The Collected Stories

by Earl

  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 her 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.”

  LAND OF THE SHADOW DRAGONS

  Somewhere in the North an unknown menace threatened disaster to America—unless the Invisible Robinhood could solve its mystery

  THE chartered plane’s motor roared as it left Chicago’s Municipal Airport. A low-winged cabin ship, it raised sluggishly, loaded almost to capacity with crated supplies.

/>   Pilot Hugh Crane tensed at the controls. The ship was acting almost as though it were overloaded! He gunned for altitude desperately. Far down the field were high-tension wires. Once a plane had blundered into them, ending up a broken, burning mass of junk.

  Why wasn’t the plane rising normally? The motor hummed smooth as silk and Crane had full control of ailerons. Yet the craft inched itself from the ground with agonizing reluctance.

  The suspense was over in seconds. The plane barely cleared the wires. The margin had been uncomfortably close. If the undercarriage had not been retractable, the ship would have crashed.

  Crane unclamped his lower lip from his teeth.

  In his years of piloting, he had never come that near to disaster. But now the plane slanted up into the safe aerial highways.

  He turned to his two passengers wandering if they had noticed.

  “Rather a poor take-off, wasn’t it?” Paul Harlan said sharply. “We were careful not to overload the ship, according to airport instructions and inspection.”

  Crane knew he wasn’t going to like Harlan. Tall and dark, he seemed about Crane’s age, under thirty. His bearing was stiff and cold, his lips straight and thin. A man who would play his own game, given the chance.

  Ignoring the words, Hugh Crane addressed the girl in the side seat.

  “Where to, Miss Damon?”

  She did not reply at once.

  Dawn’s glowing red arc brightened in the east, revealing the girl more clearly. Crane’s brief glance formed a staccato impression. Figure tall, slender. Features regular except for a slight upturned nose. Type, titian blond. Clothing mannish for roughing it—boots, leather breeches, suede jacket, tam o’shanter. Total effect, not bad!

  “You will fly due northwest,” the girl directed. Her tone was preoccupied.

  “To what, or where?”

  “Our destination is near Great Bear Lake, Canada.”

  “Which side of it?” Crane pursued.

  A frosty stare accompanied the girl’s response.

  “As I told the airport officials, that’s my business. I paid for the privilege of having an uninquisitive pilot!”

  “Ouch!” Crane said mentally.

  What kind of trip was this? Why all the secrecy? He took a longer look at the girl. No, she wasn’t just a wealthy madcap, out for a lark. There was quiet purpose in her hazel-brown eyes. Almost grimness.

  “I can’t go by those general directions,” Crane ventured. “Not all the way. A plane isn’t something you can amble around in aimlessly. After all, Miss Damon—”

  Jondra Damon interrupted with a toss of her head.

  “You’re being difficult. When we reach Great Bear Lake, I’ll give you more specific instructions. If that doesn’t satisfy you, turn back! I’ll get another pilot.”

  For a moment they glared at each other. Then Crane shrugged and turned eyes front. The girl was within her rights. He had been instructed to fly where she wished, within the range of risk to life and ship. Beyond that, the officials had said—or known—nothing of the eccentric arrangement.

  WHAT was it all about? Crane began to feel he was flying in some sort of mystery. To Crane it wasn’t exactly an unpleasant thought.

  The girl’s hand touched his shoulder. She was suddenly smiling.

  “I didn’t mean to be so abrupt. But I really can’t explain much more at present. My father is up there—Dr. Sewell Damon. He’s conducting experiments. Mr. Paul Harlan, who answered my ad last week for an experienced chemist, is to assist him. The exact destination is being kept secret as long as possible at my father’s request.”

  She added, after a moment’s hesitation, “I think he fears—well, spies.”

  “Spies!” Crane echoed the word with a start. “What sort of experimenting is he doing?”

  The girl shook her head, but not angrily. Her eyes suddenly gleamed with worry. She spoke in a low murmur.

  “I think he may be in danger!”

  She arose, as though to pace the narrow cabin floor.

  “Sit down!” Crane snapped. Hastily he added, “Sorry, but it’s the best thing to do while flying.”

  But before the girl could obey, the ship lurched through an air pocket. The girl seemed about to stumble and fall backward. But miraculously she didn’t, as if a hand had caught her arm just in time.

  “Thanks!” she smiled at Harlan, gaining her seat.

  Harlan stared at her blankly. He had had no chance to help her, half sliding out of his seat himself.

  “What—” he began, but then shrugged. It was hard to talk above the drone of the propellor.

  Crane’s quick glance behind him had taken in the episode. Again things seemed verging on the mysterious. First the plane, apparently overloaded. Then the queer mission they were on. Now the girl, acting as though an unseen passenger had assisted her.

