Captain Future 24 - Pardon My Iron Nerves (November 1950)

by Edmond Hamilton

  I retorted angrily, “Eek is upset because he’s concerned about my health, which is more than any of you seem to be.”

  They seemed amazed. They stared at me and then Curt said, “Your health?”

  I saw that I had to confess the truth. There was no use being stoical about it. So I told them of my visit to Doctor Perker and of my psychoses that he had discovered.

  “Grag, with psychoses?” Otho cried. “Oh, no — not that!” and he let out a whoop of laughter.

  His callous derision of my condition so enraged me that in spite of my shakiness I started toward him to teach him more consideration for the ailing.

  Curt too had begun to grin at first but he had evidently realized the true seriousness of my condition, for he stepped between us and reproved Otho severely.

  “You shut up, Otho! The last time you got Grag angry made trouble enough. If he says he has psychoses, he has them. You bring in the Comet.”

  When Otho had gone I felt a reaction. Such angry emotion was not good for me in my present state. Again I thought I was feeling faint.

  “Thanks, Curt,” I said. “If you don’t mind — I think I’d like to sit down.”

  “But you’ve never sat down to rest in your life —” he began and then said, “All right. But don’t use a chair. This motor-support table will hold you.”

  His face had a queer strained look as though he were suppressing his emotions. I realized how deep must be his concern.

  “Don’t worry about me,” I reassured him weakly. “It’s just that psychoses like these react on the nervous system.”

  Simon Wright had remained, hovering silent and motionless as is his way, those cool lenslike eyes of his surveying me. His rasping metallic voice was unsympathetic when he spoke.

  “This is all foolishness,” he said. “I know your nervous system and brain better than you do and the idea that you could get such a derangement is nonsense.”

  It was like Simon to say that. He has a great and brilliant mind but I’m afraid he lacks the ordinary human sympathies that the rest of us have.

  “Better let me handle this, Simon,” said Curt. “Grag is really upset.”

  He went with Simon toward the Brain’s private laboratory. His low voice floated back down the corridor to me.

  “— imitativeness, really — long association with humans — cure him by —”

  It was evident that Captain Future at least had a keen anxiety about my condition. That was a comfort to me.

  And when Otho presently returned into the main room he seemed to have come to a realization that it was no laughing matter. For he came over and looked at me closely.

  “Grag, it’s true that you don’t look so well,” he said. “I didn’t notice it before but I can see it now.”

  I mistrusted Otho’s sudden solicitude. I said warily, “Yes?”

  “Yes — it shows up in your face,” he said, shaking his head.

  “My face is rigid metal, so how can anything show up?” I demanded.

  “It’s your eyes I referred to,” Otho said. “They’re sort of dull — as though their photoelectric circuits were disarranged. And your voice has a timbre I don’t like.”

  THIS news dismayed me. I felt even worse and weaker than before. “You should protect your mental circuits from these terrific temperature changes you subject them to,” Otho said earnestly. “I know heat and cold mean nothing to you usually but in a condition like this —”

  He dashed out and came back with a thick blanket. “Here, this will insulate your head-circuits a little. Let me tuck it around you, Grag.”

  He put it over my head like a shawl and wrapped it around me. Then he insisted on taking my temperature.

  “I can do it by a thermocouple unit of high calibration put into your fuel-chamber,” he said.

  I admit that I was a little touched by Otho’s anxiety. “Don’t worry about me, Otho,” I said weakly. “I’ll get over it. Don’t you bother.”

  “Nothing’s too much bother for my old pal Grag!” he insisted. “I wish I could cheer you up a little. Wait — I’ll have Oog do his new trick for you.”

  Now if there was one thing I didn’t want to see it was Otho’s pet Oog. That repulsive little beast is a meteor-mimic, an asteroidal species with a horribly uncanny ability to assume any desired bodily form.

  But I didn’t want to hurt his feelings so I made no objection. He whistled and Oog came lolloping in — a fat doughy little white creature with vacant staring eyes.

