The Killer Thing

Three

“Welcome to Ramses, land of little people, big drinks; and open mines! The women are small, but brother, watch out, they do know what they are doing!” Lo Ti chanted, glancing through a guide-booklet he had picked up at the space port. “Any of you ever been to Ramses before?” He was a second lieutenant of Korean descent.

Trace and Duncan shook their heads with the others. Trace stretched out full length in a reclining seat in the railed carrier that had been sent to transport the fleet from the space port to the nearest city. It was a pleasant feeling, being back on ground again after six months in space, four of them in battle.

“For your edification, gentlemen, may I enlighten you?” Lo Ti grinned, not looking to see the suffering expressions the other men assumed at his words. Someone moaned, “Cork him!” Another muttered, “Let’s toss him out!” Lo Ti ignored them.

“Ramses, admitted to the World Group Government as a protectorate in 2158. Population of one billion, seventeen million; principal exports: platinum, magnesium, peridots, and related minerals. Humanoids, sub-class C, averaging five feet two inches for the males, four feet six inches for the females of the species. State of technology comparable to Earth in year 1975, sans space travel…”

From the other end of the carrier a chant began that gradually picked up voices, finally drowning out the grinning second lieutenant, whose lips continued to move as he read from the guide-book.

There was much laughter, and someone started another of the Fleet songs:

The song went on for six more verses, each verse less inhibited than the last, and Duncan and Trace bellowed out the words with the others. Trace was grinning broadly when the bawdy song ended, and the carrier slowed down to follow winding city streets. He turned to look about.

The carrier was on tracks that were six feet above ground level, rising to cross roads and buildings now and then, falling to skim over the surface by inches of clearance, and then rising again. The buildings were of translucent green stone for the most part, with dark polished trim, and jade-green inlays in geometric patterns. The roofs were white, very clean and sparkling. The same shades of green ranging from pale grey-green, through emerald, to black-green were everywhere; in the streets, sidewalks, buildings, contrasted with the dazzling white, and with brilliant complementary colours in unexpected places. There were orange and red umbrellas over canary-yellow tables along the sidewalk, awnings with red swirls on white, rows and rows of deep purple flowers in white planters, trees with grey and white leaves.

People were everywhere. They looked like children masquerading as adults. The women were petite, graceful, with long flowing hair and tiny hands and feet. They were from four feet to not quite five feet in height, and were dressed in pastel tunics that were fastened at the shoulders with jade and peridot clasps. Their hair was agleam with the green ornaments; pendant earrings swung as they walked. The men wore longer tunics that were as simple as the women’s, but were white and black, or grey. They wore hip pouches held in place by wide metallic belts. Their heads as well as their faces were clean shaven.

“Nice, isn’t it?” Duncan said, at Trace’s side.

He was as tall as Trace, and at twenty-three, three years younger. Both were second lieutenants. His black eyes were shining with the excitement of leave after four months’ running battle with the fleet dispatched by Mellic. “You have any plans for the duration?” he asked.

They had come to a larger shopping area, where stores were open to the warm air and sunshine, and goods were spread out to be seen and handled. “No,” Trace said. “You?”

“Shopping first, for my sisters. I promised them something from each world I get to see, you know. They’re dopes, think all I have to do is shop for gewgaws for them.” He looked pleased at the thought. Trace grinned at him.

“Okay, we shop, and sightsee. How about taking a look at the mines?”

“Yeah, that’s great.”

They roamed the streets, laughing at the musical tones of incomprehension voiced by the natives when they tried to explain what they wanted. They lunched in a sidewalk cafe where they ate food they couldn’t identify, and drank a pale green, milky liqueur that made their heads swim pleasantly. Somewhere along the way they picked up two girls, each of them under four and a half feet, looking more like dolls than like women. The one who linked her arm through Trace’s arm said her name was Fez. She spoke in broken English; her eyes were like immense green lakes, flecked with golden brown dots. Later that night the girls took them to a hotel where the furnishings were golden and white silks and soft candlewood, and the four of them bathed and swam in their own pool with a centre fountain of translucent olivine rock.

Fez was very beautiful; her body had soft down all over it; her pubic hair was gold. There was more of the milky-green liqueurs, and music before the lights dimmed and went out. When Trace awakened in the morning, his tongue was thick and dry, and his head ached. His money was gone, as was Duncan’s. They swore, but in resignation. They had expected it. After collecting more from the Field Commander’s office in the official government building, they continued their tour. There was more shopping, more strange food, more girls, more liqueurs, and the next morning the same thick tongue and the same swearing over the inevitable robbery.

