Collected Short Fiction, page 74
Whether by luck or skill, the rock struck the gleaming ring, crushing it against the needle—and instant paralysis overtook the metal thing. Its tentacles and limbs became fixed and rigid, and it toppled over in the brush.
Dan walked over to it, and examined it briefly. The green disk had fallen on the ground, and he picked it up. It was made of emerald crystal, it had a little knob of glistening metal set in one side. Rather afraid of it, Dan forbore to twist the knob. But he still clutched it in his hand a few moments later, when, partly for fear that others of its kind would come to succor the fallen monster, and partly to secure shelter from the threatening rain, he retired into the shadows of the tangled jungle.
He spent perhaps half an hour in creeping back to what he supposed a place of comparative safety. For some time he lay there in the cool gloom, brushing occasional insects off his bare skin, wishing by turns that he had a cup of coffee and a good beefsteak, and that he could puzzle out a logical solution of all the astounding things he had met in the island. After the encounter with the metal monster, he felt his theory of the hermit scientists a bit inadequate.
PRESENTLY his attention was attracted by the unmistakable mew of a kitten. Then he heard the padding sound of cautious human footsteps, and a clear feminine voice calling “Kitty, kitty,” in low tones. The steps and the voice seemed coming toward him; since there was no sound of crackling brush, he supposed there was a trail, which he had not found.
“Hello,” he ventured, when the voice seemed only a few yards away through the green tangle.
At the same instant a gray kitten appeared out of the underbrush, and frisked trustfully across to him. He put out a hand, caressed it, picked it up.
IN a moment the feminine voice replied, “Hello yourself. Who are you?”
A crackling sound came from the brush, as if the speaker were starting toward him. Dan, abruptly conscious of his lack of attire, said quickly, “Wait a minute! I haven’t anything on, you see. I’m Dan McNally. I owned the schooner that something happened to off the island last night.”
A delicious, trilling laugh greeted the panic of his first words. Then the clear, sweet voice, serious again, replied, “So you swam ashore from the boat I signaled?”
“Yes.”
“Gee, but I’m glad to find you! And you say you haven’t any clothes? I wonder what . . . “The voice paused reflectively, then resumed, “Here’s a sheet that I got to signal with in the daytime, if I had a chance. You might wrap it around you until we find something better.”
The low, liquid laugh rang out again; again there was a rustling in the brush, and presently an arm appeared, holding a rolled-up sheet.
“All right,” he called. “Throw it this way.”
In a moment, with the sheet draped around him like a Roman toga, and the kitten on his arm, he advanced to meet the owner of the beautiful voice.
At the trail he met a trim, active-looking young woman, clad in out-of-door attire and with a canvas knapsack on her back. Bareheaded, she wore her brown hair closely shingled. Her face, Dan recognized from the photograph he had seen five years before, though it was more lovely than the splotched newspaper picture had hinted. Her brown eyes were filled with laughter at his predicament and his present unusual garb.
He bowed with mock gravity and said, “How do you do, Miss Helen Hunter?”
Brown eyes widened in surprise. “You know me?” she asked. “Not half so well as I hope to,” he grinned.
Then, handing her the kitten, he spoke seriously. “What about this island? The green flashes? The big machine on the mountain? The metal thing that jumps about like a grasshopper? What’s it all about? You know anything about it?”
“Yes, I know a good deal about it,” she told him soberly. “It’s rather a terrible story. And one you may not believe—no, you’ve seen them! But the kitten is hungry, and you must be, too, if you swam ashore.”
“Well, yes, I am,” Dan admitted.
The storm clouds were drifting out to sea; the sun was beginning to assert itself, and it now lighted up the scene with a cheerful brightness. She slung off her pack and sat down cross-legged at the side of the trail. Dan sat down opposite her as she opened the knapsack and produced a can of condensed milk, one of sardines, a can-opener, and half a loaf of bread.
“I had to select my supplies rather at random,” she said, “and you’ll have to make the best of them.”
She started to open the sardines. “You’d better give it to me,” Dan advised. “You might cut your hand.”
“You think so?” she asked, deftly lifting the lid, fishing out a fish for the kitten, and presenting the can to Dan. Then with capable hands she broke off a large chunk of bread, which she handed him.
“Go ahead and finish this up,” she said. “I’ve already had breakfast.” She punched two holes in the end of the milk can, and poured some of the thick yellow fluid into the palm of her left hand, from which she let the kitten lap it.
“And now for the mystery of the island,” Dan demanded, forgetting bread and sardines in his eagerness.
THE girl turned her face to him. “I’m Helen Hunter, as you seem to know,” she began. “I came here with my father five years ago to observe an eclipse of the sun. When it was all over, and the ship called to take us off, he decided to send the results of our observations by one of the other men. He wanted to stay here to carry on another experiment—the one that led to that machine on the hill. Part of the other men were willing to stay. The yacht left us here, and has been back from San Francisco every six months since, with mail and supplies.”
“And what was the experiment?” Dan demanded eagerly.
“Have you ever looked at Mars through a good telescope?” she countered. “Then you must have seen the canals—straight dark lines running from the white polar caps to the equatorial zone.
