"The second unfortunate aspect is that in the past we have allowed ourselves a percentage of failures. You must realize that our tactics are almost entirely psychological, based upon fundamental human impulses."
Patientiy, he explained the method.
"Ninety-two! . . . This is Sorn speaking."
The voice came sharp, insistent, commanding, from the automaton's wrist radio. The automaton stirred in his concrete shelter. "Yes, Master?"
Apparently, the contact was all that was desired, for he heard the other say, "He's still alive!" The voice was farther away this time, as if the humanoid had turned to speak to someone else.
A second voice spoke hesitatingly, "Normally, I wouldn't have bothered, but this is the one that destroyed his file. Now, a Vulture crew is trying to save him."
"They do it every time."
"I know, I know." The second speaker sounded impatient with himself, as if he was aware that he might be acting foolishly. "Still, they've already given a lot of time to him, more than normal, it seems to me. And there is the fact that this particular ship engaged in a lengthy series of code messages with its headquarters. Afterwards, a woman arrived on the scene."
"They nearly always use women in these rescue operations." The Tobor's voice held a note of distaste, but his words were a dismissal of the other's argument.
This time there was silence for many seconds. Finally, the doubting one spoke again, "In my department, I have been acutely conscious that somewhere in our operations about two years ago we unexpectedly captured a human chemist who, it was stated, had discovered a process for sexualizing Tobors."
His emotional disgust was almost too much for him, and in spite of the frankness of his next words, his voice trembled. "Unfortunately, we learned of this too late for us to identify the individual involved. Apparently, he was put through a routine interview, and dementalized."
He had full control of himself again and went on sardonically. "Of course the whole thing could be just a propaganda story, designed to unnerve us. And yet, at the time, our Intelligence reported that an atmosphere of gloom and depression pervaded human headquarters. In appears that we raided a city, captured him in his home, wrecked his laboratory and burned his papers."
His tone implied that he was shrugging. "It was one of scores of similar raids, quite impossible to identify. Prisoners captured in such forays were in no way differentiated from those captured in other ways."
Once more, silence . . . then . . . "Shall I order him to kill himself?"
"Find out if he has a weapon?"
There was a pause. The voice came close, "Have you a blaster, Ninety-two?"
The human automaton, who had listened to the conversation with a faraway blankness in his eyes and mind, alerted as the question was directed at him through his wrist radio.
"I have hand weapons," he said dully.
Once more the interrogator turned away from the distant microphone. "Well?" he said.
"Direct action is too dangerous," said the second Tobor. "You know how they resist actual suicide. Sometimes it brings them right out of their automaton state. The will to live is too basic."
"Then we're right back where we started."
"No! Tell him specifically to defend himself to the death. That's on a different level. That's an appeal to his loyalty, to his indoctrinated hatred of our human enemies and to his patriotism to the Tobor cause."
Lying in the rubble, the automaton nodded as the Master's firm voice issued the commands. Naturally ... to the death ... of course.
On the radio, Sorn still sounded dissatisfied. "I think we should force the issue. I think we should concentrate projectors in the area, and see what happens."
"They've always accepted such challenges in the past."
"Up to a point only. I believe most earnestly that we should test their reaction. I feel that this man resisted too hard during his captivity and there's a tremendous pressure working on him."
"Human beings are very deceptive," said the other doubtfully. "Some of them are merely anxious to go home. It seems to be a powerful motivation."
His objection must have been rhetorical. After a bare moment of silence, he looked up and said decisively, "Very well, we'll attack!"
By an hour after dark, a hundred projectors were engaged on both sides. The night flashed with long trailers of bright flame.
"Phew!" Rice raced up the gangplank into the ship. His heavy face was scarlet with effort. As the door clanged shut behind him, he gasped, "Miss Harding, that fiance of yours is a dangerous man. He's trigger happy, and needs more propaganda."
The girl was pale. She had watched Rice's attempt to get the screen into position from the great barrier window in the observation room. She said, "Maybe I should go out now!"
"And get burned!" Doctor Claremeyer came forward. He was blinking behind his glasses. "Now, don't you feel badly, Miss Harding. I know it seems incredible that the man who loves you has been so changed that he would kill you on sight—but you'll just have to accept the reality. The fact that the Tobors have decided to put up a fight for him hasn't helped matters any."
"Those beasts!" she said. It was a dry sob. "What are you going to do now?"
"More propaganda."
"You think he'll hear it over the roar of the projectors?" She was astonished.
"He knows what it is," said Doctor Claremeyer matter-of-factly. "The pattern has been established. Even a single word coming through will be a reminder of the whole pattern."
A few moments later, she was listening gloomily while the loud speakers blared their message:
". . . You are a human being. We are human beings. You were captured by the robots. We want to rescue you from the robots. These robots call themselves Tobors because it sounds better. They're robots. They're not human beings, but you are a human being. We are human beings, and we want to rescue you. Do everything that we ask you to do. Do nothing that they tell you to do. We want to make you well. We want to save you. . . ."
Abruptly, the ship moved. A moment later, the Vulture commander came over.