  But there was no such passenger. She had imagined that someone had helped her keep her balance.

  THE plane drummed northwest. The countryside below became steadily more bleak and rugged with each degree of northern latitude.

  Ten hours later, Hugh Crane turned to Jondra Damon, dozing in her seat. He hated to disturb her, but now was the time for directions. She looked like she hadn’t had proper sleep for a week, in preparation for this strange venture.

  “We’re within a hundred miles of Great Bear Lake. Might tell me now exactly where you want to go.”

  Jondra Damon rubbed her eyes. “Fifty miles east of Great Bear, directly on the Arctic Circle.

  Minutes later, a snow squall came up, chilling the heated cabin.

  Crane pondered. “If the snow gets thicker,” he said, “I’ll have to land on the first level stretch. But maybe we can make it to your destination. What are we looking for? Any landmark you can name?”

  “It’s a valley,” the girl responded shortly, lighting a cigarette.

  Crane looked helplessly at Harlan.

  Harlan shrugged. “I know as little about it as you do,” he grunted.

  At the same time he eyed the girl as though he, too, resented being kept so much in the dark.

  Jondra Damon blew out a cloud of smoke imperturbably.

  “I thought it was women who were always curious. Now look, you’re both paid to do as you’re told, and paid well. You, Mr. Harlan, were hired at ten dollars a day to help my father when we arrive. You, Mr. Crane, were engaged to land the plane where I state, help unload the supplies, and then leave. It’s simple enough, isn’t it?”

  “But the valley!” Crane said patiently. “I presume there’s a big sign somewhere saying valley in big red letters?”

  The girl flushed. “Oh! Well, it’s a sunken valley. Father informed me that it should stand out from the air by itself.”

  Crane shook his head, but went back to his controls.

  Reaching Great Bear Lake, he cruised over its eastern shore, and swung gradually away in a wide circle. The snow thickened, making a landing imperative within an hour. Crane swept his eyes from horizon to horizon for the valley. A sunken valley. What in the world would it look like?

  A hand gripped his shoulder suddenly, turning him slightly. Then Crane saw it himself—a dark gash in the general whiteness of snow-tufted land.

  “Yes, that must be it!” Crane said, wondering why Harlan was so mysterious, grasping his shoulder and not saying a word. He looked around, but Harlan was now beside the girl, peering down.

  What was the man’s game? Crane thought fleetingly. Had he known how the valley would look, despite his pretended ignorance of the whole thing? Was he keeping things from the girl, as well as the other way around? What was in that valley—gold, radium?

  He’d soon find out. Crane zoomed for the spot. Circling and lowering, he made out the barren floor of the valley, with only an evergreen here and there. A landing could easily be made in the valley itself. It was sunken, all right, at least three hundred feet below general level, with sheer cliffs at every side.

  “How queer it looks!”
Jondra Damon was murmuring at his side, peering through the windshield. “Watch out for the snow . . .”

  IT struck Crane too. Swirls of snowflakes dropped into the valley and seemed to hang. Momentarily, they seemed to form the ghost-shapes of tall trees. Crane felt a qualm of uneasiness, but quickly killed it. One could see anything in clouds or snowstorms, with a dash of imagination.

  “No time to waste,” he warned. “We’re going down. Hold on!” Heading into the wind, Crane slanted down for the broad, smooth area at one end of the valley. There should be no trouble.

  Suddenly a tiny figure emerged from some hidden shelter below, near a cliff-face. It ran madly into the open, swinging its arms wildly.

  “It must be father!” Jondra cried. She peered closely. “He seems to be warning us away. I don’t understand, there’s something wrong!”

  Harlan gasped. “The man’s mad! He’s firing his gun at us!”

  Above the roar of the propellor sounded the sharp bark of a rifle. The man below was firing not at them, but in warning not to land! To stay away!

  “I’m going to land anyway!” Crane yelled. “I’ve got to! Blinding snowstorm up above, and getting worse. This is a safer chance.”

  A hundred feet above ground, Crane gasped through tight-pressed lips.

  Something had brushed against the undercarriage! He felt it jar through the ship, though he saw nothing! A keen instinct of danger knifed through him. He tried instantly to zoom upward again, but again something struck the ship.

  This time it had been at the right wingtip, almost wrenching the wheel out of his hands. The plane dipped ground-ward sickeningly, like a wounded bird. With desperate strength, Crane straightened the craft just as the wheels touched ground.

  Bouncing badly, the plane rumbled over the rough terrain. It rolled almost to a stop, but abruptly struck something with a stunning impact, shivering through its entire length. Crane found himself thrown in a tangled heap with his two passengers on the tilted cabin floor.