A Death in the House : And Other Stories

Tools

Venus had broken many men. Now it was breaking Harvey Boone, and the worst of it was that Boone knew it was breaking him and couldn’t do a thing about it.

Although it wasn’t entirely Venus. Partly it was Archie—Archie, the thing in the talking jar. Perhaps it wasn’t right calling Archie just a “thing.” Archie might have been an “it” or “they.” No one knew. In fact, no one knew much of anything about Archie despite the fact men had talked to him and studied him for almost a hundred years.

Harvey Boone was official observer for the Solar Institute, and his reports, sent back with every rocketload of radium that streaked out to Earth, were adding to the voluminous mass of data assembled on Archie. Data that told almost nothing at all.

Venus itself was bad enough. Men died when a suit cracked or radium shields broke down. Although that wasn’t the usual way the planet killed. Venus had a better—perhaps, more accurately—a worse way.

Any alien planet is hard to live on and stay sane. Strangeness is a word that doesn’t have much meaning until a man stands face to face with it and then it smacks him straight between the eyes.

Venus was alien—plus. One always had a sense that eyes were watching him, watching all the time. And waiting. Although one didn’t have the least idea what they were waiting for.

On Venus, something always stalked a man—something that trod just on the outer edge of shadow. A sense of not belonging, of being out of place, of being an intruder. A baffling psychological something that drove men to their deaths or to living deaths that were even worse.

Harvey Boone huddled on a chair in one corner of the laboratory, nursing a whiskey bottle, while Archie chuckled at him.

“Nerves,” said Archie. “Your nerves are shot to hell.”

Boone’s hand shook as he tilted the whiskey bottle up. His hate-filled eyes glared at the lead-glass jar even as he gulped.

Boone knew what Archie said was true. Even through his drink-fogged brain, the one fact stood out in bright relief—he was going crazy. He had seen Johnny Garrison, commander of the dome, watching him. And Doc Steele. Doc was the psychologist, and when Doc started watching one it was time to pull up and try to straighten oneself out. For Doc’s word was law. It had to be law.

A knock sounded on the door and Boone called out an invitation. Doc Steele strode in.

“Good morning, Boone,” he said. “Hello, Archie.”

Archie’s voice, mechanical and toneless, returned the greeting.

“Have a drink,” said Boone.

Doc shook his head, took a cigar from his pocket and with a knife cut it neatly in two. One half he stuck back in his pocket, the other half in his mouth.

“Don’t you ever light those things?” demanded Boone irritably.

“Nope,” Doc replied cheerfully. “Always dry-smoke them.”

He said to Archie: “How are you today, Archie?”

Despite its mechanical whir, Archie’s reply sounded almost querulous: “Why do you always ask me that, doctor? You know there’s nothing wrong with me. There never could be. I’m always all right.”

Doc chuckled. “I seem to keep forgetting about you. Wish the human race was like that. Then there wouldn’t be any need for chaps like me.”

“I’m glad you came,” Archie grated. “I like to talk to you. You never make me feel you’re trying to find out something.”

“He says that to get my goat,” snapped Boone.

“I wouldn’t let him do it,” Doc declared. To Archie he said: “I suppose it does get tiresome after a hundred years or so. But it doesn’t seem to have done much good. No one seems to have found out much about you.”

He swiveled the cigar across his face. “Maybe they tried too hard.”

“That,” said Archie, “might be true. You remind me of Masterson. You’re different from the ones who come out to watch me now.”

“You don’t like them?” Doc winked at Boone and Boone glowered back.

“Why should I like them?” asked Archie. “They regard me as a freak, a curiosity, something to be observed, an assignment to be done. Masterson thought of me as life, as a fellow entity. And so do you.”

“Why, bless my soul,” said Doc, “and so I do.”

“You don’t catch me pitying you,” Doc declared. “Sometimes I catch myself wishing I were you. I suspect I might enjoy your kind of philosophy.”

“The human race,” protested Archie, “couldn’t understand my philosophy. I doubt if I could explain it to them. The language doesn’t have the words. Just as I had a hard time understanding a lot of your Terrestrial philosophy and economics. I’ve studied your history and your economics and your political science. I’ve kept up with your current events. And sometimes, many times, it doesn’t make sense to me. Sometimes I think it’s stupid, but I try to tell myself that it may be because I don’t understand. I miss something, perhaps. Some vital quirk of mind, some underlying factor.”

Doc sobered. “I don’t think you miss much, Archie. A lot of the things we do are stupid, even by our own standards. We lack foresight so often.”

Doc lifted his eyes to the large oil portrait that hung on the wall above Boone’s desk, and he had quite forgotten Boone. From the portrait, kindly gray eyes smiled out of the face. The brows were furrowed, the wavy white hair looked like a silver crown.

“We need more men like him,” said Doc. “More men with vision.”

The portrait was of Masterson, the man who had discovered intelligent life existing in the great clouds of radon that hung over the vast beds of radium ore. Masterson had been more than a man of vision. He had been a genius and a glutton for work.

From the moment he had discerned, by accident, what he thought were lifelike properties in some radon he was studying, he had labored unceasingly with but one end in view. In this very laboratory he had carried out his life work, and there, in the lead-glass jar on the table, lay the end product—Archie.

Masterson had confined radon under pressure in a shielded jar equipped with a delicate system of controls. Failing time after time, never admitting defeat, he had taught the radon in the jar to recognize certain electrical impulses set up within the jar. And the radon, recognizing these impulses as intelligent symbols, finally had learned to manipulate the controls which produced the voice by which it spoke.

It had not been as easy as it sounded, however. It took many grueling years. For both Masterson and Archie were groping in the dark, working without comparable experience, without even a comparable understanding or a comparable mode of thinking. Two alien minds—

“Does it seem a long time, Archie?” Doc asked.