"I had to give the order to take off," he said. "We'll come back again about dawn. The Tobors must be losing equipment at a terrific rate. It's a bridgehead fight for them, but it's getting too hot for us also."
He must have felt the girl would place the worst construction on the withdrawal order. He explained to her in a low voice:
"We can depend on a slave using every precaution to stay alive. He'll have been given training for that. Besides, we did get the screen up and the picture will show over and over."
He went on, before she could speak, "Besides, we have been given permission to try direct contact with him."
"What does that mean?"
"We'll use a weak signal that won't carry more than a few hundred yards. That way they won't be able to tune in on what we're saying. Our hope is that he'll be sufficiently stimulated to tell us his secret formula."
Juanita Harding sat for a long time, frowning. Her comment, when it finally came, was extremely feminine. "I'm not sure," she said, "that I approve of the pictures you're showing on that screen."
The commander said judiciously, "We've got to strike at the basic drives of human beings."
He departed hastily.
John Gregson, who had been an automaton, became aware that he was clawing at a bright screen. As he grew more conscious of his actions, he slowed his frantic attempt to grasp at the elusive shapes that had lured him out of hiding. He stepped back.
All around him was intense darkness. As he backed away a little further, he stumbled over a twisted girder. He started to fall, but saved himself by grasping at the burned and rusted metal. It creaked a little from his weight and flakes of metal came away free in his hands.
He retreated anxiously into the darkness to take better advantage of the light reflections. For the first time he recognized that he was in one of the destroyed cities. He thought: "But how did I get here? What's happened to me?"
A voice from his wrist radio made him jump. "Sorn!" it said insistently. The icy tone stiffened Gregson. Deep in his mind a bell of recognition clanged its first warning. He was about to reply, when he realized that it was not he who had been addressed.
"Yes?" The answer was clear enough, but it seemed to come from a much greater distance. "Where are you now?"
Sorn said slowly, "I landed about half a mile from the screen. It was a misjudgment, as I intended to come down much closer. Unfortunately, in landing I got my directions twisted. I can't see a thing."
"The screen they're using for the pictures is still up. I can see a reflection of it in Ninety-two's Wristo. Surely, it'll be a bright landmark."
"It must be in a hollow, or behind a pile of debris. I'm in pitch darkness. Contact Ninety-two and—"
The first reference to his number had started the train of associations. The second one brought such a flood of hideous memory that Gregson cringed. In a flashing kaleidoscope of pictures, he realized his situation and tried to recall the immediate sequence of events that had brought him back to control of himself. Somebody had called his name insistently. . . . not his number—his name. Each time they had asked him a question, something about a formula for— For what? He couldn't remember, something about—about— Abruptly, it came back!
Crouching there in the darkness, he closed his eyes in a sheer physical reaction. "I gave it them. I told them the formula. But who was—them?"
It could only have been some member of the crew of a Vulture ship, he told himself shakily. The Tobors didn't know his name. To them he was . . . Ninety-two.
That recollection brought him back with a start to his own predicament. He was just in time to hear the voice on the Wristo say vindictively:
"All right, I've got it. I'll be over there in ten minutes."
The Tobor in the distant Control Center was impersonal. "This is on your own head, Sorn. You seem to have an obsession about this case."
"They were broadcasting to him on a local wave," said Sorn in a dark voice, "so direct, so close that we couldn't catch what they were saying. And his answer, when he finally made it, was interfered with so .that, again, we didn't hear it, but it was a formula of some kind. I'm counting on the possibility that he was not able to give them the full description. Since he's still at the screen, he hasn't been rescued, so if I can kill him now, within minutes—"
There was a click ... the voice trailed off into silence.
Gregson stood in the darkness beside the screen, and shud-deringly considered his position.
Where was the Vulture? The sky was pitch dark, though there was an ever-so-faint light in the East, the first herald of the coming dawn. The sound of the projectors had become a mutter far away, no longer threatening. The great battle of the night was over.
. . . The battle of the individuals was about to begin. . . .
Gregson retreated even farther into the darkness, and fumbled over his body for hand weapons. There were none. "But that's ridiculous," he told himself shakily. "I had a blaster and—"
He stopped the thought. Once again, desperate now, he searched himself . . . Nothing. He guessed that in his mad scramble to get to the screen, he had lost his weapons.
He was still teetering indecisively when he heard a movement in the near night.
Vulture 121 landed gently in the intense darkness of the false dawn. Juanita Harding had taken off her clothes, and now had a robe wrapped around her. She did not hesitate when Rice beckoned. He grinned at her reassuringly.
"I'm taking along a cylinder of the stuff," he said, "just in case he doesn't become inspired quickly enough."
She smiled wanly, but said nothing. Doctor Claremeyer came to the door with them. He gave her hand a quick squeeze.
"Remember," he said, "this is war!" She replied, "I know. And all's fair in love and war, isn't it?"
"Now, you're talking."
A moment later they were gone into the night.
Gregson was retreating in earnest and he felt a lot better. It was going to be hard for any one person to locate him in this vast maze of shattered concrete and marble and metal.
Moment by moment, however, the desolate horizon grew lighter. He saw the ship suddenly in the shadowy ruins to his right. Its shape was unmistakable. Vulture! Gregson raced toward it over the uneven ruins of what had once been a paved street.
