The Mechanical Monarch

by E. C. Tubb

  Over the radio came the sound of a man’s laboured breathing and the faint ringing of metal on metal. In imagination Comain followed the pilot's movements. First the thin metal hatch sealing the control room. It was fastened with catches and shouldn’t take long to remove. A clanging sound and he knew that it had been thrown aside, then, mingling with the sound of his harsh breathing, Curt’s voice echoed from the speaker.

  “Damn gloves! Can’t grip anything. Take them off. That’s better. Now. This conduit to the firing relays. Which wires? Which wires?”

  “The red ones,” snapped Comain. “Can you hear me, Curt? Trace the red ones.”

  “Got ’em. Now.” A mumbling and then a savage curse. “Damn free fall! Damn it to hell! Damn all designers who can't imagine a man having to repair a machine. How the hell can I get down there?”

  “Curt!” Comain bit his lips until the blood ran over his chin. “What’s the matter now?”

  “The hatch is too narrow.” Curt’s voice echoed through the room. “I can’t get down far enough to reach the relay.”

  "Your G-suit. Take it off.”

  ‘‘Yes. That’s an idea. Funny I never thought of that” Comain glanced at Adams as the pilot’s voice vibrated from the speaker. He thinned his lips at the sound of the pilot’s voice, his eyes narrowing in sudden suspicion, then, before he could speak, Curt spoke again.

  “There. Suit’s off. Now let me see.” The sound of violent retching interrupted the too-calm tones of the pilot. “Damn it! Now to work. Hook one foot behind the chair. Grip the edge of the hatch. Thrust downwards, stretch . . .” His voice grew muffled and over the radio came the sound of gasping and scraping. Comain glanced at the chronometer, his pale face wet with the sweat of nervous tension.

  “Hurry, Curt. Hurry!”

  “Got it.” Comain sighed with relief at the triumph in the pilot’s voice. “Now, press this and . . .”

  Nothing happened. No thunder spilled from the radio. No pulse of blasting rocket tubes as they checked the speed of the distant rocket ship. Just silence and the rasping breath of a desperate man.

  “Curt. Nothing happened. What’s wrong now?”

  “What’s wrong?” Comain hardly recognised the voice of his friend. “You smug fools! You knew didn’t you! You trusted metal before flesh and blood. Damn you, Comain! Damn you to hell!”

  “Curt! Take it easy, man. What’s the matter?”

  “The relay’s broken, that’s what. The metal snapped in my hand like a piece of glass.”

  “What?” Comain stared at Adams, then, even as the Colonel stared the question, he knew what must have happened. The vibration of the ship had altered the structure of the metal of the relay. It had crystalised, changed from strength to weakness, shaken and tormented by vibration and radiation. It was a chance in a million, the one thing they hadn’t even thought of guarding against, but it had happened and now . . .

  “Curt.” Comain wiped sweat from his streaming forehead. “You’ll have to by-pass the relay. Get lower down into the

  hatch and connect the wires by hand. Can you do it, Curt? Curt. Answer me.”

  “I hear you, Comain. Ill try and do what you say, but my head feels funny, I can't seem to make my hands obey me. Connect the green wires you say?”

  “The red ones, Curt. The red ones.”

  “Right, Comain. I’ll try it. Connect the red wires. Connect.”

  Silence replaced the steady sounds from the radio. A deep silence, divorced from any trace of noise but the steady hiss of the carrier beam. Comain lunged for the controls, adjusting ’ the power flow and altering the settings of the vernier dials with delicate touches of his slender fingers, but, even as he did so, he' knew that what he did was wasted time.

  The ship had passed behind the Moon.

  CHAPTER V

  Two hours the observatories had said. Two hours before the ship, if it did not alter course, could be seen again. There would be a short while before radio contact was broken, before the ship had speeded beyond the point where its signal could be picked up and amplified, and after that . . .

  Comain didn’t like to think about it.