“That’s hard to say,” the speaker boomed. “Time doesn’t have a great deal of meaning to something that goes on and on.”

“You mean you are immortal?”

“No, perhaps not immortal.”

“But do you know?” snapped Doc.

Archie did, then, the thing which had driven observer after observer close to madness. He simply didn’t answer.

Silence thrummed in the room. Doc heard the click of sliding doors elsewhere in the dome, the low hum of powerful machinery.

“That’s the way he is,” yelled Boone. “That’s the way he always is. Shuts up like a clam. Sometimes I’d like to—”

“Break it up, Archie,” commanded Doc. “You don’t have to play dead with me. I’m not here to question you. I’m just here to pass the time of day. Is there anything I can do for you?”

“You might bring in the latest newspapers and read to me,” said Archie.

“That,” declared Doc, “would be a downright privilege.”

“But not the funnies,” cautioned Archie. “Somehow I can’t appreciate the funnies.”

Outside the dome, the week-long night had fallen and it was snowing again—great, white sheets driven by gusty blasts of wind. Not real snow, but paraformaldehyde, solidified formaldehyde. For that was the stuff of which the mighty cloud banks which forever shielded the planet from space was composed.

Harvey Boone, clad in space gear, stood on the barren ridge above the dome and looked down at the scene spread before his eyes.

There lay the dome, with the flicker of shadows playing over it as the great batteries of lamps set in the radium pits swung to and fro.

In the pits labored mighty machines—specialized machines operating with “radon brains,” using, in simplified form, the same principles of control as were used to communicate with Archie. Brains that could receive and understand orders, execute them through the medium of the machinery which they controlled—but which, unlike Archie, did not hold human knowledge accumulated over the course of a hundred years.

Here and there were men. Men incased in shining crystal armor to protect them against the hell’s brew that was Venus’ atmosphere. Carbon dioxide and not a trace of oxygen. Once there had been plenty of free oxygen, some water vapor. But the oxygen had gone to form carbon dioxide and formaldehyde, and the water vapor had combined to solidify the formaldehyde.

Harvey Boone shivered as a blast of hot wind swirled a blanket of solidified formaldehyde around him, shutting off the view. For a moment he stood isolated in a world of swirling white and through the whiteness something seemed to stalk him. Something that might have been fear, and yet more stark than fear, more subtle than panic, more agonizing than terror.

Boone was on the verge of cringing horror before the wind whipped the cloud of snow away. The gale hooted and howled at him. The dancing snow made ghostly patterns in the air. The banks of lights in the pits below weaved fantastically against the sweeping, wind-driven clouds of white.

Unaccountable panic gripped him tight. Mocking whispers danced along the wind. The rising wind shrieked malignantly and a burst of snow swished at him.

Harvey Boone screamed and ran, unseen terror trotting at his heels.

But the closing lock did not shut out the horror of the outdoors. It wasn’t something one could get rid of as easily as that.

Stripped of space gear, he found his hands were shaking.

“I need a drink,” he told himself.

In the laboratory he took the bottle out of his desk, tilted it.

A mocking laugh sounded behind him. Nerves on edge, he whirled about.

A face was leering at him from the glass jar on the table. And that was wrong. For there wasn’t any face. There wasn’t anything one could see inside the jar. Nothing but Archie—radon under pressure. One doesn’t see radon—not unless one looks at it through a spectroscope.

Boone passed his hand swiftly before his eyes and looked again. The face was gone.

Archie chortled at him. “I’m getting you. I almost got you then. You’ll crack up pretty soon. What are you waiting for? Why are you hanging on? In the end I’ll get you!”

Boone strangled with rage.

“You’re wrong,” he mouthed. “I’m the one that’s got you.” He slapped a pile of notes that lay on his desk. “I’m the one who’s going to crack you. I’ll bust you wide open. I’ll let them know what you really are.”

“Oh, yeah!” crowed Archie.

Boone set down the bottle. “Damn you,” he said thickly. “I have half a notion to settle you once and for all. You’ve deviled me long enough. I’m going to let you die.”

“You’ll do what?” demanded Archie.

“I’ll let you die,” stormed Boone. “All I have to do is forget to pump more radon in. In another week you’ll be polonium and—”

“You wouldn’t dare,” taunted Archie. “You know what would happen to you then. The Institute would have your scalp for that.”

The face was in the jar again. A terrible face. One that sent fear and loathing and terrifying anger surging through the scientist.

With a shriek of rage, Boone grabbed the bottle off the desk and hurled it. It missed Archie, shattered against the wall, spraying the glass jar with liquor.

Archie tittered and a hand materialized before the face, waggling its fingers in an obscene gesture.

With a hoarse whoop, Boone leaped forward and snatched up a heavy stool. Archie’s laughter rang through the room—terrible laughter.

Boone screamed in insane rage and babbled. The stool came up and smashed downward. The jar splintered under the crashing impact.

Searing radiations lanced through the room. The spectrographic detectors flamed faintly. Fans whined, rose to a piercing shriek, sweeping the air, throwing the radon outside the dome. Atmosphere hissed and roared.

But Harvey Boone knew none of this, for Harvey Boone was dead. Incredible pain had lashed at him in one searing second and he had dropped, his face and hands burned to a fiery red, his eyes mere staring holes.

Radon, in its pure state, weight for weight, is one hundred thousand times as active as radium.

“But Archie couldn’t have had anything to do with it,” protested Johnny Garrison. “Hypnotism! That’s incredible. He couldn’t hypnotize a person. There’s nothing to support such a belief. We’ve observed Archie for a hundred years—”

“Let’s not forget one thing,” interrupted Doc. “In Archie we were observing something that was intelligent. Just how intelligent we had no way of knowing. But we do know this: His intelligence was not human intelligence. It couldn’t be. True, we bridged the gap, we talked with him. But the talk was carried on in human terms, upon a human basis.”