Gasping with relief, he saw that the gangplank was down. As he raced up it, two men covered him with their blasters. Abruptly, one of them gasped, "It's Gregson!"
Weapons were scraped back into their leathery holsters. Hands grasped eagerly at his hands, and there was a pumping of arms. Eyes searched his face eagerly for signs of sanity, found them, and glowed with pleasure. A thousand words attacked the dawn air.
"We got your formula."
"Great . . . wonderful."
"The genius made up some of the hormone gas in our own ship lab. How fast does it work?"
Gregson guessed that the "genius" was the tall, gloomy individual who had been introduced as Phillips. He said, "It takes only a few seconds. After all, you breathe it in and it's taken right into your bloodstream. It's pretty powerful stuff."
Madden said, "We had some idea of using it to intensify your own reactions. In fact, Rice took some—" He stopped. "But just a minute," he said, "Rice and Miss Harding are—" He stopped again.
It was the small man, Doctor Claremeyer, who took up the thread of Madden's thought. "Mr. Gregson," he said, "we saw a man on our infra-red plates heading for the screen. He was too far away to identify, so we took it for granted it was you. And so, Rice and Miss Harding went out and—" .The Commander cut him off at that point. "Quick, let's get out there! It may be a trap!"
Gregson scarcely heard that. He was already racing down the gangplank.
"Sorn!" The voice on the Wristo sounded impatient. "Sorn, what's happened to you?"
In the half-darkness near the screen, the men and the girl listened to the words of the Tobor on Gregson's Wristo. From their vantage point they watched Sorn looking at the pictures on the screen itself.
"Sorn, your last report, was that you were near where Ninety-two was last known to be hiding—"
Rice put one plump hand over Gregson's Wristo, to block off the sound; and whispered, "That's when I let him have it. Boy, I never had a better idea than when I took along a cylinder of your gas, Gregson. I shot a dose of it at him from fifty feet, and he never even knew what hit him."
"—Sorn, I know you're still alive. I can hear you mumbling to yourself."
Rice said, "We'll have to be careful of our dosage in the future. He's practically ready to eat up the pictures. You can see for yourself—the Tobor-human war is as good as over."
Gregson watched silently as the one-time Tobor leader scrambled eagerly in front of the screen. A dozen girls were on parade beside a pool. Periodically, they would all dive into the water. There would be a flash of long, bare limbs, the glint of a tanned back, then they would all climb out. They did that over and over.
The trouble was, each time Sorn tried to grasp one of the images, his shadow fell across the screen and blotted her out. Frustrated, he rushed to another, only to have the same thing happen again.
"Sorn, answer me!"
This time the Tobor paused. The reply he made then must have shocked the entire Tobor headquarters, and the effect reached out to all the Tobor armies around the world.
Gregson tightened his arm appreciatively around Juanita's waist (she still wore her robe over the beauty with which she was to have lured him back to safety) as he listened to the fateful words.
"Women," Sorn was saying, "they're wonderful!"
THE PEOPLE OF THE CRATER
Andre Norton
Chapter One—Through the Blue Haze
Six months and three days after the Peace of Shanghai was signed and the great War of 1965-1970 declared at an end by an exhausted world, a young man huddled on a park bench in New York, staring mise
rably at the gravel beneath his badly worn shoes. He had been trained to fill the pilot's seat in the control cabin of a fighting plane and for nothing else. The search for a niche in civilian life had cost him both health and ambition.
A newcomer dropped down on the other end of the bench. The flyer studied him bitterly. He had decent shoes, a warm coat, and that air of satisfaction with the world which is the result of economic security. Although he was well into middle age, the man had a compact grace of movement and an air of alertness.
"Aren't you Captain Garin Featherstone?" Startled, the flyer nodded dumbly.
From a plump billfold the man drew a clipping and waved it toward his seat mate. Two years before Captain Garin Featherstone of the United Democratic Forces had led a perilous bombing raid into the wilds of Siberia to wipe out the vast expeditionary army secretly gathering there. It had been a spectacular affair and had brought the survivors some fleeting fame.
"You're the sort of chap I've been looking for," the stranger folded the clipping again, "a flyer with courage, initiative and brains. The man who led that raid is worth investing in."
"What's the proposition?" asked Featherstone wearily. He no longer believed in luck.
"I'm Gregory Fareon," the other returned as if that should answer the question.
"The Antarctic man!"
From Fantasy Book, No. 1, 1947. Copyright 1947 by Fantasy Publishing Co., Inc.
"Just so. As you have probably heard, I was halted on the eve of my last expedition by the sudden spread of war to this country. Now I am preparing to sail south again."
"But I don't see--------- "
"How you can help me? Very simple, Captain Featherstone.
I need pilots. Unfortunately the war has disposed of most
of them. I'm lucky to contact one such as yourself------------- "
And it was as simple as that. But Garin didn't really believe that it was more than a dream until they touched the glacial shores of the polar continent some months later. As they brought ashore the three large planes he began to wonder at the driving motive behind Farson's vague plans.
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