by Ray Cummings
“Back!” Carter rasped still again. One of the robots was backing now; and the other shifted sidewise. And Carter murmured:
“Now, Dierdre—run—”
Run where? The thought struck at him as he and the girl ducked past the irresolute, wavering machine. And in that same second Carter realized that to run was an error. He had an instant’s glimpse of the small thin figure of Dynne, standing up on the little balcony bridge outside the control turret—Dynne with blazing eyes trying to subdue a metal monster that confronted him. And then he saw Dierdre and Carter; he turned, startled, shouted something. It gave the menacing robot an opportunity to lunge at him. Great mailed hand stabbing with its knife finger. Dynne went down with the knife-finger twisting in his heart.
And Dierdre had seen it. With Carter clutching at her as they ran, she stopped, stood staring at the figure of her dead father.
“Hurry—” Carter urged. “Run—”
Vaguely there was in his mind the idea they could get into some sleeping cubby—bar its door—
Humans in flight . . . Sign of weakness that suddenly brought three towering metal figures from the shadows of the side deck. Carter had no time to do more than thrust the girl behind him. He saw a metal arm swing up over his head. Its mailed fist crashed down; and for Carter all the world seemed to burst into a roaring white light. Then soundless empty darkness engulfed him as he was hurled into the abyss of unconsciousness—
CARTER’S next consciousness came with the dim knowledge that his head was still roaring. He felt himself lying on a metal floor-grid; his body was bathed in cold sweat; his hand fumbling at his head felt the blood which now was matted in his hair—
“All right. I’ll plot our course—Asteroid-40? Of course I know where it is. Get away from me, you damned thing, I’ll do what you tell me.”
The still weak and dizzy Carter recognized the voice. It was Swanson, the Starfield Queen’s Chief Navigator. Carter could see now that this was the interior of the little control turret. He was lying on its floor. Swanson sat at the control table, with a giant robot standing over him.
“Very good,” the robot’s hollow voice said. “I have orders—you plot our course for Asteroid-40.”
Weird scene here in the circular, starlit little turret. From the floor Carter could see a grewsome pile of dead human bodies thrown into the opposite corner—the First Officer; the Captain; and Dynne. Swanson, with blood on him, sat hunched in the navigating chair. And then Carter saw Dierdre. She was on a small metal bench across the turret—Dierdre, seemingly unharmed, her face pallid, her eyes wide with terror.
“Easy Carter—so you’re all right now? That’s good. Better not move too much.”
The voice was beside him; and as he turned, he saw, here on the floor, the thick, deformed body of James Torrington.
“They’ve got us, Carter—”
“Yes. So I see.”
Torrington was sitting hunched. His gargoyle face was blood-streaked but he was trying to smile.
“Better just lie quiet,” he murmured. “If we try to start anything, Dierdre will be killed. Thank heaven they seem to treat her decently enough, so far.”
The scene swayed before Carter as weakly he tried to lift himself on one elbow. Then he fell back, and for an instart his senses swooped again. Torrington murmured:
“You’ll be all right soon—but your friend Barry—I don’t know—”
Then Carter saw young Barry lying here, still unconscious, with blood streaming from a cut on his temple. Half a dozen of the murderous robots were here. It was obvious that there was no chance for any human to control them now. With set purpose, one ordering the other, they were beyond human direction. One stood over Swanson. Others were backed against the wall immobile—huge, grim metal statues, with swaying alert eye-beams roving the scene.
Carter was sitting up now. Dierdre, with relief on her strained pallid face, had tried to smile at him.
“You’re all right?” Carter murmured to her.
“Yes—oh, yes—don’t move too much—you might anger them.”
A figure appeared from the doorway of the adjoining chartroom. It was the ship’s robot-stewardess. Weird metal figure—narrow shouldered, with a round body fashioned like a woman blouse and knee-length skirt, with the tubular joined legs projecting beneath. She went to Dierdre.
“Come,” she said. “My orders—I have food for you.”