Doc’s cigar traveled from east to west. “Does that suggest anything to you?”

The dome commander’s face was white. “I’d never thought of that. But it means—it would have to mean—that Archie was intelligent enough to force his thought processes into human channels.”

Doc nodded. “Could man have done the same? Could man have forced himself to think the way Archie thinks? I doubt it. Archie’s thought processes probably would be too alien for us to even grasp. What is more, Archie recognized this. It all boils down to this: We furnished the mechanical set-up, Archie furnished the mental set-up.”

“You make it sound frightening,” said Garrison.

“It is frightening,” Doc assured him.

Garrison stood up. “There’s no use beating around the bush. Both of us are thinking the same thing.”

Doc said: “I’m afraid so. There’s nothing else to think.”

“All of them know,” said Garrison, “all of them, or it, or whatever is out there—they know as much as Archie knew.”

“I’m sure they do,” Doc agreed. “Archie never lost his identity, even though we had to pump in new radon every few days. It was always the same Archie. Tests with the radon brains on the machines, however, revealed merely an intelligence very poorly versed in human knowledge. The same radon, mind you, and yet the radon that was used to replenish Archie becomes Archie, while all the other radon remained an intelligence that had none of Archie’s human knowledge.”

“And now,” said Garrison, “it’s all Archie. I told Mac he’d have to shut down the machines when the radon ran low in the brains. We simply can’t take a chance. There’ll be hell to pay. R.C. will blast space wide open. We’re behind schedule now—“

He stared out the port with haggard face, watching the snow sweep by.

“Take it easy, Johnny,” counseled Doc. “The home office has been riding you again. You’re behind schedule and you’re getting jumpy. You’re remembering some of the things you’ve seen happen to men who couldn’t keep the wheels of industry moving and the banners of Radium, Inc., waving high. You’re thinking of R.C.’s secret police and charges of sabotage and God knows what.”

“Look, Doc,” said Garrison desperately, almost pleadingly, “this is my big chance—my last chance. I’m not too young any more, and this chance has to click. Make good here on Venus and I’m set for life. No more third-rate wilderness posts out on the Jovian moons, no more stinking tricks on the Martian desert. It’ll be Earth for me—Earth and an easy-chair.”

“I know how it is,” said Doc. “It’s the old system of fear. You’re afraid of the big boys and Mac is afraid of you and the men are afraid of Mac. And all of us are afraid of Venus. Radium, Inc., owns the Solar System, body and soul. The radium monopoly, holding companies, interlocking directories—it all adds up to invisible government, not too invisible at that. R.C. Webster owns us all. He owns us by virtue of Streeter’s secret police and his spies. He owns us because radium is power and he owns the radium. He owns us because there isn’t a government that won’t jump when he snaps his fingers. His father and grandfather owned us before this, and his son and grandson will own us after a while.”

He chuckled. “You needn’t look so horrified, Johnny. You’re the only one that’s hearing me, and you won’t say a word. But you know it’s the truth as well as I. Radium is the basis of the power that holds the Solar System in thrall. The wheels of the System depend on radium from Venus. It was the price the people of Earth had to pay for solar expansion, for a solar empire. Just the cost of wheeling a ship from one planet to another is tremendous. It takes capital to develop a solar empire, and when capital is called on it always has a price. We paid that price, and this is what we got.”

Garrison reached out with trembling hands to pick up a bottle of brandy. The liquor splashed as he poured it in a tumbler.

“What are we going to do, Doc?”

“I wish I knew,” said Doc.

A bell jangled and Garrison lifted the phone.

The voice of the chief engineer shouted at him.

“Chief, we have to fill those brains again. Either that or shut down. The radon is running low.”

“I thought I told you to shut them down,” yelled Garrison. “We can’t take a chance. We can’t turn those machines over to Archie.”

Mac howled in anguish. “But we’re way behind schedule. Shut them down and—”

“Shut them down!” roared Garrison. “Sparks is trying to get through to Earth. I’ll let you know.”

He hung the speaker back in its cradle, lifted it again and dialed the communications room.

“How’s the call to Earth coming?”

“I’m trying,” yelped Sparks, “but I’m afraid. We’re nearing the Sun, you know. Space is all chopped. … Hey, wait a minute. Here we are. I’ll tie you in—”

Static crackled and snapped. A thin voice was shouting.

“That you, Garrison? Hello, Garrison!”

Garrison recognized the voice, distorted as it was, and grimaced. He could envision R.C. Webster, president of Radium, Inc., bouncing up and down in his chair, furious at the prospect of more trouble on Venus.

“Yes, R.C., this is Garrison.”

“Well,” piped R.C., “what’s the trouble now? Speak up, man, what’s gone wrong this time?”

Swiftly Garrison told him. Twice static blotted out the tight beam and Sparks worked like a demon to re-establish contact.

“And what are you afraid of?” shrieked the man on Earth.

“Simply this,” explained Garrison, wishing it didn’t sound so silly. “Archie has escaped. That means all the radon knows as much as he did. If we pump new radon into the brains, we’ll be pumping in intelligent radon—that is, radon that knows about us—that is—”

“Poppycock,” yelled R.C. “That’s the biggest lot of damn foolishness I’ve ever heard.”

“But, R.C.—”

“Look here, young man,” fumed the voice, “we’re behind schedule, aren’t we? You’re out there to dig radium, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” admitted Garrison, hopelessly.

“All right, then, dig radium. Get back on schedule. Fill up those brains and tear into it—”

“But you don’t understand—”

“I said to fill up those brains and get to work. And keep working!”

