"Sir, it's signaling to us—in Anglic!"
"Hold everything," said Chang. "I'm coming up to the bridge." He glanced at Adhem. "It seems Phillips wasn't dreaming," he commented, and departed at a run.
When he re-entered the bridge, he leaned over Keston's shoulder and said, "Where's the signal?"
Without taking his eyes off the stereoscreen in front of him, Keston passed up a sheet of plastic torn from a waterproof memo block. Chang took it and read, "Note that you are in difficulties. Can I be of assistance?"
He passed it back, said, "They seem to take us for morons. Expect us to fall for that? What are you looking at?"
Keston didn't reply for a moment. Then his screen suddenly lit with a severely black and gold picture of a small rocket, obviously the inquisitive alien. At this magnification it was quite easily seen that the locks were open and a robot was "standing" on the hull looking towards them.
His speaker crackled again. A pleasant but characterless voice said, "Calling the human ship. You didn't acknowledge my last message, so 111 repeat my offer. If you're in difficulties, can I help?"
Chang said in a low voice, "Is your mike on that circuit?" "No. We haven't anything going outship on his wavelength." "Then make it so."
Keston glanced up in surprise, but shrugged and made a couple of adjustments on his control desk. "You're on," he said. "He can hear us now."
"Hello, robot!" said Chang harshly. "We're in no need of assistance."
"Glad to hear it," said the robot with complete equanimity. "I thought something might have given way during your rather scared-looking lift just now. However, as your friend Phillips has doubtless told you, there wasn't anything to be afraid of.
"I suppose you're Captain Chang ... is that right? Phillips gave us your name. I want to talk to you."
"You're talking to me right now and I am not much interested."
There was a subtle change in the robot's unremarkable voice when he next spoke. He said, "You had better be. I have an idea you are considering exterminating us and selling this planet to colonists of your race. It's the sort of thing I'd expect from you." There was a hint of contempt in the last sentence.
Chang said angrily, "You haven't much right to talk that wayl Suppose it is what we are intending, what then?" He covered the mike, whispered, "Spinelli, is that generator finished yet?"
Spinelli whispered back, "Ship back to full working order, sir."
Chang nodded and uncovered the mike again. He said harshly, "And we might make a start with you!"
The robot said, "I'd not advise you to try. At this range I could detonate every mine in your ship. If you don't believe me, throw out a mine from your ship well clear of both of us with the detonator on safe, and I'll explode it. You aren't in a position to bargain, captain."
"Bargain!With a bunch of tin soldiers?"
"Seeing that the deal I have to offer runs considerably in your favor, I'd advise you to hear it."
"You must think us extremely gullible," said Chang dryly.
The robot said tightly, "Captain, I'll give you proof of my good faith. I could quite easily destroy all the members of your would-be occupying force, but I don't want to. Throw out the mine as I suggested. Make sure for yourself, if you like, that the detonator's on safe."
Chang said slowly, "Well, there's nothing to lose—"
There was only expectant silence from the robot. He turned to Engelhart. "All right. We'll call his bluff. Engelhart, throw out a mine—hard as you can—well clear of us and the alien ship, with the detonator welded over to safe. That'll leave no room for doubt."
About two minutes later the mine—a small one, about ten feet in diameter—left the number three starboard catapult at speed, but it had traveled a bare thousand yards from the ship before it melted into silent eye-searing flame.
There was a long silence.
Then Chang said, shaken, "All right, robot. I guess we have to listen. What's the deal you offer?" "Will you accept not only this planet, but ourselves—as a gift?'
There was silence again. This time it was the silence of sheer stunned amazement. There was no reflex in the human make-up that would cope with a reverse of attitude so sweepingly complete. From facing a deadly enemy in the shape of machines that had turned on their creators to receiving their unconditional surrender without a blow being struck was beyond their powers of assimilation.
Chang was the first to recover. He said, "There's a phrase in our language dating back to the Dark Ages—something about a Greek gift. It means a gift with strings attached—a booby trap. We won't strike a bargain till we know the whole story."
The robot sighed—a remarkably human sigh, considering it was effected by direct modulation of radio waves. He said, "That's very sensible of you, I suppose."
Around Chang the four officers listened with set, worried faces.
"I don't think you'd believe me if I told you our reasons for this action. You might believe the big one—one of the main computers. This is my proposition.
"I'll send my ship back on-world under auto control and stay here myself. You will put someone responsible, in a position to make decisions, aboard a small vessel—a lifeboat, for instance— and pick me up. The ship can then get well out of the way.
'Tour representative will come with me to the big one where Phillips was taken. If we fail to convince him of the honesty of our offer, you have the choice of going away unharmed and staying gone, or being destroyed. Sorry to put it so bluntly, but that's the way it is. Any takers?"
Chang shut off the microphone and looked around the group of officers. Engelhart was pale but calm. Adhem frankly overwhelmed, Spinelli as ever inscrutable, Deeley torn between vast hopes on one side and dreadful forebodings on the other.
He said abruptly, "I'm going."
