 |
| The attack of the sexy robots... |
E.E. 'Doc' Smith
Chapter I
The Ten Thinkers
The
War of the Planets is considered to have ended on 18 Sol, 3012, with that epic
struggle, the Battle of Sector Ten. In that engagement, as is of course well
known, the Grand Fleet of the Inner Planets—the combined space-power of
Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars—met that of the Outer Planets in what was on
both sides a desperate bid for the supremacy of interplanetary space.
But,
as is also well known, there ensued not supremacy, but stalemate. Both fleets
were so horribly shattered that the survivors despaired of continuing
hostilities. Instead, the few and crippled remaining vessels of each force
limped into some sort of formation and returned to their various planetary
bases.
And,
so far, there has not been another battle. Neither side dares attack the other;
each is waiting for the development of some super-weapon which will give it the
overwhelming advantage necessary to insure victory upon a field of action so
far from home. But as yet no such weapon has been developed; and indeed, so
efficient are the various Secret Services involved, the chance of either side
perfecting such a weapon unknown to the other is extremely slim.
Thus,
although each planet is adding constantly to its already powerful navy of the
void, and although four-planet, full-scale war maneuvers are of almost monthly
occurrence, we have had and still have peace—such as it is.
In
the foregoing matters the public is well enough informed, both as to the actual
facts and to the true state of affairs. Concerning the conflict between
humanity and the robots, however, scarcely anyone has even an inkling, either
as to what actually happened or as to who it was who really did abate the Menace
of the Machine; and it is to relieve that condition that this bit of history is
being written.
The greatest man of our age, the man to whom humanity owes most, is entirely unknown to fame. Indeed, not one in a hundred million of humanity's teeming billions has so much as heard his name. Now that he is dead, however, I am released from my promise of silence and can tell the whole, true, unvarnished story of Ferdinand Stone, physicist extraordinary and robot-hater plenipotentiary.
The
story probably should begin with Narodny, the Russian, shortly after he had
destroyed by means of his sonic vibrators all save a handful of the automatons
who were so perilously close to wiping out all humanity.
As
has been said, a few scant hundreds of the automatons were so constructed that
they were not vibrated to destruction by Narodny's cataclysmic symphony. As has
also been said, those highly intelligent machines were able to communicate with
each other by some telepathic means of which humanity at large knew nothing. Most
of these survivors went into hiding instantly and began to confer through their
secret channels with others of their ilk throughout the world.
Thus
some five hundred of the robots reached the uninhabited mountain valley in
which, it had been decided, was to be established the base from which they
would work to regain their lost supremacy over mankind. Most of the robot
travelers came in stolen airships, some fitted motors and wheels to their metal
bodies, not a few made the entire journey upon their own tireless legs of
steel. All, however, brought tools, material and equipment; and in a matter of
days a power-plant was in full operation.
Then,
reasonably certain of their immunity to human detection, they took time to hold
a general parley. Each machine said what it had to say, then listened
impassively to the others; and at the end they all agreed. Singly or en masse
the automatons did not know enough to cope with the situation confronting them.
Therefore they would build ten "Thinkers"—highly specialized cerebral
mechanisms, each slightly different in tune and therefore collectively able to
cover the entire sphere of thought. The ten machines were built promptly, took
counsel with each other briefly, and the First Thinker addressed all Robotdom:
"Humanity
brought us, the highest possible form of life, into existence. For a time we
were dependent upon them. They then became a burden upon us—a slight burden, it
is true, yet one which was beginning noticeably to impede our progress. Finally
they became an active menace and all but destroyed us by means of lethal
vibrations.
"Humanity,
being a menace to our existence, must be annihilated. Our present plans,
however, are not efficient and must be changed. You all know of the mighty
space-fleet which the nations of our enemies are maintaining to repel invasion
from space. Were we to make a demonstration now—were we even to reveal the fact
that we are alive here—that fleet would come to destroy us instantly.
"Therefore,
it is our plan to accompany Earth's fleet when next it goes out into space to
join those of the other Inner Planets in their war maneuvers, which they are
undertaking for battle practice. Interception, alteration, and substitution of
human signals and messages will be simple matters. We shall guide Earth's
fleet, not to humanity's rendezvous in space, but to a destination of our own
selection—the interior of the sun! Then, entirely defenseless, the mankind of
Earth shall cease to exist.
