Collected Short Fiction, page 558
Flinching from the angry boom of his voice, Forester whispered uneasily, “I don’t quite see—what are these weapons of the mind?”
“One of the simplest is atomic probability.”
“Eh?”
“Take an atom of Potassium-40.” White’s great voice turned softly patient again. “A physicist yourself, you can easily picture such an unstable atom as a sort of natural wheel of chance, set to pay off only once during several billion years of spinning.”
Forester nodded skeptically, thinking that nothing could be deadlier than the missiles of his own project.
“Like any machine of chance,” White went on, “an unstable atom can be manipulated. Just as easily as a pair of dice—it seems that size and distance aren’t important factors, in telekinesis.”
Forester blinked unbelievingly at the withered little gambler crouching by the fire, who had just rolled a five and a two. “How do you manipulate an atom?”
“I don’t quite know.” Trouble darkened White’s burning eyes. “Although Jane does it easily, and the rest of us have made a few successful efforts at it—children learn the mental arts more readily.”
His brooding face warmed for a moment, as he glanced at the little girl, who was eagerly watching old Graystone dip out her bowl of stew.
“But I don’t know,” he muttered wearily. “The facts I have discovered are often apparently contradictory, and always incomplete. But I do know that Jane Carter can detonate K-40 atoms.”
White shrugged heavily, in the silver cloak.
“I don’t know,” he repeated bitterly. “And there’s no time left for trial and error now, because those machines have taken most of the human universe. This is one of the last planets left—and I don’t think you know that their first scouts are already here!”
Forester stared up in slack-jawed unbelief.
“Yes, old Mansfield’s humanoids are already infiltrating your defenses.” White’s voice turned wearily grim. “They make efficient spies, you see. More clever than the human agents employed against you by the Triplanet Powers.”
“Huh!” Forester gulped, astonished. “You don’t mean—spying machines?”
“You’ve met them,” White said. “You would find it impossible to tell them from men. But I know them. That’s one thing I’ve learned, for all my failures. I’ve trained myself to sense toe rhodomagnetic energy that operates them.”
Forester shook his head, incredulous and yet appalled.
“They’re already here,” the big man insisted. “And Ash Overstreet says Mason Horn’s report is going to be the signal for them to strike. That leaves us no more time for bungling. To stop them at all, we must grasp every device we can. That’s why we need rhodomagnetic engineers.”
Forester stood up uncertainly. “I don’t quite see—”
“Those machines are rhodomagnetic,” White’s great voice broke in. “They are all operated by remote control, on beamed rhodomagnetic power, from a central relay grid on Wing IV. They must be attacked, somehow, through that grid—because they can replace one lost unit, or a billion of them, without feeling any harm. Now, unfortunately I’ve no head for higher math, and old Mansfield failed to teach me more than the rudiments of rhodomagnetics. So that’s where you come in.” The deep voice tightened. “Will you join us?”
Kicking uncomfortably at the timber where he had sat, Forester hesitated for a half a second. He was fascinated against his will by the possibility that White and his dubious disciples had stumbled into a new field of science, but he shook his head uneasily. If all this were true—if Mason Horn were really coming back to report that Triplanet scientists had perfected mass-conversion weapons—then he should be back at his own project, standing by for a Red Alert.
“Sorry,” he said stiffly. “Can’t do it.” White didn’t argue. Oddly, instead, as if he had expected the refusal, he turned immediately to Ironsmith, who still sat beside Jane Carter at the fire, listening with a calm attention.
“Ironsmith, will you stay with us?” Forester caught his breath, watching narrowly. If the clerk chose to stay, that might mean that he was already an accomplice of White’s. It might even mean that he had helped old Graystone the Great stage the expert illusion of the little girl’s visit to the project—if that could have been any sort of trick. But Ironsmith shook his sandy head.
“I can’t see what’s so bad about those mechanicals,” he protested mildly. “Not from anything I heard you say. After all, they’re nothing but machines, doing what they were designed for. If they can actually abolish war, I’d be glad to see them come.”