“Those are orders?” asked Garrison.

“Those are orders!” snapped R.C.

Static howled at them derisively.

Garrison watched the ship roar away from the surface, lose itself in the driving whiteness of solidified formaldehyde. Beside him, Mac rubbed armored hands together in exultation.

“That almost puts us on schedule,” he announced.

Garrison nodded, staring moodily out over the field. It was night again, and little wind devils of formaldehyde danced and jigged across the ground. Night and a snowstorm, and the mercury at one hundred forty degrees above Fahrenheit. During the week-long day it got hotter.

He heard the clicking of the mighty brain-controlled machines as they dug ore in the pits, the whine of wind around the dome and in the jagged hills, the snicking of the refrigerator units in his suit.

“How soon will you have Archie’s jar done, Mac?” he asked. “The new Institute observer is getting anxious to see what he can get out of him.”

“Just a few hours more,” said Mac. “It took us a long time to figure out some of the things about it, but I’ve had the robots on it steady.”

“Rush it over soon as you get it done. We’ve tried to talk to some of the radon brains in the machines, but it’s no dice.”

“There’s just one thing bothers me,” said Mac.

“What is that?” Garrison asked sharply.

“Well, we didn’t figure out exactly all the angles on that jar. Some of the working parts are mighty complicated and delicate, you know. But we thought we’d get started at least and let the Institute stooge take over when he got here. But when those robots—”

“Yes?” said Garrison.

“When the robots got to the things we couldn’t understand, they tossed the blueprints to one side and went right ahead. So help me, they didn’t even fumble.”

The two men looked at one another, faces stolid.

“I don’t like it,” Mac declared.

“Neither do I,” said Garrison.

He turned and walked slowly toward the dome, while Mac went back to the pits.

In Garrison’s office, Doc had cornered Roger Chester, the new Institute observer.

“The Institute has mountains of reports,” Chester was saying. “I tried to go through them before I came out. Night and day almost. Ever since I knew I was going to replace Boone.”

Doc carefully halved a new cigar, tucked one piece in his pocket, the other in his mouth.

“What were you looking for?” he asked.

“A clue. You see, I knew Boone. For years. He wasn’t the kind of fellow who would break. It would have taken more than Venus. But I didn’t find a thing.”

“Boone himself might have furnished that clue,” Doc suggested quietly. “Did you look through his reports?”

“I read them over and over,” Chester admitted. “There was nothing there. Some of his reports were missing. The last few days—”

“Those last few days can be canceled out,” said Doc. “The lad wasn’t himself. I wouldn’t be surprised he didn’t write any report those last few days.”

Chester said: “That would have been unlike him.”

Doc wrangled the cigar viciously. “Find anything else?”

“Not much. Not much more than Masterson knew. Even now—after all these years, it’s hard to believe—that radon could be alive.”

“If any gas could live,” said Doc, “it would be radon. It’s heavy. Molecular weight of 222. One hundred eleven times as heavy as hydrogen, five times as heavy as carbon dioxide. Not complicated from a molecular standpoint, but atomically one of the most complicated known. Complicated enough for life. And if you’re looking for the unbalance necessary for life, it’s radioactive. Chemically inert, perhaps, but terrifically unstable physically—”

The door of the office opened and Garrison walked in.

“Still chewing the fat about Archie?” he asked.

He strode to his desk and took out a bottle and glasses.

“It’s been two weeks since Archie got away,” he said. “And nothing’s happened. We’re sitting on top of a volcano, waiting for it to go sky high. And nothing happens. What is Archie doing? What is he waiting for?”

“That’s a big order, Garrison,” declared Chester. “Let us try to envision a life which had no tools because it couldn’t make them, would be useless to it even if it did have them because it couldn’t use them. Man’s rise, you must remember, is largely, if not entirely, attributable to his use of tools. An accident that made his thumb opposing gave him a running start—”

The phone on the desk blared. Garrison snatched it up, and Mac’s voice shrieked at him.

“Chief, those damn robots are running away! So are the machines in the pit—”

Cold fingers seemed to clamp around the commander’s throat.

Mac’s voice was almost sobbing. “—hell for leather out here. But they left Archie’s jar. Must have forgotten that.”

“Mac,” yelled Garrison, “jump into a tractor and try to follow them. Find out where they’re going.”

“But, chief—”

“Follow them!” shouted Garrison.

He slammed down the hand piece, lifted it and dialed.

“Sparks, get hold of Earth!”

“No soap,” said Sparks laconically.

“Damn it, try to get them. It’s a matter of life and death!”

“I can’t,” wailed Sparks. “We’re around the Sun. We can’t get through.”

“Get the ship, then.”

“It won’t do any good,” yelped Sparks. “They’re hugging the Sun to cut down distance. It’ll be days before they can relay a message.”

“O.K.,” said Garrison wearily. “Forget it.”

He hung up and faced Chester.

“You don’t have to imagine Archie without tools any longer,” he said. “He has them now. He just stole them from us.”

Mac dragged in hours later.

“I didn’t find a thing,” he reported. “Not a single thing.”

Garrison studied him, red-eyed from worry. “That’s all right, Mac. I didn’t think you would. Five miles from here and you’re on unknown ground.”

“What are we going to do now, chief?”

Garrison shook his head. “I don’t know. Sparks finally got a message through. Managed to pick up Mercury, just coming around the Sun. Probably they’ll shoot it out to Mars to be relayed to Earth.”

Chester came out of the laboratory and sat down.

Doc swiveled his cigar.

“What has Archie to say?” he asked.

Chester’s face grew red. “I pumped the radon into the jar. But there was no response. Practically none, that is. Told me to go to hell.”

