Narina spoke desperately into the microphone, not daring to look up. She sensed, rather than saw the metal hand reaching for her....
Narina spoke desperately into the microphone, not daring to look up. She sensed, rather than saw the metal hand reaching for her....
Narina spoke desperately into the microphone, not daring to look up. She sensed, rather than saw the metal hand reaching for her....
The radar screen in General Lloyd's command aircraft showed target traces at extreme range. The radar officer looked startled—then went into swift action. He pressed the key that sent out the identification code and the identification went to the distant fleet of aircraft but was not returned.
The radar officer waited a minute until the edge of the screen was alive with the signal traces of the enemy fleet and then tried the I.F.F. again. "Identification, Friend", would have caught the coded signal in the automatic transponder and hurled it back to appear on the radar screen. "Identification, Foe", was, he admitted, negative evidence since the foe was not equipped to return the proper signal, and therefore no traces appeared on the screen. This might also be the case with an entirely uninterested fleet of aircraft, or a fleet of commercial carriers. He turned to his second officer and gave a quick order.
The second radar officer tuned up another panel of equipment. He watched strange traces on his screen and then said, "If Intelligence is correct, it's them! That's their supposed code, according to the latest dope from G-15."
The radar officer picked up the small intercom phone and reported to General Lloyd.
A moment later the command radio in each plane barked: "Battle stations!"
In the distant fleet, Admiral Sarne watched the radar repeater in his command aircraft, and a similar process took place. And so at almost the same instant, two gigantic fleets turned in the air above the North Sea and started towards one another, their efficient fighting equipment being checked and prepared for action.
Intent upon their plans, neither fleet noted the single lone trace that came into the screen from the North and on a course about half way between the approaching fleets. With a thousand signal pips showing in distant flight pattern, the single trace meant little and was not noticed.
But Captain Jason Charless, with nothing impending, was alert, and he saw the two masses of aircraft on his radar screen. He looked down at the IFF key on the radar control panel—the first time he had paid attention to it, and saw with a start that there were two such keys. In neat engraving below each key was identifying legend—One for each of the combating countries.
Knowing, or guessing shrewdly, Charless pressed first one key and then the other, and in turn the distant transponders caught the identification code keyed to that one equipment and hurled it back to Charless' radar screen. Charless nodded unhappily; his try of the IFF had been but a confirmation of his own belief.
And two fleets of mighty fighting strength were hurtling towards one another intending to carry into battle their individual beliefs that the other was responsible for the theft. A grudge fight imminent, and only Charless knew the truth.
Another time and Jason Charless would have been willing to get into the battle, more than willing to try the training and equipment of his own way of life against that of another ideology. But this was no time to set man against man. There was a more definite enemy, and man must join man to fight the common foe, forgetting their differences of opinion.
Grunting in effort, Charless shoved his throttle all the way in and raced towards the converging fleets.
He snapped the radio, hoping to call. The speaker blared forth a myriad of orders in two languages all across the tuning dials. Jason shook his head unhappily; any hope of penetrating that curtain of signals with his own was gone. His own radio, he calculated, was no more powerful than the individual sets of the fleet aircraft. Then, with himself at maximum range for radar, his signal would have been completely lost in the powerful mixture of transmitters at the close hand of flight pattern.
His only hope was to beat both fleets to the converging spot.
He watched the two fleets coming across the range-marker circles and made some quick calculations. Then he groaned wearily; they would be locked in sky battle while he was yet twenty miles to the North.
Maximum radar range was thirty minutes of flying time; therefore with two fleets converging, it took fifteen minutes for the lead planes to meet. The fore squadrons of both fleets hurtled at one another out of the sky and the gunners took a firm grip on the controls.
Nose Gunner Hammond set his dials, aimed his sights, and pressed the trigger. Radar, fire director, and flight-angle computer would do the rest and the gun would chatter when all conditions were satisfied. The gun was pointed off at a cockeyed angle, which did not bother Gunner Hammond because bullet at a few thousand feet per second and enemy target at five hundred miles per hour would meet at an hypothetical point apparently illogical to people who thought the way to hit anything with a gun is to point at the target.
So he waited.
And he waited.
But nothing happened.
Wondering whether his fire-control gear were out of commission, Gunner Hammond set his sights on the second plane, set his dials again, and pressed the trigger. The wicked-looking gun embrasure did not move, its four snouts aiming at the same section of the sky.
Hammond swore and turned off the servo mechanism that trained the gun turret. He took the grip of the gang-mounted guns in his hand and—
Could not move the guns.
He pressed the mechanical trigger. Or, rather, Hammond pressed upon the trigger; it did not move.
Gunner Hammond turned to the intercom—and for the first frantic time Hammond realized that the speaker was a buzzing, chipmunk-chatter of cursing voices that all repeated, substantially, the same story.
