The Killer Thing

Seventeen

Trace pushed rocks over the edge of the cliff, he shoved over all that were within reach. Some of them vaporised in air, vanishing with a cloud that quickly dispersed, others hit resoundingly, now and then upsetting the balance of the artificial hill, dislodging more than they added. When the wind blew too hard for him to continue on the top of the cliff, he returned to his chimney. He drank deeply and washed himself, and then he ate; he even made coffee. He found an ointment and applied it to his lips. When the winds died down he left the chimney, landed the dinghy in the valley where he could floodlight the pile of rocks and sand and study it for any change. Almost immediately a red glow showed, not at the top this time, but three-fourths of the way up, in the side that faced the valley. The robot had been able to shift its position. The wind had driven sand over it, piling it higher on the far side, but thinning the nearer side somewhat.

Trace worked on adding rocks to the pile until the morning wind drove him back to the chimney. He was exhausted, trembling with fatigue when he turned off the engine.

It doesn’t end, Duncan. Goes on and on…

A logic box, Trace, that’s all, a logic box…

On and on automatically without thought, without heart, without pain…

You have no heart, Captain Tracy, no thought for those who live on the worlds you take, no pain for those who bleed…

Logic box, Trace… can’t do anything not programmed in, can’t think…

As an officer you have to command instant obedience in your men, not because they agree, or like your plan, or because of anything except that you pushed the buttons that put them in motion. Do you men understand that? Instant obedience. All the way up the line!

Nothingness of sleep then, and wakening to fear. How long had he slept? Was it still there? He shook all over until he located it in the visual scanner and saw that it was still covered. Weakly he staggered to the storage unit and prepared food. He would have to set an alarm, not sleep over a couple of hours at a time. He went again to the cliff-top and surveyed the hill below. The wind had piled up the rocks and sand higher than ever on the passage side of the robot, but the valley side was being denuded. He turned his detector on the hill and located the robot inside it, less than fifteen feet from the valley side of the mound. The beam was cutting a hole five inches long, not directly up now, but towards the side, back and forth, back and forth, five inches, five and a half, six… Feverishly Trace searched for rocks that he could shove over the edge. The sun climbed through the white sky, filled it and turned the world into a dazzling glare of white hot light. He worked on. He was perspiring profusely; for the first time in days he had enough water to let him sweat. He worked without thought, until suddenly he staggered. The ground was spinning, and the cliffs were rising and falling erratically.

He pitched forward. When he roused, moments later, he had no way of knowing how long he had lain there. He was burning up, dry, and he knew he was suffering from heat prostration. He had to get out of the sun, get his body temperature down, start the flood of sweat again…

He dragged himself to the dinghy and got in it. He had neglected to take the medicine that morning, he realised, had expected the abundance of water to heal him. He thought of the killer robot fighting as hard as it could to free itself, and a wave of pity passed through him. He sponged his body, caught the water in a plastic sheet to cool again that night, and sponged himself over and over.

Afterwards he rested on the seat-bed. He could not work out in the sun during the middle of the day. He had to remember that there was too little oxygen in the air to support strenuous effort over any length of time. He had to remember that he was sick, really sick. He wondered if the robot had been programmed to feel its hurts. He hoped not. “It is such a waste,” he whispered once. Pain was such a waste.

Later he went back and stared down at the burial mound. “I’m sorry for you,” he said. “None of it is really your fault.” He shoved over the rocks he had accumulated there at the edge. Tomorrow he would have to go farther afield to get the rocks to add to the pile. It was time then to get back to the safety of the chimney. In the days that followed he was building a new world, laboriously adding to the foundations, or raising new walls of incredible beauty. Sometime he was building a simple house for Lar. Again it was a monument to mankind that he was erecting. It was an edifice that required exquisite care. His selection of his material was meticulous, his handling of the building blocks almost gentle, his concern for the thing under his corner-stone was urgent. He talked to it incessantly, describing the stones he was using, explaining the purpose of the building. Sometimes he merely worked doggedly, refusing to think about the condition of his body, the condition of his mind, hinted at by the great, growing gaps when he could remember nothing at all of what he did, or what he thought. The voices were in the dinghy constantly now, remaining there when he left, continuing when he returned. Sometimes it was the voices that directed him in the preparation of food, or reminded him to take medicine, or to set the timer, or to move to the chimney before the winds came. He would have died without the voices leading him through the bad hours. He selected the rocks he would use with infinite patience, rejecting those that were too jagged, feeling happiness when he came across one of particularly pleasing shape or colour. These he examined many times before pushing them over the side. He would tell it about the rocks he was sending to it. His voice was low and kind when he spoke to it.