All scientists did not agree as to what they were, but nobody could suggest a natural origin for them.
“My father was one of those who thought that the canals were fertile, cultivated strips, irrigated with water brought down from the melting ice-caps. Irrigation systems meant intelligent life upon the planet, and his experiment was an attempt to communicate with that intelligence.”
“And he succeeded?” Dan was astounded.
“Yes. The means was simple enough: other men had suggested it years before, in fact. Any fairly bright light on Mars—such as the beam of a searchlight directed toward earth—would be visible in a good telescope, when the planet is favorably situated: it follows that such a light on earth should be visible to an observer with a similar instrument on Mars.
“It was possible, of course, but unlikely, that Mars would have intelligent inhabitants still ignorant of the telescope. It was also possible that their senses would be different from ours—that, if they saw at all, it would be with a different part of the spectrum. Father took the chance. And he succeeded.
“The call was simple: merely three flashes of light, repeated again and again. We used a portable searchlight, mounted on a motor-truck, such as is used in the army. The three flashes meant that we were on the third planet of the solar system. The answering call, from the fourth planet, should be four flashes, of course.
“For three nights we kept signaling. One of the men watched the motor-generator, and I operated the searchlight, swinging it on Mars and off again, to make the flashes. Dad kept his eye screwed to the telescope. Nothing happened and he got discouraged. I persuaded him to keep on for another night, in case they hadn’t seen us at first; or needed more time to get their searchlight ready.
“And on the fourth night poor Dad came out of the observatory, shouting that he had seen four flashes.”
DAN gasped, speechless with astonishment. “Then that machine, with the needle pointing at Mars, and the green flashes, and the thing that jumped at me—”
Helen waved a white hand for silence. “Just keep cool a minute! I’m coming to them.
“The four flashes just began it. In a few days Dad and the Martians were communicating by a sort of television process. He would mark off a sheet of paper into squares, blacken some of the squares to make a picture or design, then have me send a flash for each black square, and miss an interval for each white one, taking them in regular order. The Martians seemed to catch on pretty soon; in a few days Dad was receiving pictures of the same sort.
“Rather a slow way of communication, perhaps. But it worked better than one might think at first. In a month Dad had received instructions for building a small machine like that big one on the hill. It is something like radio—at least it operates with vibrations in the ether—but it’s as much ahead of our radio as an airplane is in advance of a fire-balloon. I understand a good bit about it, but I won’t try to explain it now.
“And in the next three years Dad learned no end of things from the people on Mars. One queer thing about it was, that they never let us see them on the television apparatus, no matter how many of their scientific secrets they gave us. Dad and I exhibited ourselves, but I don’t know yet what the Martians look like a dash; though I have made a guess.
“By the end of the third year they had showed Dad how to make one of those metal things—”
“Like that one that jumped at me?” Dan broke in with a shudder.
“Yes. They seem almost alive; but they are machines, like our robots, and controlled by the radio apparatus. The eyes use photo-electric cells, and relay what is before them to the Master Intelligence.” The girl spoke these last words in a low tone, shrinking involuntarily. She paused a moment, then shrugged and continued.
“The first machine did not obey my father. It was controlled by signals that came from Mars, over the big station on the hill. And it went to work, making more apparatus, building more machines, enlarging the receiving station. It worked in obedience to the Master Intelligence on Mars!
“THAT was a year ago. The last time the yacht called, my father and the other men still hoped to control the machines. They let her go back without us. The machines tolerated us a while; paid no attention to us; they were busy working mines and building huge, strange things that must be flying machines; the plateau on the other side of the peak is crowded with them.
“For the machines are preparing to leave the island! They are going to conquer the world for the Master Intelligence on Mars!
“Months ago my father discovered this, and realized that he had loosed doom upon the earth. He and the three other men planned to destroy that big station on the peak. All the signals to the machines are relayed through that, from Mars. The machines seemed to pay no heed as they made their preparations.
“Then one night, about three weeks ago, they tried to dynamite the station.” The girl’s shoulder trembled; she paused to brush a tear from her eye, then went on hastily, in a voice grown husky with emotion. Dan felt an odd desire to take her slight form in his arms and comfort her in her grief.
“The machines had seemed heedless, but they were ready. They had those disks that throw the green fire: we had not seen them before. And—well, all four of them were killed.”
Dan handed her the disk of green crystal he had taken from the thing that had attacked him. She examined it silently, then went on.
“Dad had left me in bed, but I heard an explosion. I think the bombs went off when the green fire struck them. I knew what had happened, and got out of the house just before the machines arrived. They wrecked the place with their green flashes.
“And for the last three weeks I’ve been hiding in the jungle, or watching for ships. Three times I’ve raided the ruins of the house for something to eat: fortunately it didn’t burn, like your ship. And that’s all, I suppose—except I’m awfully glad that you got ashore.”
“Thanks,” Dan said, earnestly. “And what are we going to do now?”
“I DON’T know,” Helen answered in a troubled tone. “I’m afraid. Afraid for all humanity. On the television, I’ve seen enough of Mars to be sure that it is a world of machines, controlled by one Master Intelligence. And even that may be a machine. We make machines that compute the tides and carry out other computations that are almost beyond the power of the human mind: why couldn’t a machine think?