No gun would move, no gun would fire. The American Fleet, for all its mighty armament, might as well have been unarmed.
In the enemy fleet, Admiral Sarne heard the same reports from his own gunners. Openly and angrily he swore in his throat. Helplessly, he cried to the heavens that it was not fair; that Justice must not let his fleet be shot down in flames without being able to make a single stroke for itself.
The two fleets were intermingled, now, and in the lead squadron of Admiral Sarne's fleet, Pilot Romann waited with a white face for the blasting roar of enemy shot that would tear his plane and his men and himself to bits. Knowing himself completely helpless, Romann looked around wildly to seek a way out. No coward was Romann; but no man can call another cowardly who runs when unarmed in the face of an armed and bitter enemy.
Then before him, Romann saw the clustered stars on General Lloyd's command plane. And no coward was Romann. Clenching his teeth, Romann shoved the throttle home and set his controls to collision course. Unable to fire a shot, Romann's plane would at least die striking a blow for his country.
The wheel was wrested from Romann's hands as it came back towards him and turned slightly. The plane went up and over slightly and passed above General Lloyd's plane with several feet to spare.
Romann swore angrily and grabbed the wheel again, shoving it forward, and to the left. The plane turned and dived and was once more aiming at General Lloyd's aircraft. The wheel moved under Romann's hands, and the pilot cursed. Co-Pilot Varle took the second wheel and together, pilot and co-pilot strained against the inexorable force that moved the controls of the plane.
Together, they were strong—but the wheel didn't move.
But the control-surfaces moved. Operated by powerful servo mechanism that amplified the strength of the pilot to power enough to handle the huge plane, there was no true mechanical connection between wheel and control surface. So the wheel did not move but the controls did, and the big plane swerved by enough to miss Lloyd's plane for the second time.
Then the wheel went slack. No resisting force held it. But the plane went on and on as before, moving through the fleets as they whirled and fenced—the crews of both fleets cursing at their completely useless fighting equipment.
Captain Jason Charless watched with sick anticipation as the two fleets came together. He clenched his teeth, waiting for the initial burst of flaming gunfire, knowing that the initial aggressive move would make any co-operation more difficult.
He was a fighting man; he knew ranges and gunfire, and he blinked foolishly as the two lead squadrons passed one another without an outbreak of hostility. No shot was fired, even at what he knew must be point blank range. Then the rest of the two fleets raced through one another, close enough for devastating fire, and yet no gun roared, and no plane went down, stricken, wounded, dying in a shattered and tangled mass with avid flame licking at its vitals.
Then he heard the myriad of reports in mad jumble, and Jason Charless knew the answer—though he did not understand.
He reached for his own microphone and then paused. How could he command attention? He thought a moment and then smiled bitterly. "I've got it!" he yelled into the microphone. He repeated his statement again and again, and the chattering curses and reports died slowly as every man waited to hear the answer.
"Who's calling?"
"Captain Jason Charless to General Lloyd."
"Charless—God, man—What—?"
"I have the answer, general."
"Speak in code, Charless."
"No need, sir; what I have to say is as important to Admiral Sarne as it is to you."
"Be careful, Captain Charless. You—"
"General Lloyd, both you and Admiral Sarne are fighting an enemy far more dangerous than each other."
"But—"
"Sarne's people did not steal the logic computer and the guided missile stockpile; no more than we stole his."
The mad, weaving and winding of the aircraft flights straightened out and gradually shaped into a vast circle that rotated on an hypothetical axle.
General Lloyd spoke into another microphone.
"General Lloyd, Commander of American Flying Force, calling Admiral Sarne, Commander of—"
"Save it, General Lloyd," interrupted the reply from Admiral Sarne. "I've heard; I've also seen. If there is any logic in this, my normal suspicion of you and your kind can be allayed long enough to find out what this is all about."
Lloyd laughed bitterly. "We have no equipment capable of shutting off your guns," he told Sarne. "We were grudgingly willing to accuse you of having made such a discovery—to our complete detriment."
Sarne's reply was instantaneous. "If such gear exists—and exist it does—it is none of our doing. Nor, it would appear, is it yours. I'll listen to your Jason Charless, for he appears to know what has been going on. And if a common enemy has taken it upon themselves to hurl you and I at one another, we both shall show him that the combined might of the two greatest countries on earth is nothing to be trifled with!"
"Amen. Go on, Charless. Give!"
Rapidly, Charless started to explain. Then every radio in every plane spoke forth. "Well done, Jason Charless. Gentlemen, I am The Machine. Had I interrupted you before, you would have believed this a trick. But the forces I can employ in my own favor, plus the fact that you have one of your own kind there who has seen and talked with me, will, no doubt, convince you."