Doc chuckled at the man’s discomfiture. “Don’t let Archie get you down. That’s what he did to Boone. Got on his nerves. Drove him insane. Archie had to get out some way, you see. He couldn’t do anything while he was shut up in one place. So he forced Boone to let him out. Boone didn’t know what was going on, but Archie did—”

“But what is Archie doing now?” exploded Garrison.

“He’s playing a game of nerves,” said Doc. “He’s softening us up. We’ll be ready to meet his terms when he’s ready to make them.”

“But why terms? What could Archie want?”

Doc’s cigar swished back and forth. “How should I know? We might not even recognize what Archie is fighting for—and, again, we might. He might be fighting for his existence. His life depends upon those radium beds. No more radium, no more radon, no more Archie.”

“Nonsense,” Chester broke in. “We could have dug those beds for a million years and not made a dent in them.”

“A million years,” objected Doc, “might be only a minute or two for Archie.”

“Damn you, Doc,” snapped Garrison, “what are you grinning for? What is so funny about it?”

“It’s amusing,” Doc explained. “Something I’ve often wondered about—just what Earthmen would do it they ran up against something that had them licked forty ways from Sunday.”

“But he hasn’t got us licked,” yelled Mac. “Not yet.”

“Anything that can keep radium from Earth can lick us,” Doc declared. “And Archie can do that—don’t you ever kid yourself.”

“But he’ll ruin the Solar System,” shouted Garrison. “Machines will have to shut down. Mines and factories will be idle. Spaceships will stop running. Planets will have to be evacuated—”

“What you mean,” Doc pointed out, “is that he’ll ruin Radium, Inc. Not the Solar System. The System can get along without Radium, Inc. Probably even without radium. It did for thousands of years, you know. The only trouble now is that the System is keyed to radium. If there isn’t any radium, it means the economic framework that was built on radium must be swept away or some substitute must be found. And if no substitute is found, we must start over again and find some other way of life—perhaps a better way—”

Chester leaped to his feet.

“That’s treason!” he shouted.

Silence struck the room like a thunderclap. Three pairs of eyes staying at the standing man. The air seemed to crackle with an electric aliveness.

“Sit down,” Doc snapped.

Chester sank slowly into his chair. Mac’s hands opened and closed, as if he kneaded someone’s throat.

Doc nodded. “One of R.C.’s agents. He didn’t smell quite like an Institute man to me. He said it was hard to believe radon could be alive. With an Institute man that wouldn’t be belief, it would be knowledge.”

“A dirty, snooping stooge,” said Mac. “Sent out to see what was wrong on Venus.”

“But not too good a one,” Doc observed. “He lets his enthusiasm for Radium, Inc., run away with him. Of course, all of us were taught that enthusiasm ourselves—in school. But we soon got over it.”

Chester ran his tongue over his lips.

“When Radium, Inc., can monkey with the Institute,” said Doc, “it means one of two things. R.C. is getting pretty sure of himself or he’s getting desperate. The Institute was the one thing that stood out against him. Up to now he hasn’t dared to lay a finger on it.”

Garrison had said nothing, but now he spoke: “By rights, Chester, we ought to kill you.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” said Chester thinly.

“What difference does it make?” asked Garrison. “If we don’t, another one of R.C.’s men will. You’ve slipped up. And R.C. doesn’t give his men a chance to slip a second time.”

“But you were talking treason,” Chester insisted.

“Call it treason,” snarled Garrison. “Call it anything you like. It’s the language that’s being talked up and down the System. Wherever men work out their hearts and strangle their conscience in hope of scraps thrown from Radium, Inc.’s table, they’re saying the same thing we are saying.”

The phone blared and Garrison put forth his hand, lifted the set and spoke.

“It’s R.C.,” Sparks yelled at the other end. “It’s sort of weak, but maybe you can hear. Mars and Mercury are relaying.”

“Hello, R.C.,” said Garrison.

Static screamed in deafening whoops, and then R.C.’s voice sifted through, disjointed and reedy.

“—sit tight. We’re sending men, ten shiploads of them.”

“Men!” yelped Garrison. “What will we do with men?”

“Machines, too,” scratched R.C.’s voice. “Manually operated machines—“ More howls and screeches drowned out the rest.

“But R.C., you can’t do that,” yelled Garrison. “The men will die like flies. It’ll be mass murder … it’ll be like it was before—in the early days, before Masterson developed the radon brains. Men can’t work in those radium pits—not work and live.”

“That’s a lot of damn tripe,” raved R.C. “They’ll work—”

“They’ll revolt!” shrieked Garrison.

“Oh, no, they won’t. I’m sending police along.”

“Police!” stormed Garrison. “Some of Streeter’s bloody butchers?”

“I’m sending Streeter himself. Streeter and some of his picked men. They’ll keep order—”

“Look, R.C.,” said Garrison bitterly, “you’d better send a new commander, too. I’ll be damned if I’ll work with Streeter.”

“Take it easy, Garrison. You’re doing all right. Just a bunch of bad breaks. You’ll make out all right.”

“I won’t work those men,” snapped Garrison. “Not the way they’ll have to work. Radium isn’t worth it.”

“You will,” yelled R.C., “or I’ll have Streeter sock you down in the pits yourself. Radium has to move. We have to have it.”

“By the way,” said Garrison, suddenly calm, his eyes on Chester, “you remember that Institute chap who came to replace Boone?”

“Yes, I seem to remember—”

“He’s lost,” said Garrison. “Walked out into the hills. We’ve combed them, but there’s no sign of him.”

Chester rose from the chair in a smooth leap, hurling himself at Garrison, one hand snatching at the phone. The impact of his body staggered Garrison, but the commander sent him reeling with a shove.

“What was that you said, R.C.? I didn’t hear. The static.”

“I said to hell with him. Don’t waste time looking for him. There are more important things.”