He talked to it of the Outsiders. “They will push us back to the three worlds of the Solar System,” he said. “Then we’ll have to learn many new things, how to live on only three worlds, how to use the land we’ll have then. It won’t be easy. But we can’t fight them, you know.” He spoke to it about Lar, about Duncan, about death and life. It never answered him. The sweep of its laser was the only sign that it still lived. He began waiting for the beam to reach the wall of the cliff before he went on after telling it something new. When it touched the side of the cliff and started back towards the other side, it was his signal that he was to continue. Back and forth, from one side of the passage to the other, sixteen feet here at the entrance.

He felt particularly pleased with it when it made some unexpected gain, clearing more of the rubble from itself than he had anticipated, freeing one of its sensors, or widening the range of its beam. Almost regretfully he would push the rocks over the edge then, as if ashamed to continue in the face of such courage.

He asked the voices if it actually possessed courage, and they debated the answer for days without coming to a decision. Then his radio hummed and the panel light went on and he knew the relief ship was within radio range. When his report was given and the radio went silent he found that tears were on his cheeks, the sound of a voice that was not inside his head had released the hysteria that had been accumulating for a month. He went outside to the edge of the cliff and shouted at the robot.

“It’s over now, brother! They’ll be here in a few hours and then you’ll be finished for good! Do you know what I’m saying to you?”

He waited until the beam bit into the side of the crevice wall and started to swing back towards the other side, and he nodded. It knew. It wouldn’t matter now if it did get loose. They could find it and drop bombs on it wherever it went. Again it was the hunted, no longer the hunter. He laughed his relief. He didn’t push any more rocks over the edge. Let it struggle.

He went back inside and bathed. He ate and then polished up the dinghy. He even washed the all weather suit. He had the relief ship on the radar screen and he sat watching its approach with satisfaction. Twice he went back to the cliff and looked down at the robot, measuring its progress. As he watched, the pile of loose rocks and sand shifted, rocks tumbling and rolling away from the hill. It was frantic, he knew, just as he had been frantic waiting for its arrival. He said softly, “I am sorry, brother. You fought a good fight all the way…”

For the first time, there was no overtone of fear and hatred in his voice when he addressed it. It had always done exactly what it had been designed to do, no more, certainly no less than that. The radio beep recalled him to the dinghy.

“Captain Tracy, this is General MacClure speaking. Congratulations, Trace. You’ve done a magnificent job down there. You’ll be rewarded handsomely… you can be sure of that. You name it, boy, whatever you want… We have aboard an army scientist, Trace. Colonel Langtree. Answer his questions, Captain Tracy.”

“Yes, sir,” Trace said, bewildered. He had heard once that Langtree had been one of the scientists who let the robot get away from Venus. He waited. Presently the thinner, more petulant voice of the scientist was in his ears.

“Captain, you say the robot is not destroyed? Is that right?”

“Yes, sir, that is correct.”

“To what extent is it damaged?”

For the next half-hour Trace answered the scientist’s questions, describing in detail the pursuit over the mountains, the activities of the robot since its entrapment, the abilities he had been able to observe while it was still free. There was silence for five minutes after the“ questioning and then MacClure was back.

“Trace, you are going to be picked up and brought aboard. We will give rendezvous co-ordinates immediately after this communication. Now, tell me this: is the robot within radio range?”

“Yes, sir. The dinghy is within a hundred and fifty feet of it.”

“Good. Turn your receiver on loud, so that it can hear. We want it, Trace. The Outsiders won’t negotiate worth a damn. The one ultimatum was it, with no area for negotiations. They insist that we withdraw back to the Solar System to be kept there in quarantine until we meet their requirements to qualify us as legitimate space travellers. It will be death to the World Group. We can’t fight them now, but if we have that robot, learn how it has developed that screen and adapt it to our ships… build more robots with that shield… We’ll take the entire galaxy, Trace, Outsiders and all. They don’t have anything that can compare to that invisibility shield. We need the robot. You’re going to be the biggest hero since Prometheus, Trace.”

What MacClure had said was true. Trace would be the biggest hero in the galaxy; it was in MacClure’s voice when he spoke to him, a note of deference already. The note would echo, would boom. This then was what the forty days had been for. Trace laughed in exultation and turned up the radio so that the robot could hear. He went outside to watch it, to hear with it the words coming from the ship. A three-foot segment of the cliff edge had been vaporised in a precise semicircular pattern. Trace stayed away from that area. Langtree’s voice sounded loud and close.