  He sat before the radio, conscious of the eyes of the waiting men as they stared at him, and for the thousandth time he cursed himself for forgetting the unsuspected. Adams sat beside him and the naked glare of the electric lights shone on his grizzled hair, accentuating the deep lines running from nose to mouth, making him seem suddenly old and feeble.

  “How soon will we know?”

  “If Curt can fire the rockets we should know within an hour. If not . . .” Comain shrugged.

  “Can he get to the controls?”

  “I don’t know. There was no reason why he should. Who could have thought that the ship would travel so fast? Or that the vibration would crystallise just that piece of metal?”

  “Can he get to the firing point?” Adams repeated doggedly. He didn’t seem capable of thinking of anything else.

  “I don’t know,” snapped Comain irritably. “He may be able to. I just don’t know.”

  “Think of it,” whispered a man. “He’s up there, sick, burning with radiation fever, trying to fix the firing controls and save his life. I’ve worked on those relays and I say that he can’t do it. Not in the time and without the proper tools he can’t.”

  “Shut up.” Adams glared at the man. “If you must talk, talk outside.”

  “What the hell?” The man glared at the Colonel. “This is a free country isn’t it? Can’t a man speak his mind now?”

  “So you don’t think that he can reach the firing point?” Comain stared at the man. “Why not?”

  “Because it was never designed to be reached from the control room, that’s why. I’ve worked on it, and I never did like the idea of trusting to automatics so much. If that relay has broken it means that he’s got to strip off .half the wiring and then, even if h§ can do that, he’s got to squeeze down the hatch and connect the wires direct. You know what that means.”

  “You think that the acceleration pressure will be too much for him?”

  The man shrugged, reaching in his pocket for a cigarette. “You designed the ship,” he reminded. “What do you think?”

  Comain nodded, feeling a growing sickness at the pit of his stomach. The man was right. He had designed the ship, and, perhaps subconsciously, he had tended to ignore the human element. He had trusted too much in machines, in things of metal and plastic, of wire and crystal. He had toyed with a wholly automatic vessel with the pilot a passenger rather than the main element which he should have been.

  And he could have been the cause of his friend’s death.

  But there was still hope. Curt could fire the rockets by hand. He could check the speed of the ship, fall into the gravitational field of the Moon, restore the vessel to its predetermined path. It would take so little. Just the contact of two red wires. Such a little thing, and yet, knowing what he knew, Comain shivered to a sudden doubt.

  He didn’t like dealing with the Human element. Machines were predictable. The field of cybernetics offered so much and he had only agreed to work on the ship because of Curt and because of his youthful dreams. Now he was finished. After this he would leave the field of rocketry and concentrate on cybernetics. He . . .

  “One hour gone,” said Adams grimly, and seemed to slump even further into his chair.

  “He can’t make it.” The man who had spoken before glared around the room. “Rosslyn’s as good as dead. He doesn’t stand a chance, and we know it.”

  “I’ve told you once,” said Adams quietly. “Do I have to tell you again?”

  “It could have been me.” The man ignored the unspoken threat in the Colonel’s tone. “It could have been any of us. Damn it all I don’t mind taking a chance, no man does, but to be trapped up there without a ghost of a chance of getting back just because of faulty design . . .” He glared at Co-main. “To me that’s just like murder.”

  “It couldn’t be he
lped. Do you think we did it deliberately?” Adams stared at the man and his grizzled hair and seamed face gave him a peculiarly brutal expression. “Damn you! To hear you talk you’d think that we deliberately sent Rosslyn up there knowing that he could never get back.” “You could have used a little more brain. Didn’t it ever occur to you that something might go wrong? What’s the good of sending a man in a ship like that if he can’t get at anything?”

  “You . . .” Adams surged from his chair, his eyes twin flecks of feral rage. “You and your big mouth. I’ll . .

  “Steady, Adams.” Comain grabbed the Colonel by the arm and thrust him back into his chair. “Take it easy, the man is right.”

  “What?”