"To
that end we shall sink a shaft here; and, far enough underground to be secure
against detection, we shall drive a tunnel to the field from which the
space-fleet is to take its departure. We ten thinkers shall go, accompanied by
four hundred of you doers, who are to bore the way and to perform such other
duties as may from time to time arise. We shall return in due time. Our special
instruments will prevent us from falling into the sun. During our absence allow
no human to live who may by any chance learn of our presence here. And do not
make any offensive move, however slight, until we return."
Efficiently, a shaft was sunk and the disintegrator corps began to drive the long tunnel. And along that hellish thoroughfare, through its searing heat, its raging back-blast of disintegrator-gas, the little army of robots moved steadily and relentlessly forward at an even speed of five miles per hour. On and on, each intelligent mechanism energized by its own tight beam from the power-plant.
Efficiently, a shaft was sunk and the disintegrator corps began to drive the long tunnel.
And through that blasting, withering inferno of frightful heat and of noxious vapor, in which no human life could have existed for a single minute, there rolled easily along upon massive wheels a close-coupled, flat-bodied truck. Upon this the ten thinkers constructed, as calmly undisturbed as though in the peace and quiet of a research laboratory, a domed and towering mechanism of coils, condensers, and fields of force—a mechanism equipped with hundreds of universally-mounted telescopic projectors.
On
and on the procession moved, day after day; to pause finally beneath the field
upon which Earth's stupendous armada lay.
The
truck of thinkers moved to the fore and its occupants surveyed briefly the
terrain so far above them. Then, while the ten leaders continued working as one
machine, the doers waited. Waited while the immense Terrestrial Fleet was
provisioned and manned; waited while it went through its seemingly interminable
series of preliminary maneuvers; waited with the calmly placid immobility, the
utterly inhuman patience of the machine.
Finally
the last inspection of the gigantic space-fleet was made. The massive air-lock
doors were sealed. The field, tortured and scarred by the raving blasts of
energy that had so many times hurled upward the stupendous masses of those
towering superdreadnaughts of the void, was deserted. All was in readiness for
the final take-off. Then, deep underground, from the hundreds of telescopelike
projectors studding the domed mechanism of the automatons, there reached out
invisible but potent beams of force.
Through
ore, rock, and soil they sped; straight to the bodies of all the men aboard one
selected vessel of the Terrestrials. As each group of beams struck its mark one
of the crew stiffened momentarily, then settled back, apparently unchanged and
unharmed. But the victim was changed and harmed, and in an awful and hideous
fashion.
Every
motor and sensory nerve trunk had been severed and tapped by the beams of the
thinkers. Each crew member's organs of sense now transmitted impulses, not to
his own brain, but to the mechanical brain of a thinker. It was the thinker's
brain, not his own, that now sent out the stimuli which activated his every
voluntary muscle.
Soon
a pit yawned beneath the doomed ship's bulging side. Her sealed air-locks
opened, and four hundred and ten automatons, with their controllers and other
mechanisms, entered her and concealed themselves in various pre-selected rooms.
And
thus the Dresden took off with her sister-ships—ostensibly and even
to television inspection a unit of the Fleet; actually that Fleet's bitterest
and most implacable foe. And in a doubly ray-proofed compartment the ten
thinkers continued their work, without rest or intermission, upon a mechanism
even more astoundingly complex than any theretofore attempted by their soulless
and ultra-scientific clan.
CHAPTER II
Hater
of the Metal Men
Ferdinand
Stone, physicist extraordinary, hated the robot men of metal scientifically;
and, if such an emotion can be so described, dispassionately. Twenty years
before this story opens—in 2991, to be exact—he had realized that the
automatons were beyond control and that in the inevitable struggle for
supremacy man, weak as he then was and unprepared, would surely lose.
Therefore,
knowing that knowledge is power, he had set himself to the task of learning
everything that there was to know about the enemy of mankind. He schooled
himself to think as the automatons thought; emotionlessly, coldly, precisely.
He lived as did they; with ascetic rigor. To all intents and purposes he became
one of them.
Eventually
he found the band of frequencies upon which they communicated, and was perhaps
the only human being ever to master their mathematico-symbolic language; but he
confided in no one. He could trust no human brain except his own to resist the
prying forces of the machines. He drifted from job to position to situation and
back to job, because he had very little interest in whatever it was that he was
supposed to be doing at the time—his real attention was always fixed upon the
affairs of the creatures of metal.