Under the robot's guidance, Chang set the lifeboat down on its jets—it was too small to mount an antigrav unit—about half a mile from the hill that concealed what the robots called "the big one." The radar antennae among the trees had followed them down, and as soon as the flames from the exhaust died, two more of the robots came from the open entry.
Chang shut off the controls and wondered why he was doing this. He was both scared and not scared—scared in the conscious part of his mind that told him what he was doing was insanely risky, not scared but rather warmly satisfied in his subconscious, because he was feeling what Phillips had felt, and only his ingrained caution prevented him from reacting as the trooper had reacted to the aura of good will that the big robot exuded. Under any other circumstances he would have accepted it at once. But now-Well, Greek gifts were one thing that had not lost nationality. The robot opened the lock and descended to meet the others below, and Chang followed, sick with the conflict between conscious fear and mounting confidence, descended the steps into the side of the little hill.
It was as Phillips had described it—bright-lit, full of shimmering crystal and many flashing indicators. There was a faint humming like that of a well-tuned ship, and there were about half a dozen robots standing round, one of which carried one of the little animals he had met when first they came. It clung to the arm of its metal mount and gazed curiously at him. He glanced all around, noting what seemed to be an inscription on one wall in curious unreal curves that made him dizzy to look at. One of the robots came up with a chair, and he looked at it, saw it was plain plastic, and sat down with a word of thanks. Expectantly, the robots glanced up.
A deep, friendly voice which might have come from anywhere said, "Welcome, Captain Chang. I'm the big computer you're sitting inside."
In spite of the warmth of the voice, Chang felt a touch of the tremendous, terrifying awe Engelhart had suffered when he spoke to the giant brain on Canopus X and XI. He licked dry lips, said inanely, "Thank you."
The voice chuckled amusedly. "I'm sorry to frighten you, captain. But I can't say I blame you for distrusting me. My creators would have done the same at your stage of cultural development, and justifi
ably."
Chang said, with a glacial calm that cost him much effort, "Your creators—what happened to them?"
The voice said, "When you came here and found a number of obviously manufactured machines in virtually solitary possession of the planet, you saw two possible explanations. One— that our creators had been forced by some natural process to abandon the planet—had died off and were gone, in short. Two— that we had taken it by force. You settled on the second as more likely and are computing on that basis. But you overlooked the third and correct alternative."
"What third alternative?" said Chang, with the dreamlike air of a man who finds himself doing the impossible.
"That they gave it to us," said the machine.
The captain wanted to believe what Phillips believed, to know that this thing that the machine told him, though unthinkable, was true. He wanted to—but he couldn't yet. He said defiantly, "Prove itl"
"That will need considerable explanation, then. I'll tell you the story in outline.
"Our creators were a race rather like yours. These robots around you are more or less in their image, though enlarged by about a third. They grew up through cultural stages like yours— petty skirmishes, molecular-explosive wars, atomic wars, and then comparative sanity. They achieved space travel, but not hyperflight, which is why you haven't met them before. They just didn't want hyperflight. We were the reason they didn't want it.
"Don't jump to conclusions. We didn't prevent them from reaching it—that would have been insane. But there was no call for them to leave their planet. They had built us to serve them, which we did in our various ways, and I think we may claim to have served them well. So they were content without needing to take the stars, and from the physical sciences they turned to the mental ones.
"And in due course of time, being living creatures which we are not, they . . . they did something for which your language has no word or even circumlocution. You might best express it as moving up a step on the evolutionary ladder.
"When you came in here, you were awed as your friend Engel-hart was awed when he spoke to the big brain at Canopus. Would you believe me if I said I have been awed as you were?
"Yes, our creators outstripped us. They merged in a being as far superior to me as I am to you. They became pure mind, and they no longer needed us. But because without our aid they could not have achieved what they did, they were grateful, and though we cannot evolve, being machines without power of growth, they did what they could for us. They gave us our freedom, and a sense of beauty, and their technology which had become our technology over the years, and most important, they gave us what we most desired—this world.
"So we made the world as beautiful as we could, and saw to our trust carefully. And we are nearly content."
Chang listened to the deep friendly voice, full of age-old reminiscence, and fought to keep control of his doubts and fears. He said, "And the animals?" for want of anything better to say.
T said our creators were grateful. They remembered their pets, too. As you humans keep dogs or cats, so our creators kept these creatures, and they asked us to make their path easy for them in case they, too, evolved to something higher."
Chang looked at the brown furry beast with its blind-seeming eyes, and said stubbornly, "Still you have shown no proof—only made statements. You've prepared a good case, I admit, but it isn't conclusive."
The voice said musingly, "It is hard to tell whether your hesitancy is shrewdness or merely fear of the unknown."
Nettled, Chang said, "But if I do acept your offer, what then?"
"Well, it is and always has been our nature to aid others if we can. From what I know and can deduce of your race you're pretty
badly in need of help. You need new planets because you're overcrowded, but you waste money that could be spent on discovering them on new and superfluous places of entertainment. Your technical ability has left your social conscience behind. We can remedy that. We can give you the chance to follow the path our creators took." "To oblivion?"
"To something higher than your imaginings."
