by Eando Binder
“These are X-ray prints,” the other Sirian gasped. “They show—”
He held them out mutely. The prints would speak for themselves.
I knew what they showed. They showed a seemingly human body, lying flat, all its insides revealed to the X-ray’s penetrative eye. They showed wires, wheels and cogs.
I tensed as Thorg began looking them over. What would his reaction be, knowing us at last for robots? Beings more alien to him than even humans?
“My question is this, Thorg,” I went on imperturbably, as though ignoring the interruption as something unimportant. “If you failed to send the long-range radio message back to Sirius, would the follow-up armada come anyway?”
“No,” Thorg said abstractly, looking over the prints with a puzzled eye. “Receiving no message, our people would assume we had been lost. Sending these ships is a costly proposition. They would give up coming to this sun at all then, and try some other star.”
“Thanks, Thorg,” I said. “That’s all I wanted to know.”
“What?” he said, still absorbed in studying the prints. Suddenly his eyes blinked, as the significance of the X-rays struck home. He looked up.
“You are a robot,” he accused. “A mechanical being.”
“Indubitably,” I agreed. I went on rapidly. “You wanted to know how strong I was before. I’ll show you—now.”
My fist drove into his face, with all the power of a machine behind it. Thorg’s giant form toppled over backward, turning three somersaults, his horns and hooves alternately clacking on the floor.
“The engine, Eve,” I yelled. “Before they touch it.”
Mog and his workmen had turned at the swift, bewildering attack on their chief. There were twenty of them. Twenty of the towering giant monsters between us and the engine. They stood only a moment, as Eve and I bore down on them like express trains. Then they jerked out their guns.
The paralysis-rays went through us harmlessly. They had forgotten. But now Mog, aware of their uselessness, had drawn his other weapon. It was the one unknown factor left. Would it blast, like their cannon, blowing even metal to atoms?
“If he gets one of us, Eve,” I told her swiftly without slackening pace, “the other goes on. You know what to do—”
Eve nodded.
Mog fired. The electrical bolt leaped to my body, with an impact that made me stumble. But it did no more than knock plastic off and scorch the metal. It was a hand-weapon designed to blast human flesh, or Sirian flesh, but not hard metal.
Mog stared in disbelief, as I came on unharmed. Then he fired again and again, blindly, at both of us. The other Sirians too. Bolt after bolt ripped into us. Our plastic burned and melted away.
One shot tore away my artificial ears and lips and hair-wig. My true metal face shone forth.
It takes long to tell this. But it was only seconds while we leaped toward them in great bounds. I try to imagine at times how profoundly astonished the Sirians must have been. Two seeming humans coming at them, changing under the blasts of two gleaming, powerful monsters of metal.
“Robots,” one of the Sirians screeched. “Intelligent machines—”
Then I was among them.
I cracked the first one on the skull so hard he sank without a groan, dead. I snapped the second one’s neck with one sledgehammer rabbit punch. I grabbed two necks, and cracked their heads together, flinging the limp bodies aside. Giants they were, half again taller than I was, but I pulled them down to my level for blows. Eve was beside me, punching with the rapidity of a rivet-hammer. And with all its horsepower.
It was a grand fight. A soul-satisfying fight. With each blow, I hissed the name of one of the prisoners who had gone to the dissection room. With each death, I counted one earth plane pilot paid for.
CHAPTER 21
Adam Link, Citizen
Giants they were, hulking monsters of incredible strength. But they had no chance. Their blows against us served only to break their arms. They kicked viciously with their hooves, and howled in pain as the ankle-bone went numb or snapped. They stooped and butted with their short, wicked horns, and succeeded only in stunning their brains.
In turn, Eve and I butted with our metal skulls, often with enough force to cave in a chest with the muffled sound of cracking ribs.
Eve and I were at last exerting our full mechanical fury, against which no biological being could stand unless it might be a dinosaur. The Sirians were gigantic and strong, yes, alongside humans. But to us they were overgrown rag dummies.
It was a glorious fight. The hulking behemoths went down steadily.