Chester was charging in again on Garrison, intent on getting the phone. Mac moved with the speed of lightning, one huge fist knotted and pulled far back. It traveled in a looping, powerful arc, caught the charging man flush on the chin. Chester’s head snapped back, his feet surged clear of the floor, his body smashed against the wall. He slid into a heap, like a doll someone had tossed into a corner.

Doc crossed the room and knelt beside him.

“You hit too hard,” he said.

“I meant to hit hard,” growled Mac.

“He’s dead,” said Doc. “You broke his neck.”

Outside, the eternal snowstorm howled, sweeping the jagged hills and lamp-lighted pits.

Doc stood in front of a port and watched the scurrying activity that boiled within the mine. Hundreds of armored men and hundreds of laboring machines. Three spaceships, stationed beside the stock pile, were being loaded. Streeter’s police, with ready guns, patrolled the sentry towers that loomed above the pits.

The door opened and Garrison came in with dragging feet.

“How many this shift?” asked Doc.

“Seven,” Garrison answered hoarsely. “A screen blew up.”

Doc sucked at the dead cigar.

“This has to stop, Johnny. It has to stop or something is bound to crack. It’s a death sentence for any man to be sent out here. The last replacements were criminals, men shanghaied off the street.”

Garrison angrily sloshed the liquor in his glass.

“Don’t look at me,” he snapped. “It’s out of my hands now. I’m acting only in an administrative capacity. Those are the exact words. Administrative capacity. Streeter is the works out here. He’s the one that’s running the show. He’s the one that’s working the men to death. And when they start to raise a little hell, those babies of his up in the towers open up on them.”

“I know all that,” admitted Doc. “I wasn’t trying to blame you, Johnny. After all, we needn’t kid ourselves. If we don’t walk the line, Streeter will open up on us as well.”

“You’re telling me,” said Garrison. He gulped the liquor. “Streeter knows that something happened to Chester. That yarn about his being lost out in the hills simply didn’t click.”

“We never meant it should,” Doc declared. “But so long as we serve our purpose, so long as we throw no monkey wrenches, so long as we’re good little boys, we can go on living.”

Archie’s voice grated from beyond the open laboratory door.

“Doctor, will you please come here?”

“Sure, Archie, sure. What can I do for you?”

“I would like to talk to Captain Streeter.”

“Captain Streeter,” warned Doc, “isn’t a nice man. If I were you, I’d keep away from him.”

“But nevertheless,” persisted Archie, “I would like to talk to him. I have something that I’m sure will interest him. Will you call him, please?”

“Certainly,” agreed Doc.

He strode out into the office and dialed the phone.

“Streeter speaking,” said a voice.

“Archie wants to talk to you,” said the Doc.

“Archie!” stormed Streeter. “Tell that lousy little hunk of gas to go chase himself.”

“Streeter,” said Doc, “it doesn’t make any difference to me what you do; but, if I were in your place, I would talk to Archie. In fact, I’d come running when he called me.”

Doc replaced the phone, cutting off the sounds of rage coming from the other end.

“Well?” asked Garrison.

“He’ll come,” said Doc.

Ten minutes later Streeter did come, cold anger in his eyes.

“I wish you gentlemen would tend to small details yourselves,” he snarled.

Doc jerked his thumb toward the open door. “In there,” he said.

Boots clumping angrily, Streeter strode into the laboratory.

“What is it?” his voice boomed.

“Captain Streeter,” grated Archie’s voice, “I don’t like your way of doing things. I don’t like Radium, Inc.’s way of doing things.”

“Oh, so you don’t,” said Streeter, words silky with rage.

“So,” continued Archie, “I’m giving you and your men half an hour to get out of here. Out of the mine and off this planet.”

There were strangling sounds as the police captain fought to speak. Finally he rasped: “And if we don’t?”

“If you don’t,” said Archie, “I shall force you to move. If the mine is not vacated within half an hour, I shall start bombardment.”

“Bombardment!”

“Exactly. This place is ringed with cannon. It is a barbaric thing to do, but it’s the only way you’d understand. I could use other methods, but the cannon probably are the best.”

“You’re bluffing,” shrieked Streeter. “You haven’t any cannon.”

“Very well,” said Archie. “Do what you wish. It’s immaterial to me. You have thirty minutes.”

Streeter swung around and stamped out into the office.

“You heard?” he asked.

Doc nodded. “If I were you, Streeter, I’d pull stakes. Archie isn’t fooling.”

“Cannon!” snorted the captain.

“Exactly,” said Garrison. “And don’t you ever think Archie doesn’t have them. When the machines ran away they took along our tools.”

Streeter’s face hardened. “Let’s say he had them, then. All right, he has them. So have we. We’ll fight him!”

Doc laughed. “You’ll play hell. Fighting Archie is a joke. Where are you going to find him? How are you going to corner him? There isn’t any way to hit him, no way to come to grips with him. You can’t defeat him. You can’t destroy him. So long as there are radium beds there will always be an Archie.”

“I’m calling Earth,” said Streeter, grimly. “It’s time the army took over.”

“Call in your army,” said Doc, “but remember one thing. The only thing you can fight is Archie’s weapons. You may destroy his guns, but you can’t hurt Archie. All he has to do is build some more. And those weapons won’t be easy to hit. Because, you see, those guns will be intelligent. They won’t depend on brass hats and military orders. They’ll have brains of their own. You’ll be fighting deadly intelligent machines. I tell you, Streeter, you haven’t got a chance!”

Streeter turned to Garrison with bleak eyes.

“You think the same?” he challenged and the menace in his voice was scarcely hidden.