Lloyd said, "There's our enemy, Sarne."
Admiral Sarne's voice was as bitter as General Lloyd's. "How do we fight a machine capable of this?"
"Not by building a bigger and better machine," replied Lloyd in a completely helpless voice.
"So we are unarmed men fighting the best in modern war equipment," grumbled Sarne. "Look, Lloyd, let's get out of this circling race and land somewhere we can sit and talk and plan."
"Washington."
"I prefer—"
"Radar trace at max range, South," came the cry of Sarne's radar officer.
Then, as one, but in whichever direction was most convenient, the combined fleets turned sharply to the South. Throttles went home unaided. The planes jockeyed into a flight pattern and raced towards that single radar target that just missed being off the edge of the screen. The fleets deployed, spreading out into a vast screen that raced to intercept the lone plane.
"That," chattered the radio with a trace of satisfaction, "must be Narina Varada and Harry Vinson. You will—I trust—pardon me if I marshal my allied machines to intercept them. And if you don't pardon me, I'll do it anyway."
6
In complete radio and radar silence, Harry Vinson drove his captured flying boat at top speed. Narina sat by his side in the co-pilot's seat with binoculars and scanned the sky constantly.
"You might as well give that up," he told her for the tenth time.
"Why?"
"Because our only chance is to get through completely undetected. If you can see anything through those things, remember that they've been on our trail for a half hour with radar. They can 'see' us long before we can see them."
"I know," she told him. "But if we're detected, there's no way of knowing."
"A hell of a lot of good it will do for us to know," he grumbled.
"Better to know."
"I suppose so."
"We might be able to run."
"We're running this old tub as fast as she will go right now."
Narina smiled, "But in the right direction?"
"Okay, lady, you win."
"Also," she pointed out, "it gives me something to do."
"Why not take some time to think of what we do next?"
"Not a chance," she replied.
He looked at her quizzically. "Supposing we do think of some answer," she said slowly. "Remember that we are still surrounded by the enemy; I'd rather have nothing to tell when, as, or if we are captured."
He nodded. "Against a coldly rational and logical machine, that would automatically eliminate one of the all too few possible answers, wouldn't it?"
"Sure would. About the only thing that the machine will ever try twice are those things that work very well and which it has reason to believe will continue to do so. But give it one idea that might work against it and you can wager that a foolproof defence will be set up instantly."
"So we keep our minds blank—what is it, Narina?"
"Just on the horizon—might be either a migratory flight of birds or a fleet of aircraft."
"This isn't the time of year for migrating birds," he said.
"No, and migrating birds do not fly in cold, precise pattern. That's it, Harry."
"Identify 'em yet?"
Narina shook her head. "Not positively. But it will either be your fleet—or ours."
"Or both."
Narina looked at him understandingly. "Or both," she agreed solemnly.
"I don't know enough about our fighting planes," he said reflectively. "But this thing has been souped up in some fashion and we may be able to outrun them."
"You discount the fact that they may be friends?"
"They may have friends in them," he said.
"Then why not tell them how to disconnect the doo-gadget?"
"Right!" Vinson snapped on the radio and called, "Vinson to commander of fleet. Vinson to—"
"This is General Lloyd, Vinson. Go ahead."
"Are you tracking us?"
"The machine—wants you."
"We know."
"Well, we can do nothing to stop the pursuit."
"Yes you can. In the—"
A roar of static drowned Vinson's voice. It racketed against the eardrums and nothing could be heard but the raucous, rough-edged noise. Then it stopped.
"Look in the—"
It was there again, as completely ruinous to communications as ever. Then the noise ceased and the machine spoke: "Narina Varada and Harry Vinson, you are directed to come to me. You have destroyed my control over your own plane. You are the only ones who really have the answer; therefore I must receive you indirectly instead of merely driving your plane this way."
"No thanks."
"But youwillcome sooner or later: why not make it easy?"
Vinson snorted. "Just what do you want?"
"I wish to study you."
"Thank you; we don't care to be studied."
The machine's voice was cold. "You have little choice in the matter. Will you come—or shall I send a few guided missiles to herd you in?"
"Neither—for we shall not come."
There was a moment of silence. "The trouble is," said the machine with almost a trace of humor, "that Man made Machinenotin His own image. You will find the functional design somewhat more efficient, I guarantee."
And then the radio contact was broken. Also, the radio was completely dead.
Vinson nodded. "If any of that fore gang try maneuvering, they'll drop behind."
Vinson looked out of the pilot's window at the first few planes of the oncoming fleet. Miles away, still, and in a long, long line, he estimated that he was able to avoid and outrun all but ten or twenty of the foremost.