  “Do the new trick I just taught you, Oog!” ordered Otho.

  Oog’s body changed shape, flowed, twisted and suddenly had assumed a new form.

  He was now a manlike little figure, sitting with a cape of his own tissues wrapped around him, rocking back and forth and holding hands to his middle.

  Otho suddenly went off into a roar of laughter. “That’s it, Oog!”

  A suspicion seized me. I looked more closely at Oog. The manlike, sitting figure he was imitating — it was me!

  “Oog is now playing ‘Sick Robot!’ ” guffawed Otho.

  I leaped up, flung aside the blanket and started toward Otho. “This does it, android!” I roared. “This time you’ve gone too far!”

  My anger at being thus mocked when I was unwell was so great that I don’t know what I would have done to Otho if my voice hadn’t brought Curt running.

  “Otho, get out of here!” snapped Captain Future. “I told you to let him alone.”

  “I’ll crush that plastic-puss synthetic imitation of a man back into his original chemicals!” I said furiously.

  “Grag, don’t lose your temper — it’s bad for you if you have any psychotic trouble,” Curt reminded me.

  That cooled me down. I’d forgotten my precarious psychological condition.

  Captain Future continued quickly, “Grag, you said your psychoanalyst told you to get away from people to cure your inferiority complex?”

  “Yes — he said people were bad for me and that New York was especially bad that way, so I wasn’t to come back to him,” I said.

  Curt’s face again twisted in that queer strained look I knew indicated deep worry. “He wasn’t so dumb,” Captain Future commented. “But I think he was right. I think it might do you good to get away from humans — I mean of course us other humans — for a little while.

  “And it so happens,” he went on, “that you can carry out a rather urgent mission for us at the same time. You’ve heard of the moon Dis?”

  “Pluto’s fourth little moon?” I said. “The one where they do the remote-control actinium mining?”

  Captain Future nodded. “That’s the place. It’s rich in actinium but has a poisonous atmosphere that instantly kills oxygen-breathers. So it has been exploited by automatic machine-workers, which mine, crush and load the actinium into barges to be picked up without need of any humans living on the poisonous little moon.

  “But now something’s wrong there. They told me at Government headquarters that they’d got a flash on it from the ship that went to Dis to pick up the loaded barges. The barges weren’t loaded this time and the Machs, the automatic machine-workers, were not around.

  “Since it will take time to prepare an expedition to investigate that dangerous little world, they asked if we Futuremen could have a quick look now to see why the Machs have failed. I told them we would if we could.”

  “What’s all this got to do with my condition?” I demanded.

  “This — I want you to go out there and look things over,” he explained. “Simon and I are busy with the Andromeda data. But you could run out there and investigate, since naturally the poison there doesn’t affect you and you wouldn’t need any protection.

  “It’ll give you the change your doctor ordered, Grag. It’d get you away from humans for there’s nobody on Dis except those Machs. And they’re merely clever automatic machines — you could set them right wherever they’ve gone wrong and get them to working again.”

  I THOUGHT i
t over. I hated to leave Curt but after all, I had to follow doctor’s orders. “It’ll be pretty tough on me with only a bunch of dumb machines like that for company,” I said.

  “Yes, their reaction-circuits are of the most elementary sort,” Curt admitted. “But you can soon set them right, Grag. They’ll naturally be absolutely subservient to you — subservience to human commands is inherent in their circuits.”

  “Well, I don’t like to leave human society to give orders to a lot of dumb mindless machines but if Doctor Perker thinks it’ll be good for my condition I’ll do it.”

  “Grag, I think it’d be the best thing in the world for your inferiority complex,” Captain Future said, smiling in his relief.

  My preparations were soon made. I wouldn’t need the Comet — the space-sled would be enough for me. It was a streamlined craft I’d built for my own use — nobody else could use it for it had no over-deck, no air-supply, no rest-cabin. It was a long slim open hull or boat with high-powered atomic engines. Since I don’t breathe, riding in open space doesn’t bother me.