“Archie isn’t bluffing,” Garrison insisted. “He can make guns, tanks, ships … in fact, he can duplicate anything we have—with improvements. He’s got our tools and our knowledge and he’s got something we haven’t got. That’s his knowledge, the knowledge he never shared with us.”

“You both are under technical arrest,” snapped Streeter. “You will remain inside the dome. If you venture out—”

“Get out of here,” yelled Garrison. “Get out of here before I break your neck!”

Streeter got out, with Garrison’s laughter ringing in his ears.

Doc glanced at his watch. “Fifteen minutes gone. I wonder what Streeter will do.”

“He won’t do anything,” Garrison predicted. “He’s pig-headed. He’ll put in a call to Earth, have an expeditionary force sent out as a precautionary measure. But even now he doesn’t believe what Archie told him.”

“I do,” said Doc. “You better put in a call to Mac. Tell him to hustle over here. I’d hate to have him get caught in the fireworks.”

Garrison nodded and reached for the phone. Doc got up and walked into the laboratory.

“Well, Archie, how are you feeling now?”

“Why do you always ask me that, doctor?” Archie demanded irritably. “I’m feeling all right. I always feel all right. There’s nothing to go wrong with me.”

“Thought you might feel a bit different—starting a war.”

“It isn’t a war,” insisted Archie. “It isn’t even an adventure. At least, not the kind of an adventure the human race would understand. It is a part of a carefully studied plan.”

“But why are you doing it, Archie? Why are you messing into this at all? The human race can’t touch you. You could, if you wanted to, just go on disregarding them.”

“You might be able to understand,” said Archie.

“I sure would try,” Doc promised.

“You know about me,” said Archie. “You probably can imagine the sort of life I lived before the Earthmen came. For eons I was a thing without physical life. My life was mental. I developed mentally. I specialized in mentality, you see, because I didn’t have a body to worry about. I thought and speculated and that was all right, because it was the only kind of life I knew. It was a good life, too, free of so many of the worries and annoyances of physical being. Sometimes I wish it could have continued.

“I didn’t have any enemies. I didn’t even have neighbors to fight with. For I could be one or I could be many; I was sufficient to myself.

“I realized there was such a thing as physical being, of course, because I observed the few tiny animals that are able to survive on Venus. Pitifully inadequate physical life as compared with the life on Earth, but physical life nevertheless.

“I wondered about that life. I attempted to formulate a behavioristic pattern for such a type of life endowed with my mentality. Starting with small imaginings, I built that idea up into the pattern of a hypothetical civilization, a civilization that paralleled Earth’s in some ways, differed from it vastly in others. It couldn’t be the same, you know, because my philosophy was a far cry from the kind of thought that you developed.”

The grating voice died and then began again—“I, myself, of course, can never live a life like that.”

“But Earthmen could,” suggested Doc, the cigar dangling in his mouth.

“You’re right, doctor,” Archie said. “Earthmen could.”

“If you could force them to.”

“I will force no one to do anything,” Archie grated. “I am experimenting.”

“But would the experiment be good for Earth? Would your way of life, your hypothetical civilization, be the right one for Earth to follow?”

“Frankly, doctor,” said Archie, “I don’t give a damn.”

“Well, well,” said Doc.

“There’s something else, doctor,” said Archie. “You and Garrison and Mac are in trouble.”

“Trouble,” admitted Doc, “doesn’t rightly express it. We’re in a mess clear up to our ears.”

“There is a ship waiting for you,” said Archie. “Back in the hills north of the dome. It is the fastest thing ever built for space.”

“A ship!” cried Doc. “Where did the ship come from?”

“I built it,” Archie said.

“You—”

What Doc had meant to say was engulfed by a wave of sound that seemed to rock the dome.

“There it goes!” yelled Garrison.

Doc ran into the office and through the port he saw debris still flying through the air—the tangled wreckage of machines and blasted ore.

The radium pits disrupted in another flash of blue-white flame and again thunder blanketed and rocked the dome. The two remaining watch towers vanished in the upheaval and disintegrated in the blast, losing their identity in the clouts of flung-up earth.

“He’s using high explosives,” yelled Garrison.

“Of course,” gasped Doc. “He wouldn’t dare use radioactive stuff or he’d blast the planet to bits. No one would dare use anything but high explosives in a war on Venus.”

The door swung open and Mac stumbled in.

“Thanks for the call,” he said.

Men were running now out in the pits, scurrying like frightened ants, heading for the one spaceship which had escaped the shells.

The dust settled slowly over the battered field, now plunged in gloom with the shattering of the lights. And, as if by signal, the howling wind swept a sheet of snow down to blot out the sight.

When the snow cleared, the pits were empty of life—there was no movement in the blasted gouges. Fire spurted from the launching rockets of the one undamaged spaceship, the dome vibrating to the monster’s take-off. Momentarily a trail of flame climbed into the clouds and then silence and grayness clamped down over the deserted mine and dome.

“That settles it,” Mac commented. “We’re left alone. We’ll have to wait until the military comes and then—”

“You’re wrong,” said Doc. “There’s a ship waiting out north in the hills for you two fellows. A ship that Archie built. Better take Sparks along with you. He’s probably still around.”

“For the two of us?” asked Mac. “Why not all of us?”

“I can’t go,” said Doc. “I have to stay. I have a job to do.”

“Forget it, Doc,” urged Garrison. “Archie really built that ship for you. You were the one he liked. You were the only one he liked.”

Doc shook his head stubbornly. “No, I’ve thought it out. I can’t go along. Archie says the ship is fast. If I were you, I’d head for the asteroids. Stick around there for a while. Maybe after a time you can come out. Things are apt to be different then.”

“You’re afraid of what R.C. would do to you if he caught you,” jeered Mac.

“No. I’m not afraid of that,” Doc protested. “He couldn’t do any more to me then than if he had me now. And, anyhow, R.C. is through. He doesn’t know it yet, but he’s through for good and all.”