That day there was a fight in the dining-room of the hotel where they had decided to spend their last night. It started with one of the fleet men, a technical sergeant named Jensen, spying a girl who had taken him for two hundred World Group credits. He jerked from his chair and ran across the large room, upsetting three tables in his path. When he caught the girl’s arm and swung her around, her free hand flashed at his face leaving his cheek cut wide open, streaming blood. In the confusion that followed, she sped from the building, only to run into three more of the fleet men entering. One of them caught her, and pinning her arms behind her, brought her back.

Trace and Duncan were on the opposite side of the dining-room when it started, and they started to cross at the same time everyone else in the room began to try to get through.

“She has a knife,” Jensen said, holding a napkin to his bleeding face. “Watch her, she’s a real bitch with it.”

“Gentlemen! Gentlemen, please. Come into the office. Please!” It was the manager, or the owner. He was four feet eleven inches at the very most. Jensen shoved him aside and reached for the girl. She squirmed furiously in the clasp of the second fleet man, who grinned and twisted her arm. Her face went white and shiny. There was no sound or movement in the restaurant.

Jensen slapped her, and with the sharp sound of flesh striking flesh the tableaux exploded. Someone threw a bottle, and it caught Jensen on the back of his head, spilling the milky green liqueur down his white off-duty blouse. He staggered, but instead of looking around to see who had done it, he slapped the girl again. She screamed. None of the fleet men was armed, but among the Ramseans knives began to appear, and bottles were flying. Trace and Duncan had been in the outskirts of the crowd, but when screams and crashes, curses and falling bodies began to show that this would be a serious fight, Trace caught Duncan’s arm and pulled him back. They retreated to their table, fending off two small men who tried to stop them with chairs. Trace tripped one of them as Duncan grabbed the chair from the other one and smashed it against the little man’s chest.

Trace lifted a second chair and sent it crashing through the window behind their table, and they ran out through the jagged opening. They ran for a block before they stopped to catch their breath.

“Let’s get a ticket for the mines,” Trace said, leaning against a luminous, intricately carved panel of green. “The whole fleet’s probably going to get recalled for this.”

Duncan was grinning happily. He nodded. Arm in arm they went on down the street, the natives making room for them unassumingly. The mining country was twelve hundred miles north, and there was one scheduled carrier leaving that evening, or four on the following day. Knowing that if they remained in the city, and if the fleet was recalled as a result of the brawl, they would miss their chance to see the mines, they chose to go on the overnight carrier.

The ride was whisper quiet and smooth and they slept throughout the night, to be awakened by the slowing of the carrier as they approached a town. They were in mountainous country now; the early morning sun glinted from green extrusions of bare rock at elevations of over fifteen thousand feet. The land they were passing through looked as if a war had been fought over it. It was pitted and stripped and bared to the elements which had removed the rest of the topsoil, greenery, trees, everything that had rested on the valuable rocky bed.

The town they were entering was largely abandoned, with tall, handsome buildings of the ubiquitous green stone standing empty and uncared for. Shops were closed; in some cases the sheets of paper-thin stone that was often used for windows had been taken from the frames, and the wind howled through the bare interiors. A second track joined theirs, and then there were more until the tracks gave the appearance of gigantic metal rays even spaced, all drawing in close to the centre of an immense web. They began to see other carriers, not sleek, shiny-green as theirs was, but work-carriers, grey, heavy bellied and ugly, loaded with ores in every stage of refinement, from the virgin metallic rocks, to shaped blocks ready to be used for buildings, to car-loads of what looked like green dust. Other cars were tightly sealed, with guards riding them. The guards were all wearing the dun-coloured uniforms of the World Group Security forces. They looked at Trace and Duncan without expression when they left their carrier and started to walk across the loading dock following a sign, in W.G. English, that directed them to the car leaving for Mocklem Mines.

They had time for breakfast, they learned, and they were directed to the only restaurant in town that was still open. In it they were served the food that the World Group workers were fed throughout the galaxy: thin, tasteless coffee, synthetic eggs, paper-like bread. The restaurant had been one of the natives’ buildings, but it now bore the stamp of the World Group. Government issue furnishings appeared oversized against the built-in fixtures, oversized and awkwardly ugly, and where there had been surfaces that could be painted, they had been: flat whites that now were streaked and dirty, dark red floor paint that was chipping and cracked. It was a depressing room; they hurried through the meal and went back outside to wait in the cool morning mountain air until it was time to leave.

“If there was a train, or anything, going back right now, I’d take it,” Duncan said once as they waited.