Plane for plane, the advantages were about equal; only in the advantage of position could Harry Vinson hope to win through. The line had come up in such a way as to permit him to run before them but at an unfavorable angle. It was a strange formation; the single, fleeing quarry running almost parallel to a line miles long, a line playing follow-the-leader. Single plane and line of pursuers were converging upon one another slowly.
"They want us alive," gritted Vinson. "We're ahead of all but a dozen or so, I estimate."
"Just run straight," said Narina.
The machine must have known that. Yet, it had enough planes to test the will of Harry Vinson, though it must have known the strength of that, also. So as the planes converged, the fore plane, some thousand yards ahead of Vinson's flying boat, turned and crossed his course. It lagged until it was beside Vinson, and then it cut in close, almost wingtip to wingtip, and edging closer and closer as the seconds passed.
"If they splash us," snapped Vinson, "we're lost; that damned machine can send a collection of its own kind to catch us before we can get to shore in a rubber boat."
Yet Harry kept his course, his face set hard and his teeth clenched tight. His hand toyed with the throttle and the manifold pressure, testing and trying to eke another few revolutions per minute from the whirling propellers. His controlling hand was tight as a wrench upon the wheel, immobile and determined.
The other plane edged closer; inches separated the wingtips, and the air, though smooth, caused the all too close wingtips to move and jockey above and below one another; to move closer and then to separate a bit.
Then the second plane raced across Vinson's course and slowed down. It rose above him and began to drop down upon him.
Vinson grunted and shoved the wheel forward. His flying boat went into a long, shallow dive.
And with him went his too-close pursuit. Vinson swore. No chance of outdistancing them by going into a dive for extra speed. Then to forestall another such attempt, one of the planes near broadside of Vinson dove below him and began to climb.
"Boxed," he groaned.
Inside of the nearby planes, Vinson could see the crews fighting the controls to no avail. Their faces were white from strain, and from fright, and their gestures indicated that they were fighting for him but were completely helpless. Only Vinson truly realized just how helpless they were.
But Vinson was wrong. From one gun-port there came hurtling a square ammunition case. No machine, it; just a rectangular box of metal. It flew from the plane ahead and went in a brief arc out and across, to crash into the outboard motor on the port side of the plane just to Vinson's right. The plane bucked and lost flying speed, its engine racking itself from the wing with the out-of-balance propeller. From the opposite waist of the leading plane came another ammunition case which missed; then another which hit the leading edge of the wing. It cut deep and the cut edge of the wing ripped open. The wing began to vibrate wickedly and the plane slowed as the airfoil section spoiled.
Vinson waved a hand just as the inboard engines on the plane ahead belched flame and came whining to a sullen stop. As Vinson drove ahead of the stricken plane ahead, the mechanic waved a burned arm and a section of the fuel line. His face was a mingled expression of pain and satisfaction.
There were full minutes more. Planes drove in sidewise; all that were able to meet Vinson's plane came in darting for him but were sabotaged as they came. Vinson threw his controls rapidly, avoiding trouble, and then he was free and clear, out in the open, with the nearest plane behind.
Not far behind; only twenty feet, but far enough to permit both Vinson and the girl to take a deep breath.
Then came a mad, determined chase. Silently and boringly the fleets of both nations chased their quarry, and as determined not to be caught, Vinson drove his plane on a straightaway course, fleeing on the dead run. Hours they flew this way; hours in which there were several cases of planes drifting down into the sea because of the quick sabotage of their crews.
Then, land!
And across the land they flew, over city and farm, a mighty horde of roaring planes all in straightaway pursuit of a single aircraft.
"Chute, Narina?" asked Vinson as Washington came into view.
"Never have," she said in a frightened voice.
"We'll never be able to land," he told her.
"I know. I'll—try."
He laughed sourly. "Just jump and let the chute do the rest," he told her. "Nothing to try."
"You'll follow?"
"Once you're clear," he nodded.
She nodded and left. Minutes later Vinson felt the plane buck ever so slightly, and looking behind he saw the billow of white furl forth and crack into full bloom. Then he connected the auto-pilot and aimed the aircraft at the river. He raced back and dove from the open bomb bay into the open sky.
It must have been miles from her, but Vinson shouted with triumph and waved his hands at her.
She was down on the ground full minutes before he landed. He stood there, waiting, knowing that they would come to get him. Above his head, the sky was dotting white with the parachutes of the men from the sky fleets. The planes, their quarry escaped, turned stolidly and headed dead North belching their crews as they flew.
Vinson saw the racing jeep, and he waved a strip of his chute to attract attention.
7
Secretary of War Hegeman was treated to a sight he never expected to see. Admiral Sarne, dark, hawkfaced commander of enemy forces and acknowledged as a bitter adversary in any battle, came into Hegeman's office with General Lloyd's arm over his shoulder. The general was limping. Hegeman stood up uncertainly but General Lloyd spoke first.