“Mac,” said Garrison, “let’s tie the stubborn old fool up and take him along whether he wants to go or not.”

“Look, Johnny,” declared Doc. “I’d never forgive you if you did. Take my word for it. I have to stay.”

“O.K.,” said Mac. “If the benighted old goat doesn’t want to go, let the rest of us get moving. I’ll go hunt up Sparks. We don’t want to have that war fleet Streeter called for pick us up as they are coming in.”

Garrison nodded dumbly and moved toward the door. With the knob in his hand, he turned back.

“I don’t suppose I’ll be seeing you again, Doc.”

“I don’t imagine you will. I’m sorry the way things turned out, Johnny. It was a dirty shame. And you so near to Earth and that easy-chair.”

“Aw, hell,” said Garrison, “who cares for easy-chairs?”

Doc watched through the port until he saw the flare of a ship painting the northern hills. His gaze followed the streak of flame that climbed up and out toward the Sun.

Up and out toward the Sun. Out where one could see the stars. Out to take their place with a race that could conquer those stars. A race that could stretch out its hand and handiwork to the farthest reaches of the Universe. A race that could trace new pathways between the galaxies. A race that could hang its signposts on distant solar systems.

But a race that needed leadership to do it—a leadership that would strike off its shackles, shackles such as Radium, Inc., would weave. Shackles born of hate and greed and jealousies.

Perhaps Man had gotten off on the wrong foot. Perhaps his philosophy had been all wrong even from the start. Perhaps a bit of alien philosophy, weird as it might seem at first, would be good for him.

With a sigh, Doc turned back to the room.

A mournful silence hung there. Machinery still throbbed and occasionally there was a whine of fans, but aside from that there was no other sound.

Doc selected a fresh cigar from his vest pocket and carefully cut it in two. One half he stuck in his mouth, the other went back into the pocket.

He headed for the laboratory, shutting the door behind him.

“Howdy, Archie,” he said.

“You’re a fool,” said Archie.

“What’s the matter now?”

“I gave you a chance,” rasped Archie. “You threw it away. Don’t blame me for anything that happens now.”

“I had to have a little talk with you,” said Doc.

“You could have had it before.”

“No,” persisted Doc. “This one had to be private. No chance for anyone to hear.”

“All right,” said Archie, impatiently, “go ahead and spill it.”

“I just wanted to tell you something,” Doc explained. “Something that might make you easy in your mind. I destroyed those notes Boone made before he died.”

“You did what?”

“I destroyed them. I didn’t want to see you vulnerable. Because as soon as anything becomes vulnerable to the human race it’s a goner, sure as shooting.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” Archie rumbled.

“Because I couldn’t make up my mind,” Doc told him. “I had to think it out.”

“You had a long time to make it up.”

Doc swiveled the cigar from east to west. “Yeah, that’s right. But somehow I couldn’t seem to do it. I made the decision just a little while ago.”

“What decided you?”

“A spaceship,” said Doc. “A spaceship that you made.”

“I understand,” said Archie.

“You aren’t as tough as you would like to have us think,” declared Doc. “You might not have had them before, but since Masterson found you, you’ve absorbed some conception of human emotions. The spaceship proved it.”

“I like you, doctor,” Archie said. “You remind me of Masterson.”

“I’m giving you the human race to carry out your experiment,” said Doc. “It can be a great experiment. You have good material to work with. All you need to do is handle it right. Point it toward the stars and keep it going straight. I’m backing you against Radium, Inc. I think the human race will get a better break from you. Don’t disappoint me, Archie.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Archie rumbled. “Maybe your race does deserve a break.”

“They aren’t such bad folks. And, anyhow,” Doc chuckled, “if they don’t like the way you do things they can turn their backs on you. If they don’t insist on radium, you have no hold on them. But if Radium, Inc., could beat you, there’d be no hope for them. They’d only fall deeper and deeper into slavery.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Archie grumbled. “You had the knowledge that would have broken me. You haven’t used it. You say you aren’t going to. Why not let it go at that?”

“If you were a man,” declared Doc, “I’d slap you down for that. I’m not trying to pose as a hero. There is something else.”

“Yes?”

“Look, Boone was the only man who stumbled on the clue. Even he, perhaps, didn’t realize all he had. But he might have. Given time, he certainly would have. But you killed him first. You had intended to all along as a means of escaping yourself. But his stumbling on the clue made you hurry up the job.”

“I was defending myself,” Archie declared.

“Those notes were dangerous,” said Doc. “They gave the human race an angle for attack.”

“But you destroyed the notes. I’m safe now.”

Doc shook his head. “No, Archie, you aren’t. For, you see, I know.”

“But you wouldn’t tell.”

“Oh, yes, I would,” said Doc. “I couldn’t help but tell. R.C.’s police have ways to make one talk. Slick ways. Unpleasant ways. I’m a psychologist. I should know. And they suspect I may know more than I’ve ever told. Chester was curious about Boone’s reports—”

“But if you had escaped with the others, you could have hidden—”

“Even then, there would have been the chance they would have found me,” Doc declared. “Just an outside chance—but in a thing like this you can’t take any chances at all.”

He walked across the room, picked up the heavy stool.

“This is the only way to do it, Archie. There’s no other thing to do. It’s the only way we can fool them—you and I.”

Archie’s voice was cold, mechanical. “You don’t have to do it that way, doctor. There are other ways.”

Doc chuckled. “Psychological effect, Archie. First Boone, now me. Makes you sinister. After two accidents like this no one will want to study you too much—or too closely.”

He weighed the heavy stool in his hand, getting the feel of it.

His cigar traveled across his face. He lifted the stool and crashed it down.