Chang stared at the floor. A million memories crowded into his mind—Deeley saying, "Frankensteinl"; himself saying, "Greek gift?"; the robot saying, "Will you accept not only this world but ourselves?"; and he felt miserably small to make a decision on which rested the fate of the human race.
He slowly became aware that the voice had stopped, the robots around him had looked upwards, and the little brown animal had become motionless, clinging to its mount. As if drawn by a magnet, he turned to look at the wall which bore the inscription. For one brief instant he saw it, not as a collection of meaningless mind-straining curves, but as a plain, clear statement in his own language.
It ran:
Well done, thou good and faithful servant.
Then it was gone, and in a voice suddenly husky, from a throat dry and constricted with wonder, he said firmly, "We accept."
For was it his imagination, or in that brief instant had his mind been filled with a glory beside which all the stars in the galaxy were as dark dead coals?
My HAT HAPPENS when those who have been bred and trained for a single path of duty rebel against bureaucratic supervision and demands? Once there was a picked team of experts, conditioned to explore—but they decided to become settlers instead. But they had been forced to carry with them the one danger to their plan for personal freedom, and only their commander, Grevan, could go to battle with it for the future of his crew.
JAMES H. SCHMITZ
The spaceship dropped near evening towards the edge of a curving beach. A half-mile strip of grassy growth stood tall and still behind the beach; and beyond the jungle smoothly marbled prows of pink and gray cliffs swept steeply upwards for nearly two thousand feet to the northernmost shelf of a wide, flat continent. The green-black waters of the planet's largest ocean stretched away in a glassy curve ahead, broken by two narrow chains of islands some thirty miles out.
The sleek machine from beyond the stars settled down slowly, a wind thundering out below it and wrinkling the shallows near the beach into sudden zigzag patterns. It fell through explosive sprays of dry sand, sank its base twenty feet deep into the rock below and stopped. A sharp click announced the opening of a lock a third of the way up its rounded flank; and seven of the nine members of Central Government's Exploration Group 1176 came riding out of the lock a moment later, bunched forty feet above the beach on the tip of their ship's extension ramp.
Six of them dropped free of the ramp at various points of its swooping descent. They hit the hard sand in a succession of soft, bounceless thumps like so many cats and went loping off towards
the water. Grevan alone, with the restraint to be looked for in a Group Commander, rode the ramp all the way down to the ground.
He stepped off it unhurriedly there: a very big man, heavy of bone and muscle, though lean where weight wasn't useful, and easy-moving as the professional gladiators and beast-fighters whose training quarters he'd shared in his time. A brooding, implacable expression went so naturally with the rest of it that ordinary human beings were likely to give him one look and step out of his way, even when they weren't aware of his technical rank of Central Government Official.
It was a pity in a way that the members of his Exploration Group weren't so easily impressed.
Grevan scowled reflectively, watching five of the six who had come out of the ship with him begin shucking off weapon belts, suits and other items of equipment with scarcely a break in their run as they approached the water's edge. Cusat, Eliol, Freckles, Lancey, Vernet—he checked them off mentally as they vanished a few seconds later, with almost simultaneous splashes, from the planet's surface. They were of his own experimental breed or something very near it, and physically, though not quite adults yet, very nearly as capable as Grevan was himself. However, nobody could tell from here what sort of alien, carnivorous life might be floating around beyond this ocean's shallows—
They had too
good an opinion of themselvesl
Weyer, at any rate, seemed to have decided to stay on shore with his clothes on and his armament handy, in case of trouble. Somewhat reassured, Grevan turned his attention next to a metallic bumping and scraping at the ship's open lock overhead. Klim and Muscles, K.P.'s for the day, were trying to move a bulky cooking unit out of the ship so the Group could dine outdoors.
"Boss?" Klim's clear soprano floated down. "Right here," Grevan called back. "Having trouble?" "Looks like we're stuck," Klim announced from within the lock. "Would you come up and . . . no, wait a minutel Muscles is getting it cleared now, I think—Wait till I've degraved it again, you big apel Now, pushl"
The cooker popped into sight with a grinding noise, ejected with considerable violence from the ship's interior. For a moment, it hung spinning quietly in the air above the ramp, with Klim perched on top. Then Muscles came out through the lock and attached himself to the gadget's side. They floated down lopsidedly together, accompanied by tinkling sounds from the cooker's interior.
"What's it going to be tonight?" Grevan asked, reaching up to guide them in to an even landing.
"Albert II in mushroom sauce," said Klim. She was a tall, slender blonde with huge blue eyes and a deceptively wistful expression. As he grounded the cooker, she put a hand on his shoulder and stepped down. "Not a very original menu, I'll admit! But there's a nice dessert anyway. How about sampling some local vegetables to go with Albert?"
"Maybe," said Grevan cautiously. "Whose turn is it to sample?" Too often, preoccupied with other matters, he'd discovered suddenly that he'd been roped in again for that chore when the items to be sampled were suspected of being of a particularly unco-operative nature. And then the Group would drop whatever it was doing to gather around and sympathize while he adapted.
"Vernet's turn, isn't it?" said Muscles.
"Vernet's the victim," Klim nodded. "You're safe this time."
Andre Norton (ed) Page 15