Trace knew he would too. From what he had read of this world, he knew it was mostly mountainous, with little flat land for farming. The cities must be like oases, he thought, where people can pretend they haven’t spoiled everything outside. They deserved to be invaded and controlled, he decided. Most of them did, if you looked closely enough. He was glad when they could get in the smaller carrier that would take them to the mines.

They were met by a guard who looked them over sourly, glanced at their passes and then called to a second guard to show them to Dr. Vianti. The second man looked even sourer. “Inspection?” he asked. Trace kept his face straight and said nothing. In silence they were taken across a wide, empty compound to a low, grey-green building. The guard took them inside and turned them over to a native girl who seemed afraid. Her eyes were very large and golden in her pale face. Her yellow hair was below her waist at the back when she turned and led them into an inner room.

“Doctor,” she said softly, “some inspectors are here.”

Trace and Duncan exchanged glances; neither of them smiled nor corrected the girl. They waited a moment; with an apologetic murmur the girl left them, hurrying across the room to a door in the far wall. She knocked lightly on it, opened it a crack and said something, then pulled it closed and returned to them.

“Dr. Vianti will be out in a moment,” she said in flawless English. Hurriedly she walked out. The room they were left in was a larger office. What attracted the attention of both of them was the view from the window wall of shimmering, transparent stone. They were looking out over the biggest mine in the galaxy. A whole mountain was being eaten away, layer by layer, section by section. It was being carved into terraces, like giant stairs, and against each riser metal machines were shining in the sun, machines that moved and cut and loaded cars, all at the same pace, so that all the steps were being cut away simultaneously. In the few moments that they watched, car after car was carried away on the tracks, each one loaded with the ore, each one giving mute evidence to so many cubic feet of the mountain now gone.

There was a sound behind them and they turned together to see a tiny man emerge from the other room. He glanced at them, turned a key in the door and pocketed it, and then came forward to meet them.

“I am Dr. Vianti,” he said. He stood two feet shorter than Trace, and couldn’t have weighed more than sixty pounds. His eyes were piercing brilliant green, his skin unhealthily white, and he looked as if what flesh he had were being melted away from his frame. But there was life and intelligence in his very green eyes.

“Lieutenant Ellender Tracy, sir. And this is Lieutenant Ford Duncan,” Trace said, coming to attention.

“Ah, yes. Another inspection, my secretary tells me. Of course. This way, gentlemen.” The doctor turned and led them from the room. He didn’t look at them again. His voice was as emotionless as a professional guide’s. “This is Mocklem Mine, the site of the world’s richest deposits of native platinum, along with peridot, magnesium, iron, and olivine pyroxenite. If you will, please.” He led them outside to a small car suspended from a rail. The car swayed as he opened the door for them. The rail went out over a chasm that looked bottomless as mist swirled, hiding the lower levels. The doctor was talking again, as they hesitated. “This car will take us to the mines themselves, which, as you can see, are across the valley now. It is an eleven-thousand-foot drop to the floor of the valley, which incidentally is entirely man-made. Or machine-made, I should say. At one time the mines were on a level with the headquarters building we have just left. Above us the peak rises another seventeen thousand feet, and it is being worked to the peak, as you can see.” They continued to hesitate, and he looked at Trace for the first time since emerging from his locked room. “You do want to inspect the mines themselves, don’t you?”

There was no humour on his face; he simply looked very old, and very tired. Trace thought he must be quite ill. He shrugged and climbed inside the car that swayed precariously with his weight. Duncan followed, and then the doctor got in and pulled the door closed. He continued, as if he had not stopped:

“Mocklem Mine has been worked for twenty-seven years, has had ninety-six billion tons of ore removed from the site, and continues to yield pure, native platinum at the rate of one part to each three parts of gabbro and olivine pyroxenite. There are numerous vugs where druses of peridot crystals averaging eight inches are found.”

Duncan shifted uncomfortably and Trace said, “Never mind the lecture, Doctor. What are those machines doing the work?”

Dr. Vianti looked at him quickly, a flash of curiosity and confusion crossing his face. “Those are the robots your government ordered built to do the mining,” he said.

“Our Government?” Trace watched the death-like face, but no further emotion showed.

“Of course. I was working on the model when your forces… liberated Ramses. The robot was ordered into production in order to speed up the mining operations. At that time we had fewer than fifty thousand miners in the field.”

They left the swaying car on a wide, evenly cut rock ledge and there, at close range, Trace saw the robots. They were cylindrical, on wheels, with cutting lasers and waldoes. “Tell us about them,” he said, keeping his gaze on the robots that continued to work.