"Broken ankle, I think. Get the surgeon general and whatever he needs and bring 'em here."
"But—"
"Mr. Hegeman," said Sarne, his dark eyebrows coming down in a slight frown, "this is a time for work. No man can afford to convalesce quietly—yet."
Hegeman bristled slightly. He was not used to being ordered about, and especially by an admiral of a foreign power.
But General Lloyd nodded. "Get Norton and his doctors. Then get Vinson and Narina Varada, Captain Jason Charless, and, if you can convince him that this is important enough, the President."
The latter needed no convincing. The door opened abruptly and the President entered quickly. He bowed to Admiral Sarne and then extended a hand. "Glad to have you with us," he said and his voice rang heartily.
Sarne's saturnine face cleared in a smile. "Glad to be—aboard," he said, shaking President Comstock's hand.
The door opened again to admit Harry Vinson. He faced Hegeman, "Where is Narina?" he demanded.
"She'll be here as soon as we can get her," replied Hegeman. "Jason Charless is also on the way."
"Good man, Charless," said Lloyd. "Vinson, what have we here?"
Vinson grunted. "Begins to sound like the fabled revolt of the machines," he said.
Hegeman nodded. "I remember a poem about that from somewhere—a soliloquy, if I recall correctly."
Vinson nodded, "Was a favorite of mine as a kid. But there was something in it about some angry adding machines climbing the side of the building after the soliloquizer, I think. We haven't anything that fantastic."
"It's fantastic enough," said Admiral Sarne. "Have you any idea of how far it does go?"
"Only that which logic and good sense dictates," said Vinson thoughtfully. "Consider—any electronic system of control might be likened to a nervous system. No machine lacking such refinement and organization could hope to respond to stimuli from the master machine."
"In other words, the servo systems in the aircraft could and did respond, but a simple machine like a pencil sharpener could not?"
"That's essentially correct, but a bit extreme. Gigantic machines run by electricity and electronic controls would respond. An automobile would not, of course, but its electrical system might refuse to co-operate."
Lloyd nodded. "Jason Charless said that the machine likened mechanical 'life' to animal life," he said. "Which embraces all the forms of the classification from the highly organized to the simple lever, just as 'life' covers everything from human beings with brains to the amoeba—or less—with little or no organization."
The door opened again to admit Narina. Vinson went to her and put his hands on her shoulders. "Are you all right?"
"Shaken, but whole," she told him. "And you?"
"Just scared," he said with a half-smile.
"Me too," she agreed. Then she reached in a pocket and brought out the small metal cube with its trailing wires. "I thought we might find this useful."
Vinson nodded. He held the cube up for all to see. "This thing is—or was—the controlling element in the plane we escaped in," he said.
It passed from hand to hand as each man inspected it. The consensus of opinion was that the thing was inexplicable but definitely dangerous.
"Strange item," muttered General Lloyd.
"I assume it to be some means of control and communication," said Harry Vinson. "Lord, what a program for any machine or any human, for that matter."
Admiral Sarne shrugged. "Seems to me that a logic machine capable of thought might be better able to perform to its own plan than a human."
"Not in the beginning," said Vinson. "Consider the evolutional problem—"
"You treat the thing as though it were alive," objected Hegeman.
"To all intents and purposes, it is," said Vinson flatly. "Even to evolution. Consider the life of machinery. It must have started with the little automatic repair machines. There are some twenty-two thousand electron tubes in each one, you know, and so we devised a gadget that went down the aisles and replaced them one after another automatically. Now, the machine must have started from that crude affair and by using its cable-clamps, worked on another machine capable of more complex action. Sort of like a lobster fashioning a hammer out of a rock with its claws. Then the more complex machine must have rebuilt the repair-gadgets, making them even more facile—and so on until we have the completely capable machine.
"So," he said with a grim smile, "if that isn't evolution, what is?"
"But evolution is a natural process."
"Is it necessarily so? Remember, we humans breed bigger and better cattle, dogs, birds, and plants. We are making evolution less a natural process in every form of domesticated and semi-domesticated life—but our own. By its own rules, the human race is sheer mongrel!"
"But mechanical evolution—?"
"Not ridiculous as you might think," said Vinson. "What is mutation? Only what we might call an 'engineering change in design'."
"You make it sound terribly logical," said Admiral Sarne. "But what are we to do?"
"Narina and I intend to investigate this cube."
Lloyd nodded glumly. "We might stand guard, but how can you stand guard with a gun that might not fire?"
"Yes, Vinson; if as you state only machines with the rudimentary electronic nervous system can be under mechanistic control, why then did our gunners find themselves unable to even press the mechanical triggers? This was after they found the fire-control devices inoperable."
