by Eando Binder
The helmet went dead. I was no longer in Hillory’s mental control. In two bounds I was before him. I grabbed the helmet from his head and flung it to the floor. Then I grasped his two shoulders in a vise-like grip and held him. I think if my face had shown any expression at that moment, I would have been grinning—but with no trace of humor.
Hillory’s face had gone dead-white in fear. He squirmed and moaned in my adamant clutch, expecting immediate death.
Let me make a confession at this moment. For one split instant, with rage shaking every cell of my iridium-sponge brain, I thought of tearing Hillory’s head from his body. But only for an unguarded instant. Then reason came to me. A robot must never kill a human of his own free will. It was a thing I would never do.
I merely held Hillory firmly. To Kay I said: “Thanks, Kay. You’ve saved me—”
“I knew there was something wrong!” Her lips were quivering now, in reaction to the excitement. “I knew it couldn’t be you, Adam, that told me to go so brusquely. And Dr. Hillory is a poor actor.” And Kay, I reflected, was an intelligent girl.
“What is this all about? What horrible—” Kay seemed about to go to pieces.
“Buck up,” I snapped. I told the story briefly. Then I instructed her to get a bottle of acid and apply it to the instrument welded on my skull-piece. A few minutes later the vibrator fell away. I was free entirely of the helmet control.
Not till then did I release Hillory. He staggered to a chair, mute and mortally frightened. The man who had been my master sat there now, a cowering wretch.
“Hillory—” I began.
There was an interruption outside. The clank of metal feet sounded. Through the open door I could see Eve’s body, glinting in moonlight. She had come back, also released from the mental control. She stood beside Kay’s car, swaying on her feet, as though utterly dazed and lost.
I ran out.
“Eve!” I yelled. “We’re free. Eve, dear—”
I suppose I felt at that moment as any man would, when he and his loved one are reunited after a deadly peril. I extended my hand.
Eve took it with a glad cry.
And then suddenly she yanked at my arm, throwing me to the ground. For an agonized moment I thought she had gone mad. Then, as her great body came at me I realized what had happened.
I leaped to my feet. A glance over my shoulder told me the situation. I saw within the open, lighted doorway of the cabin. Like a fool, I had forgotten about Hillory. He had picked up the helmet, turned on the power, and was fighting Kay off. Brutally, he crashed his fist against her chin and the girl toppled to the floor, knocked cold.
Hillory had no more control over me. But he did have over Eve.
Her great body came at me, under Hillory’s command. Its mighty arms clutched for me, grabbed me, squeezed with machine-given power. My frontal plates groaned. I squirmed loose somehow, and staggered back. A stunning blow from Eve’s powerful hand caught me at the side of the head. My left tympanum went dead, ruptured. I reeled.
“Eve!” I shouted. “Eve—don’t!”
But of course it was no use. It was not Eve who was attacking me. It was Hillory. And there we fought, Eve and I, two beings who loved each other but who were battling with the fury of giants. Eve was fighting to destroy me. I was fighting for my life.
I knew quickly that I had no chance. Eve’s body was almost twice as heavy and powerful. I was slightly quicker in movement, and that alone saved me from almost instant destruction.
Mighty blows from her great fists thundered against my body. My return blows fell short. I danced out of her grasp. Those arms had crushing strength. I tried to flee. In three mighty strides Eve had caught up, knocked me off my feet. A powerful leg rained kicks at my fallen form, denting metal and endangering delicate mechanisms within. Then, the great form jumped on me. Nine hundred pounds crashed down on my chest. It was very nearly the fatal blow.
But I managed to roll aside, escaping the second such stroke, aimed at my head. Hillory wanted my brain crushed. He wanted to destroy me utterly, and have Eve left under his control.
The battle could not last much longer. Within seconds I would be crushed, broken, lifeless.
I did the only thing left. I ran—but this time to the cliff edge, where I had once nearly invited death. Eve’s hands clutched at me, and then drew back. Hillory was willing to let me plunge over the cliff, and meet destruction five hundred feet below. I went over, dropping like a stone.…
The fall seemed interminable.