“Come on, you Sirian thugs,” I yelled. “Meet Adam Link, the robot. My wife, Eve. Pleased to kill you.”
The last two tried to flee, shrieking, from the two berserk metal whirlwinds. I overtook one. Eve caught the other. We swung them around our heads, by their heels, banging them together till they were bloody, broken shreds. We were laughing, shrieking in joy.
I cannot explain this orgy, except that all our pent-up hatred and rage and revulsion against the Sirians had come to a head. It was like the overcharged hatred of a human stamping again and again on a snake long after it is dead.
Our joyful shrieking stopped, as a sound penetrated our ears. It was a hissing bolt-blast, following by a tinkling crash.
“We forgot Mog,” Eve yelled. “He’s at the engine, smashing the controls.”
I was already leaping to the front of the ship, where Mog was aiming his second blast among the drive-apparatus. I jerked the gun away, so that the blast sped harmlessly against the hull. Mog whirled with a snarl of rage and fear.
“Twice before we battled, Mog,” I said, “without coming to a decision. Now—”
It was brief. I grabbed his nine-foot body as if he were a child. I bent him across my chest, as once he had brutally bent a human across his. I slowly pulled as he screamed in pain. The scream clipped off as a sharp snap told of his spine breaking like a twig. I tossed the corpse aside.
I looked around. All the Sirians down here were dead.
Except one.
“Look,” Eve pointed. “Thorg recovered.”
I had not killed Thorg, only dealt him a blow. He had crawled to the door and now dashed through it, escaping.
“Let him go,” I said. “Let him tell his men of the two metal demons who will defeat them. And we will, now that we have this ship. We know how to run it now—by thought control.”
Eve and I clasped hands happily. It was the last factor in the plan that had slowly shaped in my mind during the spying.
“Good job you did, Eve,” I commended her sincerely. “Acting the part so superbly of turning against the human race, for the benefit of the Sirians. You even had me fooled for a while.”
“And you had me worried,” Eve returned, sighing in relief. “For a while I thought you might actually mean it. Especially when you took poor Captain Taylor and… but you had to do it.”
I laughed.
“Taylor isn’t dead,” I said. “I didn’t strangle him. I slipped a finger over a vertebra below the back of his neck and pressed hard. You know the delicate nerve there. Pressed hard, it renders the victim unconscious. But not dead. Taylor’s alive.”
“Adam, you darling,” Eve said. “Our hands are clean after all. Now—”
She was interrupted by the sound of clattering hooves down the corridor, approaching this underground hangar.
“No time to lose,” I said hurriedly. “All we have to do now is start this ship’s engine and—”
I slipped the thought-helmet over my head.
“Come to life—start—operate,” I commanded mentally in a dozen different ways.
There was no reaction from the mighty engine. I tried vainly for another minute. At the anti-aircraft guns, the merest thought of the alien gunners had swung them, aimed them, fired them. What more was needed here?
Eve clutched my arm, pointing.
“Mog fired one shot at the controls. Look there—he
damaged it.”
I looked. A dozen wires had been blasted out of what seemed a vital unit of the complex mechanism.
Ruined! The ship’s drive mechanism was ruined, and with it my great plan. We had only killed off twenty aliens. There were 980 of them left. A formidable force. I could not storm up and wade into them all. Their combined hand-weapon bolts would eventually damage me, defeat me.
Eve and I might kill a hundred or two. Hundreds would be left. And the dome would be intact. Ship Two would land tonight, with reinforcements. In one crushing moment, all my carefully planned schemes had smashed.
“I’ve failed, Eve,” I groaned. “They’ll win, now. Our only hope was getting this ship into operation.”
“Can you repair it?” Eve suggested. “I’ll try to hold off any attack for a while—”
“Repair it?” I said hollowly. “Repair an engine I never saw or heard of before? I might—if I had enough time. But they won’t give us time.”
Hopelessly, we prepared to battle to the end. We heard the thunder of hooves, like a herd of buffalo, and they appeared at the far end of the hangar.
