Andre Norton (ed)

by Space Pioneers

  "Right, sir," Keston answered. The lapel speaker went dead, and Chang turned to Carmody. "Go ahead," he invited.

  "Well, sir, there's only one more point of interest and that's this." He laid his pointer on a blue cross about ninety miles southwest of the ship at the center of the map. "Fischer!" he said briefly over his shoulder, "get that stereocube from Mitsubishi, will you? If it isn't fixed yet, use a quick dryer on it. We can, make another print later."

  "Right, Mr. Carmody," said a photo tech fourth class who was standing nearby.

  Carmody turned to Chang again. He said, "This is the nearest approach we've found to a sign of habitation, sir. It could be an ordinary hill, but it's also the only thing that could by any stretch of the imagination be a camouflaged building. Ah, here we are."

  The photo tech fourth class came up to them with a big stereo-cube and handed it over. He said, "Mitsubishi did have to use a quick dryer on it, Mr. Carmody, and it'll fade in about ten minutes."

  "Good enough," said Carmody, taking it. "Have him make another and fix it." He turned and put the stereocube on the table, and Chang and Engelhart leaned over to examine it.

  They saw a reproduction of a steep-sided hill, vaguely square in plan, crowned with a small clump of trees similar to those that dotted the plain around them—luxurious green growths with soft barkless trunks. Carmody said, "You see, sir, it could be a natural formation, but on a world as old as this there aren't many hills as steep as that and certainly they don't stick up out of a flat plain that way."

  Chang glanced from the cube to the site of the blue cross on the map and saw that it was indeed sticking up like a wart on smooth skin. He said in a curiously distant voice, "Very interesting, Carmody. Get me a spotlight and a microscope, will you?"

  An observant tech standing nearby anticipated Carmody's order and passed the captain one of the pocket-sized twin microscopes used for examining photos that wouldn't take enlargement. At the same time Carmody pulled one of the ceiling lights down and held it over the top of the cube. Chang scrutinized the hill closely.

  At last he straightened with a satisfied grunt and held out the microscope to Engelhart. "Take a look at that clump of trees," he suggested. "Tell me what you see there."

  Engelhart adjusted the focus of the viewer and bent to examine the cube. A few seconds later he uttered a surprised exclamation and Chang smiled. "What does it look like?" he asked.

  "Sir, if that isn't a radar antenna I'll eat my entire uniform," Engelhart said. He looked at it from a different angle, nodded in excitement. "That's an antenna all right. And there's an incoming beam aerial in the crown of the big tree on the left, and I think there's a transmitter next to it. Sir, what induced them to hide the stuff like that? For our benefit?"

  "Maybe they just didn't want to spoil the view," said Chang shortly. He pinched his lapel speaker with his thumb and first fingernails, said, "KestonI"

  "Sir?"

  "You can call off the search for the focus of that radio beam southwest of here. You'll find it on top of a hill"—he glanced at the map and made a rapid calculation—"about ninety miles from here. You can't miss it—it sticks out like a sore thumb. But don't try to meddle with itl One thing more. Tell those helis, if they see any of the robots on the way home, to open their receivers, let down their screens and record anything they pick up. Don't ask why now."

  "Right, sir," said Keston, plainly puzzled, and the speaker went dead. Chang turned to Engelhart.

  "That's obviously where the alien ship was delivering its beam. Nice shooting at that range." He pushed the stereocube across to Carmody.

  "Have the first properly fixed print sent up to the bridge as soon as it's ready, will you? We'll have to do something about attempting communication, I suppose, but the prospect doesn't thrill me. Engelhart, come back to the bridge with me."

  They re-ascended in silence, Chang wearing a thoroughly worried look, and were greeted enthusiastically by Keston. He shut off his speaker and turned to them.

  "Sir, we've established a relationship between the robots and that hill with the radio station atop it."

  "Already?" said Chang. "How?"