It is said that you humans, when falling or drowning, see your whole life before your mind. I saw mine—not once but a hundred times. Every detail stood out with stark clarity. But one livid thing stood out above all others—the thought of Eve, my beloved creation, remaining alive in the hands of a human fiend…
Yet one part of my brain, as I fell, was cool and calculating. It kept track of my descent, counting off the feet and yards by that automatic sense of timing and measurement which is part of me.
A hundred feet to the ground it announced, and then acted. It made my arms and legs flail, shifting my center of gravity. My body had turned head over heels four times in falling. But when I landed, it was squarely on my feet. To have landed on my head would have been immediate destruction.
I have instant reflexes. The moment my feet-plates touched ground, my leg-cables flexed, taking up as much of the shock as possible. It might be the margin to save me. The rest was a clash of grinding, bending, breaking metal that horrified my own ear. I had fallen on a patch of grassy ground, but with the force of a motorcycle hitting a stone wall at 300 miles an hour.
My mind swam out of a blur. One eye was wrecked and useless, but with the other I looked over my body. My legs were twisted, crumpled lumps that had been driven up into my pelvic region. One arm was broken completely off and lay twenty feet away. My frontal plates had split in half and now stuck half-way over my sunken head. Every cog, wire and wheel below my shoulders was scattered around in an area of more than fifty feet.
But I lived! I lived!
My brain was whole, though badly jolted. By a miracle, the battery cable to my head was intact. The battery was cracked, but working. I could move one arm slightly. I was little more than a battery, head and arm, but I lived!
And thus I had played out my one slim chance. I had thrown myself over the cliff—but not as a suicide. I had hoped this miracle would happen. Up above, Hillory must be looking down. He must be seeing the faint patch of metal shining in the moonlight, unmoving. He would be certain of my utter destruction.
Perhaps now he would be turning away, ordering Eve inside. And there plotting his scheme of bringing to life a horde of mind-enslaved robots.
But I lived…
I began crawling. Little more than a head, battery and arm, I began crawling along. The stump of my arm dug into the soil, flexed, and moved me an inch at a time. Behind me trailed shreds and tags of metal, all that was left of my body. My steel backbone, to which was attached the battery case, head and arm, moved as a unit, but the rest was shreds. Hour after hour I crawled along, like some strange half-mangled slug that clung to life.
Yes, I knew agony. The shattering of my body meant nothing, but my brain itself ached. Some few crushed cells were warping my electron-currents, creating a sort of hammering static. It throbbed like the beat of a great hammer. I do not know what your human pain is. But I would have gladly exchanged any possible form of it for the crashes and thuds within my brain that seemed like the sledge-blows of a giant.
But worse than that “physical” agony was my mental torment.
What if the twisted cables and gears of my arm failed? What if the battery cracked wide open? What if a little bolt or wire slipped out of place? At any moment it might happen. And I would lie there, dead. Or paralyzed, awaiting death. And up there in my cabin-laboratory, Hillory, and poor Eve…
But metal is sturdy. And Dr. Link had built my body with care. I crawled all that night and the n
ext day, through woods, meadows, and stretches of boulder-strewn land. I knew where I was going, if I could get there. Once, reaching a brook, it took me an hour to figure a crossing. I could not risk water for fear of a short-circuit. I nudged a log into the stream. It caught against rocks. I crawled across.
But I will not go into the nightmarish detail of that journey. Forty-eight hours later, again at night, I had crawled five miles. Before me lay a farmhouse, the nearest one, as I had known, to my hideaway. It had a telephone.
I reached the back door. Luckily, as with many unmolested farmer folk, it was unlocked. I made my way in and found the telephone, but it was on the wall out of my stunted reach. Working as soundlessly as I could, I pulled a chair over. From that perch, I was barely able to reach the phone. It was the old-fashioned hand-ringing type, still prevalent in that region.
With my one good hand I lifted the receiver, left it dangling, and rang the bell. A sleepy operator answered. I hurriedly gave the long-distance number in the city nearby. Jack’s number.