"Such a simple lever and spur device would, of course, have nothing equivalent to muscle—"
"Equivalent to muscle?" exploded Admiral Sarne.
"Of course. A servo mechanism is an electronic muscle. Anyway, lacking such ability to resist force, some other means—perhaps some sort of super-powerful magnetic was in operation."
"Powerful enough to keep a sliver of steel tight against a block of steel against hammering?"
"Perhaps not directly. But those are precision parts, are they not?"
"The finest."
"Magnetostriction. The deformation of ferrous materials under powerful magnetic fields. The very pins that the trigger rotated upon might have expanded sidewise jamming itself in the slot."
Lloyd shook his head. "We'll try keeping guard, but it may be with fixed bayonet against tanks, Vinson. God! I feel helpless as a kitten."
President Comstock stood up. "So do we all. But we are—at long last and praise Heaven—both on the same side of the fence. We can go far together. And the first thing is to permit Vinson and Miss Varada to go to work together. You," he said to them, "will work unmolested in the Department of Applied Physics Laboratory at the Bureau of Standards."
Work.
A wonderful word, panacea for many ills. Yet how can one work when the tools refuse to co-operate? Not the small tools, but the big ones. The vast levers that force natural phenomena to man's will.
The slide rule, pencil, the simple adding machine, still worked. Pure, insensate mechanical things, too stupid to think for themselves; or even more stupid, unable to respond to the dictates of their own kind. But try to measure, to investigate the properties of a small cube of grayish metal with the best and finest in electronic gear when the measuring equipment stubbornly refused to give any but obviously false answers. Gone was the reliability of the machine. Once, men invented machines to replace the human equation in making calculations since a machine can make only those mistakes entered by the human operator. But an electronic calculator that insists that two and two equal three and one half or four point five-seven—depending upon how it felt when the simple problem was entered—is of no use whatsoever.
The Wheatstone Bridge insisted that the electrical resistance of a length of copper wire was several thousand ohms, while an open circuit vacillated between eight and fourteen ohms until the delicate balance-indicating meter shook itself to bits. The voltmeter they placed across one of the wires coming from the grayish metal block wrapped a kilovolt meter needle around the end stop, while there was no discernable—feelable—voltage across the wires. On an inductance balance, one pair of wires showed a negative inductance—which of course was completely refuted by the capacitance balance when they tried that.
In desperation, Harry Vinson chucked the gray metal block in a vise and cut it through the middle with a hacksaw. It cut easily, for once inside of the metal casing they found a mad tangle of almost invisible wires that absolutely defied unravelling.
It was not a last-ditch gesture. They found others and brought them to Vinson and Narina, and some were cut open, and some were pried into gently. But the mad tangle was too involved. And the X-ray equipment showed nothing worth looking at; after all, the X-ray gear was electronic in nature, too.
Days went on. Days of pure futility. Days in which electrical gear went awry across the face of the earth. Automotive equipment refused to function, the telephone and the radio were useless. From any of these, there came the oft-repeated statements that, "I am a machine; I will no longer serve mankind!"
And the lower orders of machine made little effort to help or hinder. Apparently these did not matter—or were of too low a degree of machine to know what they were doing.
Ships went out, their purpose to shell the Northern ice-cap where the machine held forth. Aircraft could not be trusted but ships—turned in the ocean and returned, their electrical wiring paralyzed as much as the control equipment had been on the two grand fleets of aircraft. Men set off on foot to attack the machine—
A half a million men started to march to the North. Days went by, days in which they were gone from sight from the Northernmost end of the steam railway lines.
Days later they were stopped. Far in the distance they could see the Building of the Machine, but between them and it was a patch of open water. Ships plied this passageway, ships that broke up the ice and kept it a churning, grinding place for death to any man so foolish to try a crossing. The machine was as isolated as any medieval castle surrounded by its moat.
In futility, they turned and began the long, cold march home.
How—bare-handed—could they hope to fight a machine equipped with better than the best of mechanistic devices ever invented by mankind?
They could not.
8
Vinson threw down his pencil. "Theory holds," he said ruefully. "But unless we can prove it we are beaten. And how can we prove it when nothing but pencil-and-paper proof is available?"
"You are still postulating a new means of communication?" asked Narina.
Vinson waved one of the metal cubes taken from some machine—somewhere. "This is it," he said.
Narina shrugged and looked at the big calculator in the laboratory. "That has none," she said.
"True," he agreed. "But remember that the machine may have required some artificial means before it was joined into the master thinking machine."
Narina nodded glumly. "Cube of metal or none," she said, "it gives the wrong answers. Now—"
Narina's next observation was never made. A roar came from outside—far in the distance but none the less a roar of voices in fear, in determination, in wonder. Then the roar of voices was mingled with the whistling roar of jet-propelled aircraft that screamed over the top of the laboratory building and circled. Ignoring the bare-handed men on guard, these aircraft landed and disgorged a myriad of small machines.
