mechanized murder, that I would steer my robot course clear of such utterly animal tactics. At the first opportunity, I would leave with my robots.
Still I watched, fascinated by
this spectacle of human will to suicide.
ESCORTED BY motorcycles, a bullet-proof car rolled up at the van and stopped before the mine. A half-dozen resplendently uniformed Japanese stepped down. The men at the machine gun saluted.
“You have done well,” the Japanese general commended. I understood the Japanese words. I have learned fluently every language on Earth available in books. “We have taken our first objective, without cost of life!”
He turned to Daggert, speaking now in precise English.
“You are the superintendent of this American mining project. Please consider yourself a prisoner of war. I will leave a small force of occupation here. The army goes on immediately. So sorry to interfere with your estimable labors, but this mine lies directly on the road to conquest!”
Daggert eyed the Japanese. His eye wandered to the formidable forces rumbling close.
“Conquest?” he croaked, half belligerently. “How far do you think you’ll get?”
The Japanese officers smiled at one another.
“What is there to oppose us? Your people rest in false security. In a week we’ll reach the Canadian border. California and the western seaboard will be sliced off from your country. That is assured. It will be easy. Perhaps then, if all goes well, our armies will sweep eastward . . .”
The general’s voice trailed away.
Daggert half nodded to himself, as if for an hour he had pictured that very thing.
“You’ve already taken this territory,” he said slowly. “What about me? Suppose I continued to run this mine—for you!”
I was not surprised. Daggert was an opportunist.
“THE general smiled pleasedly.
“Good! We welcome all cooperation with us, in conquered territory. Your salary will continue at the same rate!”
I imagine this sickens you who read. It sickened me. At least, though utterly neutral in this human quarrel, I would not think of helping the enemy, no matter in what small way. Daggert was a renegade of the first water.
“Daggert!” I found myself saying. “Surely you aren’t deserting your country for the first piece of gold?”