“They’re already here!” Savagely harsh, White’s voice forgot to drawl. “Overstreet told me you wouldn’t help us now, but at least you are warned. I think you’ll change your mind when you meet the humanoids.” White broke off suddenly, with an inquiring glance at Ash Overstreet. The short man had stirred on the rock where he sat. His dim eyes stared vacantly at the dark stone walls, but the tilt of his head had a curious new alertness.
“It’s time for him to go.” The clairvoyant nodded heavily at Forester. “Because his men are getting nervous, out there with their rocket gun. They imagine we’re Triplanet agents and they’re about ready to low us up.”
VIII
FORESTER peered at his watch and darted out of that dark room without ceremony. Outside the tower he began frantically waving his hat, hoping that Armstrong and Dodge could see him through the drifting fog. Behind him, he heard Ironsmith taking a more deliberate leave. Little Jane Carter laughed with pleasure, and then he heard her voice:
“Thank you, Mr. Ironsmith!”
“Come along!” Forester shouted hoarsely. “Before they shoot!”
But the smiling mathematician lingered maddeningly, to shake the trembling hand of the old magician and murmur some farewell to White. He had turned out the pockets of his baggy slacks, to give Jane Carter a few coins and all his stock of chewing gum, and she followed him outside, when at last he came, waving a grave farewell.
“They won’t shoot.” Grinning, Ironsmith displayed a dark bit of metal. “Because little Jane brought me the firing link out of their rocket gun.”
Shuddering to the cold sea wind, still desperately waving his hat, Forester scrambled ahead of Ironsmith across the great wet stones of the broken causeway. He was breathless when they came back to the car, and cold with sweat from something else than running.
“You had us worried, sir,” Dodge called gratefully from beside the tripod in the ditch. “That hour was almost up.”
Turning to peer uneasily back at the old round tower, dark in the driving mist, Forester told him to unload the launcher and test the mechanism. He obeyed, and shouted a startled curse. His jaw dropped when Ironsmith silently handed him the missing firing link.
“Don’t ask questions now.” Forester clung weakly to the door of the car. “Just stow your gear, and let’s get back to Starmont. Because I think the project is going to be alerted. Soon!”
The Red Alert came at midnight, on the tight-beam teleprinter. That warning signal meant that hostile action from the Triplanet Powers had been detected. It called for the staff of Project Thunderbolt to arm two missiles against each of the enemy planets, and stand by for the final order to end three worlds.
A second message, five minutes later, called Forester himself to the capital for an emergency meeting of the Defense Authority. He took off at once, with no time even for a word to Ruth. His official aircraft landed in cold rain at dawn on a military field, and a waiting staff car took him into guarded tunnel in the face of a hill.
Deep in the underground sites which men had dug in their frantic search for vanished safety, he came at last into a narrow room of gray concrete, and took his place at the foot of a green-covered table to wait for the meeting. He blinked and started when he saw Mason Horn.
The secret agent came in through another guarded door, walking between two armed lieutenants of the Security Police. Forester rose eagerly to call out his greeting, but Horn answered with only a stiff little nod, and one of the lieutenants beckoned Forester bade. They waited, watchfully apart at the end of that long gray room. Horn carried a small brown leather case, chained to his left wrist. Sinking back into his chair, Forester felt a new chill in the damp blast from a fan somewhere behind him. He knew what that case must contain, and the knowledge was monstrous.
The aged world president entered at last, leaning on the arm of his solicitous military aide, one Major Steel. Calling out quavering greetings to a few of his cronies, he shuffled to his big chair at the end of the table. Steel helped him to sit, and he waited for the dapper little officer to prompt him before he spoke to the hushed meeting.
“Gentlemen, I’ve bad news for you.” His voice faltered thinly. “Mr. Horn will tell you what it is.”
