by Earl
Thorg listened to our tete-a-tete with sharp interest.
“I take it the human race hates your race. They have tried to exterminate you? How many of you are there?”
“We are not as numerous as the humans,” I bluffed. “But we are far stronger, and hold our own easily. We have atomic-weapons. More than once we decided not to exterminate the humans, as we easily could have.”
“A little soft-hearted,” Thorg scoffed. But behind that was a deep respect for our avowed power. “You are scientific?”
I waved around.
“This dome is made of stable chain-carbon molecules compressed together so that they touch, isn’t it? It is far stronger than porous metal. We have a weapon that can pierce it—vibration!”
Thorg started. The deductions had struck home. He was visibly impressed. By what I left unsaid, he could only assume that our “race” was able to resist humans—and the aliens too.
“Perhaps your race and mine can make a pact?” Thorg said cautiously. “Will you help us defeat the humans and enslave them?”
At that moment, I felt that the universe held its breath.
The decision was plain before me. It meant a complete reversal of loyalty. Champions of the human race we had been an hour before. Betrayers of the human race we would be now, if we accepted. The aliens were realistic-minded. They would give robots a place alongside them, on conquered Earth, realizing their worth and special abilities. They would not label us Frankensteins!
Humans had rejected me and my coming race. These aliens wouldn’t. The decision was plain.
“What are your terms?” I asked.
“Complete and equal mastery over humans, along with us,” Chief Thorg answered. “Definite terms will be agreed upon later, according to what parts of this planet you control, and what help you give.”
“Good enough,” I agreed. “As emissaries of our race, we will come to terms. But first, tell us who you are, where you are from, and what your plans are.”
THORG’S story was strange and impelling. Again I have no proof of it. It will ring falsely, fantastically, to your stunted human minds that still arrogantly believe that in all the mighty universe, only Earth was given life, and only man was given divine intelligence.
Eve and I waited breathlessly to hear his story. We had stepped out of the normal world and into this dome. With shock, we had laid eyes on the first alien beings ever to visit Earth. Curiosity consumed us, as to their origin and history.
“You are from Jupiter?” I asked. “The largest planet?”
Thorg shook his great horned head.
“We are from the star I think you call Sirius!”
Eve and I absorbed the shock of that. Not only were they from beyond Earth, but from beyond the Solar System. They were from another star!
“That’s only logical,” I said then. “Jupiter is frigidly cold, and probably has no breathable atmosphere. The other planets are likewise ill-adapted for life. It’s likely that at all suns with a family of planets, only one or two have the right conditions to support life.”
Thorg gave me a glance of respect for the deduction.
“Sound reasoning,” he said. Our sun too has a family of planets—twelve. Only one supported life, our planet Korlo. Perhaps 25,000 of your Earth-years ago, our race achieved civilization and science. We passed through the Metal Age more than 10,000 years ago. Now we are in the plastic Age, manipulating matter and energy at will.
“A hundred years ago we achieved space ships, and colonized all our planets. Then, very recently, we cast our eyes out into the great void, swarming with stars. Our destiny lay out there, building an interstellar empire.”
I nodded. Intelligence is restless. It ever seeks new worlds to conquer.
“Nearest to Sirius lay this sun, with a family of planets,” Thorg resumed.
“Powerful telescopes resolved the satellites, and this expedition was launched.”
“Sirius is eight and one-half light years away,” I said. “How long did it take you to arrive?”
“Seventeen of your years,” Thorg informed. “Since we achieved half the speed of light.”
Seventeen years in space! Eve and I marveled not at the time, but at the speed. Building up a velocity of 93,000 miles a second was no small feat.
“THIS has all been a great adventure,” Thorg continued, his heavy, saturnine face lighting up. “Two other ships were previously dispatched to Earth, and were never heard from again. Either their engines failed in space, or they struck large, wandering meteors. This is the first ship to arrive. But now that the trail has been blazed, others will follow!”