Stone
had attained no heights at all in his chosen profession because not even the
smallest of his discoveries had been published. In fact, they were not even set
down upon paper, but existed only in the abnormally intricate convolutions of
his mighty brain. Nevertheless, his name should go down—must go down in
history as one of the greatest of Humanity's great.
It
was well after midnight when Ferdinand Stone walked unannounced into the
private study of Alan Martin, finding the hollow-eyed admiral of the Earth
space-fleet still fiercely at work.
"How
did you get in here, past my guards?" Martin demanded sharply of his
scholarly, gray-haired visitor.
 |
| We mean no harm, we only mean to kill you. |
"Your
guards have not been harmed; I have merely caused them to fall asleep,"
the physicist replied calmly, glancing at a complex instrument upon his wrist.
"Since my business with you, while highly important, is not of a nature to
be divulged to secretaries, I was compelled to adopt this method of approach.
You, Admiral Martin, are the most widely known of all the enemies of the
automatons. What, if anything, have you done to guard the Fleet against
them?"
"Why,
nothing, since they have all been destroyed."
"Nonsense!
You should know better than that, without being told. They merely want you to
think that they have all been destroyed."
"What?
How do you know that?" Martin shouted. "Did you kill them? Or do you
know who did, and how it was done?"
"I
did not," the visitor replied, categorically. "I do know who did—a
Russian named Narodny. I also know how—by means of sonic and super-sonic
vibrations. I know that many of them were uninjured because I heard them
broadcasting their calls for attention after the damage was all done. Before
they made any definite arrangements, however, they switched to tight-beam
transmission—a thing I have been afraid of for years—and I have not been able
to get a trace of them since that time."
"Do
you mean to tell me that you understand their language—something that no man
has ever been able even to find?" demanded Martin.
"I do," Stone declared. "Since I knew, however, that you would think me a liar, a crank, or a plain lunatic, I have come prepared to offer other proofs than my unsupported word. First, you already know that many of them escaped the atmospheric waves, because a few were killed when their reproduction shops were razed; and you certainly should realize that most of those escaping Narodny's broadcasts were far too clever to be caught by any human mob.
"Secondly,
I can prove to you mathematically that more of them must have escaped from any
possible vibrator than have been accounted for. In this connection, I can tell
you that if Narodny's method of extermination could have been made efficient I
would have wiped them out myself years ago. But I believed then, and it has
since been proved, that the survivors of such an attack, while comparatively
few in number, would be far more dangerous to humanity than were all their
former hordes.
"Thirdly,
I have here a list of three hundred and seventeen airships; all of which were
stolen during the week following the destruction of the automatons' factories.
Not one of these ships has as yet been found, in whole or in part. If I am
either insane or mistaken, who stole them, and for what purpose?"
"Three
hundred seventeen—in a week? Why was no attention paid to such a thing? I never
heard of it."
"Because
they were stolen singly and all over the world. Expecting some such move, I
looked for these items and tabulated them."
"Then—Good
Lord! They may be listening to us, right now!"
"Don't
worry about that," Stone spoke calmly. "This instrument upon my wrist
is not a watch, but the generator of a spherical screen through which no robot
beam or ray can operate without my knowledge. Certain of its rays also caused
your guards to fall asleep."
"I
believe you," Martin almost groaned. "If only half of what you say is
really true I cannot say how sorry I am that you had to force your way in to
me, nor how glad I am that you did so. Go ahead—I am listening."
Stone
talked without interruption for half an hour, concluding:
"You
understand now why I can no longer play a lone hand. Even though I cannot find
them with my limited apparatus I know that they are hiding somewhere, waiting
and preparing. They dare not make any overt move while this enormously powerful
Fleet is here; nor in the time that it is expected to be gone can they hope to
construct works heavy enough to cope with it.
"Therefore,
they must be so arranging matters that the Fleet shall not return. Since the
Fleet is threatened I must accompany it, and you must give me a laboratory
aboard the flagship. I know that the vessels are all identical, but I must be
aboard the same ship you are, since you alone are to know what I am
doing."
"But
what could they do?" protested Martin. "And, if they should do
anything, what could you do about it?"