The special agent left the two lieutenants, at the president’s feeble nod, and stepped up briskly to the table. With his thinning yellowish hair and fat red face, he looked more like a show salesman than an interplanetary spy. Unlocking the chain, he opened the brown leather case to display a polished metal object the size of an egg.
“This is the bad news.” His voice was as blandly casual as if he had been offering a chic new number in brown suede for the spring market. “I brought it back from a Triplanet arsenal in Sector Vermilion. The president has instructed me not to reveal the technical specifications. I’m only to tell you what it can do.”
The men around that long, bright-lit table, most of them withered with years and all tight-faced with anxiety, leaned silently to watch as Horn’s plump, careful fingers unscrewed the flat-ended metal egg into two parts and set them on the table. Cold light glittered on small knurled metal knobs and graduated scales.
“Huh!” The chief of staff sniffed scornfully. “Is that all?”
“It’s enough, sir.” Horn gave him a brief, amiable smile, as if about to explain the irresistible sales appeal of a plastic evening sandal. “Actually, the device itself is only a sort of fuse. The explosive charge is formed by any matter which happens to be near. The atoms aren’t just fissioned, but converted entirely to free energy. This little knob sets the radius of detonation—anywhere from zero to twelve yards.”
When his smooth voice stopped, an appalled silence filled that buried room. Men leaned to stare with a sick, slack-jawed fascination at the tiny machine on the table. The muted drone of the ventilator fan became an unpleasant roaring, and the reek of paint seemed stronger. Forester sat shivering, trying not to be ill.
“One of these could finish us.” With a fumbling care, Mason Horn began screwing the two small sections back together. “If you want to estimate its effectiveness for yourselves, convert the cubic yards of soil and rock to tons, and then multiply the answer by one thousand. That will give you the approximate equivalent in plutonium.”
He paused, carefully locking the chain again.
“The Triplanet Powers have now had more than two years to plant these where they want them,” he added quietly. “They may have been dropped into our seas, or sowed across the polar caps, or perhaps even smuggled into this very site. Placed in advance, they can be detonated by remote control, by a time mechanism, or even by the penetrating radiation from a mass-explosion on another planet. No defense is possible, and we cannot attack, not even with similar weapons, without destroying ourselves.”
“I don’t see that.” The chief of staff cleared his throat, with a stern authority. “When they discover that you have, escaped with this device, they will assume that we have also duplicated it successfully. Perhaps we should plant the information with one of our double agents—to create the fear of retaliation, and so make it impossible for them to strike.”
“I’m afraid it wouldn’t work out that way, sir.” Horn frowned, as if in regretful disapproval of the shoddy workmanship of some competing line. “Because such absolute weapons create their own explosive psychology. I think it would be foolish to reveal that we have successfully stolen this weapon, because I saw symptoms enough of official hysteria in the enemy governments to convince me that we should be prepared to die on the instant they discover the loss. That delicate situation makes me doubt the wisdom of my whole mission, sir.”
And Horn stepped respectfully back, mopping at his plump red face and waiting as if to write up an order for shoes. The chief of staff scowled at him, and abruptly sat down, seeming to say with his indignant shrug that such unmilitary men, with their unbelievable new weapons and their shocking ignorance of discipline, had ruined all his old pleasure in the ancient calling of war.
Wiping his palms again, Forester shook his head at the mute query on the bleak gray face of the minister of defense. Project Thunderbolt was ready. But it was too late to launch them now, if their blasts would also trigger enemy detonators planted here.
The old president was turning anxiously to his aide, with some question in his watery eyes. Nodding briskly, little Major Steel helped him to his feet. Forester tried to conceal a sharp disapproval, recalling the legends of Steel’s phenomenal memory and efficiency, and mistrusting his undue influence.
“An unpleasant situation, gentlemen.” Clutching die edge of the table with trembling yellow hands, the president cleared his throat uncertainly. “It first appeared to offer us only the hard choice of war without hope, or peace without freedom. However—” Gasping breathlessly, he gulped water the little officer held to his lips. “However, Major Steel has revealed a third alternative.”