I ran forward and picked up Mog’s bolt-gun. I slipped three more from dead aliens and handed two to Eve. We stood shoulder to shoulder and fired. We blazed away, like two metal gunmen, with a pair of guns each, in a battle to the finish.
The first few Sirians that darted from the corridor went down with smoking holes blasted in their bodies by the lightning we hurled. It was no trick to us to handle the guns, and our aim was mechanically without error. Then they came thundering out in a body, at least a hundred of them, spreading in a semi-circle in the large space.
The lightning bolts lanced back and forth.
Eve and I, with our precise aim, picked them off like clay pigeons. But the last twenty surged near enough to blast us with a fusillade of shots. Some of our rivets cracked away. A frontal plate or two loosened. If our inner vitals were exposed, one shot within would short-circuit us and bum out our brains.
We divined Thorg’s desperate plan.
Knowing he was up against formidable metal beings who acted fast, he would destroy us fast. At any cost. Even if it took all his men, he would finish us. Better for Ship Two to arrive at a dome empty of Sirians and robots alike, rather than arrive at a dome held by robots.
A wave of another hundred Sirians spilled out next.
Again Eve and I shot them down with our unerring swiftness. But again, appallingly, rivets flew loose and metal slowly weakened. One shot had clipped away one of my neckbolts, so that a flange dropped away. The next electrical bolt in there would bore into my neck-cables, run up the wires, and blast my brain.
“The next attack,” I told Eve somberly, “will get us. Earth is doomed after all.”
“If only Captain Taylor and his men had weapons and could attack from the rear,” Eve said hopelessly.
I started.
“Eve! The weapons are there—on the downed Sirians. Hurry, let’s gather them before the next attack.”
We ran among the dead and piled up a hundred bolt-guns. Enough to arm all the prisoners.
“Get these to the men,” I said to Eve. “Have them attack from the rear. Keep the Sirians occupied. Give me one hour if you can. One hour to repair that engine. One hour.”
Our plan was desperate, but simple.
When the next wave of aliens boiled out, two hundred of them this time, they withered before the thunder of an earth tank’s gun. We had remembered the tank stored here. Eve was inside, with the bolt-weapons.
Guns spitting, she rumbled the tank forward, plowing through their ranks. The tank darted into the clear corridor back of them, knocking down the last few Sirians in the way. Then it churned madly down the hall toward the prison.
“Good luck, Eve,” I shouted.
“Goodbye, Adam,” her voice drifted back, above the rumble of the engine. “If we never meet again…”
Yes, goodbye it might be, I swung on the aliens with a snarl. They had forced me to separate from my mate. It always drove me berserk, when Eve was in danger. I would kill—kill—kill—
But only twenty stayed to duel with me. The remaining force, at an order, gave chase to Eve. They realized the threat she would be, at their backs.
Two guns blazing, I shot down fifteen of the twenty. Then my guns were empty. I did not waste time picking up fresh guns from among the dead. I waded into the last five, defying their bolts like a metal madman. None had made a vital shot.
I picked up one and flung him to the floor as pulp. The second I bowled over and stamped on. I tore the head of the third from its trunk. I punched the fourth so hard my alloy fist sank half-way into his chest. The fifth and last, I flung over my head against the wall, with a wet thud.
I was free from attack, for the time being.
I listened at the door. Faintly, I heard the joyous shouts of Taylor’s men, drifting down from the halls above. Eve had reached them, killed the guard, yanked open the bars, and distributed the weapons. Already their hissing barks sounded. And the tank’s rumble resumed, as a spearhead formed behind it.
We had a rear-attack fighting force now.
I calculated the possibilities. Less than a hundred humans against 600 aliens. The Sirians would win, of course. The tank might confound them for a while, but they would barricade it off in some corridor and force the charging earthmen to fight hand-to-hand. In the narrow hallway, with bolts sizzling thickly, Eve too would be doomed.…
But it would give me time now to look at the engine. Repair it, if possible.
I ran back, and looked the damage over.