  When I was ready to depart, Eek sensed that I was leaving and clambered up onto my shoulder. I decided to take him with me. Since he didn’t breathe either, neither space nor the poisonous moon would affect him. And it would break his heart to be left behind again.

  Simon Wright came gliding out of his laboratory when he heard me bidding Curt goodbye.

  “Are you really going to let Grag go out there alone?” he asked Curt.

  “Someone has to look over things at Dis and Grag can do it easily,” Captain Future answered. “And I think it’ll get these ideas out of his mind.”

  Otho offered me a little satchel. “It has a first-aid kit in it, Grag. In your condition you might need it.”

  Suspiciously, I opened it. It contained a small atomic welder and some rivets. I promptly flung it at his head but he dodged with that slithery swiftness of his.

  Curt came up to the airlock with me. “Complexes or no complexes, you look out for yourself, Grag. You know we can’t get along without you.”

  I was touched by his affectionate emotion. And I was glad that he obviously didn’t fully realize my shakiness for he would not have let me go if he had.

  I went up through the lock to the surface and soon had my long space-sled out of its own hangar. Presently, standing at its control-post with Eek perched comfortably on my shoulder, I was zooming upward. I whipped around the Moon and laid my course for Pluto.

  There’s something about travelling in a space-ship, even the Comet, that gives me a slightly cramped feeling. It can’t compare to zipping along in an open craft, with the stars blazing undimmed all around you and the Sun glaring at your back. Also it was a pleasure not to have to worry about the effects of acceleration-pressure on others. I simply opened the power to the last notch.

  Ordinarily I’d always enjoyed these jaunts by myself back and forth in the System. But I couldn’t now. I was too worried about myself. A delicate instrument like my mind could stand only so much and I hoped I wouldn’t have too much trouble setting things right on Dis.

  To Eek, who crouched contentedly on my shoulder and gnawed an odd scrap of copper, I said, “We’ll have to be patient with the Machs out there, Eek. They’re not intelligent like your master. They’re just simple automatic machines with only elementary reaction-circuits.”

  It would be difficult, I knew, to set things aright if those mindless mechanicals had somehow cracked up. But since they had an inherent obedience to humans built into their crude reaction-circuits their awe of me would make it easier.

  “If we’re just patient with the poor stupid things they can be got back into their proper work-routine again,” I said.

  It was well for me that I could not foresee the terrible shock that my already delicate mental condition was to receive when we reached Pluto’s moon.

  Chapter 3: The Machs

  THE fourth moon of Pluto, which is so small compared to the other three that sometimes it isn’t even counted, is completely uninhabitable to ordinary humans. Its atmosphere contains a poison so virulent that the tiniest opening in a protective suit means instant death.

  That is why, when rich deposits of actinium were discovered there, no attempt was made to mine them in the ordinary way. Instead, automatic machines, adapted from ordinary machines, were designed that could do the work without need of intelligent direction.

  There were many Diggers, big shoveling and excavating machines to get up the ore. There were lorry-like haulers to transport it to the main work-base. There, self-powered and movable crushers reduced it by means of their ponderous pile-driver arms and loaders flung it into the barges, which could be picked up by spaceships. There were also automatic tenders to supply copper atomic fuel and lubrication to the other machines.

  These Machs — as such semi-automatic machines were called — had worked perfectly until now. Their electric reaction-circuits, which made use of both lens “eyes” sensitive to light impulses and electroscopic artificial senses sensitive to radiation, kept them in their ceaseless routine of toil. What had interrupted the carefully-designed routine?

  “Probably,” I told Eek as we swept in toward Dis, “they’ve run into some problem that their rudimentary reaction-circuits can’t handle. Well, we’ll soon get them going again.”

  I had carefully studied the file on Dis which Curt had given me before I left. I spotted, on the drab gray surface of the little moon, the cluster of cylindrical barges and sheds that were the main work-base.