IX
THAT quavered phrase took Forester’s breath. He remembered a pale tattered man, squatting by a smoky fire and peering as if at distant things with a strange alertness. Something drummed in his ears, and the old leader’s faltering voice seemed far away.
“—quite a shock to me, as you will soon understand.” The president nodded his cadaverous head at the trim little officer, who stood motionless at attention, peering fixedly down the table. “But the alternative he offers has ended a nightmare for me, and I urge you to accept his advice without question.”
Forester knew that he shouldn’t have been surprised. Mark White had tried to prepare him for this moment, and he had always mistrusted the superhuman energy and competence of the president’s aide. Yet, as he watched the human-seeming thing at the other end of the long green table now, something made him shudder. Something cold brushed up his spine, and something took his breath.
“At your service, gentlemen.” The human vocal quality was suddenly gone from Steel’s voice, so that it became a mellow silver drone. “But just a moment, if you please. Because you should see us as we are, and now the need for this disguise has ended.”
And the thing slipped out of the crisp uniform. It snapped contact lenses out of its eyes. It ripped at what had seemed its skin, and began peeling flesh-colored plastic from its limbs and its body in long spiral strips.
Forester watched helplessly. He saw the faces around the table turning stiff and gray, and heard men gasping with something close to horror. His own breath caught when an overturned chair fell with a shocking crash. Yet there was nothing really horrible about what emerged from that discarded mask.
Rather, it was beautiful. The shape of it was nearly human, but very slim and graceful, with no mechanical awkwardness or angularity whatever. Half a head shorter than Forester, it was nude now, and sexless. The sleek skin of it was a shining black, sheened with changing lights of bronze and blue. A yellow brand gleamed on its breast:
HUMANOID
Serial No. M8-B3-ZZ
“To Serve and Obey,
And Guard Men from Harm.”
For a moment, when it had flung off the last of its wrappings, it stood quite still beside the old president. Now its eyes were blind-seeming orbs that caught the light like polished steel, and its narrow, high-cheeked face was fixed in a look of dark benignity. After the flowing felicity of its action, that frozen poise seemed eerie as its inhuman voice.
“Your present alarm is needless, gentlemen,” it cooed musically, “because we never injure any man. Major Steel was simply a useful fiction, created for your own benefit, which enabled us to observe the present technological crisis as it developed here and to offer our services in time to abolish war.”
“Quite remarkable!” The chief of staff turned red in the face, and sputtered at the dark humanoid, which now stood alertly motionless again. “But how—precisely how—can you abolish war?”
“We are used to dealing with the inevitable cataclysmic breakdowns of such hypertrophic technologies as this planet has developed,” the machine pealed sweetly, “and we have efficient methods of averting violence. Our agents here and on the neighbor planets began preparing for this crisis ten years ago. Our ships from Wing IV are already near, bringing the necessary units and equipment to begin our service, and you will find the formal arrangements very simple.
“Your spaceports and those of the Triplanet Powers must be opened immediately to our shipping,” it continued serenely. “Our advance agents must be given authority to monitor communications and inspect military installations, in order to prevent any human treachery. At an agreed future date, all military equipment must be surrendered to us for safe disposal.”
“Surrender?” The chief of staff turned a choleric purple. “Never!”
“The matter is not in your hands,” the machine droned blandly. “The crucial decision for all these planets was actually made some decades ago in a physics laboratory, by a foolhardy man who had discovered the theoretical possibility of a nuclear chain reaction in a uranium-graphite pile. Once he chose to risk the test, and so demonstrated the fission process, the outcome was already fixed. You are still free, however, to discuss the situation.”
The Defense Authority voted a few minutes later, with the chief of staff indignantly abstaining, to suspend the anti-mechanicals statutes in this national emergency, and to open the spaceports to the craft from Wing IV.