I heard the ringing of the phone at the other end. I also heard a stir from one of the other rooms. Jack answered at the same time that a burly farmer appeared, snapping on the lights.
“Jack!” I yelled. “It’s Adam Link. Come and get me. Trace this call—”
That was all I had time for. The farmer blazed away at me with a shotgun he carried. The first shot wrecked my arm swivel, making me completely helpless. The second, by its concussion, tumbled me from my perch. I fell to the floor with a clatter and lay still. The farmer did not know what he had shot at, in those ghastly seconds, whether beast or nameless thing. He shut himself up in the next room, then, with his wailing family. I will never know what he thought of the whole thing.
Jack arrived within an hour, in his car, and took me away, explaining to the farmer as incoherently as the farmer stammered his story. In the car were Kay and Tom Link.
Kay wept unashamedly.
“Adam! You’re alive—thank God.”
I told my story briefly. Kay told hers. Hillory had released her of course, after I was gone, afraid of a kidnapping charge. Kay had returned to the city. In a red rage at Hillory, Jack had driven to his place the next day—yesterday. He had not met Hillory, only the menacing form of Eve, who waved for him to leave. Hillory spoke, through Eve, saying he was preparing papers for patent rights on the helmet-control of robots.
Back in the city, Jack had called Tom, who came by plane from his law office. They had been discussing, when I phoned, some legal way to forestall Hillory.
Tom Link, my “cousin,” looked at me sadly.
“Meeting you this way hurts, Adam,” he said sincerely. “I didn’t know you were in trouble.” My last letter to him had not revealed my hideaway or purpose.
He went on grimly. “We must stop Hillory some way. We can try to pin the robbery on him, with yourself as chief witness. You have legal status since your trial, Adam. Failing that, we can contest the patent or file counter-patent or…”
Tom was vague, uncertain. It was a tricky situation. “The trouble is,” he burst out, continuing, “that you are still not a true citizen, Adam. As I’ve written you at times, I have your application papers on file in Washington, but nothing has come of it. Red tape, of course. If only you were a citizen under federal law, Hillory would not dare talk of patenting you, like a common machine. The infernal nerve of him. Yet, he might succeed.”
Yes, that was the rub. As Adam Link, United States Citizen, no scheming wretch like Hillory could do this to me. But as plain Adam Link, robot machine, I had no defense against such tactics.
Adam Link, citizen. Had events again closed that door to me, forever?
Tom raved on some more, but I broke in. I think my voice must have startled them. Perhaps for once something of the burning emotion I felt was reflected in my dead, phonic voice.
“Vengeance,” I said, “is mine.”
Three days later, working day and night at an accelerated, driving pace, I had a new body. I was in Dr. Link’s old workshop, my “birthplace.” Tom had locked the place without removing its contents, for sentimental reasons. I had been created here, over a year before. Now a new Adam Link was replacing the old.
My new body was eight feet tall, excluding a head. Bringing me only as a living head, Tom and Jack had, under my instructions, connected me to a broken, partly dismantled robot body Dr. Link had first made for me, then discarded as not quite what he wanted. Working with this basis, I rebuilt the body piece by piece, strengthening, improving, employing greatly advanced mechanical principles.
At last it was done, and I prepared to leave.
Kay, Jack and Tom wore solemn faces. Within, I was solemn too. I knew what I had to do.
“I’ll bring Hillory down alive,” I promised grimly. “But before that—” I could not finish the thought.
Kay burst into tears. She loved Eve too.
I left. I had told them to come up, with police, if I did not return in twenty-four hours. Hillory could be arrested for living on my property, already signed over to Jack and Kay. Perhaps then they might win a legal victory over him.
I was there at dawn. If I had thought to surprise Hillory asleep, I saw my mistake. Eve’s form, sitting before the cabin, rose up mechanically, with a shout of alarm. Hillory had somehow rigged her up as a sentry.
The cabin door flew open and Hillory’s bald head peered out. He saw me running up as fast as I could. His eyes popped. I must have seemed to him like a ghost from the dead—a robot’s vengeful ghost.