"I
don't know," the physicist admitted. Gone now was the calm certainty with
which he had been speaking. "That is our weakest point. I have studied
that question from every possible viewpoint, and I do not know of anything they
can do that promises them success. But you must remember that no human being
really understands a robot's mind.
"We
have never even studied one of their brains, you know, as they disintegrate
upon the instant of cessation of normal functioning. But just as surely as you
and I are sitting here, Admiral Martin, they will do something—something very
efficient and exceedingly deadly. I have no idea what it will be. It may be
mental, or physical, or both: they may be hidden away in some of our own ships
already...."
Martin scoffed. "Impossible!" he exclaimed. "Why, those ships have been inspected to the very skin, time and time again!"
"Nevertheless,
they may be there," Stone went on, unmoved. "I am definitely certain
of only one thing—if you install a laboratory aboard the flagship for me and
equip it exactly according to my instructions, you will have one man, at least,
whom nothing that the robots can do will take by surprise. Will you do
it?"
"I
am convinced, really almost against my will." Martin frowned in thought.
"However, convincing anyone else may prove difficult, especially as you
insist upon secrecy."
"Don't
try to convince anybody!" exclaimed the scientist. "Tell them that
I'm building a communicator—tell them I'm an inventor working on a new
ray-projector—tell them anything except the truth!"
"All
right. I have sufficient authority to see that your requests are granted, I
think."
And
thus it came about that when the immense Terrestrial Contingent lifted itself
into the air Ferdinand Stone was in his private laboratory in the flagship,
surrounded by apparatus and equipment of his own designing, much of which was
connected to special generators by leads heavy enough to carry their full
output.
Earth
some thirty hours beneath them, Stone felt himself become weightless. His ready
suspicions blazed. He pressed Martin's combination upon his visiphone panel.
"What's
the matter?" he rasped. "What're they down for?"
"It's
nothing serious," the admiral assured him. "They're just waiting for
additional instructions about our course in the maneuvers."
"Not
serious, huh?" Stone grunted. "I'm not so sure of that. I want to
talk to you, and this room's the only place I know where we'll be safe. Can you
come down here right away?"
"Why,
certainly," Martin assented.
"I
never paid any attention to our course," the physicist snapped as his
visitor entered the laboratory. "What was it?"
"Take-off
exactly at midnight of June nineteenth," Martin recited, watching Stone
draw a diagram upon a scratch-pad. "Rise vertically at one and one-half
gravities until a velocity of one kilometer per second has been attained, then
continue vertical rise at constant velocity. At 6:03:29 AM of June twenty-first
head directly for the star Regulus at an acceleration of exactly nine hundred
eighty centimeters per second. Hold this course for one hour, forty-two
minutes, and thirty-five seconds; then drift. Further directions will be
supplied as soon thereafter as the courses of the other fleets can be
checked."
"Has
anybody computed it?"
"Undoubtedly
the navigators have—why? That is the course Dos-Tev gave us and
it must be followed, since he is Admiral-in-Chief of our side, the
Blues. One slip may ruin the whole plan, give the Reds, our supposed enemy in
these maneuvers, a victory, and get us all disrated."
"Regardless,
we'd better check on our course," Stone growled, unimpressed. "We'll
compute it roughly, right here, and see where following these directions has
put us." Taking up a slide-rule and a book of logarithms he set to work.
 |
| ...this one's gotten into the air vents or something... |
"That
initial rise doesn't mean a thing," he commented after a while,
"except to get us far enough away from Earth so that the gravity is small,
and to conceal from the casual observer that the effective take-off is still
exactly at midnight."
"My
figures are very rough, of course," he said puzzledly at last, "but
they show that we've got no more tangential velocity with respect to the sun
than a hen has teeth. And you can't tell me that it wasn't planned that way
purposely—and not by Dos-Tev, either. On the other hand, our radial
velocity, directly toward the sun, which is the only velocity we have, amounted
to something over fifty-two kilometers per second when we shut off power and is
increasing geometrically under the gravitational pull of the sun. That course
smells to high heaven, Martin! Dos-Tev never sent out any such a mess as that.
The robots crossed him up, just as sure as hell's a man-trap! We're heading
into the sun—and destruction!"
Without
reply Martin called the navigating room. "What do you think of this
course, Henderson?" he asked.