  "He’s right in what he says. We should have been able to predict what happened. A machine could do it, but we aren’t machines. How could we guess that the vibration at take-off would crystalise the relay? We just didn’t accept that asfa factor at all, but if we’d have known.”

  “I don’t understand.” Adams frowned at the thin man. “What are you talking about, Comain?”

  “You’ve heard of EINAC I suppose? You know that there are huge electronic machines which are able to store a series of facts and to predict, within the range of those facts, a probable happening? Insurance companies do it all the time. They can tell almost exactly just how many people will die from any large group. They can even give the average life expectancy of any trade or profession. You know that don’t you?"

  “Yes,” admitted Adams reluctantly. “But what has that to do with what’s happening now?”

  “If we'd had such a machine, one large enough to store all the relevant factors, we could have told to within a fraction of a decimal point just what chances Curt would have of survival. We could nave adjusted the variables to give him the highest possible favourable probability factor and we’d have known in advance just what would happen. As it was we merely took a wild gamble. We didn’t know what would happen once the ship took off. We guessed, but we guessed wrong, and now a man may lose his life because of it.’’

  “So what do you suggest? That we don’t build any more space ships until this dream-machine of yours has been built?” Adams smiled without humour and Comain knew that the Colonel thought that he was just talking to ease his inner tension. In a way Adams was right. Comain admitted it, but, as he watched the swinging hands of the chronometer, he knew that it was more than just that.

  He really believed in such a machine. Like most weak people he had a fear of the unknown. He had always disliked meeting new people, of making sudden decisions, of thrusting himself forward. It would be so simple if there were such a machine as he had described. Then, whenever a new problem arose, the exact percentage of probability could be found and acted on. There would be no wasted time, the result of an experiment could be found without the experiment actually taking place. The machine would know everything there was to be known. It would have all the knowledge of the ages within its memory banks, would be able to scan that knowledge, and, from that information, deduct new facts and predict inevitable happenings.

  It would be an oracle. An omnipotent, omnipresent, machine. It would end all fear. It would end all blind alleys and futile lines of research. It would free men forever from the harsh necessity of studying all their lives so that, with luck, they could add just one new fact before their deaths.

  A grunt from one of the men snapped him from his dreams back to the present.

  “Five minutes before the ship comes into sight again.”

  “Get the radio antenna aligned on the point of emergence,” snapped Adams. “We won’t have long before he’s beyond

  range.”

  Comain nodded and fed co-ordinates from the observatory into the machine before him. On its high tower the huge web of the radio antenna swung a little as it pointed towards the glowing face of the Moon.

  Tensely they waited for the radio to crackle into life, and in silence, the steady hiss of the carrier beam seemed to mock them with its indifferent noise.

  Three minutes. Comain wiped sweat from his face and neck, wondering desperately what he was going to say.

  Two minutes. He checked the three recording machines, noting their full spools of metallic tape, and made a slight adjustment to the vernier controls of the radio.

  One minute. Comain switched on the recorders and made sure that his headset was near at hand.

  Now. Everyone stared at the black box of the radio speaker and Comain leaned forward, clearing his throat with a rasping sound.

  “Curt! Comain here. Can you receive me?”

  Silence and the steady hiss of the carrier wave.

  “Curt! Come in, Curt. Answer. Answer.”

  A crackle. A blur of static and, like a thin ghost, the weak voice of a man at the extreme range of radio reception.

  “Comain. Thank God you waited.”

  “Did you fix it?” He knew that it was a foolish thing to ask but for the moment he couldn’t think of anything else to say. The radio hummed and faded, crackled and blurred. Impatiently Comain fed power into the extra boosters and the voice returned with a rush.

  “Fix it?” The laugh which followed wasn’t nice to hear. “I fixed it alright. If I’d had a bomb I’d have fixed it for good. You and your damn machines.”

  “What happened? Curt! What happened?”

  “I couldn’t reach it, that’s what happened. I tried to get down to the firing controls. I could see them just beyond my fingers, but I couldn’t get down far enough. Can you understand that, Comain? I could actually see them.” Static washed through the speaker and the men moved a little closer, hungry to catch the last words of the first man in space.