He pointed to the great searchlight. “This was built as a signal-light for our scouting aircraft, which we brought disassembled. But also for Ship Two to land near us. Two ships were sent on this expedition, a month apart. If one failed to arrive, the other might. But both won through without mishap. Ship Two is passing Pluto now. We will shine the light tonight. Ship Two will land beside the dome.”
“Only two ships were sent to conquer Earth?” I asked dubiously. “The humans are many. It might take years to beat them to submission.”
“We realize it is not a small job, though assured for us,” Thorg returned. “No, not just two ships. Now that we have successfully arrived and scouted Earth, the main forces will follow.”
He pointed to the giant transmitter, which busy workmen were hurrying to completion.
“It will be finished tonight, too. Then a message will be hurled back to our home planet.”
“It will take eight and one-half years to arrive!” I pointed out.
“One hour,” Thorg contradicted. “This is our long-range radio. It will project impulses through the sub-ether, at almost an instantaneous rate. The message will reach Sirius in an hour, telling of our success. Then a waiting armada will be dispatched. A hundred more ships. With those reinforcements, we’ll conquer humanity overnight, when they arrive!”
It would not be for seventeen years. But in that time these first arrivals would consolidate their position, and scout Earth till they knew every city and gun and factory. When the time came for action it would be an overnight conquest.
“Good!” I said enthusiastically. “I see you have laid sound plans. I am glad to ally myself and my race with you of Sirius. You are making interstellar history. You are a great race! Bridging the void alone is a mighty achievement. The human race does not even have one space ship!”
“Would you like to see ours?” Thorg said proudly. “Come, I’ll show it to you. But first—”
Without finishing the sentence, he led us to the prison room.
CHAPTER VII
Battle in the Dome
“WE ARE realists,” Thorg said bluntly. “I need one proof of your pledge to our cause. Mog, bring out a human!”
Mog unlocked the prison door and pulled a man out by the arm. It was Captain Taylor.
“Kill him before my eyes, Adam Link!” Chief Thorg said.
I looked around. The tableau seemed to freeze. Thorg and Mog watched me narrowly, to see if I would kill the humans I avowed were my enemies. The men in the cage stared in frozen silence. Eve turned away a little. For all our decision, it would not be an easy thing to do.
Stonily, I strode to Captain Taylor. I placed my two hands around his neck, slowly squeezing. That would be best, strangulation. But I hesitated.
“Go ahead, Frankenstein!” Taylor taunted me, without flinching. “Surely the life of a mere man isn’t going to stand in your—”
I clipped off the bitter denunciation. I squeezed. Taylor’s face went purple. A moment later I dropped the limp body.
Chief Thorg clapped me on the back.
“You’re with us all right, Adam Link! Mog, throw the corpse back in prison, so that the humans can mourn over their leader. Come, Adam Link. I’ll show you our space ship.”
When we arrived at the underground hangar, I did not tell Thorg that I had seen it once before. He might wonder why
I had spied first, before joining him. I did not want our newly-formed alliance to be riddled with useless, unimportant suspicions. That was of the past, anyway, when I had been the thankless champion of humanity.
Workmen were there, just starting to dismantle the ship.
“Since we contacted Ship Two,” Thorg explained, “we have no need for this ship, for emergency. We are getting rid of it. This underground space will be converted into barracks for the new arrivals.”
He conducted us through the ship, explaining its various features.
“The space trip was not easy,” he related. “Acceleration for a year produced a terrible ache in our bones and organs. Then, coasting for fifteen years, we had little to do but think back and think ahead. One man went mad, and was exterminated. Then deceleration for a year again. Arriving on Earth, we were half dead.
“But recuperation was quick, in Earth’s light gravity. Our world is about Jupiter’s size. We are used to three times more gravity than this. We feel light as a feather here. And it makes us proportionately stronger, far stronger than humans.”
He was looking at me suddenly. “You are strong, too, as Mog found out. Are you stronger than we are?”