“They are simple machines, programmed to cut blocks, lift them, lead them on to the cars, and cut more blocks. The lasers have a beam length of four feet, the depth they cut through.”

“And you made them?” Trace asked, turning to study the tiny man once more. Dr. Vianti nodded.

“I was improving the model when your… forces landed here.”

One of the robots lifted a four-foot-square block of the rock. It was shiny with green olivine, with bands of grey-white platinum running through it. The robot swung around and put the rock on a waiting car, and with a continuation of the same movement, turned back to the mountain, its laser flashing on in the same instant that the robot was in a position to use it.

“They’ve done all this, the whole mountain? With no humans to run them?”

“I am here,” Dr. Vianti said. “And, of course, there are the security forces, and my secretary…”

“Yeah,” Trace said, looking up and then down. There were thousands of the robots at work, each one working steadily. As he watched, one of them rolled over a slab of rock that had been dropped in its path, and the sudden change tilted the machine; it hung for a second, its centre of gravity too off balance for the spinning wheels to find purchase again, and then it toppled, rolled, and fell over the side of the mountain. This occurred without sound, without interrupting the work of any of the other robots. Immediately another robot appeared at the far end of the ledge and rolled to the empty position to resume the task.

“I’m afraid that I’ll have to get back,” Dr. Vianti said. “Where there is an accident like that, it sometimes throws off the whole line. Things do have to be co-ordinated in this operation.”

Silently the three men returned to the low, grey-green building. The doctor turned on a screen that showed in a series of dots the cutting-line as it marched into the mountain itself. There was an almost imperceptible jag in it, and he twisted dials and made corrections, staying at the board until the line of dots was again straight.

“I adjusted the replacement in order to speed it up until they were working in unison once more,” he said. He remained in his seat before the console board of the computer and controls. “Is there anything else, gentlemen?”

Trace looked at him steadily. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “there is. We will have to have a look at that other room.”

Dr. Vianti let his gaze drop to his hands, resting quietly on the control panel. Helplessly he stood up and led them towards the door. “It is a harmless avocation, gentlemen. I assure you that since ordered to operate Mocklem Mines, I have given the mines very nearly all of my waking hours. Production figures will substantiate this statement. However, I am not a young man, and the nights grow long. Since I am denied repeal of my sentence, and have no contacts with the world beyond these mines, I sought my own amusements…”

He pushed open the door and stood aside for them to enter. The room was a work-room, with sturdy tables of metal, electronics equipment, chemicals on stonework counters, a second computer, this one in the open, not closed in by the commercial panels. And at the left side of the room there was a robot.

Trace felt his skin prickle when he saw it. The robot swivelled a dome that protruded from the cylindrical body, and the dome was fitted with slits that gleamed with the transparent green pyroxenite, ground and polished to glasslike smoothness and clarity. Trace knew the robot was looking at him.

It moved towards them, moving on treads instead of the wheels the other mining robots were equipped with. Its mid-section was open, a maze of wiring, with the laser tubes showing, with circuitry, things that looked like solenoid cells, monolithic crystals, transistors… Trace didn’t know what some of the things were that he caught a glimpse of before the thing halted and returned to the place where it had been when they entered. It turned at a word from Dr. Vianti.

“It can understand oral commands?” Duncan asked, awed by the robot.

“A few,” Dr. Vianti said. “Only a few. It is very primitive still…”

He wanted them to leave, Trace knew. The doctor stood at the door, holding it open for them, wishing them out. “What else have you added?” Trace asked.

“Nothing! Nothing! The treads… an experiment to forestall the kind of accident we witnessed today.”

“It has extra waldoes,” Trace said, looking at the monstrous machine from across the room, not wishing to get closer to it. It was about ten feet tall, not counting the treads. The dome had added two feet to its height.

“Yes, one extra set. Sometimes from the mines there are almost pure strains… if they could be bathed in hydrochloric acid they would be perfect… platinum insoluble, but the gabbro… Platinum waldoes…” His voice was agonised, and when Trace turned to look at him his pallor had spread and he looked as if he might faint.

“You were ordered to stop experimentation, is that it?” Trace asked

The doctor nodded.

“I see.” He turned to stare at the monster again. “I don’t think they would penalise you for perfecting it even more, would they?” He swung about again and said harshly, “I do have to report it, you know. It’s my duty.”

“I know,” Dr. Vianti said. “How long?”

“Months. I’ll be in space again tomorrow. It’ll be months before the report is filed and acted on…”

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” the doctor said.