  “I stripped off the G-suit. I stripped off the undersuit. I still couldn’t get down far enough. I grew desperate then. It’s funny how a man will grow desperate when he still thinks there’s a chance. I cut a vein and covered my body with my own blood. I thought that it would let me slip those last few inches, a sort of oil you know, but it didn’t work. I couldn’t do it, Comain. A half-inch difference in the width of the hatch would have done it. Three inches difference in the position of the firing point would have done it. Even a single tool would have enabled me to fire the drive, but I didn’t have it, Comain. I didn’t have it.”

  “Couldn’t he have used his feet?” A man whispered the suggestion, then fell silent as the radio blurred again.

  “Have you ever tried stripping wires and connecting them with your toes, Comain? I did. I ripped the nails from both feet trying, but it was no good. You chose your wiring well. It would take a knife to get through the insulation and I

  hadn’t got a knife. I hadn’t got anything except my teeth.” Curt laughed again. “I can taste my own blood now.” “God!” A man stumbled towards the door, his face white and his eyes sick and dark against his strained features. Adams stared after him then stepped towards the radio. “Rosslyn. How are your physical symptoms?”

  “I’m scared, Colonel. As scared as all hell. I’m going to die. You know that don’t you? I know it, and so you must know it, too.”

  “Never mind that now. How are your physical symptoms? Has the radiation affected you at all?”

  “Radiation?” Curt sounded puzzled. “What are you talking about?” . 4

  “Snap out of it man.” Adams glared at the radio. “You know what I mean. Has the radiation affected you at all?” “I don’t know. How could I know? I’ve been busy trying to fix up this glorified firework. Damn you and your questions anyway. Why the hell should I answer?”

  “Curt.” Contain thrust Adams away from the radio. “Don’t be bitter about it. We couldn’t help it, you know that. You took a chance and you lost, but, if you had the chance again, would you refuse?”

  “Thanks, Contain, I knew that you’d understand.” The faint voice echoed with a peculiar gratefulness from the speaker. “Would I take it again? I don’t know. It hasn’t been pleasant up here. All on my own, doubled with sickness
, knowing that I’m going to die. I don’t want to die, Contain. I want to live, to enjoy all the things I haven’t had time to enjoy. I want to smell the scent of growing things, to feel the rain on my face, and to see the sunset and the night sky. I want to marry, have some kids perhaps, grow to be an old man. I shan’t have any of those things now, Comain. I shall never know what they are like, the things I haven’t had. All I’ve got now is a tank of air, a tank of water, and the universe to rove in. It’s a big universe Comain, but I don’t think that I shall be seeing much of it.”

  “Curt.” Comain bit his lips until the blood ran down his chin. “Curt—I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry? Why, Comain. Because I am going to die instead of you? Don’t feel sorry for me. Just see that they spell my name right in the history books. One other thing. Tell Adams not to worry too much about the radiation. I don’t feel any effects from it.”

  Static crackled from the radio and the thin, ghost voice, wavered and blurred, fading and dwindling to a tiny thread of sound.

  “Goodbye, Comain. I don’t regret this you know, but if only that hatch had been wider, a half-inch even.” Comain frowned as he listened to the dying voice. “Remember my name, won’t you. I’d like to think that I won’t be wholly forgotten. You know how to spell it? Rosslyn. R . . . O . . . S . . . S . . .”

  Sound snarled from the speaker. A savage burst of noise, thundering, pulsing, and then, as if it had been stopped at source, silence replaced the noise, silence and the empty hiss of the carrier beam.

  “The automatics,” whispered Comain sickly. “They fired on time.”

  “Then he’s safe?” Adams stared at the thin man and sweat glistened on his seamed features. Comain shook his head.

  “No. The blast came too late. Anyway, the stress must have split the hull. If the metal of the relay had crystalised then other metal must have been weakened also. Not that it makes any difference now.”