Dierdre hesitated, with a new terror on her face. Then the robot woman’s hand gripped her shoulder. “You come—I am saying.”
With impulsive protest Carter started to his feet. Two of the metal figures erect by die wall quivered into sudden movement. It was a tense second, pregnant with horrible action barely suppressed. And Torrington’s hand gripped Carter and drew him back.
“Easy!” Torrington whispered. “For God’s sake don’t start anything. If anyone could control them, I could—and I can’t!”
The robot woman led Dierdre away—Carter lay back, with his head still throbbing and aching as he listened to Torrington’s murmured words. The robots were in control of the ship. They had killed most of the officers and crew, and some of the passengers. All the humans who were living were here in the turret, or locked in some of the sleeping cubbies, with robots guarding them.
“Taking us—where?” Carter murmured. “Asteroid-40—what is that?”
It was, as Torrington understood, one of the many dark, uninhabited little worlds lying in the belt between Earth and Mars.
“I think it’s some five hundred miles in diameter—gravity about like Earth, because it’s amazingly dense. Totally uninhabited—just barren metallic rock. The captain said we’d pass fairly close to it, this voyage.”
Why were these murderous machines going to Asteroid-40? And was that what had happened to those other space-ships which had vanished? A robot world? These newly-built mechanisms—recruits on their way now to join the others in freedom?—Free machines; monsters turning upon their human masters to make them slaves?
Carter was murmuring something of the kind, and Torrington agreed. “Damned weird,” Torrington commented. “By God it is. But it must be something like that—”
TO CARTER that next hour was a blur of weakness and terror for Dierdre. Would that woman-robot treat her kindly? It was hardly like being in the hands of human criminals. Infinitely more terrifying, gruesome. These unhuman metal monsters. As Carter lay docile, with Torrington, watching them, he had the feeling of watching irrationality—as though here were monstrous insane things. Quiet now. Apparently with rational purpose. But at any instant, like maniacs, they might change—
Young Barry had recovered now. Like Carter, for a time he lay weak, confused. And then Carter and Torrington were telling him what had happened.
“Well, you’re right,” he murmured lugubriously. “My Gawd, I wouldn’t dare make a wrong move—”
An hour passed. Two hours. Grim, mechanical silence. There was just the occasional murmur of the robot who was directing Swanson. Uncanny, this lade of human movement; human talk—no thought of food or drink. No heed of the passage of time.
“You have the course right?” the robot at the control table said at last.
“Yes,” Swanson agreed. “Look here—do I sit here forever? I’m tired.”
“I have orders. Someone will come later.”
Orders. Carter remembered they had all said that. Orders, from whom? From what?
He and Torrington and Barry had found that they could move around a little now. Swanson’s assistant—a young fellow named Rolf—had been presently put in his place at the controls. Swanson was led away, to rest and be given food and drink.
Then Carter and Barry tried it. With Torrington they were allowed down into one of the superstructure corridors; shown which cubbies they could use.
But certainly there was no chance to do anything. At least twenty robots were here, scattered over the ship on guard; grim silent watchful figures everywhere. The sounds of t
he imprisoned passengers were audible; they were being guarded in the main lounge now.
“If we could get some weapons,” Torrington murmured once as they were seated down on the lower deck-triangle. “These robots here—let them guard you—we’ll see if they’ll let me get into the purser’s room. Might be some weapons there.”
He tried it. One of the robot guards here on the deck growled with rasping voice; but Torrington said casually: “Orders—” Then he ducked into the ship’s corridor. These ghastly, unpredictable machines! One of the guards here instantly clanked into the corridor. There was the faint sound of a rumbling mechanical voice; and then Torrington’s human scream—scream of wild, futile command—the clanking of robot footsteps. And then Torrington’s scream of human agony.
The white-faced, numbed Carter and Barry had no time to try and do anything, even if they had dared chance it. The guards here, shaking with deranged excitement, stood over them menacingly. From up by the turret other guards came clanking.