  "One of the helis on its way back ran across a robot lying down in the grass, so it made like you said and went down without screens and its radio receiver wide. Better still, another heli came back within a few miles of the hill in question, detoured over it and picked up an incoming beam. They've just re-broadcast it to us, and it's identical with one sent out by the robot. It's double, as usual—one pictorial, one this odd mathematical stuff again. The semantic analyzers gave it up in disgust, apparently, but Running Bull, one of my men, thinks he's got a clue to it. Seems we were right about it being like a digital computer, but it's a cut above the best we have. All our stuff depends on binary figure combinations—you know, one impulse or no impulse. This stuff uses impulses of varying strengths and conveys as much in one signal as we do in ten. Anyway, Running Bull reckons that as soon as he can convert the impulses into our sort of stuff, he can give the analyzers something they can handle. Sir, what gives, though, about the natives? Have they just dug themselves a hole and climbed in? Or have they merely taken fright at our arrival and hidden till they know if we're friendly?"

  Chang shook his head. "I don't know. But we've only been on-world six hours, and if I'm any judge six hours is a short time to hide everybody."

  "You mean they're insane? Or do they live underground naturally, from choice?"

  "That can be answered later," said Chang. He strode over to his own control desk, snapped a switch, spoke into the hanging mike. "Malory? I'm going off watch now. Have Keston post you on the position as it stands. General orders are to sit still and do nothing, but to be ready to go upstairs at short notice. And don't jump to any conclusions."

  Two days—the planet's twenty-nine-hour, four-minute days —passed. The big ship sat in the middle of the black patch of charred "grass," already turning green again, and its weapons still swung watchfully from side to side, the radar antennae still probed the sky. The survey of the neighborhood had been extended over a further sixty miles, making the map too big for the table in the officers' mess. It had accordingly been transferred to the floor of the recreation room, since the chart room, where one might have supposed it belonged, was full of three-dimensional star maps. But nothing had happened.

  Once, the sky had clouded over and it had rained, and it was after that that fresh green shoots sprouted among the wet ash near the ship. Otherwise everything had been serenely peaceful. Neither animals nor robots had been seen within twenty miles of the ship since the first day. It was as if by tacit consent they were being ignored.

  T don't understand it," Engelhart confessed. Since there was nothing they could do just now, the officers on watch were on the captain's verandah looking out over the plain. "What do these people hope to gain by remaining hidden? Do they think we'll get bored and go away again? Surely this is the openest invitation to bring the family and set up house."

  "Not quite," Chang contradicted. "Those robots are a disturbing factor. I had hoped for some clue to their behavior and their raison d'etre from Running Bull's idea, but since Keston reported that it appeared to be an arbitrary number-code related to a spoken language, and the analyzers aren't equipped to take straight number and can't take it if it isn't converted, I've given up hope in that direction."

  Keston nodded. He had joined them from inship. He said, "But there's one inaccuracy there, sir. For all we know the language might not have been spoken at all. It might be related to a language of signs, for instance, or visual signals of some sort like colors. Running Bull's working on that now. If only we had a semantic analyzer that was more than a kindergarten toy! But that's all we'll have as long as they skimp our allocations to pay for new fun-planets."

  Chang nodded emphatically. He said, reaching in his pocket for his pipe and hot-coil lighter, "We're supposed to be the most important branch of the service, and if we find a habitable pl
anet we get a sizable fortune and retirement with honor. But they assuredly don't make the job easy for us. If they'd stop spending so much on entertainment for twenty years or so, I guarantee we could wipe off the overcrowding problem."

  From inship came voices, and after a moment Adhem came out on the verandah. He nodded to Chang, said bluntly, "Sir, the men are getting edgy."

  Chang said, "I feel that way myself. This waiting for an enemy who doesn't seem likely to turn up would get anybody. All right. What do you prescribe?"

  "Let 'em out in the sun, sir. There's no town for them to go into, or any attraction, much, but I think I've spotted a few cases of incipient agoraphobia, and the chance to get out in the air will nip them in the bud. Tell them to keep within sight of the ship, if you like."

  "I can do better than that," said Chang. "Engelhart!"