“The Master Intelligence of Mars plans to add the Earth to his domain. Unless we can do something to stop it, in a few years the world will be overrun with gigantic robot-machines, controlled by force from across the gulf of space. Humanity cannot resist them. Imagine a battleship pitted against that green annihilating ray, and all the other science of an elder planet!
“Life is to be blotted out! The Master Intelligence of Mars will rule two worlds of mechanical monsters!”
Dan sat in a dazed vision of horror to come, until Helen straightened up as if shaking off a mantle of fear, and smiled heroically, if a bit wanly.
“Now you must eat your bread and sardines, to give you strength to fight for humanity!” she cried, with a laugh that she strived, not too successfully, to make cheerful and gay. Obediently, he began to eat, finding an excellent appetite . . . It was several minutes later that he fancied he heard a whirring and crackling in the brush behind them. He sprang to his feet in alarm.
“It can’t be far back to where I left the machine,” he cried. “Do you suppose there’s danger that—”
The mechanical ears of the metal things may have picked up the sound of his voice: but in any event, green flame flashed about them on the instant. Feeling a sudden protective impulse, Dan started toward Helen. That was his last recollection, before what seemed a terrific concussion swept him into the abyss of unconsciousness . . .
HIS first thought, when he awakened, was of the girl. But he was alone in the silence of the canyon. He sat up, realizing that many hours had passed, for the air was growing cool again, and the sun was low behind the peak at the head of the ravine. The huge, mysterious machine of the purple ring and the vibrating white needle were blazing splendidly.
He took more detailed stock of his immediate surroundings. The tangle of brush that had sheltered them had been cut away by the green annihilating ray. Charred stumps remained to show where it had fired bushes beyond the trail. His own shoulder was blistered, a hole was burned in the sheet wound about him, and the hair was singed from the back of his head.
Suddenly trembling with horror, he looked about for anything to show that Helen had perished by the ray. Discovering nothing, he breathed a sigh of relief.
“She must be still alive, anyhow,” he muttered. “And I’ve had another lucky break! The ray was too high to get me. They must have left me for dead.”
Presently he became conscious of torturing thirst. He retired through the brush, along the rocky wall of the canyon. By sunset he came upon a little natural basin in a rock, half full of rainwater. It was none too clean, but he drank his fill of it, and felt relief.
Looking up the canyon, he could see the great mechanism on the peak, gleaming in the dusk. Intensely-glowing purple mist clung about the great metal ring, and the slender, delicate needle swung below it, still vibrating, still throbbing with brilliant, white radiance. It pointed at the red eye of Mars, which had just winked into view.
Dan stared at it a long time.
“It all sounds crazy,” he muttered, “but it isn’t! The Master Intelligence of Mars, she said, is controlling the mechanical things through that! The doom of the Earth is coming through that white needle! If only I could smash it, somehow!”
He looked down at the white folds of the sheet that draped him, and clenched his hands impotently. “No gun! Not even a pocketknife. Nothing but my bare hands!” He bit his lip.
SILL he stared challengingly at the gleaming mechanism on the peak. An idea slowly took form in his mind; an exclamation abruptly escaped him. Narrowly he eyed the trussed girders of the silver towers, which supported the great ring, muttering to himself.
“Yes, I can do it! If I don’t get caught! I can climb it, well enough. The needle looks a bit frail. I should be able to smash it! I’d like to see Helen again, though.”
He gathered the sheet around him, and began picking a cautious way up the canyon, staying always in the cover of boulders or brush. A few times he disturbed a rock, or snapped a twig beneath his foot. Then he waited out of sight for long minutes, though he had no reason to believe that the metal monsters were on the alert for him.
“I’ve got to do it! The world depends on it!” he kept saying again and again in his mind.
The quick darkness of the tropics had fallen almost before he started. But he welcomed the night, for, if it made his own silent progress more difficult, it reduced the hazard that he would be discovered.
Gauging the time by the slow wheeling of the diamond-like stars across the velvet sky, he thought that two hours had passed when he reached the head of the canyon. He stood up cautiously to survey the little plateau at the summit of the hill.
It was several acres in extent, quite level, and almost clear of vegetation. At the farther side was a pile of wreckage, which, he supposed, had been the quarters of Dr. Hunter’s party, before they had been destroyed.
Many huge machines stood about the plateau, vast, dark masses looming in the starlight. Mostly they were either not running or very silent in operation; but a very deep, vibrant humming sound came from one near him. Smaller shapes were moving about them, with long easy leaps. These, he knew, were the mechanical monsters, though it was too dark to distinguish them.
BUT by far the most prominent object upon the plateau was the enormous, gleaming thing that Helen had said was the station over which came the signals from the Master Intelligence on Mars. One of its three towers sprang up not far from where he stood. The huge, refulgent ring, swathed in its midst of purple fire, was a full hundred feet above him; and the slender needle, pulsing with white flame, swinging within and below the colossal ring, was itself a hundred feet in length.