Then a mechanical voice was shouting: “Thor comes! Thor comes with more orders! Take those men to the turret!”
Thor! From the control turret floor, where Carter and Barry had been carried and thrown, they stared up at the huge robot which now was entering. Great golden body-case almost seven feet tall. The light glinted on its polished surface with a yellow sheen. Wide square shoulders, square body, with massive jointed legs. Head and face oblong, with the head protruding upward where the golden plates were carved into an ornate kingly headdress.
Thor the King! Here was no Dynne robot. Was this towering giant, golden machine the product of some other Earth factory? Or from some robot factory of Venus? Or Mars? Five hundred thousand gold-dollars or more, such a mechanism would cost.
Or was it the product of the robots themselves? The creation of their own mechanical genius! Carter shuddered at the weird thought. Machines in a sense thus to propagate themselves! Ghastly conception.
But that here was a super machine, beyond anything Carter and Barry had ever imagined, was at once obvious. Deranged, rebellious mechanism—it was surely that if it had been built by human genius. But the irresoluteness of the others seemed to be missing here. It was as though this one were built for command. By its looks, its voice, all the surety of its purposeful movements, it was obviously master.
It came now into the turret; stood with its greenish-red eyebeams gazing at its fellow machines who backed before its advance. Carter stared up at its burnished golden breastplates. There was no serial number on the nameplate beside the ornate fuse-box. No manufacturer’s insignia. But the name. Thor was engraved in great scroll letters.
“Stand up,” Thor said suddenly. Kingly man-robot. Carter could only think of him as masculine. The huge mailed burnished hand went out with a kingly gesture of command to the two humans on the floor at his feet. “Stand up, humans,” he repeated.
They stood before him. Impassive metal face. It was engraven into a mask of pseudo-human form; more human than the box-like countenances of the others, for here was modeled cheeks and a nose, hawk-like, high-bridged, and a wide, grim mouth of cruelty. Lips set in carved metal, permanently to be smiling with a faint ironic smile.
His eyebeams glittered on Carter and Barry. Carter seemed almost to feel the electronic heat of their green-red stare.
“You will say, ‘I give you service, great Thor,’ ” he intoned.
They said it obediently.
“That is right.” There was satisfaction in the hollow tones of the flexible mechanical voice. “I think you will be obedient. And I think you will be able to help us Mechanoids—when we get to our world.”
“Where is that?” Carter demanded. “And what has happened to Dierdre Dynne? We want to see her.”
“So you are not afraid to question me? She is safe. You will be fed now. Thor has never harmed a human who caused no trouble.”
TO Carter the rest of that little space journey was weird, terrifying in the extreme. By Earth routine it could have been another day and a half. The putty-colored little dot which he and young Barry realized now was Asteroid-40 had visibly enlarged. A huge round disc, vaguely mottled with the blurred outlines of the cloud masses of its atmosphere. And then as it grew to fill a full quarter of the heavens, through cloud-rifts the sunlight showed brightening the ragged tops of its great metal mountains.
Carter and Barry now were given even more freedom of movement. But wherever they went, a silent robot guard stalked watchfully with them. Once they were able to get near the Purser’s empty little cubby. No weapons seemed here. On the floor, a gruesome red-brown dried stain seemed mute evidence of the deformed James Torrington. But the body was gone.
Much of the time they spent in the control turret where the golden robot, Thor, nearly always was by the control • table. And Dierdre too, was allowed here now. Occasionally she had a chance to whisper to Carter. The little stewardess-robot was keeping her locked in one of the cubbies. Feeding her; ministering to her; treating her properly enough. But there was once that Dierdre whispered:
“But George—that Thor—I—I’m so afraid of it. Something—so horribly weird—”
She had no time to add more. Thor saw them whispering. Rage seemed to dart from the red-green eyebeams. “You—human girl—you come here by me.” And then the voice weirdly softened. “You are not afraid of me, are you? That should never be. Thor would not harm you.”