  "Sir?" from Engelhart.

  "How many alarm connections can you muster?" "About a dozen, sir."

  "Right. Detail a working party to mount them on posts and ring the ship with them about four or five hundred yards out so that anything crossing either way will make a racket. As soon as they're set up, you can let the off-watch men go outside."

  About an hour later they sat in an irregular semicircle of cushioned chairs on the captain's verandah, and watched the men leave the ship and savor the taste of natural air and the sight of blue sky and the warmth of the sun. A few of the more energetic made up a couple of baseball teams near the stem, but the majority went over to a grassy bank beyond the burnt patch, stripped off their clothes and lay down to sun themselves a while.

  Engelhart said, "Are you expecting any trouble at all from the inhabitants, sir, or do you think they're willing to stay hid?"

  Chang knocked out his pipe delicately and dropped his bombshell. He said, "I think we've met the intelligent race."

  Engelhart's mouth dropped open. He said, "I don't understand, sir."

  "Nor I," said Keston. "Do you mean—they're invisible to us, or something?"

  "I do not," said Chang calmly. T think the answer is staring us in the face."

  They thought it over. Then Deeley said faintly, "Sir, do you mean—the robots?"

  The captain nodded, his face strained and serious. He said, T do mean the robots."

  Adhem sat up in his chair with a jerk. He said, "No, by thunder, sir. It's impossible. I'll stake my reputation that these were never natural growths. It's against all possibility for an Earth-type planet to evolve metal intelligences."

  Another bombshell. "Who said they had evolved?"

  "Frankenstein!" said Deeley in an awed voice.

  "What was that, Deeley?"

  T said Frankenstein, sir. It's the name of a preatomic story current on Earth, dating back to the late Dark Ages, about a man who built the first robot and it killed its creator."

  "There's nothing new under any sun," said Chang.

  They looked out across the burning to the green plain and the blue hills and bluer sky, and there was no pleasure in these things any more. It was as if a cloud had passed across the sun.

  Adhem said puzzledly, "Sir, if I understand you, you're assuming that these robots were built by some intelligent race and turned on and killed their creators."

  "Correct," nodded Chang.

  "But what makes you think so?"

  "You said yourself that metallic beings wouldn't evolve on a world like this. Therefore they were manufactured. To manufacture them, or that lunar station, would require a colossal technology—they're light-years ahead of any robots I've seen on any world—and the only living beings we've seen are small and without holding appendages. If they have the technology, where is it? There are no roads, no cities, not even any houses. The only artificial thing we've seen is a radio station, camouflaged to look like a hill. Living creatures—organic creatures—need protection from the weather and usually means of getting from place to place. They get tired. But no weather can touch a durasteel robot, and it never gets tired. It needs neither roads nor cities. And there aren't any underground cities or any similar place where the inhabitants could be hiding, or our seismo probes would have shown them up. Further, if the intelligent race only made itself scarce because we came, why didn't it take its servants with it?"

  He sucked at his pipe, but it had gone out.

  "Add to that the fact that we saw a rocket on the inner moon —with its locks open—a meteor-damaged entry to a pressurized city, of which someone or something had mended the floor but hadn't bothered to repair the roof, and a robot. Robots don't need air. Shortly afterwards we saw something that could have been that same rocket lift from the moon and dodge into radar shadow—most conveniently. That wasn't accident, Ad-hem."

  "But—why haven't they attacked us?" demanded Engelhart.

  "Why should they? The status quo suits them perfectly. If we don't interfere with it, they won't trouble us. If we try to set up house, though, that'll be a different matter."

  "But . . . but maybe some natural disaster like a disease—or a war—was responsible?" Adhem suggested.

  "Think it over for yourself, Adhem. If there was a war, why did the robots survive? Even durasteel won't take atomic blast. And if they used radio-dust, why haven't we found traces of lead in the soil? Poisons are out for the same reason. As for germ warfare or disease, there are no bacteria here now. Robots don't catch diseases. Why should they clear away the germs after their masters died? Isn't it far more likely that living beings did that?"