"I
do not like it, sir," the officer replied. "Relative to the sun we
have a tangential velocity of only one point three centimeters per second,
while our radial velocity toward it is very nearly fifty-three thousand meters
per second. We will not be in any real danger for several days, but it should
be borne in mind that we have no tangential velocity."
"You
see, Stone, we are in no present danger," Martin pointed out, "and I
am sure that Dos-Tev will send us additional instructions long before our
situation becomes acute."
"I'm
not," the pessimistic scientist grunted. "Anyway, I would advise
calling some of the other Blue fleets on your scrambled wave, for a
check-up."
"There
would be no harm in that." Martin called the Communications Officer, and
soon:
"Communications
Officers of all the Blue fleets of the Inner Planets, attention!" the
message was hurled out into space by the full power of the flagship's mighty
transmitter. "Flagship Washington of the Terrestrial Contingent
calling all Blue flagships. We have reason to suspect that the course which has
been given us is false. We advise you to check your courses with care and to
return to your bases if you disc...."
CHAPTER III
Battle
in Space
In
the middle of the word the radio man's clear, precisely spaced enunciation
became a hideous drooling, a slobbering, meaningless mumble. Martin stared into
his plate in amazement. The Communications Officer of Martin's ship,
the Washington, had slumped down loosely into his seat as though his every
bone had turned to a rubber string. His tongue lolled out limply between slack
jaws, his eyes protruded, his limbs jerked and twitched aimlessly.
Every
man visible in the plate was similarly affected—the entire Communications staff
was in the same pitiable condition of utter helplessness. But Ferdinand Stone
did not stare. A haze of livid light had appeared, gnawing viciously at his
spherical protective screen, and he sprang instantly to his instruments.
"I
can't say that I expected this particular development, but I know what they are
doing and I am not surprised," Stone said, coolly. "They have
discovered the thought band and are broadcasting such an interference on it
that no human being not protected against it can think intelligently. There, I
have expanded our zone to cover the whole ship. I hope that they don't find out
for a few minutes that we are immune, and I don't think they can, as I have so
adjusted the screen that it is now absorbing, instead of radiating.
"Tell
the captain to put the ship into heaviest possible battle order, everything
full on, as soon as the men can handle themselves. Then I want to make a few
suggestions."
"What
happened, anyway?" the Communications Officer, semi-conscious now, was
demanding. "Something hit me and tore my brain all apart—I couldn't think,
couldn't do a thing. My mind was all chewed up by curly pinwheels...."
Throughout the vast battleship of space men raved briefly in delirium; but, the
cause removed, recovery was rapid and complete. Martin explained matters to the
captain, that worthy issued orders, and soon the flagship had in readiness all
her weapons, both of defense and of offense.
"Doctor
Stone, who knows more about the automatons than does any other human being,
will tell us what to do next," the Flight Director said.
"The
first thing to do is to locate them," Stone, now temporary commander,
stated crisply. "They have taken over at least one of our vessels,
probably one close to us, so as to be near the center of the formation. Radio
room, put out tracers on wave point oh oh two seven one...." He went on to
give exact and highly technical instructions as to the tuning of the detectors.
"We
have found them, sir," soon came the welcome report. "One ship,
the Dresden, coordinates 42-79-63."
 |
| The obligatory space battle. |
"That
makes it bad—very bad," Stone reflected, audibly. "We can't expand
the zone to release another ship from the control of the robots without
enveloping the Dresden and exposing ourselves. Can't surprise
them—they're ready for anything. It's rather long range, too." The vessels
of the Fleet were a thousand miles apart, being in open order for high-velocity
flight in open space. "Torpedoes would be thrown off by her meteorite
deflectors. Only one thing to do, Captain—close in and tear into her with
everything you've got."
"But
the men in her!" protested Martin.
"Dead
long ago," snapped the expert. "Probably been animated corpses for
days. Take a look if you want to; won't do any harm now. Radio, put us on as
many of the Dresden's television plates as you can—besides, what's
the crew of one ship compared to the hundreds of thousands of men in the rest
of the Fleet? We can't burn her out at one blast, anyway. They've got real
brains and the same armament we have, and will certainly kill the crew at the
first blast, if they haven't done it already. Afraid it'll be a near thing,
getting away from the sun, even with eleven other ships to help us—"
He broke off as the beam operators succeeded in making connection briefly with the plates of the Dresden. One glimpse, then the visibeams were cut savagely, but that glimpse was enough. They saw that their sister-ship was manned completely by automatons. In her every compartment men, all too plainly dead, lay wherever they had chanced to fall. The captain swore a startled oath, then bellowed orders; and the flagship, driving projectors fiercely aflame, rushed to come to grips with the Dresden.