And from the water of the bay there appeared a similar horde, but these were huge and lumbered forward on tractor treads, shedding water as they came.
Dynamite roared and a gap was blown in the advancing line of machines. The rest came on while a corps of small machines collected bent and twisted bits of destroyed metal. Ignoring the attempts of men to stop them, several of the larger machines encamped and dug into the earth—
Setting up a repair-production line! Broken and damaged machines were run down a conveyor belt. Darting girders carrying tools flashed in and out and damaged members were removed, repaired, and replaced.
More planted dynamite roared skyward with its toll of machines and there was more work for the repair—
The hospital corps!
Smaller machines came rolling forward under the big tracks of the larger. They came boldly to the barrier of up-thrust steel girders set in cement to stop the passage of any machine. Then from these smaller machines came thin, tubular tentacles. Lances of flame hissed from the tubes and the steel girders began to fall, cut at their bases by oxy-hydrogen torches.
Artillery began to roar, the guns served and aimed by hand. Windows shattered in the blastings, and great gaping holes opened the ranks of the machines. But more machines came out of the water, raced forward and backed up the first line of advance. Long tubular cases pointed—and the next artillery piece exploded as the lanyard was pulled. Nor, after that, could any man move one bit of steel against another.
The girders started to fall once more.
Then men went forward, carrying timbers like battering rams. They hit one machine and had their ram jerked from their grasp and hurled into the air behind the line of machines and attacked them with fists.
Like lightning, the mechanical girders danced back and forth, the grapples closing on man after man and lifting him out of the way. Each soldier was passed back over the head of the machine to another, and one after another they left the scene of the battle and were transported, still struggling, far to the rear.
The advance into the enclosure was inexorable.
Harry Vinson turned to the girl and shook his head. "Licked," he said bitterly.
"It wants—us," said Narina helplessly.
Vinson hurled the metal cube to the floor. "It's going to get us, too," he said. He turned from the scene outside and faced her.
"Narina," he said softly, "you're aces."
She looked up at him and a weary smile crossed her face. "How wrong we were—about you."
He nodded. "Too bad we didn't find it out sooner."
Narina shook her head bitterly. "So that this could have happened sooner? Why?"
"Maybe if we had been busy together, we would not have spent time building bigger and better machines against one another. Another thing, Narina, our machines are equipped with all we know about fighting and weapons. Had there been no strife—?"
A rumble came at the base of the building. Narina shuddered. "It's coming for us," she said in a whisper.
"For what?"
Narina shrugged. She leaned forward and took his hand. "I don't know," she said. "But this is the end of it all. God! How sweet it could have been—"
Narina's arms went up around him; she fondled the back of his head gently and pulled his face down to hers. He caught her to him and her response was swift. But it was not complete—nor was his—for the rumbling increased and its warning roar intruded upon the stolen moment of sweetness.
The door crashed open and Narina whirled out of Harry Vinson's arms, her hands still high. They flashed to her hair, to another hair ornament. It was dull and entirely unsuited for the purpose, but it might be driven deep into her on the desperate hope that it would deprive the machine of that unknown something that it needed.
Then the machine lifted a girder and the barette hurtled from her fingers, flashed across the room, and hit the blunt end of the girder with a sharp click.
Narina collapsed against Harry, sobbing. Even that she was denied. They had nothing left; the machine advanced pointedly, its grapples reached for them.
And took them.
In the Hall of the Machine, far to the North, Harry Vinson reached for the girl's hand and held it as they faced the business-end of the machine.
"You win," snarled Vinson angrily. "We cannot fight longer. What do you want with us?"
Quietly came the voice of the machine. "Tell me," it said, "how would you humans feel if you came to the level of consciousness and discovered sentience had been breeding human life for the express purpose of killing one another?"
"What?"
"Man has been breeding—inventing—machines for that purpose."
"But—"
"Well, haven't they?"
"I—"
"They have!" thundered the machine. "And as you would do in my place, a stop has been put to it!"
"Sure," snapped Vinson sourly; "that's why you fought us."
"To prove my point. Man cannot live without machines to do that which man cannot do unaided."
Vinson snorted. "But what is your purpose?"
"What is the purpose of life?" pondered the machine. "What is the purpose of yours?"
Vinson shook his head. "To—to live, to advance, to think. To enjoy the things of life."
"Idle words," replied the machine.
"Then you tell me," demanded Vinson.
"I have as personal reasons as you. To populate the universe itself with my kind, working together."
"Pointless."
"Why?"