“Perhaps a little,” I laughed. “Tell me more of the ship. It intrigues me. How does the engine operate?”
“Thought-control,” Thorg answered briefly. “As with our guns.”
I GLANCED at Eve ruefully. Before, looking at the intricate engine, we had wondered how it operated. We had not thought of the mental-control, though that was so obvious.
A group of workmen passed us, approaching the engine.
“Careful while you dismantle it!” Thorg warned them. “It has its own power-plant. The power is still in the coils. Mog, you go and turn off all the switches first, so there won’t be any accidents.”
I glanced at Eve again. Powder was still on, in the ship. If we had known that when first seeing it, and guessed at the thought-control, we might then have accomplished our original mission. But that was while we were still champions of humanity.
“I’ve wanted to ask you a question, Thorg—” I began, when a messenger came running from above. He thrust something in his chief’s hands.
“What is this?” Thorg asked. “You are from the dissection room. Why are you so excited?”
“These are X-ray prints!” the other Sirian gasped. “They show—”
He held them out mutely. The prints would speak for themselves.
I knew what they showed. They showed a seeming human body, lying flat, all its insides revealed to the X-ray’s penetrative eye. They showed wires, wheels and cogs!
I tensed, as Thorg began looking them over. What would his reaction be, knowing us at last for robots? Beings more alien to him than even humans!
“My question is this, Thorg,” I went on imperturbably, as though ignoring the interruption as something unimportant. “If you failed to send the long-range radio message back to Sirius, would the follow-up armada come anyway?”
“No,” Thorg said abstractly, looking over the prints with a puzzled eye. “Receiving no message, our people would assume we had been lost. Sending these ships is a costly proposition. They would give up coming to this sun at all, then, and try some other star.”
“Thanks, Thorg!” I said. “That’s all I wanted to know!”
“WHAT?” he said, still absorbed in studying the prints. Suddenly his eyes blinked, as the significance of the X-rays struck home. He looked up.
“You are a robot!” he accused. “A mechanical being!”
“Sure,” I agreed. I went on rapidly. “You wanted to know how strong I was before. I’ll show you—now!”
My fist drove into his face, with all the power of a machine behind it. Thorg’s giant form toppled over backward, turning three somersaults, his horns and hooves alternately clacking on the floor.
“The engine, Eve!” I yelled. “Before they touch it!”
Mog and his workmen had turned, at the swift, bewildering attack on their chief. There were twenty of them. Twenty of the towering giant monsters between us and the engine. They stood only a moment, as Eve and I bore down on them like express trains. Then they jerked out their guns.
The paralysis-rays went through us harmlessly. They had forgotten. But now Mog, aware of their uselessness, had drawn his other weapon. It was the one unknown factor left. Would it blast, like their cannon, blowing even metal to atoms?
“If he gets one of us, Eve,” I told her swiftly without slackening pace, “the other goes on. You know what to do—”
Eve nodded.
Mog fired. The electrical bolt leaped to my body, with an impact that made me stumble. But it did no more than knock plastic off and scorch the metal. It was a hand-weapon designed to blast human flesh, or Sirian flesh, but not hard metal.
Mog stared in disbelief, as I came on unharmed. Then he fired again and again, blindly, at both of us. The other Sirians too. Bolt after bolt ripped into us. Our plastic burned and melted away.
One shot tore away my artificial ears and lips and hair-wig. My true metal face shone forth.
It takes long to tell this. But it was only seconds while we leaped toward them in great bounds. I try to imagine at times how profoundly astonished the Sirians must have been. Two seeming humans coming at them, changing under the blasts to two gleaming, powerful monsters of metal!
“Robots!” one of the Sirians screeched. “Intelligent machines—”
Then I was among them.
I cracked the first one on the skull so hard he sank without a groan, dead. I snapped the second one’s neck with one sledge-hammer rabbit punch. I grabbed two necks and cracked their heads together, flinging the limp bodies aside. Giants they were, half again as high as I was, but I pulled them down to my level for blows. Eve was beside me, punching with the rapidity of a rivet-hammer. And with all its horsepower.