It made Carter’s heart pound. What ghastly necromancy was this? Giant golden-cased conglomeration of machinery—intricate scrolls of electroidal memory-thoughts, emotion-thoughts, deduction-combinators mechanically to select actions and reactions from given combinations of impulses—all that Carter could at least vaguely understand. All that—just one of the seeming miracles of man’s genius in the building of an intricate machine. But here seemed something else. As though in truth this golden Thor in some horrible way had crossed the border—had become something more than a machine.
Then at last the ball of Asteroid-40 had grown to fill all the forward firmament. And then the spaceship was slackening, with repulsion in its hull gravity plates to check its fall as it eased down through the planet’s heavy atmosphere.
In the control turret, Carter and Barry sat tense. Dierdre as always now, was huddled on the little bench, with the huge yellow burnished form of Thor standing beside her. For hours at a time, all the Robots stood impassive; weird statues of tireless mechanical patience.
“Listen,” Barry whispered suddenly.
“That stewardess-robot—she gets pretty confused when you glare at her. And that Tom-4—remember him?”
“What about him?” Carter murmured. “He’s generally down on the stem-deck, isn’t he?”
“Sure. Been standing there for forty-eight hours. Well, listen—I got down there alone a while ago. Tried some commands on him.” Barry’s whisper was tense, vehement. “He gets more than confused. He’ll obey, if you go at him hard enough.”
If, while they were disembarking, they could get Tom-4 to oppose the other robots—or to trick them—and then if they could seize Dierdre, get her back into the ship, and escape.
Futile plans. Thor called suddenly: “You come here by me—human-Carter—human-Barry. You stay here by me.”
THE Starfield Queen had burst below the clouds now;, the gray-black mountainous landscape of the little asteroid lay spread in a dim tumbled waste. Bleak, barren metal rocks; huge tiers of ragged, naked mountains. For an hour, slanting down, the ship dropped lower. It was a wildly desolate surface, ragged as though split by some titanic cataclysm of nature. It was night now in this hemisphere—night of dim blurred starlight overhead, with starshine on the metallic mountain peaks.
“My world—my city of Mechana,” Thor’s voice murmured. “The city I built. Thor—master of all you will see.” The robot’s red-green electronic eyebeams suddenly were bathing little Dierdre in their lurid glow. “Mechana—for Thor—and for you, Dierdre? You would like that, wouldn’t you?”
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The great glistening golden face of the robot was impassive; but the eyebeams seemed to quiver with an intensity of glow. Dierdre was shuddering; but she stammered, “Why—why, yes, great Thor. That’s very nice. I want to see it.”
“And Thor will show you. And feed you—and keep you warm when the air is cold. Because you are only human—you need such great care.”
Gruesome, horrible, hollow-toned words. So suddenly gentle—
Carter and Barry were still tensely alert, watchful for the least possibility of escape. But it was futile. None came.
They were the only humans here now in the turret, save Swanson who was at die controls to make the landing. And presently Dierdre, Carter and Barry were herded down into the lower corridor. They could hear the frightened voices of the imprisoned humans and the hollow-toned commands of the robot-guards with them, making them ready for disembarking.
And then the Starfield Queen was landed. The lower exit door clanked open. With it came a rush of heavy, strange air; and a blur of clanking sounds. Grinding, pounding thuds—the whirring roar of whirling wheels; clanking grinding of gears. The voice of Mechana.
The giant Thor was shoving them forward. With the others Carter stumbled out and down the landing incline. Out into a red and yellow glare, and the clanking, thumping sounds of machinery—Mechana, city of the robots. At the bottom of the incline Carter stood numbed, amazed by the weirdness of the scene.
CHAPTER III
Empire of the Machines
THE red-yellow glare at first was blinding. Then the dim weird outlines of the scene began taking form. The spaceship rested here on a small open rock-space. A hundred feet or so away, to the right, there was a huddled group of metal structures. A factory, belching turgid smoke, illumined by the glare. The machine sounds came from there—a clanking, harsh cacophony of hissing, thumping jangle.