“You, Dr. Vianti’s robot, this is Colonel Langtree speaking to you. I know you can hear me and understand my words. I have a message for you. You understand about destruction and death. You understand about preserving your own life. You are trapped and doomed to destruction now. You know that we can drop bombs on you from miles above you, out of reach of your laser. You have seen these bombs; you learned about them back on Venus. Scan your memory banks and you will know that I did not want your destruction under the seas of Venus. That was a mistake. We want you alive and functioning. We want to learn from you, and we want to provide you with more abilities. We can do this. You know we can give you more abilities, better abilities. You must cooperate with us or we will destroy you.”

Trace’s eyes followed the trail of the laser, no longer sweeping back and forth in a straight line, but wobbling, making a figure of eight that was growing wider, burning into a larger area of the cliff as he watched. It would be free in an hour or so. As soon as it was able to burn a round hole, it would start enlarging it until it was free. The voice was continuing over the radio.

“If you understand my words you know that what I have said is true: you have been programmed to preserve yourself. Now you must follow my orders or you will allow yourself to be destroyed. You must turn off the laser.”

The beam vanished.

Trace hadn’t believed it could happen, hadn’t believed the robot capable of understanding to this degree. Suddenly the fear that had left him returned heavier than before. He backed from the edge of the cliff and went inside the dinghy. MacClure was speaking to him, ordering him to adjust the radio so that the robot couldn’t hear them. Trace made his report of the robot’s response to Langtree’s offer and he heard the triumphant note in MacClure’s voice. Trace was given co-ordinates for pickup, and the radio became silent. He stared at it.

They didn’t know what they were doing.

He remembered the other dinghy, equipped with the screen, and he started his engine. He had to go to the rendezvous point. He would go there and wait. He didn’t want to wait with the killer robot. His fever was high; he had ignored it in the excitement of the arrival of the relief ship. The ship was going into orbit now, he noted. They would dispatch the pickup craft within minutes. In half an hour it would be on the planet; he would get in, and they would take care of him. A long rest, vacation, they would get Lar for him, bring her to him wherever he said. He could retire now, a rich man, with everything a man could want for the rest of his life.

… a disease spreading through the galaxy…

Like a virus that could not be seen, that was deadly and swift, they would move through the galaxy, world by world falling before them, under the fire of their robots, both metal and flesh… He took off, swinging north, and landed near the other dinghy. He turned off his radiation detector, but the voices remained with him, louder, insistent, each clamouring for attention. He couldn’t turn them off. He tried to ignore them as he worked inside the other dinghy. Then he turned again to his own dinghy and left the spot. The rescue craft was on the radar screen, but he didn’t look at it. The radio was buzzing angrily at him, someone wanting to know what he had done, where he had gone and why.

For the first time since he was twelve, he ignored the voice of a superior officer, didn’t even hear the voice over the other voices that were louder, more insistent.

He thought of Venus, his birthplace, swamps and soft forests, steam and mud, and he knew he loved it. He thought of Mars, hard, cold air, domed cities, a vast frigid desert. He thought of Earth, overflowing with life, polluting its seas, lakes, rivers, forests, careless and indifferent because there were so many more worlds out there. Something Lar once said, and he hadn’t understood: “Drink first yourself of the cup you would offer a stranger.” Indifferent, happy-go-lucky Earthman, not responsible for the cup proffered the stranger; let him now drink of it himself.

Behind him a fountain of rubble erupted as the igniter he had rigged touched off the fuel that he had turned into a bomb. The other dinghy was gone. Trace was well schooled in the art of demolition. He didn’t turn back to check the damage; he knew that it would be complete destruction, that no part would remain in sufficient quantity to be reassembled for study.

The dinghy skimmed close to the ground. There was the cottony sky overhead, with a glare that half filled it. There were the white cliffs and the black cliffs, and beyond them the white wool desert, interwoven with silver threads in a random pattern, where sky and land met like the inside of a flattened sphere. There were the gentle hills stretching endlessly as the winds tore down the mountains and deposited them grain by grain on the dunes. One day it would be a world of nothing but desert, a world of death and heat and glaring white desolation. It was like Tarbo, Trace thought. Once you understand it, you don’t leave it.

He circled the valley, gained altitude and speed and circled it again. He could see a small section of the robot where it had freed itself from the mountain of rocks and sand. It was a brilliant reflection that pained his eyes. He looked in on the robot then and when he turned the last time there was no way he could change his mind, no way he could stop. He felt nothing. He had known that he had to find the killer robot and destroy it. He had found two… “The war’s over for both of us, brother,” he murmured.

When the killer things met in a fiery embrace, the voices in his ears were singing.