But he darted back in, obviously to his helmet-control, and Eve’s great form lumbered out to meet me. This I knew was inevitable, that I would have to battle Eve again.
“You escaped death somehow, Adam Link,” Eve’s voice said. But I knew it was Hillory talking, through her. I had no way of telling whether he was perturbed or not. “I’ll smash you completely this time, before my eyes,” he concluded defiantly.
I stopped ten feet before Eve’s crouching, waiting form.
“Eve, listen. I know you can hear and understand.” I went on rapidly. “I have to battle you, perhaps kill you. It is the only way. I must destroy you if I can, so that Hillory does not destroy me. Hillory must not be allowed to introduce robot-slaves. This is all torture to you, darling, I know. You are fighting me when you don’t want to. And I will be bent on your destruction—even, if necessary, that of your brain. Your life! I love you, Eve. Forgive me—”
“Love!” scoffed the robot before me. For a moment I thought it was Eve. Then I knew it was Hillory, hearing my words, and mocking. “Mechanical puppets, both of you.”
And then we were battling.
How can I describe that battle? A struggle between two metal titans, each with the ruthless machine-powered strength of dozens of men? It seemed unreal even to me.
We came together with a clang that resounded through the still mountain air like a cannon’s roar. We locked arms, straining to throw each other. But now I was no longer at a disadvantage. We were equally matched. Two robots constructed for maximum power, speed and endurance. Unyielding metal against unyielding metal.
We looked into each other’s eyes, told each other that though our bodies fought, our minds loved.
We broke apart. We came at each other with swinging arms. Mailed fists clanked against our adamant armors. The blows would have broken the back of an elephant. Within us, gears, cogs and wheels clashed in spurts and reverses as we weaved and danced around like boxers in a ring. We did not move as agilely as human boxers, however. The robot body must ever be inferior, in sheer efficiency, to nature’s organic robots.
Suddenly my adversary—I no longer thought of her as Eve, but Hillory—stepped back, stooping. He shot forward in a football tackle, toppling me backward. Then, while I lay slightly stunned, he picked me up by heel and arm, and flung me over his head. I landed with a metallic crash. The next second a huge boulder whizzed past my head. Then another… but I was dodging.
&nb
sp; I was on my knees when he came at me, hammering at my skull-piece with his ponderous arms. I flung my arms up in protection. He sought to destroy my brain. Once that was crushed, my powerful body was senseless junk.
I lunged forward at his knees, hurling him to the ground with a thunderous crash. I had my chance then—a perfect chance to stamp my iron heel down on the head, crunching it. But I didn’t.
Eve’s eyes stared at me.
The chance passed, as my enemy rolled away, swung erect. But I had been a fool. One blow and Eve would have known non-existence. It would have been sheer mercy, to save her from a living death. If the chance came again, I would not hesitate…
I hardly know what went on in the following minutes. Once my enemy picked up a boulder that ten men could not have budged and hurled it at me like a bomb. I dodged but it scraped my side, tearing three rivets loose. Again, he locked his arms around me from the back and crunched them together so fiercely that metal screamed. But I heaved him over my back, breaking the hold.
We fought on, like two mad giants. Our colossal blows at one another would have felled the largest dinosaur of Earth’s savage past. Our mechanical apparatus within began to feel the repeated shock. Parts were being strained to the breaking point. It couldn’t go on forever. One of us would break down.
I had a dim hope that my enemy would succumb first. Hillory had had to fight by proxy, from a distance. I had fought from a closer range. I had gotten more telling blows in. His inner mechanisms had received the most terrific jolting. It was his second battle. I had punched at the head as often as I could, jarring the brain within—even though it was Eve’s.
I cannot describe the hollow ache that came with the thought of winning by killing Eve. But I had to win. I had to save the future robot race from slavery. And the human race, beyond that, from the eventual catastrophe of such a murderous course.
I aimed another blow, straight for what would be the human jaw.
Suddenly it was over.
The other robot’s arms dropped. There was a stunned, dazed air about the whole body. It swayed a moment, then its knee swivels bent and it crashed to the ground. It lay sprawled, eyes closed.