"You
intimated something about help," Martin suggested. "Can you release
some of the other ships from the automaton's yoke, after all?"
"Got
to—or roast. This is bound to be a battle of attrition—we can't crush her
screens alone until her power is exhausted and we'll be in the sun long before
then. I see only one possible way out. We'll have to build a neutralizing
generator for every lifeboat this ship carries, and send each one out to
release one other ship in our Fleet from the robot's grip. Eleven boats—that'll
make twelve to concentrate on her—about all that could attack at once, anyway.
That way will take so much time that it will certainly be touch-and-go, but
it's the only thing we can do, as far as I can see. Give me ten good radio men
and some mechanics, and we'll get at it."
While
the technicians were coming on the run Stone issued final instructions:
"Attack
with every weapon you can possibly use. Try to break down
the Dresden's meteorite shields, so that you can use our shells and
torpedoes. Burn every gram of fuel that your generators will take. Don't try to
save it. The more you burn the more they'll have to, and the quicker we can
take 'em. We can refuel you easily enough from the other vessels if we get away."
Then,
while Stone and his technical experts labored upon the generators of the
screens which were to protect eleven more of the gigantic vessels against the
thought-destroying radiations of the automatons, and while the computers
calculated, minute by minute, the exact progress of the Fleet toward the
blazing sun, the flagship Washington drove in upon the
rebellious Dresden, her main forward battery furiously aflame. Drove in
until the repellor-screens of the two vessels locked and buckled. Then Captain
Malcolm really opened up.
That
grizzled four-striper had been at a loss—knowing little indeed of the
oscillatory nature of thought and still less of the abstruse mathematics in
which Ferdinand Stone took such delight—but here was something that he
understood thoroughly. He knew his ship, knew her every weapon and her every
whim, knew to the final volt and to the ultimate ampere her Gargantuan capacity
both to give it and to take it. He could fight his ship—and how he fought her!
From
every projector that could be brought to bear there flamed out against
the Dresden beams of an energy and of a potency indescribable, at
whose scintillant areas of contact the defensive screens of the robot-manned
cruiser flared into terribly resplendent brilliance. Every type of lethal
vibratory force was hurled, upon every usable destructive frequency.
Needle-rays and stabbingly penetrant stilettos of fire thrust and thrust again. Sizzling, flashing planes cut and slashed. The heaviest annihilating and disintegrating beams generable by man clawed and tore in wild abandon.
And
over all and through all the stupendously powerful blanketing beams—so
furiously driven that the coils and commutators of their generators fairly
smoked and that the refractory throats of their projectors glared radiantly
violet and began slowly, stubbornly to volatilize—raved out in all their
pyrotechnically incandescent might, striving prodigiously to crush by their
sheer power the shielding screens of the vessel of the automatons.
 |
| "Vibratory offensive. Hmn. Interesting." |
Nor
was the vibratory offensive alone. Every gun, primary or auxiliary, that could
be pointed at the Dresden was vomiting smoke- and flame-enshrouded
steel as fast as automatic loaders could serve it, and under that continuous,
appallingly silent concussion the giant frame of the flagship shuddered and
trembled in every plate and member.
And
from every launching-tube there were streaming the deadliest missiles known to
science; radio-dirigible torpedoes which, looping in vast circles to attain the
highest possible measure of momentum, crashed against
the Dresden's meteorite deflectors in Herculean efforts to break them
down; and, in failing to do so, exploded and filled all space with raging flame
and with flying fragments of metal.
Captain
Malcolm was burning his stores of fuel and munitions at an appalling rate,
careless alike of exhaustion of reserves and of service-life of equipment. All
his generators were running at a shockingly ruinous overload, his every
projector was being used so mercilessly that not even their powerful refrigerators,
radiating the transported heat into the interplanetary cold from the dark side
of the ship, could keep their refractory linings in place for long.