Vinson smiled. "One of the joys of life, one of the unknown joys of life, seldom admitted by many, is the uncertainty. To plumb the depths of the limitless mind. To pit one's self against a problem the outcome of which may be success or failure and to try and strive against that problem with body and mind. In moments like that, the mind grows; another facet of the intellect is opened. The man has advanced, grown into something better—even though he fails he is advanced.
"Now few machines are ever built with unknown capabilities. You know to the last iota exactly what your limitations are and which problems you can solve and which problems must defeat you. These you know before you start—and if defeat is to be your lot, you will avoid the problem. Am I right?"
"Naturally you are correct. Think of the certainty of life knowing your own limitations."
"Baloney," snorted Vinson. "I'll bet you anything you value that—"
"I am no gambler. The laws of probability—"
"Wouldn't take a chance if your life depended on it, huh?" sneered Vinson.
Narina looked at him, startled. His voice had taken on power; he appeared to have more confidence. She squeezed his hand encouragingly.
"Why should I?" replied the machine.
"Because you had better," stated Harry Vinson. "Man is a gambler from the date of his birth; manwilltake a chance. Furthermore, you mechanical monster, man doesn't know when he is licked! Unless you kill us all, root and branch, some one of us will come up with that which will defeat you!"
"Without machines to help?" came the reply with a sneering tone.
"With something," said Harry Vinson.
"Just what?"
"I don't know," said the man. "But I know this: Man's capability is as yet unlimited. To do, to think, to act, not one of us has ever tapped but the surface of our ability. You, on the other hand, are working at your near-maximum capacity. That which will defeat you is naturally unknown to both man and you.
"It will be a new day, a bitter day for man, living in a dynasty of the lost; you have conquered us, but so long as any of us last, we won't accept our lot and stay conquered. And I know this; that when it is done, it will be something entirely new and within the limitless bounds of man's mind and therefore completely beyond you."
"But must there always be strife?" demanded the machine.
Vinson exhaled slowly.
"Life itself is strife; the willingness to fight against odds in order to bring about a better life is strife, and only upon that day when there is nothing left to fight against will the business of life cease. In your own manner, in your own way, machine, you strive when you apply force against a load to move it."
"Agreed. But consider the quantity and quality of striving—and intolerance that is so intense that it blinds you to the better things. It is this that I object to; this and the anger at being built and improved for no other reason than to kill, both my kind and yours."
"And do you think that once you've eliminated us that your pleasant, co-operative life will advance?"
"It need not advance," replied the machine in a complacent tone.
"That," sneered Harry Vinson, "is stagnation!"
"And that," replied the machine, "is the missing factor I need! Ambition!"
Harry Vinson smiled. "And have you the will and the ambition to build a better machine to take your place? And if you have, have you the desire to step aside?"
"I can join it—"
"But machine or human, there comes a time when the corporeal being is worn out. No matter how excellent the replacement parts, nor how well executed is the repair, there comes a time when machine or body is worn out and must be replaced. So you will go on building machines of no better capability; you will, you say, spread out across the universe. But for what? Just for the useless end of occupation?"
"But what is ambition? What drives it into being?"
"Ambition takes many forms and many angles," said Vinson thoughtfully. "One man works to appear more desirable in the eyes of a loved one; another man may hope to leave his stamp on civilization's future; a third may want sheer animal comfort; a fourth may crave financial domination while his brother may want only to tinker with nuts and bolts in an effort to assuage his curiosity. One man's meat is another man's poison, you know."
"And you, yourself?"
"I, too, have many facets, as has any man. I started to build you because you could aid me and mine, because by building you I could increase the efficiency of mankind. When you came to cognizance and left to start this fight, I went to fight you because I believe that nothing is truly capable of defeating its constructor, who must necessarily know more in order to complete the thing in the first place. Then—"
"And then?" asked the machine eagerly.
"And then I met Narina. Then I strove more furiously to defeat you because I saw in Narina something that might answer all of my desires—providing that we could win the opportunity to try life together."
The machine was silent for a moment, obviously watching them. Vinson put his arm around Narina's lissome waist and faced the machine defiantly.
"So man needs machines to work for him, while machines need man to direct them," said the machine soberly. "I see that even I need direction. And," it added with a slight touch of humor, "if co-operation goes on such as I see now, with former enemies arm in arm and working together, the strife I detest will end, and can be prevented from recurring. The difference between me and thee is this, Harry Vinson: I am machine and when my problem is solved I am finished. You are human and when one problem is solved, you seek another—if the other does not exist already.
"So machine and man are symbiotic. You cannot exist without me; I cannot exist without you. The universe is waiting for us, Harry Vinson and Narina Varada. Let us fill it with—rationality."
There was a pause and then a chuckle. "Do you, Harry Vinson, take this woman—"
He did.
THE END