I must make another fantastic statement here. I had never seen a spaceship before, or even dreamed of one. I knew absolutely nothing of its principle or intricate design, fashioned by alien minds.
Yet in one hour I knew its essential features.
The armed and freed earthmen were putting up a heroic battle. Thorg knew he had to wipe out this armed menace in his midst, before he could come after me.
I could hear the sounds of battle. The triumphant, joyful shouts of the earthmen, as at last they struck back at the aliens. Captain Taylor’s voice was loudest of all, deploying his men in the corridors, sniping, charging, withdrawing, doling out his men’s lives for the largest possible price. And for the longest slice of precious time. The tank’s rumble sounded periodically, as it was used to spearhead a sortie, or to cover a strategic retreat.
Humans and robots, united again, were making history under the dome.
One hour they gave me.
One hour in which I examined 5000 engine parts, wires, condensers, tubes, spark-chambers, computerized parts, and electronic gadgetry. And then I knew. Knew that the dozen wires Mog’s one vital shot had destroyed should be replaced and hooked up in such and such a manner. I took wire from a bolt-gun’s coil. I made the last connection. I slipped the thought-helmet over my skull.
Would it work? Or would all those humans go down for nothing?
Even as I adjusted the helmet with feverish haste, the battle sounds died. The shouts of men trailed to dying echoes. They had spilled their blood, to the last man, buying an hour with their lives.
And Eve? The tank’s rumble was absent. It had been wrecked. Had a bolt finally ripped into Eve’s battered metal body and blasted within? No sound from her. She was gone, too.
Savagely, I commanded the engine to come to life. Obediently, a hum rose back of the panels, as mighty forces came to life and awaited their metal Aladdin’s next wish. I began to give the mental order.
“Adam! Adam!”
It was Eve’s voice, far down the corridor. Her metal feet pounded, louder and louder. Hooves pounded after her. The last 500 of the Sirians pursued her, to finish the battle underground where it had started.
Eve’s flying metal form burst from the corridor. Sirians followed, blazing away. A hail of lightning sparked against her alloy plates. Eve stumbled half-way to the ship. She was badly hurt. A lightning-bolt spa
nged against the back of her skull, where metal had oxidized away under heat.
Eve fell with a crash and lay still. I was there in two huge bounds. I swept up her limp form. It was silent, lifeless. She had paid the price, too, along with Taylor and his men.
I would not wish to describe my feelings of that moment. Earth was saved, but for me the universe had turned dark.
I ran back to the ship’s controls.
“Rocket tubes fire,” I commanded the engine. “Rear and front together, at equal rate.”
Instantaneously, livid flame shot from the multitude of drive tubes. With equal forces from back and front, the ship itself did not move. But all the hangar was filled with a dense, choking, poisonous exhaust gas. This had been my plan.
I turned to watch. With savage satisfaction, I saw all the charging Sirians stop, stumble, and claw at their throats. By the dozens they dropped, then hundreds, as the clouds of gas billowed over them. They had lungs. The lungs filled with vapors that choked out their lives. The 500 aliens died in their tracks.
Chief Thorg was among them. I watched him curl to the ground, double up, and die in agony. I gazed down at Eve’s dead form. Thorg’s death soothed, perhaps by a millionth part, the blind agony within me.
I let the rockets blast out for fifteen minutes, filling the whole dome with its poisonous vapors. No being could be alive now. No last lurking Sirian who might be at some watch station.
Only Adam Link was alive now, without lungs to be seared.
I commanded the engine to stop. Then I sat before Eve, in dead quiet.
Hours later I arose. It was night now. Ship Two was due to arrive. If my metal face could have showed it, I was grinning within. A deadly, ghastly grin.
The beacon light shone that night, guiding to earth the starship that had plummeted across the gulf of space from Sirius.
The mighty craft lowered from the clouds, rockets drumming. It dipped in salute. Within were 1000 yelling, cheering, rejoicing Sirians, eager to step out on the planet they were to conquer.
I was at a thought-controlled anti-aircraft gun. The mighty ship was limned clearly by searchlight.