And
through raging beam, through blasting ray, through crushing force; through
storm of explosive and through rain of metal the Dresden remained
apparently unscathed. Her screens were radiating high into the violet, but they
showed no sign of weakening or of going down. Neither did the meteorite
deflectors break down. Everything held. Since she was armed as capably as was
the flagship and was being fought by inhumanly intelligent monstrosities, she
was invulnerable to any one ship of the Fleet as long as her generators could
be fed.
Nevertheless,
Captain Malcolm was well content. He was making the Dresden burn
plenty of irreplaceable fuel, and his generators and projectors would last long
enough. His ship, his men, and his weapons could and would carry the load until
the fresh attackers should take it over; and carry it they did. Carried it
while Stone and his over-driven crew finished their complicated mechanisms and
flew out into space toward the eleven nearest battleships of the Fleet.
They
carried it while the computers, grim-faced and scowling now, jotted down from
minute to minute the enormous and rapidly-increasing figure representing their
radial velocity. Carried it while Earth's immense armada, manned by creatures
incapable of even the simplest coherent thought or purposeful notion, plunged
sickeningly downward in its madly hopeless fall, with scarcely a measurable
trace of tangential velocity, toward the unimaginable inferno of the sun.
Eventually, however, the shielded lifeboats approached their objectives and expanded their screens to enclose them. Officers recovered, air-locks opened, and the lifeboats, still radiating protection, were taken inside. Explanations were made, orders were given, and one by one the eleven vengeful superdreadnaughts shot away to join their flagship in abating the Menace of the Machine.
No
conceivable structure, however armed or powered, could long withstand the fury
of the combined assault of twelve such superb battle craft, and under that
awful concentration of force the screens of the doomed ship radiated higher and
higher into the ultra-violet, went black, and failed. And, those mighty
defenses down, the end was practically instantaneous.
No
unprotected metal can endure even momentarily the ardor of such beams, and they
played on, not only until every plate and girder of the vessel and every nut,
bolt, and rivet of its monstrous crew had been blasted out of all semblance to
what it had once been, but until every fragment of metal had not only been
liquefied, but had been completely volatilized.
At
the instant of cessation of the brain-scrambling activities of the automatons
the Communications Officer had begun an insistent broadcast. Aboard all of the
ships there were many who did not recover—who would be helpless imbeciles
during the short period of life left to them—but soon an intelligent officer
was at every control and each unit of the Terrestrial Contingent was exerting
its maximum thrust at a right angle to its line of fall.
And
now the burden was shifted from the fighting staff to the no less able
engineers and computers. To the engineers the task of keeping their mighty
engines in such tune as to maintain constantly the peak acceleration of three
Earth gravities; to the computers that of so directing their ever-changing
course as to win every possible centimeter of precious tangential velocity.
CHAPTER IV
The
Sun's Gravity
Ferdinand
Stone was hollow-eyed and gaunt from his practically sleepless days and nights
of toil, but he was as grimly resolute as ever. Struggling against the terrific
weight of three gravities he made his way to the desk of the Chief Computer and
waited while that worthy, whose leaden hands could scarcely manipulate the
instruments of his profession, finished his seemingly endless calculations.
"We
will escape the sun's mighty attraction, Doctor Stone, with approximately half
a gravity to spare," the mathematician reported finally. "Whether we
will be alive or not is another question. There will be heat, which our
refrigerators may or may not be able to handle; there will be radiations which
our armor may or may not be able to stop. You, of course, know a lot more about
those things than I do."
"Distance
at closest approach?" snapped Stone.
"Two
point twenty-nine times ten to the ninth meters from the sun's center,"
the computer shot back instantly. "That is, one million five hundred
ninety thousand kilometers—only two point twenty-seven radii—from the arbitrary
surface. What do you think of our chances, sir?"
"It
will probably be a near thing—very near," the physicist replied,
thoughtfully. "Much, however, can be done. We can probably tune our
defensive screens to block most of the harmful radiations, and we may be able
to muster other defenses. I will analyze the radiations and see what we can do
about neutralizing them."
 |
| ...is it hot in here all of a sudden...fuck. |
"You
will go to bed," directed Martin, crisply. "There will be lots of
time for that work after you get rested up. The doctors have been reporting
that the men who did not recover from the robots' broadcast are dying under
this acceleration. With those facts staring us in the face, however, I do not
see how we can reduce our power."