  Deeley, who had been listening in silence, put in, "Sir, you're assuming that these robots are volitional, aren't you? That their free-will extended even to harming their creators?" Chang nodded. "I thought that wasn't possible."

  "Ask Keston. He's the authority."

  Deeley looked at the observation officer, who held a doctorate in cybernetics among other distinctions, and received an emphatic nod.

  "We couldn't do it. We couldn't put that much intelligence into a single mobile robot. A human-built servant is nothing but a small number of stimulus-response circuits that enable it to obey orders. But it can evaluate situations. It hasn't an endocrine balance, for one thing, nor a random factor in its analyzer. We have to work with a binary signal system—impulse or no impulse. But the stuff we picked up uses variable-strength impulses, and with that you could store between twice and a hundred times as much data according to the sensitivity of your analyzer. Oh yes, it could be done. I see no reason why these robots shouldn't be volitional."

  Engelhart was appalled. His face went white. "You know what this reminds me of? The time I talked to the big brain on Canopus X and XI. I wouldn't go through that again if I was paid. I was terrified."

  "Why?" Deeley wanted to know.

  "Well, I suppose it wasn't really fright so much as awe—the knowing that this man-made thing was ten times as intelligent as its builders and knew ten thousand times as much as any man could hope to learn in a lifetime. But at the bottom of it was always the fear that the servant would become the master."

  Chang stuffed his pipe afresh, forcing himself to feel calm. He said, "Here the fear has become reality."

  There was a roar of jubilation from the stern of the ship as a big hitter in the baseball game swiped one over the head of the pitcher and began a home run. It symbolized the joyous irrationality of mankind—the knowledge that they were not perfect, not infallible, and quite content to remain so, but permanently afraid, because of that knowledge, of going down before something inhumanly efficient, fearing most of all lest their downfall be of their own doing.

  "By all that's holyl" said Keston suddenly, slapping his thigh and sitting up with a jerk. "I think that gives us the answer to the radio signals we picked up."

  "How, Keston?" demanded Chang.

  "We've wasted time trying to make a language out of it. It isn't a language. It's true telepathy." "Telepathy!"

  "Yes, on the mechanical level. It's pure thought without intervening steps. The robot, being mechanical, thinks with electric
al impulses, and communicates by broadcasting them as they stand. Magnificent! Running Bull'll go wild over this. Excuse me, sir." He got up and went hastily inship.

  By the stern, the noise from the men playing baseball had stopped. A soft breeze ruffled the grassy vegetation of the plain.

  Deeley said eventually, "Sir, we can't afford not to have this planet."

  Chang nodded, taking his pipe out of his mouth. "Not with twenty billion people on New Earth alone and a birth-death ratio of plus two per cent. This world is worth more than any man could spend."

  "Well, sir—what are we going to do about it?"

  Til need time to consider it, but the general pattern is clear. The first step would be to pick up a sample of the opposition-magnetic grapples should hold them—and find out if and how, they can be destroyed or immobilized. Then do it. As for that fake hill with the concealed radar gear atop, we'll just blast it and any like it. If these tin soldiers took the world from their creators, I feel no compunction about taking it from them. This is the course of action I suggest in outline. We grab our specimen and go upstairs at once. We can fight off attack easier in space, and if necessary we can dodge into hyperdrive. If we find the robots indestructible, at least by our resources, we'll have to put back for reinforcements. A robot-dominated world would be an unstable element in a galactic culture anyway, and on a sweet world like this one it's a criminal waste—"

  His lapel alarm went and he said, "Chang listening."

  "Sir, Trooper Phillips P.J. has disappeared."

  Chang jerked as if stung. He said, "How?"

  "Sir, he was in the ball game by the stern, and Trooper Horrigan was at bat and hit a homer which went behind a ridge, and Trooper Phillips went after it and didn't come back, and from the tracks in the grass it looks like a robot got him."

  Chang was on his feet. "What went wrong with the alarm system?"

  "Blanked out, sir. We found the master cell'd been blown with a big overload."