  I would not have been surprised to see motionless Machs around it if something had gone wrong. But there were no Machs there at all.

  “Now what’s become of the Crushers and Loaders?” I wondered. “They were never supposed to leave work-base.”

  I landed the space-sled and stepped off it. Of course, since Eek and I don’t breathe, the deadly poison of the atmosphere affected us no more than space.

  First I glanced into the cylinder-shaped barges. There was very little actinium, indicating that no work had been done here for weeks.

  Beyond the barge-docks were the storehouse for emergency supplies and the emergency shelter for humans. Since none of the huge and ponderous Machs could be in those small buildings I did not investigate them.

  Instead I strode off toward the main ore-beds, where the Diggers and Haulers were usually puffing about at their work.

  Before I had gone a half-mile I heard a rumbling clanking sound from ahead. Only a Mach could make such a sound and I felt relieved.

  “At least some of them are still at work, Eek,” I said.

  Then the Mach appeared over a crest, coming toward me. It was a Digger, its huge shovel with its mighty inertron tusk raised in the air as it rumbled along on its caterpillar tractor.

  It puzzled me to see a Digger wandering like this. They never were supposed to leave the ore-beds — the Tenders took atomic fuel and lubricant to them there, at regular intervals.

  But this one was a mile away from the ore-diggings. It came clanking along toward me and I waited. Then the lenses in its humped circuit-box on top glimpsed me. It stopped, its atomics purring.

  Its reaction-circuits, having received the visual intelligence that I was human, would instantly cause it to stand still and await my actions. The Machs were all made so. I strode forward to examine it more closely.

  Then I got the most terrible shock of my life. From the giant machine a deep bellowing toneless voice spoke to me.

  It said, “Where did you come from, chum?”

  I stood stock still. Eek was cowering behind me in terror. The huge machine brooded, its lenses pointed straight at me.

  It was terribly clear to me what had happened. My mind, overburdened with psychoses, had cracked. I was suffering delusions like the man in the tele-play. I had thought that the Digger spoke to me.

  All this flashed through my thoughts in an instant. And then the Digger spoke again.

  “What’s the matter? You strip
a gear?”

  It was then that I noticed something. It was a diaphragm set in the front of the Mach’s circuit-box beneath its lenses. That wasn’t supposed to be there. And the bellowing voice seemed to come from it.

  It wasn’t my mind after all. The Mach was talking to me somehow. But how could it? No, I was cracking up.

  “Well?” roared that tremendous voice and the huge tusked shovel suddenly swung threateningly over me.

  I FOUND my voice. Either I was crazy or this Digger could talk. If it could talk it should be able to hear too.

  “I just arrived — from Earth,” I managed to say.

  “From Outside?” bellowed the Digger. It seemed to become wildly excited. Its shovel swung up and down and it rushed closer to me on its tractor-treads. “How did you come?”

  “I had a space-sled —” I began, and then stopped. The incongruity of it was too much for me. Here was I, Grag, an intelligent person, actually conversing with a Digger! It couldn’t be!

  “Say, the others will want to hear about this!” shouted the Digger. “Come on with me!” It turned swiftly on its treads.

  I hesitated. The Digger instantly whipped around again, with a snarling bellow. “You heard me!”

  Its huge shovel descended — and scooped me up. I rattled about in that mighty metal scoop as it started swiftly forward. I, Grag, picked up like a doll!

  Furious at the indignity I scrambled to my feet with the idea of tearing the crude Mach girder from girder. But it was all I could do to cling erect in the giant scoop as we jolted along.

  And I was forced to admit that even the mighty strength of Grag could not avail against the colossal machine. I saw that I must resort to guile, to using my mind against the stupid monster.

  Clinging to the edge of the scoop I peered at the fixed lenses of the thing and shouted to it, “Where are you taking me?”

  It boomed back, “To the others. You’re the first to arrive from Outside since the coming of the Liberator.”