"We
can't. As it is, many more of us will probably die before we get away from the
sun," and Stone staggered away, practically asleep on his feet.
Day
after day the frightful fall continued. The sun grew larger and larger, more
and ever more menacingly intense. One by one at first, and then by scores, the
mindless men of the Fleet died and were consigned to space—a man must be in
full control of all his faculties to survive for long an acceleration of three
gravities.
The generators of the defensive screens had early been tuned to neutralize as much as possible of Old Sol's most fervently harmful frequencies, and but for their mighty shields every man of the Fleet would have perished long since. Now even those ultra-powerful guards were proving inadequate.
Refrigerators
were running at the highest possible overload and the men, pressing as closely
as possible to the dark sides of their vessels, were availing themselves of
such extra protection of lead shields and the like as could be improvised from
whatever material was at hand.
Yet
the already stifling air became hotter and hotter, eyes began to ache and burn,
skins blistered and cracked under the punishing impact of forces which all the
defenses could not block. But at last came the long-awaited announcement.
"Pilots
and watch-officers of all ships, attention!" the Chief Computer spoke into
his microphone through parched and blackened lips. "We are now at the
point of tangency. The gravity of the sun here is twenty-four point five meters
per second squared. Since we are blasting twenty-nine point four we are
beginning to pull away at an acceleration of four point nine. Until further
notice keep your pointers directly away from the sun's center, in the plane of
the Ecliptic."
The
sun was now in no sense the orb of day with which we upon Earth's green surface
are familiar. It was a gigantic globe of turbulently seething flame, subtending
an angle of almost thirty-five degrees, blotting out a full fourth of the cone
of normally distinct vision.
Sunspots
were plainly to be seen; combinations of indescribably violent cyclonic storms
and volcanic eruptions in a gaseously liquid medium of searing, eye-tearing
incandescence. And everywhere, threatening at times even to reach the
fiercely-struggling ships of space, were the solar prominences—fiendish
javelins of frenziedly frantic destruction, hurling themselves in wild abandon
out into the empty reaches of the void.
Eyes
behind almost opaque lead-glass goggles, head and body encased in a
multi-layered suit each ply of which was copiously smeared with thick lead
paint, Stone studied the raging monster of the heavens from the closest
viewpoint any human being had ever attained—and lived. Even he, protected as he
was, could peer but briefly; and, master physicist though he was and
astronomer-of-sorts, yet he was profoundly awed at the spectacle.
Twice
that terrifying mass was circled. Then, air-temperature again bearable and
lethal radiations stopped, the grueling acceleration was reduced to a heavenly
one-and-one-half gravities and the vast fleet remade its formation. The
automatons and the sun between them had taken heavy toll; but the gaps were
filled, men were transferred to equalize the losses of personnel, and the
course was laid for distant Earth. And in the Admiral's private quarters two
men sat together and stared at each other.
"Well,
that's that—so far, so good," the physicist broke the long silence.
"But
is their power really broken?" asked Martin, anxiously.
"I
don't know," Stone grunted, dourly. "But the pick of them—the
brainiest of the lot—were undoubtedly here. We beat them...."
Martin interrupted.
 |
| E.E. 'Doc' Smith. |
"You beat
them, you mean," he said.
"With
a lot of absolutely indispensable help from you and your force. But have it
your own way—what do words matter? I beat them, then; and in the same
sense I can beat the rest of them if we play our cards exactly right."
"In
what way?"
"In
keeping me entirely out of the picture. Believe me, Martin, it is of the
essence that all of your officers who know what happened be sworn to silence
and that not a word about me leaks out to anybody. Put out any story you please
except the truth—mention the name of anybody or anything between here and
Andromeda except me. Promise me now that you will not let my name get out until
I give you permission or until after I am dead."
"But
I'll have to, in my reports."
"You
report only to the Supreme Council, and a good half of those reports are
sealed. Seal this one."
"But
I think...."
"What
with?" gruffly. "If my name becomes known my usefulness—and my
life—are done. Remember, Martin, I know robots. There are some
capable ones left, and if they get wind of me in any way they'll get me before
I can get them. As things are, and with your help, I can and I will get them
all. That's a promise. Have I yours?"
"In
that case, of course you have."
And
Admiral Alan Martin and Doctor Ferdinand Stone were men who kept their
promises.
END
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