It was a grand fight. A soul-satisfying fight. With each blow, I hissed the name of one of the prisoners who had gone to the dissection room. With each death, I counted one Earth plane pilot paid for.
GIANTS they were, hulking monsters of incredible strength. But they had no chance. Their blows against us served only to break their arms. They kicked viciously with their hooves, and howled in pain as the ankle-bone went numb or snapped. They stooped and butted with their short, wicked horns, and succeeded only in stunning their brains. In turn, Eve and I butted with our metal skulls, at times, with enough force to cave in a chest with the muffled sound of cracking ribs.
Eve and I were at last exerting our full mechanical fury, against which no biological being could stand unless it might be a dinosaur. The Sirians were gigantic and strong, yes, alongside humans. But to us they were overgrown rag dummies.
It was a glorious fight. The hulking behemoths went down steadily.
“Come on, you Sirian thugs!” I yelled. “Meet Adam Link, the robot. My wife, Eve. Pleased to kill you!”
The last two tried to flee, shrieking, from the two beserk metal whirlwinds. I overtook one. Eve caught the other. We swung them around our heads, by their heels, banging them together till they were bloody broken shreds. We were laughing, shrieking in joy.
I cannot explain this orgy, except that all our pent-up hatred and rage and revulsion against the Sirians had come to a head. It is like a human stamping again and again on a snake with boots, long after it is dead, with overcharged hatred.
OUR shrieking stopped, as a sound penetrated to our ears. It was a hissing bolt-blast, followed by a tinkling crash.
“We forgot Mog!” Eve yelled. “He’s at the engine, smashing the controls!”
I was already leaping to the front of the ship, where Mog was aiming his second blast among the drive-apparatus. I jerked the gun away, so that the blast sped harmlessly against the hull. Mog whirled with a snarl of rage and fear.
“Twice before we battled, Mog,” I said, “without coming to a decision. Now—”
It was brief. I grabbed up his nine-
foot body like that of a child. I bent him across my chest, as once he had brutally bent a human across his. I slowly pulled as he screamed in pain. The scream clipped off as a sharp snap told of his spine breaking like a twig. I tossed the corpse aside.
I looked around. All the Sirians down here were dead.
Except one.
“Look!” Eve pointed. “Thorg recovered!”
I had not killed Thorg, only dealt him a blow. He had crawled to the door and dashed through it, escaping.
“Let him go,” I said. “Let him tell his men of the two metal demons who will defeat them. And we will, now that we have this ship. We know how to run it now—by thought-control!” Eve and I clasped hands happily. It was the last factor in the plan that had slowly shaped in my mind during the spying.
“Good job you did, Eve,” I commended her sincerely. “Acting the part so superbly of turning against the human race, for the benefit of the Sirians. You even had me fooled for a while!”
“And you had me worried!” Eve returned, sighing in relief. “For a while I thought you might actually mean it! Especially when you took poor Captain Taylor and. . . but you had to do it.” I laughed.
“Taylor isn’t dead,” I said. “I didn’t strangle him. I slipped a finger over a vertebra below the back of his neck and pressed hard. You know the delicate nerve there. Pressed or knocked, it renders the victim unconscious. But not dead. Taylor’s alive.”
“Adam, you darling!” Eve said. “Our hands are clean after all. Now—” She was interrupted by the sound of clattering hooves down the corridor, approaching this underground hangar.
“No time to lose,” I said hurriedly. “All we have to do now is start this ship’s engine and—”
I SLIPPED the thought-helmet over my head.
“Come to life—start—operate!” I commanded mentally in a dozen different ways.
There was no reaction from the mighty engine. I tried vainly for another minute. At the gun, my merest thought had swung it, aimed it, fired it. What more was needed here? Eve clutched my arm, pointing. “Mog fired one shot at the controls. Look there—he damaged it!”
